When you think about it, the concept of a fourth wall is pretty interesting. An invisible barrier
that separates the canon of a story from the world of the audience, maintained predominantly
by the consensus agreement among the actors to pretend that the audience doesn’t exist. Back in
ye olde greek tragedy days, stories were almost exclusively plays performed for live audiences
on a stage where the chorus played a liminal role and would actively address the audience directly,
but the actors maintained the fourth wall and would pretend like they weren’t standing on
a stage in front of hundreds of people all judging their every move. Stage plays have
always had this slightly weird relationship with the fourth wall, because when you’re up on stage,
even if you’re immersed in the story and really committed to the bit,
you know the audience is there. You can see them, hear them - and they’re the entire reason you’re
performing in the first place. And ironically, one of the only ways the audience can get fully
invested in the story is if the performers don’t acknowledge that they’re there. The world on stage
is at its most immersive when it truly feels like its own world, and if the actors turn out to look
straight at a member of the audience and say “man, this is a pretty crazy story, right?” it jars the
audience into acknowledging that this is a story, and, more importantly, one that they are excluded
from. It might seem a bit contradictory, but an audience can immerse themselves more fully in a
story if the story maintains the fourth wall and never admits they’re there. In a sense that gives
the audience the freedom to choose how they want to immerse themself in the story. Are they gonna
relate strongly to one of the characters, are they going to imagine they're an invisible observer
moving among the crowd, are they gonna stay firmly planted behind the fourth wall watching from a
fully externalized view? As soon as the story does point out the audience exists, it also reminds
them of where they are - firmly on the outside looking in. It tells the audience what role
they have in this story, and that means if the audience was getting invested in some other way,
that can actually jar them. Of course this can be used for interesting effect, but for the most part
the story needs to stay separate from its audience or the impact is diminished. The Fourth Wall was
a vital narrative conceit to maintain because for a very long time it was the only thing separating
the world of the story from the audience. In the grand scheme of things, for the
vast majority of human history, storytellers and performers have by necessity existed in the same
space as their audiences. Without the ability to transmit, record or replay performances,
the only way to experience performance art was to sit in front of a stage and watch people do it
live. It wasn’t until we got the moving picture followed by the radio and later the television
that storytellers became physically walled off from their audiences - performers in this new
paradigm would initially act to an audience that consisted only of their tech crew and an optional
studio audience, and the actual audience would see their art long after the fact, cut together,
edited and scored for cinema or TV. The fourth wall was no longer an invisible barrier maintained
by the performers - it was a physical screen that literally separated the story from the audience.
For the first time in history, actors and their audiences had no way of directly communicating.
And this took some getting used to! In the last few years a lot of aspects of modern communication
have gone from in-person to virtual, and plenty of people will tell you how jarring it is to go
from a crowded classroom or a meeting full of people to just you and a screen, even if there
are people on that screen. Speaking as someone who performs to a microphone for a living,
it is a learned skill to get yourself in that headspace where you can talk like you’re talking
to someone even if there’s nobody there. The Fourth Wall is no longer something actors have to
actively enforce - it just passively exists as a byproduct of the medium. If it’s not a live stage
performance, the fourth wall is now built into it. And that means, when stories wanna get cute with
it, they need to be a little creative. In a stage show if you wanna break the fourth
wall you just pick an audience member to make eye contact with and address directly. But if
it’s just you and the camera, things can get a little complicated. Obviously you can’t address
your actual audience directly, because… they aren’t there. Instead you have to cold-read an
imaginary audience figure and address that hypothetical being like you’re talking to a
person. And that means your personal assumptions about your audience can kind of… leak through.
And I know what you’re thinking. “Gosh, Red, I just love those dulcet tones of yours! I could
listen to you meander around the point forever! And by the way I loved ReBoot, I totally watched
the whole thing except for season four, you got any more media recommendations I’d like?” And
I appreciate that, viewer, but now is hardly the time. This is all just a lengthy preamble
to contextualize today’s actual point, which is the practice of lampshading.
Lampshading, or “Lampshade Hanging”, is a specific kind of fourth-wall-break where a writer or
creator actively draws attention to some quirk of their storytelling for the benefit of their
audience - frequently a cliche, trope or plot device that they think threatens their audience’s
immersion or suspension of disbelief. Like, if a boom mic is visible in a shot, a character might
take a lampshade and hang it on the boom mic to show the audience that they know it’s there.
