On Deadpool, WandaVision and Breaking the Fourth Wall

Here we are, with my first proper post here in literal years, the first of many carried over from my Tumblr in some attempt towards legitimacy. This will be the most recent of those carried over from tumblr, originally written in March of 2021, so not long ago at all.  

Let's get into it. Let’s talk about breaking the fourth wall and extrapolation of meta information in fictional multiverse universes–say, the Marvel cinematic vs the xmen films vs the comics. Let’s talk specifically about the Marvel multiverse. 

As a general rule, the suspension of disbelief works better on paper than it does on video. The show Heroes was an excellent example of this problem. Remember Heroes? Like many pop culture greats, it was a critical darling until it flew itself directly into the sea. Heroes was the first notable time a TV show was made directly based on a comic book format, trying to emulate a comic book format. To keep the metaphor going, the plane took a nose dive when they tried to keep comic book pace, and to play by similar rules, i.e. the serial impermanence of death as a serious consequence. There is a reason why this didn't work. Long story short, the way that our brains consume literature and comics is different from how we consume photographic media like movies or tv. Video, like photography, convinces the brain that it’s depicting reality even when we logically know that it isn’t. Therefore, unless the rules of the video/TV world are well established as being different from our own, we apply to it our own real-world understandings of what is possible. If we see real, human people on the screen, our brains will apply real, human laws to the world. We are able to follow the fantastic more willingly when we’re imagining it (because we’re reading it) instead of seeing it with our senses. 

Breaking the fourth wall and/or being self-referential is extremely tricky on video media because you’re forcing the audience’s brain to acknowledge that this is fiction, which can cause some cognitive dissonance if the goal of your show/movie is to create second world immersion. Second world immersion is, to roughly paraphrase the man who invented the concept as well as the majory of what we consider Fantasy Standard, the understanding that a fictional (secondary) world is fully self-actualized as separate and unique from our own world, has it's own clearly defined rules of reality, and can therefore be fully inhabited as if it is itself real. (Tolkien, the man is Tolkien.) Sitcoms are good at breaking the fourth wall because, with laugh tracks, live studio audiences, and a general lack of real-world consequences, our brains understand that it isn’t real. There is no clearly defined and self-sustaining Second World to be immersed in. Generally, they’re not trying to fool us into believing that they’re real. Still, if Chandler Bing suddenly turned around and made eye contact with the camera, that would be weird. It’s not established in that particular sitcom world that they understand that they’re fictional. Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on the other hand, did that all the time. 

But we’ll get back to Sitcoms, because WandaVision. As opposed to most sitcoms, most serious dramas and adventure-thrillers are trying to create a very different vibe. In order to function, you have to be fully engaged, and have to completely believe the second world you are currently in. Otherwise, the emotional experience falls short. Tonality must be consistent, whereas sitcoms can get away with having the odd emotional moment surrounded by a laugh track. 

Marvel is very weird when it comes to second worlds and believable experiences, because Marvel films, tv, and comics all exist in the same multiverse (not to be confused with the same universe) but with wildly different tones. If you try to wrap your head around all of it as one body, it can give you a headache. Which is why I find it so interesting whenever they try to be meta. 

The Marvel Cinematic Universe as we understand it is presented as a realistic second world. Yes, it’s fun action-adventure with magic and superheroes, but it is presented in a way that intends to feel real, and rationalizes its reality. In Tolkien's terms, it defines the rules of it's reality (again, a paraphrase, sorry JRR). It explains with technobabble and sciencebabble everything that it’s doing. It wants to feel real. There are a few examples of comedy in the MCU (AntMan, Guardians of the Galaxy, Thor Ragnorok), but their silliness can for the most part be explained away. With the latter two, they take place in space with a cast of alien characters, and are painted with a flourescent paintbrush, so our brains allow that as an explanation of wackiness outside our own reality. For Ant-Man, I think it was a brilliant idea to make it a comedy because there was no way that film would have succeeded if they tried to make the audience take Ant-Man seriously on screen. 

I love Ant-Man, there's going to be a whole post about Ant-Man, I promise. But I digress. 

Importantly, even though these three films are funny and camp, they never lose their sense of realism, with emotional anchor points to keep them grounded.  When these characters are in an ensemble, they lose their high camp aesthetic and become part of the realism whole. 

Honestly, who was ever going to take this movie seriously without intentional comedy?

