Abstract:
Breaking the fourth wall is a common convention within popular cultural forms and is often narrowly regarded as an actor turning to the audience (or camera) and addressing them directly. Whilst this is an accurate description of the process, this thesis will argue for a broader and more multifaceted approach to breaking the fourth wall that goes beyond this direct address. To demonstrate this expanded definition, video games that break the fourth wall will be analysed as their digital mediation and necessitation for interaction create several boundaries such as narrative, spatial and ludic, which all constitute walls that can be broken. This expansion will show how breaking the fourth wall is inherently a tool of Derridean deconstruction and can be used to analyse the boundaries of media. However, deconstruction and breaking the fourth wall are more about exposure and revelation rather than complete destruction. They expose boundaries, and those boundaries then define the medium, which in turn can reveal meanings and messages of that medium. Video games, through the process of deconstruction, convey a rhetorical message of control, which can manifest in both the narrative and gameplay. Control as a theme is seemingly in conflict with the utopian notions of freedom associated with breaking the fourth wall, as characters who transgress through walls are regarded as free agents who are unshackled from the bounds of their fantasy worlds. However, control is perpetuated in video games through their design and interaction. Players control agents within games but those games are governed by rules. Therefore video games contain a rhetoric of control, showing that freedom is just a simulation.