This reframes the presence of the microphone in the shot from looking like a mistake to being
a cute in-joke. In a sense it’s an intentional disruption of the fourth wall to soften the blow
of something that might otherwise damage the audience’s immersion behind the fourth wall.
But this is where the cold-reading starts factoring in - and can start causing problems.
When a writer chooses to lampshade something, in the most basic terms, it’s usually because
they don’t think their audience is going to like that thing. Hanging a lampshade on it to prove
they’re in on the joke is the artist’s way of reducing that impact so the audience knows to
just laugh and move on. But this means the artist has to make some assumptions about what their
audience is potentially going to dislike about their story, and that can get a little weird.
Now there’s a bit of a scale here. At its most minor, lampshading is barely more than a wink and
a nudge. Characters will briefly acknowledge some story contrivance or silliness and then quickly
move on. A character might wonder where some conveniently-timed dramatic wind came from or
how a character quick-changed into a new outfit so fast - basically the cast shows a degree
of self-awareness in recognizing some of the pretenses of their fictional world without ever
directly implying that they’re aware of a fourth wall beyond that world. This doesn’t so much break
immersion as jostle it lightly for comedic effect. But the more we slide up the scale, the more
disruptive lampshading can become. Sometimes characters will actively call out plot points
they’re experiencing, pointing out that they’re implausible or even cliched. A character might
bemoan that the setting they’re in is totally stereotypical, or that a villain is indulging
in a classic evil monologue, or that they have to go rescue a damsel in distress how original. This
is where lampshading can start causing problems by highlighting authorial insecurity. As mentioned,
most authors lampshade things they don’t like or feel that they can’t justify in-story. When those
are fun little quirks that’s one thing, but when they escalate to plot points it kinda provokes
a question: if the writer wasn’t happy with this story beat, why did they still choose to write it
that way? If the writer is calling themself out on being unoriginal, that implies they have a problem
with that. And the thing is, it’s completely fine to be unoriginal. It doesn’t need to be justified
or mocked or turned into a little knowing wink-and-a-nudge. Many tropes are popular because
they work, and using things that work doesn’t make a writer bad. But apologizing for your art
preemptively is always a bad idea. Most artists are their own worst critics and will almost always
be able to rattle off at least three things they’d change about anything they do - but telling people
that before they’ve even got a chance to see it themselves will prime them to be disappointed.
This is actually a concept that Julia Child, of all people, brought up at one point,
saying “I don’t believe in twisting yourself into knots of excuses and explanations over the food
you make. Usually one’s cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is truly vile…
then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile — and learn from her mistakes.”
Basically, don’t apologize for the meal you’re about to serve and don’t lead by pointing out
your own mess-ups - it’s better for everyone to let the audience come to their own conclusions
about it. If you let the art speak for itself, the audience will get to draw their own conclusions
with a clean slate, without being predisposed to notice and dislike the things you personally don't
like about it. But if you apologize for your work or demean it, it kinda looks like you’re
trying to salvage your reputation as a creator by distancing yourself from the thing you made,
which, again, begs the question why you made it in the first place if you aren’t proud of it.
And this can be a serious problem when lampshading becomes large-scale or chronic.
