Protagony 1: Abed (suuuuuuuuper rough cut, feedback plz)

Just want to note that I went back to watch this again because I really liked the "Picasso at the Lapin Agile" here-is-what-breaking-the-fourth-wall-is bit. On which note: the ending of this, where you explain in detail why this kind of thing should be really confusing before having Abed go, "cool, cool cool cool" because it's straightforward? Really good. A great way to end the video.

The Packbats

"I know you're a fan" is a joke, I don't expect anyone to have heard of that show.

Ian Danskin

I quite like the idea behind the video, having rewatched Story Beats recently and all that. Generally, I like the flow of the video, although it feels like something should connect Deadpool example with the next beat, I can't put a finger on it, so it's probably fine. The black screen feels pretty appropriate where it is, although I kinda expected something like twitter collage there, not sure why. I feel like the ending feels a bit loose, talking about how a certain level of meta is realistic in one beat, but finishing it on a note how conflicting the state of mind required to watch the show can feel from outside in the next one. Not sure what to do about it, it might be just fine. But I feel like Story Beats managed it to a degree by putting work in context in a bit of a broader context of the medium, where it talked about how the beat in question is unique. Also, "Edge of Proscenium" sounds like a tautology.

Now having read some of the other comments, I think the pacing of the play-reading bit is fine, and I know what "diagetic" means from game design, but yeah, I guess most people don't know that word.

Not having read the other comments, I thought it was great as-is! If you filled in the black spot and rolled credits over the ridiculous ending, I'd think "Yup, another awesome Ian video, excellent and interesting as usual"

Incredible work, Ian. Thank you. I know that this is a working progress, so take my feedback with a grain of salt. I'm in need of a proper definition of "diegesis", maybe even a couple examples. Currently the piece has an issue with pacing. It starts slow (not a bad thing), but then takes off flying. The content is extremely dense and I feel confused trying to map out the theories and examples. Abed is absolutely one of the most sophisticated, high brow examples of fourth wall - hence the manifestation of character vs writers' fourth wall theory. But perhaps starting from a history of, or ascending order of complexity of the fourth wall could work in your favor. I think we as viewers dive into the conceptual side of it too quickly. Whereas a few more Deadpool examples, or maybe a House of Card (or cancel culture appropriate substitute), then get into Abed / Harmon and the self-referential schools. Also, I liked the Wallace quote, maybe extrapolate a little on that, too. Thank you, Hisham

I also agree about the pacing and always enjoy hearing Olly act. I think the idea of an actor reading a playbill is a great way to shock people and go.... wait, what?

Eric Hula

I got really fascinated with diegetic, narrative, and death of the author because of a video about above mentioned Stanley Parable. I really enjoyed that game. It challenged my understanding of games and agency. It blurred the line. And I think Deadpool is the most widely understood way of breaking the fourth wall. I am curious though. From previous research into the fourth wall I learned that comic books Deadpool would do crazy things like read to the end of the comic book to get a solution to a problem. And in the comic books, it was diegetic. The "bad guys" would characterize him as insane and talking to people who aren't there. Whereas in silver screen DP, or say, House of Cards, it's non-diegetic. So there was a dissonance in my mind when you used DP as the non-diegetic example. I suppose most people won't be familiar with comic books version.

Eric Hula

I agree with previous commenters who have suggested defining 'diegetic' and including more illustrative ciips of Abed. These can also give the viewer time to reflect on what you're saying, and make the video more interesting to viewers who haven't seen Community. But I could be biased, as I also love me some Abed. There are also a number of examples of other characters in Community who respond to what Abed says but do not acknowledge the breaking of the fourth wall as 'reality'. Including some of these might be ways to flesh out or expand on your current content.

This could use more emphasis or a little time to sit with the point. To me that felt like a premise for another point, not the takeaway. @_@

JinxedJoker

The meta-levels are making my brain hurt, but again, middle of the night, and also maybe not a bad thing. I need to revisit this when I've had some sleep.

Jacque Marshall

+1 Add'ly, it may be that it's Oh-dark-thirty, but I'm struggling with the concept—which sounds neat and really interesting...if I understood it...?

