You Talkin’ to Me?
Eugene O’Neill may have won a Pulitzer for breaking the fourth wall, but cartoon characters have been directly addressing their audience almost from the start. When I was watching creaky old cartoons on TV as a kid, I enjoyed it when the character on screen stopped what he was doing and talked to me. I really loved it when there was some subsequent interaction between the onscreen cast and us, the audience (usually an animated silhouette representing a theater patron.)
Of course, in a Tex Avery type thing, that animated silhouette was likely to get whomped on the head. Occasionally an onscreen character would ask us for help. Popeye did it a lot, in films like “A Date to Skate” and “How Green Was My Spinach.” Somebody in the front row of the movie house always seemed to have that tin can of spinach whenever the grizzled old sailor forgot his.
Nowadays, people in live action movies seem to natter at us all the time, launching into windy soliloquies at the drop of a dime. They never actually ask us for help. May be they could help us… like telling the guy two rows behind us to shut his damn cell phone off!
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On March 24th, 2006 at 12:00 am
I’ve always liked the gag where a hair shows up “on the lens” and the character(s) on screen holler at the projectionist to get it out.