This is at its most visible when stories actively undercut emotional moments by lampshading that
boy, an emotional moment sure just happened! How embarrassing! You know the trope. The soundtrack
swells more bombastic than ever, a character makes an anguished declaration of love or
steels themself for a heroic sacrifice or gazes, teary-eyed, at a moment of crushing emotional
impact - and then the soundtrack abruptly cuts out as we snap to a wide shot and the whole thing just
looks silly. Characters will shuffle around with embarrassment that they had the audacity
to nearly experience sincere investment in the plot, and then move on. This is called Bathos,
and you might recognize it from every marvel movie. It isn’t just lampshading
a costume choice or a bit of weird timing, it’s lampshading the concept of emotion. Now I might
just be old-fashioned about this, but I don’t think that’s the kind of story element you want
your audience to stop being invested in. The primary benefit of lampshading is it
signals to the audience what it’s okay for them to ignore. You hang a lampshade on something to tell
the audience “hey man, it’s just a show, you can really just relax”. How’d the characters get from
point A to point B so fast? Even they’re not sure! So don’t worry about it. Where’s that dramatic
wind coming from? No idea! So we can move on. Is this character being fully played by a new actor
with no explanation? Yup! Anyway! Lampshading acknowledges a narrative pretense just enough
to tell the audience “don’t worry about it, it’s fine” so they don’t get hung up on it. But that
means if we hang a lampshade on something really important, we basically tell the audience “hey,
that emotional arc or intense fight scene or entire premise of the third act - it doesn’t
matter. Don’t worry about it. It’s fine.” And if we tell the audience “you don’t need to care
about this part of the story,” they won’t. There’s nothing wrong with sprinkling in the
occasional nod to the fourth wall - letting characters acknowledge the pretenses of their
fictional universe is frequently good for a quick laugh and it can make them feel more relatable,
if they react the way we’d react to something unlikely or ridiculous. But the problem is,
lampshading is kind of the enemy of sincerity - of committing to the bit. Even just elbowing
the fourth wall a little makes the characters seem less invested in their fictional universe. If they
do it too much it can be difficult to accept that they’re invested in the story at all. Lampshading
by its nature erodes the integrity of the fourth wall, and if it’s done too much or too frequently,
the audience learns to accept that the characters aren’t taking this seriously. And then if we want
the audience to take something seriously, we kind of can’t convince them that this time we’re
staying in the confines of the fictional universe - this time it’s for real. It’s like the boy who
cried wolf. If we’ve learned the story will break its own barriers for more than a quick laugh,
we’ll have trouble believing that a genuinely sincere moment isn’t about to be undercut by
a cheeky “well that happened” that relegates whatever impact that plot point could’ve had to…
it happened, let’s move on, don’t worry about it. Lampshading, despite being a comedic trope,
is a powerful tool, and it needs to be used sparingly or it risks undercutting the sincere
parts of the story. But it can also be utilized creatively in ways that integrate with the
tone rather than diminishing it - and one of the easiest ways to do this is with a story within the
story. When you’re telling a story with another story nested inside it, then that larger story
contains both an audience and a fourth wall while still being firmly located behind the real fourth
wall separating the nested stories from the real actual audience. Thus, characters in the story can
comment on events in the story within a story and lampshade the narrative choices or silly
moments without breaching the real fourth wall. It doesn’t diminish our investment
because these characters are not commenting on a story they’re in, they’re commenting on a story
they’re experiencing. If anything, this can make them seem more invested. This is like 90% of the
appeal of The Princess Bride, where the framing sequence of the adventure is absolutely full of
commentary and snark about what’s happening in the story within the story, but as the boy gets
more invested in that story we see his commentary shift from complaining and dismissing the whole
thing to asking actual probing questions, rooting against the villains and getting
visibly upset when the story-within-a-story hits its darkest hour. This is a case where a
framing sequence chock full of lampshade-hanging increases the impact of the purposefully very
tropey and basic story-within-a-story, which wouldn’t have been nearly as entertaining if
it was just played straight. The sincerity of the book is more impactful because we
see it actively changing the cynical kid spectator to become more sincere himself.
There are also comedic stories that use this in interesting ways, like Emperor’s New Groove,
of all movies, which technically opens in medias res with Kuzko narrating an explanation over how
he wound up as a crying llama in the jungle. This movie has a complicated on-and-off-again
relationship with the fourth wall, but for the first part of the movie it is technically a story
within a story. Narrator Kuzko will occasionally pop in to loudly remind the audience that he’s
the hero, remember? He’s the one we should be sympathizing with! The story we’re watching
play out is behind two layers of fourth wall, and Narrator Kuzko regularly breaks the first fourth
wall to comment on the proceedings or complain directly to the audience. But then by the time
the story catches up to that in medias res moment, story kuzko actually breaks his fourth wall for
the first time and directly addresses narrator Kuzko to tell him to knock it off and stop trying
to spin his general shittiness for the audience. From this point forward the story only has one
layer of fourth wall and no in-universe narrator - but lampshading still happens, mostly from Kronk,
who’s willing to cheerfully admit when the things they do don’t make sense at all. This story is a
rare one that commits to the bit so hard that the audience becomes invested even though the
characters seem on some level aware that they live in a farcical comedy. This movie doesn’t
have an insecure bone in its body, and when it points out a gag to hang a lampshade on, it’s
because knowing the characters know their world doesn’t make sense makes the joke twice as funny.
Which brings us to a useful question to contemplate: why do we lampshade?