Even when they say in the MCU, Oh look at this I'm an action figure, I’m in comic books, it’s presented as in-world realistic. These people are famous now, and they’re real life superheroes, so obviously action figures and comic books are being produced about them. It all makes sense. Even the X-Men films, as camp as they are, do this in their own realism bubble. I would argue the X-Men films actually have an advantage because you don’t have to suspend as much disbelief to believe mutation as you do to believe in a super suit that shrinks people (I love you Small Rudd). 

Things get weird when the fourth wall is broken, and the multiverse is acknowledged, because the Marvel Cinematics have done an excellent job of creating stable, self-contained second worlds. The Deadpool films, the prime example of fourth-wall breaking in Marvel films/tv, are as good as they are at what they do because they go whole hog into breaking the fourth-wall and acknowledging how ridiculous it all is. We can break down why it works with three points:

1. Deadpool is the only person in the entire movie that acknowledges the fourth wall (I am pretty sure, it’s been a while since I’ve watched them, and when I do rewatch them I may come back and correct this). Because he alone is aware that he’s a fictional character in a wider fictional universe, it’s not weird when he references his actor being the Green Lantern or talks directly to the camera. It’s exactly what we expect from him. With Deadpool, we’re in on the joke but no one else is. And that’s funny. 

2. The tone of the Deadpool films is intentionally absurd, funny, and sometimes downright stupid. Even when it gets serious, that becomes the joke. There is no cognitive dissonance because it’s consistent. See: Sitcom Logic. If the tone is light, breaking the fourth wall doesn’t jarr quite so much. 

3. Deadpool is never in the other films, and for the most part the characters in Deadpool (beyond the odd brief cameo) aren’t in the greater universe (I say for the most part because of Colossus, but he was in one movie ages ago for like ten minutes it’s not the biggest deal, it's not in our present memory). It’s consistent, and it doesn’t become confusing because it’s contained in itself as a weird fourth-wall bubble on the side of the greater universe. Anything that happens to characters in the Deadpool films will not carry over to the more serious timeline. 

Rest in Peace Shatterstar, we are never going to see you ever again.

There is one place in which I would say that the Deadpool films miss the mark, and make a mess of things. By making that one joke where young 90s X-Men from the newest films are behind a door and quickly shut it before Deadpool sees them, a wrench is thrown in. The weirdness of the Deadpool films suddenly becomes an issue because the question is asked: Where do the Deadpool films sit in the timeline? The answer is that the Deadpool films don’t fit anywhere in the established X-Men Cinematic Timeline, and the mistake was having a group of characters from an X-Men film on screen at the same time even as a gag. In this moment, the Deadpool films are very suddenly part of the greater universe, rather than a sidecar referencing what’s going on inside. By doing this, Deadpool is not the only character breaking the fourth wall. Now the physical world is breaking the fourth wall, and our brains will try to make sense where they cannot make sense.

This one error aside, Deadpool does an excellent job of being a weird little fourth-wall meta bubble on the fringe of existence. 

But let's talk fourth-wall breaker number two, WandaVision. WandaVision gets weird in a different but also very fun way.

WandaVision works in terms of meta referencing and occasional fourth-wall breaking in a very unique way for the first 3/4ths of the show, before it crumbles back into the main Marvel Cinematic Secondary Universe. The reasons for this are as follows:

1. Genre and tone. The show sets up from the beginning that this is a sitcom world, not gritty realism world. We as viewers understand a sitcom world, we know what to expect from a sitcom world. There was no surprise, all the advertising told us what we would be starting with, and it dives right in without any presense of not being a sitcom. We can laugh along with the laugh track when something odd, silly or referential happens and accept it as truth, because a sitcom generally does not pretend to be reality. 

2. Whenever the fourth-wall breaks in a way that doesn’t make sense, it’s intentional. Wanda reacts accordingly. Something goes weird, she fixes it. When something goes weird for someone other than Wanda (Say, the Vision), the integrity of this sitcom world is called into question in an intentional way that tracks with what is actually going on in the gritty-realism world (acknowledging that we’re in a bubble within a bubble). This camp sitcom world breaks the fourth-wall within itself, not to us. Billy talking to the screen isn’t talking to us, he’s talking to the imagined viewer in-world. 

3. Most of the meta-references are either subtle enough to be Easter eggs (like the Kick-Ass reference) or exist solely as fun gaffs that have no consequences and are never acknowledged as being meta (the Halloween costumes). I say most, because there is one big meta-reference that I think was a mistake, and where it kind of starts to fall apart in my eyes. 

