Maybe it’s not a sytlistic device but just a joke smuggled into a drama, film etc by the author. What I mean is a little comment made by one of the characters that surprisingly make clear it’s just fiction what they’re in.
Let me give you two examples, both from The Persuaders* TV series (starring Roger Moore and Tony Curtis), although I’ve found similar things elsewhere as well.
In one episode, the two hobby detectives burglarize a house to collect evidence. After they’ve broke in, they’re standing beneath a staircase, and Moore asks what to do next. Curtis replies: “Well, the script says we have to go upstairs.”
In another episode, Moore drops a bad joke, and Curtis tells him: “Stop that nonsense, or they’ll discontinue the series.”
[sub](Both quotations re-translated by myself from the German version of the series, so it might not coincide with the original text.)[/sub]
In both cases, the action goes on as if nothing had happened, but this little comment makes clear it’s not real but merely fiction by mixing up the action within the series and the production of it. I love it; is there any term for this?
[sub]* Remarkably bad as detective stories, but fun to watch and full of good puns.[/sub]
The term you are looking for is “breaking the fourth wall.”
According to the Web site Logophilia, “This phrase originated in theatrical circles where the fourth wall is the imaginary wall that separates the actors and the audience.”
Someone told me that this is known as a 4th wall joke. You’re supposed to imagine the TV characters being inside the television, with the “4th wall” being the screen that you’re watching them through.
A similar device is the Easter Egg. These are in-jokes or merely humorous tangents thrown in, and usually not glarinly obvious: its not itended that everyone “gets” the joke. They are quite common in Computer games, particularly ones with a good sense of humor and RPG’s.
I.E., in Fallout and Fallout 2, there were a number of special random events. Some were serious plot thingies or optional areas, but most were kinda funny, such as meeting King Arthur and the Knights, etc., all in Power Armor and wielding Chainguns and Plasma Rifles.
Or the Bridgekeeper upon the Bridge of Death (Amswer me these questions three, ere…)
Yep, ‘breaking the fourth wall’ is the usual contemporary description in film and TV.
George Burns and Gracie Allen used to do this in their golden era comedy TV show, and were probably first or among the first to do this on prime-time TV in the States. More recently, the TV Willis/Sheperd comedy ‘Moonlighting’ featured this device quite often, and reportedly it took many viewers some time to ‘get it’.
I was under the impression that “breaking the fourth wall” referred to speaking to or otherwise interacting with the audience, removing the divider between actor and viewer. I can see how simply acknowledging that you’re in a movie/show/play could be thrown into this same category of things, but is there a seperate name for it?
In other words, when Tony Curtis says to Roger Moore, “the script says we have to go upstairs”, he’s not actually breaking the fourth wall as George Burns is when he turns to the camera and makes a comment about what’s going on. In the Curtis/Moore scenario, they haven’t actually acknowledged or interacted with the audience, so there’s still conceptually a fourth wall.
Note that there’s also a third variation on this, where the characters joke as if they’re in a script, but they don’t mean it literally. For example, in Scream, one of the guys saying something like, “this is the part where the bad guy always shows up” definitely isn’t breaking the fourth wall. The character isn’t really supposed to be aware he’s in a script, but he’s talking as if he is.
I think “breaking the fourth wall” can also refer to “destroying the illusion of reality”. In the webcomic PvP (www.pvponline.com) one of their running gags is the one character who always gets attacked by a giant Panda bear. Obviously, in real life people aren’t attacked in their offices by Panda bears, so this destroys the illusion of real life.
I saw the British film <i>24 Hr Party People</i> last week, a recreation of the 1980s Manchester music scene through the eyes of impresario Tony Wilson, and it employed some interesting techniques that made me think about this subject quite a bit. Wilson is played by British comedian Steve Coogan, who narrates the story as if it were a documentary of his own memories, sometimes sitting in a modern-day cutting room as if he were producing a retrospective, sometimes stopping in the middle of a scene to tell us what’s going on, and at some points even finding himself in situations he was never even part of, then turning to us and explaining why it’s necessary we see this happen.
A particularly fascinating moment comes when we see a brief scene involving a TV director on a mid-80s music show, and then Coogan/Wilson tells us “Now, in that last scene, did you see that man? That man playing the television director is the REAL Tony Wilson. The REAL me.” This prompted a lot of discussion after the film with my roommates about the sacredness of keeping a character intact and the liberties one can take with suspension of disbelief in contemporary times…
(He then adds, “We’ve got a lot of real people doing cameos, if you’ve noticed,” goes back to show us who the cameos so far have been, and explains one unfamiliar one as “Unfortunately this scene didn’t make the final cut of the film, but it’ll probably be in the DVD.”)
Now that you mention TMNT, I’m reminded of what I can only describe as an “anti-fourth wall joke.” In one episode, the reporter April O’Neil and another reporter named Vern fall off the edge of a roof during a fight or something. The Turtles are there, but can’t grab them in time. We then see the Turtles running out of the building’s entrance. April and Vern should be lying splatted on the ground, but they’re nowhere to be seen. The Turtles look around, bewildered, and one of them asks “Uhhh, do you think we might have beaten them down?” One of the others replies “What do you think this is, a cartoon?” The joke, of course, is that it is a cartoon. (It turns out that April and Vern landed safely on an awning above them.)
Is there a name for this kind of device, the converse of a fourth wall joke?
The Goon Show: Six Charlies in Search of an Author.
Several… well, six, er, charlies, searching for the guy who’s writing the script. They catch up with him, steal his typewriter, and write themselves a happy ending.
Only it’s really really funny.
This was originally broadcast on the BBC radio in 1956.
What the OP is talking about isn’t breaking the fourth wall. Breaking the fourth wall means, very simply, making contact with the audience. A character can reveal that he knows he’s in a script without breaking the fourth wall (the OP’s example). It’s also very easy for a character to break the wall without making this revelation (most narrators do it all the time).
Can a character do what the OP is talking about and break the fourth wall? Yes. Can they do it and not break the wall? Yes. So there must (or should) be another name for it. I like KayT’s or ratatoskK’s answer.
