![\"dontbreak4thwall1\"](\"http:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/dontbreak4thwall1.jpg\" "\\"dontbreak4thwall1\\"")
<\/a><\/p>\nIn this comic strip by Wiley, the theme is made explicit, and even includes an allusion, in the part below, to other comics artists who also break the fourth wall. <\/p>\n
The \u201cfourth wall\u201d is a term in drama that recognizes that spectators watch an enactment by players who behave as if there is no one watching, as if the walls of the stage are not transparent—especially the imagined wall that is really the open space between the stage and the audience. That imagined wall is the 4th wall. But of course, actors have been \u201cbreaking the fourth wall\u201d at least since Shakespeare—characters coming out and addressing the audience, as if to say: \u201cLook, this is a play. I\u2019m just a performer. Don\u2019t be scared by the action here, it\u2019s just an act.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kids don\u2019t need a fourth wall to play at kill each other, eat each other, be killed (and die in dramatized agony), and so forth. It\u2019s understood as not really real. It\u2019s understood that you\u2019ll stop playing if it gets too real, and I wouldn\u2019t want that. (In the sexual play of grownups that involves sadism and masochism, this line is stretched, but there are still signals of what is too much.)<\/p>\n
Anyway, as I say, dramatists and comics cartoonists have been playing with this boundary for a long time—it\u2019s not a common device, but far from unknown. Recognizing that what is drawn is a comic strip, sometimes climbing on the edges, tearing them off, acknowledging that the characters are just cartoons, or maybe being ambiguous about this—I see this as a growing part of human awareness that we are not only the players but also playwrights, constructing our reality—with your agreement, if you please. <\/p>\n