As much as I adore Evan Peters’ Pietro, as extremely happy as I was to see him on this show, this particular meta-reference was done in a way that breaks the second world illusion, because they pointed a big red sign at a meta reference and then tried to explain it without breaking into the multiverse. 

The thing about breaking the fourth-wall and meta-referencing is that it has to be toungue-in-cheek to be sustainable. Our brains are accepting that this reference is for us, but to make it a serious part of the story requires an answer to the question: Why? By explaining that actually, this fake Pietro was Ralph the whole time, a real person who exists in this gritty realism universe, the illusion of tongue-in-cheek is gone. Suddenly, there is a person who brings into question the entire structure of the second world. Because this second world does not have access to the multiverse (Into the Spiderverse is wholly its own thing), it doesn’t make sense that this random guy who happened to be used by Agatha to play Pietro in Wanda's fantasy world looks exactly like Pietro from elsewhere in the multiverse. The joke becomes confusing, and we start trying to find answers where there are none. 

In my opinion, there are two ways they could have solved that problem. 1. Never explain it. If you never explain it, it’s just a weird meta reference for us that also exists in Wanda’s fake-world that is in itself accessing the multiverse (see: the costumes), without touching the realism world outside the bubble. 

2. What I’m now calling the Taika Waititi method. Give a nonsense explanation told with a straight face as a brush-off. Say, Wanda asks Agatha who this guy is, and she says something along the lines of, oh I don’t know I just pulled some random Pietro out of the universe, I never met the guy I had to improvise. 

That all being said, there is an important point to Ralph!Pietro's existence, and that is to define the limits of creation. Ralph!Pietro tells us that Agatha was incapable of creating people from scratch. She couldn't just make a new Pietro, she had to find a substitute. This is in direct opposition to something that Wanda does: create people. Wanda creates Billy and Tommy out of nothing. Billy and Tommy are not just props, but develop genuine autonomy, distinct personalities, are able to manipulate the illusion while being conscious of it, and to some extent seem concious of their own irreality. This not only shows us that Wanda is much stronger than Agatha, but also sets us up wonderfully for the Young Avengers show that Marvel is most definitely working towards. Wanda created actual people, who are going to have to exist in some way whether she intended it or not. So I suppose, for the sake of the twins, we can break the second world just a little. 

WandaVision really is impressive. Pulling off multiple tones and multiple second worlds simultaneously without even explaining it away with the multiverse is hard, and they did a pretty good job all things considered. 

If anyone is interested in what the hell I’m talking about in regards to second worlds, I highly recommend Tolkien’s essay On Fairy Stories which pretty much defines how fantastic fiction works. Definitely worth a read, and I hope you enjoyed this one! 

I am Tough, but I'm No Cookie: Praising Lana Winters

Author's Note: I set to write about the superb character that is Lana Winters in American Horror Story before the season was over.  What is so spectacular about American Horror Story is that each season is self-contained, without the risk of spinning wildly out of control.  I could have waited, yet I didn't   Now that the season is over, I’ve gone back and added to this, but my opinion has not changed.

Here are a few praises hailing Lana Winters, played by Sarah Paulson.

 gif by snowwhitebemberg on Tumblr

I am a far cry from Ryan Murphy’s biggest fan.  I gave up on Glee after a long struggle with his sloppy writing and contradictory characterization, and I have barely held on to The New Normal for the sake of a cast that I’m fond of, in spite of it's frankly masturbatory nature.  That said, I have held on tightly to American Horror Story.  It seems that, in spite of Ryan Murphy, this show has succeeded in being quality television.  Some would argue that it’s not, based on a few key flaws, but I’m not here to defend American Horror Story so much as praise one of the new seasons main characters, Lana Winters.

I would go as far as to say that Lana Winters is one of the best characters on TV today.

This is in part thanks to Sarah Paulson’s incredible acting, relaying the story of a strong woman going through hell and remaining, throughout it, sane.  Appropriately traumatized to the point that she cannot physically allow the baby she will loathe to be aborted, because she can’t open her legs far enough, can’t keep from being loud, and can’t stop imagining all the death she’s seen.  Traumatized, but sane.  With Sarah Paulson’s skill, we really feel the truth behind her emotions.  This makes her relatable in ways that the writing of her story would not be able to do on it’s own, with a less sufficient actress at the helm.

What is truly spectacular about Lana Winters, beyond the pure chops of Sarah Paulson, is that she is not a stereotype.

