The Time I Invented A Wall
Listen up, let me tell you a story
The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air - 4
A story that you think you've heard before
The Simpsons Movie - 4
We know you know our names
Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back - 4, 8
And our fame
Fight Club - 4
And our faces
Aladdin - 4, 5
All about the glories
Ferris Beuller's Day Off - 4
And the disgraces
Monty Python and the Holy Grail - 5
I'm done, 'cos all this time
Spongebob Squarepants - 5
I've been just one word in a stupid rhyme
Looney Tunes - 4
So I picked up a pen
Deadpool - 4
And a microphone
The Holy mountain - 4, 5
History's about to get overthrown
Robin Hood: Men in Tights - 4
Just thought I'd diversify my audience a bit. Granted, it could be considered false advertising; this post is not about musicals and is even less about Six.
Most of the above screenshots came from this video.
Preface: For the record, I came up with this idea completely independently, but I've since discovered that at least one person has come up with the same idea (although they interpreted it differently to my way).
More false advertising: the title of this post is The Time I Invented A Wall. I actually invented four walls, one of which I invented while writing this post!
You're probably familiar with the concept of The Fourth Wall. Just in case you aren't, here's an explanation of the origin of the term, taken directly from my (as yet unfinished) review of the School of Rock TV Show, which is a real thing that actually happened:
Most conventional stage shows have three walls on stage at any given time (some shows are set in multiple locations). This is because most rooms have four walls, and the physical 'fourth wall' has been removed to make it easier for the audience to see the action. Fun fact: this was only the case after 1853 when Sir Jeremy Pleasure suggested the removal of the physical fourth wall and that's where we get the phrase 'for your viewing pleasure' from.
I do all my own artwork. Does it show?
'Breaking The Fourth Wall' is a narrative device where characters ignore the hypothetical fourth wall and directly address the audience.
However, as I mentioned earlier, there are three other walls and they enclose the entire stage. So you’re probably wondering where they are. Obviously, they are all metaphorical walls rather than physical or hypothetical walls. Well, let's go through them one at a time:
The Fifth Wall
The fifth wall is easily confused with other walls, especially to new initiates to the Eight Wall School of Thought. Even I still get them confused occasionally.
The fifth wall is broken when a character references being part of a tv show/play/movie etc. For example, check out this clip from The Fresh Prince of Bel Air:
In it, Will does break the fourth wall, because he talks to the audience, but he also breaks the fifth wall by pointing out that it is a TV set, so doesn't have a proper ceiling.
But why is that different to breaking the fourth wall, I don't hear you ask because that's not how blogs work. Well, the difference is that with each subsequent wall, you can break it without breaking the previous walls.
The Sixth Wall
The sixth wall is script/writer criticism. Breaking of the sixth wall is fairly uncommon, and the only TV/Movie example I can think of is this:
The best example I know of sixth wall breaking is actually a book, The Better Brown Stories by Allan Ahlberg. It is a series of stories about the Brown family, except that they all take issue with parts of their character and situations, so they go to visit 'the writer' who changes details about them and inserts them into stories of their choosing.
Click the link to the Amazon page and click Look Inside if you want to read some of the book, but I'm not sure of the legal ramifications of including some of the text, even if I were to cite it properly, so here's a short extract from my play, Tangents (for context: Dan has just fitted a binary-encoded lock to the lab (their workplace) but Jo can't figure out how to use it, so they come up with an alternative solution):
COLIN: And so it came to pass,
That Dan locked everyone out,
But when Jo arrives in the morning,
She’ll just have to shout.
Chris: What?
COLIN: Oh, yeah. I’ve taken up poetry now. Stay tuned for better poems that weren’t written by the author of the play, who, no matter what he says, CANNOT WRITE POETRY TO SAVE HIS LIFE!
Loud V.O.: I killed you once, I can kill you again!
For anyone who has played the game and is wondering who Dan is, he is another character who I merged with Jo to make the plot simpler. Unfortunately, because they are so different, it is a lot harder to make that character work on any level.
The Seventh Wall
The seventh wall is by far the hardest to grasp the concept of. This is when a character makes a comment criticizing, or not understanding, common tropes. For example, in the below clip from Community, Abed keeps referencing the fact that the episode is a bottle episode (an episode of a TV show which uses only the main cast and stays in a single location).
The reason for the strange editing is that the clip only includes the seventh wall breaks
My brother says he is also breaking the fourth wall because he speaks to the audience, but it can be debated that he was talking to Perry, who is where the camera would be.
The Eighth Wall
Eighth wall breaks are when a piece of media references a cast or creative member's name or other works Check out this clip from Futurama:
(for context, in the episode this clip is from (The Silence of the Clamps), Bender (the robot) has witnessed a crime and has been forced into Witness Protection. The gang then discover his new identity as a farmer on the Moon. There's another twist, but I won't ruin it here)
In this clip, Fry mentions that Bender's new name, Billy West, sounds made up. This is because the actor who plays Fry is called Billy West.
The Ninth Wall
The ninth wall is Guy Incognito:
Ten+
Scientists have postulated the existence of up to 12 walls, but so far insufficient evidence has been gathered to prove this.
In case you were wondering, it is also possible to break the 3rd wall:
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