The breakdown of fictional logic in Fleabag

Abstract

It is not new that in some theatrical performances the characters address the public, breaking the fourth wall or fictional logic, since a character (belonging to the world of fiction) interacts with the spectators (belonging to the real world). This transgression of the communicative logic is tolerated by the fact that characters (actors) and spectators, although they share neither time nor artistic space, do share time and physical space, materially coincide in time and space. In recent decades, some directors have developed this phenomenon in feature films, where the rupture is more transgressive (Annie Hall, 1977, or The Purple Rose of Cairo,1985, by Woody Allen) We are interested in the case of the TV serie Fleabag (two seasons, 2016 and 2019) because the metalepsis or break in fictional logic has important narrative repercussions: it seeks the complicity of the viewers without distorting the narrative or dramatic universe despite that he does it in the presence of other characters and not apart, is a source of comedy (very black humour), turns the viewer into an active being and involved in the story, with the privilege of knowing more than the other characters and makes the main character is also a narrator. As if that were not enough, in the second season the artifice grows especially with the character of the priest, and sometimes causes the characters in the work to be on different levels of fiction, raising the degree of originality of the series.