Framing Device: Difference between revisions

 

The '''Framing Device''' is a narrative technique in which a story is surrounded ("framed") by a secondary story, creating a story within a story, often through [[Separate Scene Storytelling]]. The inner story is usually the bulk of the work. The framing device places the inside story within a different context.

The inner story does not need to be a work of fiction from an frame-story character's point of view: letters, journals, and memoirs can also be used as framing devices, often in the form of [[Day in the Life]].

 

 

Occasionally, an entire series can use a persistent '''Framing Device''', such as ''[[Cro]]'', which was framed by a recently thawed mammoth, who was telling the stories which composed the bulk of each episode. A noteworthy example from the days of radio is ''Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar'', whose stories were told in the form of explanations to a private detective's expense account. To a lesser extent, devices such as the [[Captain's Log]] can be viewed as a '''Framing Device''', especially when (as in many ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series]]'' episodes) they appear to have been written after the fact.

 

Compare [[Intro-Only Point of View]].

 

* A particularly ingenious version of this is used in ''[[Martian Successor Nadesico]],'' in an inversion of its [[Show Within a Show]] relationship with ''[[Gekiganger 3]]''—it airs as an episode of ''Gekiganger'' in which its characters are watching ''Nadesico.'' It manages to [[Lampshade Hanging|lampshade]] the [[Recap Episode]] when one of the ''Gekiganger'' characters complains that nothing new happens in them, and it's an excuse for the production company to take a break.

* ''[[Tenchi Muyo!]] Extra Chapter: Galaxy Police Mihoshi's Space Adventure'' (a.k.a. ''Mihoshi Special'') is framed by Mihoshi telling the story to the other characters from the original [[OAV]] series. Most of the characters in the "inner" story are [[Alternate Continuity]] versions of them.

* The story of the manga ''[[Not Simple]]'' is told as a reporter named Jim writes a book (also titled Not Simple) detailing the many trials of the protagonist's life.

* ''[[Jing King of Bandits]]: Seventh Heaven'' is a 3-episode [[OVA]] series in which the first and third episodes act as a frame for the second one.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

** The current ''[[House of Mystery]]'' has a framing device of characters swapping stories in an [[Inn Between the Worlds]].

* In ''[[All Fall Down]]'', chapter two's funeral service frames a flashback to the heroes and villains' last hour of glory.

== [[Film]] - Animated ==

* ''[[Aladdin (Disney film)|Aladdin]]'' begins with a peddler selling a magic lamp and proceeding to tell the story of the fortune it brought its previous owner. The third film, ''Aladdin and the King of Thieves'', ends with the same peddler bidding the viewers farewell with a reprise of ''Aladdin'''s opening song, "Arabian Nights."

* The children's movie ''[[Balto]]'' begins and ends with live-action sequences, where a grandmother is explaining to her granddaughter about the influenza epidemic that led to the creation of the Iditarod dog sled race in Alaska. The end sequence, where they visit the statue erected to honor the dogs who heroically brought the medicine the town needed, reveals that the grandmother is actually Rosie, the little girl who almost died.

* The film ''[[Heavy Metal (animation)|Heavy Metal]]''. The first segment of the movie has the Loc-Nar appearing to the little girl: the subsequent segments are the stories it tells her.

 

== [[Film]] - Live-Action ==

* ''[[The Princess Bride (film)|The Princess Bride]]'' (movie version) is framed as a book being read by a grandfather to his sick grandson.

* The Framing Device in ''[[Titanic]]'' is elderly Rose telling her story.

* ''[[Stand by Me]]'' is framed by the Writer (aka the adult Gordy) reacting to the news of his friend Chris being stabbed to death.

* The movie adaptation of ''[[Of Mice and Men]]'' with Gary Sinise starts and ends with George on a train, recalling the events that led to Lenny's death.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

* In [[Michael Ende]]'s ''[[The Neverending Story (novel)|The Neverending Story]]'', Bastian's story is initially used as a frame for Atreyu's, as Bastian reads a stolen storybook. When Bastian finds that the book he is reading contains descriptions of his own life and actions, the line between framing and framed story becomes blurry.

* ''The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar'' by [[Roald Dahl]] has two layers of framing.

* [[Geoffrey Chaucer]]'s ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]'' has the framing device of a group of pilgrims telling each other stories to pass the time on their journey.

* It's possible that Chaucer was familiar with [[Giovanni Boccaccio|Boccaccio]]'s ''[[The Decameron|Decameron]]'', featuring a group of young men and women retreating to a country estate to avoid the plague and passing the time by telling stories as a framing device.

* [[Poul Anderson]]'s ''[[The High Crusade]]'' uses this ''twice'': the action is framed as being the chronicle written by a monk, which in turn is framed as a translation by a group encountering the subjects of the story.

* The book ''[[The Manuscript Found In Saragossa]]'' and its later [[The Movie|adaption]], ''[[The Saragossa Manuscript]]'' take this trope to extreme lengths, telling stories within stories within stories ''within stories''. The initial Framing Device quickly disappears among the layers of narrative.

* [[Stephen King]] used a nursing home and the narrator's old, ''old'' age to frame his re-entries into the serial story of ''[[The Green Mile]]''

* Also by [[Stephen King]], book 4 of [[The Dark Tower]] series, ''Wizard and Glass'', is a back story told by Roland to his group.

* The above mentioned ''[[Frankenstein]]'' actually has ''three'' framing devices: The monster is telling his story to Victor, who is telling it to Robert Walton, who's writing a letter to his sister.

* ''[[World War Z]]'' is briefly framed as initially being for a report on the zombie war, but when the author handed it in to his superiors, they said it was too personal. So he made it into a book.

