We discussed briefly in class this deconstruction and reconstruction of the “fourth wall,” or the awareness between characters of each other. The demon’s influence forces this singing about real life, and thus all the secrets come pouring out. But, there are times in the episode when the characters can and can’t hear what the others are singing, like when Giles is singing about leaving Buffy and she can’t hear him. But, Anya and Xander can hear each other singing about those little things they don’t like (beady eyes and hairy toes). So there’s a jarring shift between having that fourth wall and not. The same occurs in The Nutcracker and the King of Mice where there’s the veil that gets blown aside every now and then. Finding the line between reality and fantasy is very difficult in the story because it gets blurred so often. Someone I believe argued that this is partly a result of what the characters want to hear. Anya and Xander each have a desire to know what the other is thinking, born from an anxiety about whether their marriage would work. Spike wants Buffy to hear him out, and Buffy has this strange attachment to Spike because he cares for and understands her, something she secretly desires from her other friends. Spike can see through Buffy and knows that she was torn out of heaven instead of hell, so he acts as her anchor. But, Buffy is unable to stand on her own until some healing starts, so she vehemently doesn’t want to hear Giles saying he’s leaving her. Thus the fourth wall is reconstructed. At the end, Buffy’s desire to reveal the truth and for her friends to understand what happened to her wins out over her martyrdom and they hear when she sings about it. Marie, in the Nutcracker story, of course fully believes in the realness of her dolls, and therefore the battle and the trip to Marzipan Castle is very real for her. But no one else seems to believe these things. The fourth wall is more blurred in this story than it is in the Buffy episode. It’s difficult to say just what makes the difference and why sometimes we as the audience are in the real world or the fantasy world. Perhaps we should instead ask whether there’s a difference.
Maybe there is no difference between the worlds. You kind of blew my mind there. I definitely sometimes feel like the world of a book is just as real as the computer I'm typing at, so who's to say that Marie's Nutcracker isn't real? I mean, I kind of hope the whole thing isn't because it's a bit creepy. I'm going to cut myself off right there before I start to ramble incoherently, but I wanted to say thanks for the thought-provoking question and I intellectually like all of the stuff you said about the fourth wall.
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