Last season, we were presented with a cast of characters all cut out of a very unified mold: the residents of a rich Los Angeles neighborhood. While they were (mostly) all different, individually interesting characters, they all had elements of that tricky little writing tool that Ryan Murphy tends to fall into: namely, character typing. We have the bigoted older southern belle, the psychopathic romantic interest, the misunderstood teenager and the sexually diverse gay couple who don’t avoid stereotypes so much as slide comfortably into them.  His characters are often a sloppy cut-and-paste job from TVTropes.  We can safely say that season 1, with it's aimless focus and squeaky wheels, was a test run for ideas and artistic license.  We see many of these tropes again in season 2 ( see the Nazi Doctor Arden for your bigoted older gentleman, or Axe Murderer Grace for your psychopathic love interest—one that subsequently gets turned on its head quite interestingly), but one character really seems to pull away from the mold: that of our Heroine, Lana Winters.

When we were first presented with a strong, gay, female reporter, I was wary for a few reasons.  My first concern was for her longevity.  American Horror Story has proven that the writers have no qualms against being cruel for the sake of a deeply disturbing and theme-appropriate story.  While this is a daring and wonderful quality for a television show, given how driven today’s media is to please the fans, it sets the viewer up not to have hope.  It seemed inevitable that she would be sullied in some way, or sacrificed to the gears of plot for the sake of Kit and Sister Jude, the show’s headliners.  A second concern I had, and a much more major one at that, was how Ryan Murphy would handle her.  Despite being a gay man himself, his track record for writing gay characters who don’t rely on their sexuality as a defining characteristics is rather poor.  Kurt Hummel, originally a uniquely individual character, has become a series of statements on gay rights without much concern for any other aspect of his life.  He is gay, and that is why he exists.  Oddly enough, that was the first critique of Kurt given to me long ago that made me begin to see the light and release my tight grip on the show.  The same can be said about the Zachary Quinto’s character in the first season of American Horror Story, whose plot is entirely based on his relationship, and of course is also the case with the entire working premise of The New Normal.  More often than not, Ryan Murphy’s gay characters are defined by their homosexuality.  

On top of all of this Lana is also a woman, and I don’t trust Ryan Murphy’s shows to pass the Bechdel test on a regular basis.  There are numerous articles about how poorly Ryan Murphy writes female characters, so I won’t go into that so much here.  What I will talk about is lesbians.  While the negative treatment of gay women by gay men is a massive stereotype in its own, Ryan Murphy feeds into stereotypes very often.  His own character, Bryan Collins of The New Normal, is essentially a a representation of Ryan Murphy himself, and a very campy, occasionally over the top one at that.  Bryan can really be used as a reflection of how Ryan Murphy sees himself, and it doesn't bode well for his opinion of lesbians;  Bryan's opinion of lesbians feeds directly into the stereotype.  This leads me to believe that Lana, being a lesbian, would not be treated or depicted fairly, but rather through the stereotypical lens of a gay man. 

So I worried about Lana.  I worried that she would die, or that she would be relegated to a love interest, or a butch stereotype, or rely solely on her sexuality as a plot device. I am happy to say that I couldn't be more wrong.

Lana Winters has shown herself to be multidimensional.  She is strong and independent, occasionally cold and callous, but not without a heart or soul.  She has moments of weakness, moments where she is terribly wrong, and moments when she is right on target.  She was even, in the penultimate episode, shown to be terribly flawed, emphasized by her own state of repentance in the finale (which isn't solely repentance, keeping her from being a glorified saint—there is personal gain in that as well).  She isn't the perfect strong hero that she could have been.  When it came to beginning her career anew, she chose the safety of not outing herself in her book and not risking being sent back to Briarcliff by digging once again into the state of the place.  She chose an escape through applause, her goal from the very beginning (Now That’s What I Call Continuity).  It shows the depth of a character that she can do something that so many fans have been enraged by, and not actually be wrong by doing it.  It is a purely human reaction, one that she falls into before she takes Kit’s words as fuel to the flame and becomes who she wanted to be once again.

I know that a great deal of this post was about how much I dislike Ryan Murphy, but that’s important.  Ryan Murphy’s flaws as a writer emphasize how Lana shines through his usual pitfalls into being a product of true inspiration.  Lana has proved to be her own character, and with every trope thrown her way she has slipped by with a giant fuck you.

gif by elmumin on Tumblr