Jacque Marshall

Good work. I took away '4th wall breaks illistrate how we can be led to hold two positions that are opposed without questioning the dissonance that should represent'.

I think you need something ~3:15 to bridge the gap between "to other characters, these are pop culture references" and the later points because even though I think that is true, it's not instinctively true. We most of us think of the term "pop culture references" we think of specific references to the specificities of that popular culture, not structural ones. "Pop culture reference" refers more to diagetic aspects of popular culture (Family Guy cutaways are probably the easiest example) not the underlying structures of popular culture. In other words, people remember lines like "Luke I am your father" more so than they understand the concept of a bottle episode. I would agree that talking about bottle episodes and quoting Star Wars are both pop culture references, but it probably deserves a line or two drawing that distinction.

I mostly knew this was a bespoke performance of the material because of the "fourth wall break" of it being performed by two other YouTubers whose voices I recognize (which is some Abed-level meta-meta, right there).

Drew Messinger-Michaels & L. Villegas

For what it is worth: I did not register at any point in the Picasso at the Lapin Agile section that it was performed <em>for this video</em> and not an existing performance that you had the right to excerpt. It was completely and invisibly natural, as far as I could tell. Also, people have probably mentioned the webcomic 1/0 - https://undefined.net/1/0/ - which is probably much less significant a cultural artifact than early-mid 2000s webcomic nerds felt like it was at the time and ... <em>less</em> problematic than a lot of webcomics of its era but still not great viewed through a present-day lens? But people have probably mentioned it because it is intended to have no fourth wall at all - a webcomic whose cast are not merely aware of and commenting on webcomics, but aware that they are webcomic characters in a webcomic and acting on that knowledge. And if they haven't, I guess they have now.

The Packbats

My favourite example of fourth wall breaking is The Stanley Parable, definitely. It uses its medium - and shows understanding for it, and other meta levels up to basic human psychology - to a degree I have rarely seen anywhere else. The Beginner's Guide, the next game made by the same developer, shows the exact same amount of expertise, while going in the extreme other direction - so far that he comes back round to being one of the most immersive games of all time. To this day, The Beginner's Guide is the only work of art, movie or game or book, that I have seen that _actually manages_ to convince a great number of players that what they're seeing/playing is real. Not the games themselves, obviously, but the story told through the game's narrative. Obviously the story told is not real (it may be metaphorically, but that's not important) - but even saying that usually causes players to question why I think that. If anyone's actually curious about the indisputable facts behind that statement, feel free to say so and I will list some. The fact alone that I have to state this is mind-blowing, because it shows that the game immerses people so much that they just actually take it as reality, without even thinking about it. I have never seen a movie pretend to be a documentary and the viewers weren't sure it's the former. I wrote about immersion in art in different mediums, including The Beginner's Guide and how it uses the fourth wall to transport itself into the players' perception of reality, here: https://medium.com/@JannisTenbrink/of-immersion-and-found-footage-in-art-8f724ecbdeaf One of my favourite actually obviously fourth wall breaking movies is Found Footage 3D. That movie shows an incredible understanding of its subgenre (found footage), it's general genre (horror), its medium (film), its industry (movie production industry) AND its culture (movie &amp; pop culture). It uses this to both become one of the funniest horror movies I've ever seen, and to create a super unique kind of horror/drama experience because, even though you don't for a second doubt that what you're seeing is fiction, the self-aware and fourth-wall-breaking meta level enables you to get into the characters in a way that's super rare for any movie. But it's always the referential kind of fourth-wall-breaking (which I personally highly prefer), not the direct kind like in Deadpool! Most found footage movies try to achieve this, some get closer, some not so much, but that one is the only one who actually gets there, and choosing the main movie plot to be the pseudo Behind-the-Scenes-material of a fictional found footage movie shoot is just genius. (Also, a person and movie critic I like a lot, Scott Weinberg, was one of the main producers of the movie.) Found Footage 3D is available on Shudder in some countries, on Amazon Video in some others, and not available at all in the rest. I highly recommend everyone who enjoys horror movies and movies with strong meta levels to watch it!

