The 4th Person Perspective
Lately I’ve been seeing a lot of online commentary about the “new” Collective 4th Person Perspective and I’d like to have a gentle but firm whack at it.
For reference, here is a link from Medium where a writer breathlessly extolls this “emergent collective subjective character”:
and a slightly more critical link from Reddit suggesting that there’s no such thing as the 4th Person at all:
My take is that the 4th Person does exist, but that it’s nothing new and no big deal. Let’s go through it, shall we?
Theory of Mind and Intentionality
Looking at this from the perspective of Theory of Mind and levels of intentionality, there very much is a 4th Person perspective… and a 5th… and a 6th. I was taught a long time ago that Shakespeare (whether he actually existed as an individual or as a “legendary figure” like Hermes Trismagistus is a topic for another time) was capable of presenting narrative in his works that went up to the 7th Person.
Consider this example that I just made up:
1st Person: I like a girl.
2nd Person: I believe the girl doesn’t notice me.
3rd Person: I think her friends believe she likes me.
4th Person: I think our teacher is aware her friends believe she likes me but isn’t going to get involved.
5th Person: I believe an educational psychologist would think the teacher is performing properly by observing how kids negotiate relationships indirectly without interfering as it’s vital to their adult development.
6th Person: I think a cultural anthropologist would say that the educational psychologist‘s perspective exists within a specific cultural context of the western education system and it’s belief in the role of teachers as assisting students with their intellectual development without directly influencing their social development.
7th Person: I believe that a grad student reading the anthropologist’s work disagrees with the their argument that it’s appropriate for different communities to perceive the relationship between educators and youth in the context of socialization in different ways, and this inspires the grad student to create an app to help young people develop adult social skills in a way that crosses cultural boundaries and disrupts the traditional western education system.
Now You’re Thinking With Levels
The key component of the idea of “the Nth Person” from the perspective of Theory of Mind research is not that additional people are involved per se, but rather that each level of awareness builds on the previous one, incorporating a belief or intention about the previous level’s belief or intention. It’s not that four or six levels of people are perceiving me, but rather that I am capable of perceiving that N levels of people are perceiving the perceptions of the levels below them all the way down. Simple, right?
Okay, so what has that got to do with Shakespeare? Well we started off with this idea that internet viewers (or “chat” as the Redditor called them) somehow represents some emergent 4th Person perspective… and my argument is that the 4th person has been there all along.
What’s happening here, I think, is that some people either don’t understand intentionality, are conflating “4th Person” perspective with the theatrical notion of the “4th Wall”, are just picking up on some new sounding techno-thing for clicks and cred, or… why not… all of the above.
Making and Breaking The 4th Wall
I guess we’ve got the Deadpool movie to thank for the public’s emerging awareness of the 4th Wall… but for those of you who don't know, the 4th wall represents the imaginary boundary between the stage and the audience… or the TV screen, or the printed page… which separates the players who exist in the imaginary world of the performance from the observers of that world... the theater audience, television viewer or reader. It’s called the 4th wall because a normal stage play would have a set with three walls and all the furniture arranged (sometimes oddly) so that the audience can see all the action through an imaginary “4th wall” that would be there in real life but doesn’t exist on the stage.
This model of set design was carried on into early live television production and has persisted as a concept and extended to other forms of art, even after live viewers were replaced by cameras freed from the constraints of the stage and the need for that “wall” disappeared. The performers, be they theater players, TV actors or comic book characters, rarely interact with the 4th wall from their own point of view and in more serious forms of art, almost never break that wall from the audience’s point of view. It does happen, though… and often with comedic results… but with all due respect to Ryan Reynolds, it’s been happening for a very long time.
The Downside of Audience Engagement
Nevertheless, the 4th Person Perspective and the 4th Wall are not that closely related, aside from being the 4th of something. This modern misconception of the 4th Person… the interactive online viewer… is nothing more than an audience with the ability to talk back to the performers. It has little to do with perspective and nothing to do with intentionality.
In fact, I believe the entire misguided discussion about the “Emergent 4th Person Perspective” could be easily summed up as “In the current year, performers in every medium now encounter the same types of interactions that stand up comics have endured since the dawn of time… the heckler.”
Reflecting on Perspective
But If we want to be as charitable as possible to this notion of the “Collective 4th Person”, I think we can find an example from history… I present to you the Greek Chorus. The role of the Chorus in Greek Theater was to act as that of the 3rd person. They served as a collective character which provided background information and exposition, moral and social commentary, and emotional and thematic reflections on the events of the play... likely under the assumption that some of the audience may need this context to understand the events being portrayed. You as a member of that audience could watch the engagement of two characters in the play yourself as the 3rd person, but you could also watch the Chorus watch the play and attempt to understand their reactions to it, placing you in the 4th person’s perspective.
A more modern example might be televised sporting events which feature color commentators for the benefit of viewers at home… or “let’s play” live streams where viewers watch the streamer watch people playing video games… or the Japanese "ワイプ" (waipu) which refers to the small inset that shows the reactions of celebrities to the main content being shown on popular Japanese news and public interest TV shows which, in turn, spawned the recent internet “reaction channel” craze.
The point that brought this to mind was not so much the “emergence” language (which is always a bit cringy to read when used by someone who apparently just noticed something that’s been around for a while) or who the 4th person might be, but rather the specific notion that the interactive collective observer was somehow a new thing.
The Greek Chorus absolutely fulfills the definition of a collective observer who is interacting with the play… and in many cases interacts directly with the performers themselves… thereby serving both as observer AND performer, very much like the chat of any live stream you might see today… and also as a very early example of a complex 4th wall break pre-dating Deadpool, televised sports commentary, let’s plays and reaction channels by quite some time.
The Wisdom of Solomon
So, again with apologies to all the excited commentators who believe they have discovered some new emergent complexity born of the unique affordances of our modern internet age, allow me to paraquote Oedipus and say to them as he said to the Theban elders… “You pray to [technology]? Let me grant your prayers. Come, listen to me."
And what is the lesson we get from listening to the ancients? That, when it comes to human interaction, there is truly nothing new under the sun.
Oh, And One More Thing About Criticism...
If you happen to find yourself in a creative field that is just now starting to be exposed directly to critical audience feedback, in either the individual or collective sense, let me offer you a few tips on how to deal with it. First, just give up any idea that your work is beyond criticism, particularly from people who do not have your training or experience... even if they appear to have no idea what they're talking about. As I've told people before, I don't have to be a sushi chef to have an opinion about whether or not the fish has gone bad. Formal training and an end-to-end understanding of the process is not a prerequisite for having a bad experience and wanting to talk about it.
Your best move is to embrace your audience's criticism, try to understand where it's coming from and then thank them for offering it. Trust me... you would much rather live in a world where some of your audience hates your work and is aggressively vocal in saying so than one in which nobody cares enough to bother saying anything. When they stop criticizing you, it'll likely be because you didn't take those criticisms to heart or, worse, threw their bad experiences into their faces.
Stay humble and remember that problems you can overcome are merely opportunities to build relationships. If you treat your customers like they are the people who sign your checks rather than a bunch of irrational haters who just don't "get it", they will likely stick with you and keep signing.