It’s not a structurally vital trope in any story. It’s not a character arc, a plot beat
or worldbuilding trope, it’s a specific way to disrupt the fourth wall without fully breaking
it that turns an otherwise sincere moment into a self-referential gag. So why do people do that?
Well, there are a few reasons. As mentioned, sometimes in stories things end up happening
that the writer isn’t 100% happy with - usually a contrivance that’s necessary to make the plot
play out a certain way, or a moment they’re not sure the audience will like if they fully commit
to playing it straight. In these cases, the writer might want to drop a lampshade on it to signal to
the audience that they know this bit is a little weird but hey, let’s all move on anyway. It lets
the writer smooth over little moments without having to give them too much attention. Just
having a character note that some event was unlikely or raise an eyebrow at something
silly can do a lot to make a potentially skeptical audience accept it and move on.
Of course, the problem is if the creator is too insecure about their own work,
they might assume their audience will be incredibly skeptical about everything
and correspondingly overcompensate, making the protagonists snarky and self-referential about
anything and everything that could conceivably be poked fun at by some redditor somewhere,
which - like all deliberate attempts to look cool - backfires into making the thing look less cool,
because it makes it look insecure. Audiences are actually really perceptive about picking
up on what assumptions a creator is making about them, and in a way it can become a self-fulfilling
prophecy, because audiences that don’t fit that assumption can start to feel unwelcome and drift
away from the work, while audiences that fit the image the creator has for them will feel
perfectly at home. But this means if a creator is expecting their audience to harshly judge them,
their corresponding defensive attitude can essentially select for an audience that will
do that. This is a big part of why preemptively apologizing for your art is a bad idea. It’ll
alienate the people who were looking forward to just enjoying it at face value and now feel
awkward and weird about how tense you’re being. If a creator thinks their audience is going to laugh
at them and thus must preempt them by laughing at themselves first, they’re gonna select for
an audience willing to laugh at them, because it feels weird being the only person in the room who
doesn’t think the joke is funny! Telling a story sincerely can feel scary and vulnerable, but some
stories have to be sincere or they lose their impact, and when those stories get undercut with
jokes it kinda… punchlines itself into oblivion. But on the flipside, some stories are at their
best when they’re silly, and sometimes it’s just fun to draw attention to that.
Jostling the fourth wall kind of highlights the absurdity inherent in most forms of performance
art. Anyone who’s taken an acting class will tell you lesson 1 is exposure-therapying your way
out of feeling any shame or embarrassment about acting “weird” in public, because in order to act
you kinda have to completely disregard social norms about how people are supposed to behave
around each other. The mere act of maintaining a fourth wall on stage requires the actors to
pointedly ignore a huge crowd staring intently at them. How wild is that? And then you need to
set aside who you and your fellow actors are as people, what you know about each other, how you
actually interact - and instead act as a part of a story, whatever that entails. And the fact is,
that means you gotta do stuff that would be incredibly weird in any other context, like
loudly weeping in front of strangers or kissing someone you are absolutely not involved with.
A really good, sincere, effective performance will immerse you so much in the story that it makes you
forget how many social norms it’s breaking to make that happen. A goofy, silly performance with a
loose on-and-off relationship with the fourth wall might instead highlight that weirdness for comedy.
Because at the end of the day, the fourth wall is a tool. When it’s perfectly smooth and undisrupted
it’s easy to forget it’s there, and you can instead lose yourself focusing on what’s happening
on the other side of it. A smooth, flawless fourth wall lets the audience see the story play out like
it’s its own perfect universe, a completely closed system with its own internal logic
unaffected by audience opinions or metanarrative commentary. But when the fourth wall is broken,
distorted, scribbled on or otherwise changed, it reminds us of three important things:
there is a barrier there, the story is behind the barrier, and we are separated from the story by
that barrier. Clear glass is hard to see and thus doesn’t disrupt our immersion in whatever’s beyond
it; warped glass changes how we see everything. Ultimately what it boils down to is that some
stories work best when they internally acknowledge that they are stories,
but a lot of stories don’t. And even within the space of a single story, some plot beats work
best when they’re played completely straight and unpacked as though they were real events,
typically serious emotional moments where we want the audience’s immersion to be at its
highest - while other plot beats are improved by a little metacommentary humor that recognizes that
they’re happening in a story and that’s kinda silly. The art of the lampshade really is just
deciding where to hang it for the best effect. So… yeah!