[snarky aside]: on the fourth wall as artistic technique and real-world consolation
What do Deadpool, The Office, and Fleabag have in common? Well, for starters, they share an exceedingly tenuous connection to Christopher Nolan: Hugh Jackman, who cameoed in the first two Deadpools, starred in Nolan’s debut film, The Prestige; Emily Blunt, wife to the actor who played Jim in The Office, also starred in Nolan’s recent blockbuster Oppenheimer; and both Nolan and Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who wrote and starred in Fleabag, are afflicted with the sui generis condition of being British. I jest, of course. The primary factor that unites all three shows is the consistent breakage of the fourth wall, i.e. when Jim twists his features into his classic lopsided smirk for the camera in The Office, or when Deadpool makes obscene gestures in “our” direction. (Plus I adore all three of them.)
For the uninitiated, the fourth wall refers to the imaginary “wall” that exists between fictional character and audience, and the fourth wall is broken when the character interacts with the audience in some way. This tends to be subversively self-referential, characteristic of contemporary (postmodern? let’s pretend you and I know precisely what “postmodern” entails) film and television bent towards irony and black-ish humour. Done poorly, it can cause the audience immense second-hand embarrassment (controversial, but see: Ferris Bueller's Day Off); done well, it makes for endearing, if imperfect, characters, and a subliminal incentive for the audience to keep watching.
Note that the fourth-wall break isn’t restricted to the televisual medium: plays pioneered it in the form of dramatic asides, and writers do it too, sort of, when they address the reader directly—yeah, you, thumbing your way down the screen there, hi—for a number of intended effects. Often the character/narrator employs this technique for the purpose of insulating themselves from sentiment (or criticism) by way of irreverent one-liners and conspiratorial grins (literary equivalent, as manifest in para. 1: “Well,...”). David Foster Wallace did this in his essays to stunning effect, routinely undercutting his own authority on matters in which he was clearly well-versed and doubling back on hard-edged claims and convictions to allow for nuance, or at least the impression of nuance. I would venture to suggest that he did this not only for his readership, but also and perhaps mainly for the most critical member of his audience—himself.
Such poses of sophistication are meant to be humorous, but they also allow for characters to evade a reality that would otherwise be necessary to confront, from the pervasive tedium of the workplace (The Office) to the anguish of genuine loss (Fleabag) to the misfortune of being Canadian (Deadpool). We attempt to appear more clever than we are in an effort to conceal pain, terror, despair; when a character glances sideways at the camera, quietly amused, they create an excuse to avert their gaze and attention from the perennial demands of their fictional lives. But we do this too, in real life.
In the early hours of the morning at karaoke, you’ll almost certainly find someone caterwauling to Celine Dion like a wretched creature getting flayed alive. I usually wind up hovering soberly in a corner, cringing for the benefit of some imaginary audience, dismissive of the courage it takes to get up there and wilfully blind to the cowardice of not trying. We don’t like Deadpool, Jim, or Fleabag for their witty quips, their quirky expressions of good-humoured disdain; not really. We like them because of the vulnerability that emerges in stark contrast when they face away from us, resisting the urge or even forgetting to use the fourth wall as a crutch. It’s the moments in-between, when the inane babble of internal monologue falls silent—the walls coming down, ego giving way to awe and sincerity—that make us human and imbue our lives with meaning, purpose, joy.
As such, the scenes in which characters who usually break the fourth wall choose not to are invariably the most important: when Jim confesses his feelings to Pam, when Deadpool tries to memorise the lines of Vanessa’s face upon learning about his diagnosis, when a wordless Fleabag listens to the tribulations of the ruined bank manager with a silence that is uniquely honest and non-judgemental.
But the fourth-wall break exists for a reason: it’s comforting, a self-indulgent necessity for some to endure the constant grind of being alive. Sometimes, I feel both viscerally and objectively certain that life is, on balance, a net negative; that humanity will annihilate the planet, and then itself; that everyone I love will die by the turn of the century and time will render our strivings meaningless and the future is now and forever irrevocably bleak. (Deadpool: "So dark. You sure you're not from the DC universe?” If only we lived in the MCU.) The worst thing is that I’m right. I’m too old to believe in Santa or dog heaven but too young to possess the wisdom necessary to accept the doomed insignificance of humankind.
But there’s nothing to do about it, really, but laugh in the face of this great cosmic joke, shrug it off facetiously, what can you do; to imagine Sisyphus happy. Life carries on. Sometimes the only thing that prevents me from succumbing to wholesale despair is the internal smirk or misanthropic thought conceived for an audience that doesn’t exist—a mental aberration, devastating if said aloud but sustaining when kept to oneself. It might seem like I’m encouraging you to be a bitch in your head, but mostly I want to encourage doing so to avoid being a bitch IRL: to occasionally cut to the fourth wall, so to speak. Gallows humour never killed anyone.
Still, though, my favourite scene in Fleabag is the final one. It’s late at night, the streetlights hazy and golden over the sidewalk. Fleabag’s made it through two seasons (if you haven’t yet, I beg of you: watch the show) alive and accepted that—impossible as it may seem—things are going to be okay. The camera follows her as she gets up from the plastic seat at the bus stop and turns to leave. Then she pauses, rocks back. She doesn’t say a word, but she looks directly at the audience with a small smile, and shakes her head. She doesn’t need us anymore; she’s ready to live without constantly performing for the audience in her head.
Then, at last, with an incredible lightness, she turns her back and walks away.