Nikki

I had never heard the series of word “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” before watching this video, so I feel a bit excluded when you say you know I'm fan. (This could probably be fixed by saying "The theater play set in a single room, Picasso at the Lapin Agile, …”) The part with the play feels nice and the pace is just right for me. I had my headphones on while listening though, and some of the noise in the background made me pause and turn backward because I felt someone just entered the room I was in. I guess it's too well spatialized? Watching it a second time, I still feel slightly uneasy. I had to rewatch the video to locate the black screen you mentioned. As you say “my feelings are mixed”, the black screen just reinforced this feelings. I took it as “you don't have a definite opinion enough to show us something about it”. I had to look up the definition of “bottle episode”. (The wikipedia page is easy enough to find.) I know it's not the subject of the video, but because you say “the episode is indeed a bottle episode” I felt like I had to look it up or I would be missing something. If I had to retell the video to a friend, I'm not sure what to say about your conclusion. “Ian is puzzled that he has to do two seemingly incompatible mode of thoughts to fully understand the show.” Is that right? But as someone who hasn't watched Community, I'm not sure about what I've learned there… One last random comment: I'm now wondering how Thumbleweed Park fits this diagetic/non-diagetic 4th wall breaking dichotomy. Hope that' s useful feedback.

Lunar

At around 3 minutes when you say "the writers" and then two people show up, I thought they were the writers and assumed the arrows were both pointing to Abed so maybe make them appear one after the other like : "the writers *the one on the top appears* [...] us/the audience *the other one appears*" Also at the end shouldn't the "to continue suspending disbelief" part be illustrated by the one that is *not* crossed and the other one, "thinking about the fact you're doing it" be the crossed one ? (because it takes you out of the suspention of disbelief) And I don't understand how the clip at 1,20 is breaking the fourth wall + last thing maybe insist more on the fact Abed ~~breaks the fourth wall~~ because he describes tropes *as they happen* (maybe with more examples as others have said) instead of it just being a nerdy guy who likes to talk about said tropes whenever. (because he otherwise always talks about pop culture)

The word "diagetic" is new to me, and it if my quick googling is correct, you're using it in a broader context than normal? So rubes like me need a few definitions.

Nathaniel Tagg

I like where you're going with this. I think the through line here is the bargain, which you make really clear in the first act. You could also explain "diegetic" as an abstraction in the same way you do for the fourth wall so that when you get to Abed (whom I also love inside of the mixed bag that is Community) you can really hone in on what the diegetic fourth wall break means for the bargain. I also see something interesting in your title that you don't really touch on in the content: protagony. I'm guessing you're getting at something about the nature of being a protagonist, or in this case, what does Abed toying with the audience bargain say about him as a protagonist? I'm not sure if that's where you wanted to go; I'm just putting together the pieces that I see. Also... side thought... if Abed and the audience have stuck a different bargain, perhaps a more real and human bargain, how does that alter the terms of the bargain struck between the audience and the more cartoonish and questionable elements of the show? Does accepting Abed's bargain reframe the bargain that we're willing to make around some of the problematic stereotype characterizations for Shirley and Dean, for example? Because "It's a sitcom, what are you gonna do? Amirite?" Or maybe that's a whole other topic. Sorry this is all one long graph.

I have never seen the show community, so to better understand what you're talking about with Abed, I could do with a couple more quick examples of where he does the thing. The performance from Picasso at the Lapin Agile seems fine to me.

Alfie

Upvote the under-the-breath fourth wall break comment.

Kait Hatch

The only theme to Protagony is "interesting thoughts about narrative/character," which will probably come through as more videos go online.

Ian Danskin

you broke me

Ian Danskin

I couldn't find any good recordings of the play to excerpt here, so I brought in voice actors. They live thousands of miles apart from each other so I can't get them to perform it. I did consider illustrating the exchange and only went with the script imagery because it was less work. So maybe I'll go back to that other idea. XD

Ian Danskin

I can't remember the name of that girl from Breakfast Club. Mary. Margo. Molly Ringworm.

Jacob Geller

I like the video in it's simplicity, and wonderful ending with: Cool. Cool, cool, cool.

Vincent Aaskov

I also find the pacing just fine. The video is short (way shorter than the other video on the channel), so a slower pace doesn't hurt at all.

Vincent Aaskov

Speaks the truth. Leave the ending as is. I lov e it

Ryan Aston

This is great! I honestly wouldn't change too much. The section of audio of Picasso at the Lapin is paced fine; I don't know how the actors could play it any tighter and I don't agree with a prior commenter that video would work better. It all hung together perfectly for me, aside from the audio mixing requiring a tiny bit of work. I agree, a definition of diegesis might help a little. It's a great video and made me smile on this Thursday morning. You've done a great job - sorry to hear it's been a bit of a slog, but it's paid off!

Sarah Hall

omg please don't cut the nonsense in the end

Alex Mayzlakh

is it an option to actually show video of the actors performing those lines, instead of just providing audio? I think that'd make your point a lot more easily, I was actually kinda surprised not to get to see that interaction.

matt

I really like this! It's fun to see a primer on a single interesting trope, and illustrating it with a character who exemplifies that trope brings it home. I feel like social media and behind-the-scenes culture (among other things) make us all feel like we're competent critics these days, but I really don't feel qualified to offer expert criticism on the work you do so maybe I'll just give my gut feelings? I did feel, as someone unfamiliar with the character, like there could have been more use of examples that illustrate the trope, though maybe I'd better understand that on rewatching (as happens for me with all of your essays). I like the joke at the end about the absurdity of the paradoxical thinking required to understand Community's fourth wall humor (followed by the cool cool cool and silly music and dancing), but mostly -because- the words felt like they were washing over me in a way that was too complicated for me to process and understand (*McBain voice* "That's the joke"). Overall, I like this little bite-size essay, both for its content and its format as a possible template for exploring other ideas that interest you but don't really demand as much research and time as most of your other work. ^_^

Kaylee Christine

It might help people if you include even a brief description of diegesis, just a definition would do. Also feels like an abrupt ending. Maybe mention aesthetic distance as what people are trying to get at when they say fourth wall? The pacing of the exchange seemed fine, I only paid attention because you mentioned it. My note about framing: "Protagony" is the name of the series but isn't really introduced, or how this relates to protagonists: the first half (roughly) feels like it's explaining the concept of diegetics, aesthetic distance, and then comes through to Abed as a thematic link in that initial instruction. But then, the title implies that we're here to learn about why you like Abed as a character, so the first half in that sense feels edifying but only about concepts; from this perspective I felt like I didn't really find out why you like the character of Abed, just that he's your favourite character who exemplifies this one storytelling trick. Friction: having the DFW quote on the screen which is primarily differently worded from what you're narrating throws me off because I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be concentrating on. Keep up the good work.

My thought on the Lapin-Picasso bit: it isn't, but it as at a noticeably different pace than the video surrounding it. I like the internal pacing, so maybe it makes more sense to throw in a transition or inside joke (maybe you breaking the fourth wall?) there to get the pacing back on track? I'm working under the assumption this is part of a longer video or series, where a long introduction makes some sense to to introduce a few of the concepts you're gonna hit on. Only other comment is to let slip a under-the-breath comment about your thoughts on Community, as your own breaking the fourth wall bit

Peter Benzoni

Yeah, quick thoughts: I don't know what this is saying other than 'Abed is funny because he lets the writers break the fourth wall without the characters doing so' and that's suuuper common - hell, it's just a kind of fanservice. Speaking of fanservice, if you want suggestions for clips to plug that gap, the monkey named Annie's Boobs, or what happened to Annie and Britta's characters over time, would be a good one. I think, for a 5 minute video, the Picasso at the Lapin Agile opening is too long for the purpose it serves - as an example of breaking the fourth wall. It could be exchanged with a scene where the characters consult a script, or a scene from a pantomime.

Matt Cramp