** Similarly, Holmes' investigation in the short story ''The Boscombe Valley Mystery'' is a Framing Device for a story about a soldier in India, and his involvement in ''The Adventure of the Gloria Scott'' is entirely incidental.

* ''[[Shutter Island]]'' is presented as Dr. Sheehan's desire to set the record straight at last.

* ''[[The Name of the Wind]]'' has Kvothe narrating his story to a scribe. The book is the first in a trilogy, and each book is a day's worth of narration.

* In the novel ''Slumdog Millionaire'' the hero of the story, Raj Mohammed Thomas, frames the story as testimony to the police who have arrested him.

* Mil Millington's ''A Certain Chemistry'' is framed by God telling us how all our emotions, actions and thoughts are governed by our bodies' chemistries, using the main character's story (in which a writer cheats on his girlfriend with a soap star) to illustrate his points.

* In ''[[The Iron Dream]]'', we have a banal [[Science Fiction]] story by [[Adolf Hitler]], a USA emigrant, followed by a Framing Device in-universe essay to explain the point of this story.

* The novel of ''[[Dr. Strangelove]]'' has a prologue written by an alien, who [[Literary Agent Hypothesis|found a record of the story]] under a rock in the deserts of the north-western continent of an uninhabited planet they're currently exploring.

* The ''[[Dinotopia]]'' prequel ''First Flight'' is told as a story that one of the main characters from the main book is studying.

* Someone tells the story of ''[[Who Moved My Cheese?]]'' at a high school reunion.

* In ''[[Who Cut the Cheese?]]'' by Stilton Jarlsberg, Biff tells the story of "Who Cut the Cheese?" at a funeral.

 

* ''[[The Golden Girls]]'' had several episodes constructed of three or four shorter stories, always framed by the girls recalling events fitting a particular theme. (For example, in one episode the girls are dieting, and they recall past attempts at self-improvement.) The show also did several [[Clip Show|clip shows]], in which the framing device was usually a time of crisis, such as Blanche considering selling the house.

* The ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]'' [[Grand Finale]] had the episode being run as a holodeck simulation as its framing story (though the fact [[Star Trek: The Next Generation|Commander Riker]] kept intruding into the events it might as well not have been a Framing Device at all).

* The final episode of ''[[Smallville]]'' featured Chloe Sullivan reading a comic book to her son titled "Smallville" that framed Clark Kent's transformation into Superman.

* The Nickelodeon series ''[[Are You Afraid of the Dark?]]'' sets up each episode with the Midnight Society, a group of teens, gathering around a campfire in the woods to tell ghost stories. After the tale was finished, the episode would end with the Midnight Society calling their meeting to a close.

 

== [[Music]] ==

* [[Sound Horizon]]'s ''Moira'' starts with a Russian billionaire trying to discover the truth behind the Elefseya, an ancient Greek [[The Epic|epic]] that tells the story proper. In a case of [[Stealth Pun]] [[Lampshading]], the song makes a number of references to [[Nested Story|Matyroshka dolls]].

 

== [[Radio]] ==

* [[Charles Dickens|Dickensian]] [[Parody]] ''[[Bleak Expectations]]'' tells the story of Pip Bin surviving his [[Hilariously Abusive Childhood]] and going from "[[Rags to Riches|riches to rags to riches to rags]] [[Up to Eleven|to ''worse'' rags to riches to rags to riches again]]" presented by the now-elderly (and extremely wealthy) Sir Philip Bin telling his story to a journalist for serialisation in ''The Times''.

 

== [[Theater]] ==

* Oddly, [[Shakespeare]]'s ''[[The Taming of the Shrew]]'' begins with a framing device, but never follows up on it once the story proper starts. There's speculation that there was a follow up, but it's been [[Lost Forever|lost to the ages]]. The additional frame story passages have been restored in The Oxford Shakespeare, edited by Stanley Wells and Gary Taylor.

* ''[[Brooklyn]]'' is framed as five street musicians putting on a play for passersby in hopes of donations.

* Cervantes and the Inquisition in ''[[Man of La Mancha]]''.

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

 

== [[Video Game]]s ==

** The second installment wasn't narrated at all, and the third was narrated by Kaileena. At the end of the series, {{spoiler|the Prince starts telling Farah the story all over again.}}

* The text adventure game ''[[Spider and Web]]'' is known primarily for its ingenious framing device, wherein the player is a spy who has been captured and is being interrogated using a machine that causes them to relive their actions. If the player ever strays too far from the correct path, the interrogator interrupts them and says, "That's impossible, that's not how it happened" and makes you try again.

* The overarching narrative of ''[[Okami]]'' is told by a mysterious narrator, beginning with the legend of [[Orochi]] and [[Physical God|Shiranui]] one hundred years ago. By the end of the game, if you haven't figured out the narrator's identity, he'll berate you and switch to more familiar speech patterns that make it easier to recognize him.

* ''[[Assassin's Creed]]'' is ostensibly about Altaïr Ibn al-Ahad, or Ezio Auditore da Firenze, in the Middle East and Renaissance Italy respectively, and their journeys to assassinate the men behind a vast [[Knight Templar]] conspiracy. The game is ''actually'' about a man who lives [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]] named Desmond Miles, who is reliving the [[Genetic Memory|memories of his ancestors]] through a device called the Animus, for different reasons in each game, though they are related to the [[Knight Templar]] conspiracy. Where future games will take place is currently unknown, but the second game's ending implied that {{spoiler|Desmond had become skilled enough to possibly become the player character himself}}. ''Brotherhood'' still focuses on Ezio, but Desmond has some free-running sequences to be done in 21st-century Monteriggioni and the Villa Auditore.

** So does ''[[Chrono Cross]]''.

* The story of ''[[Odin Sphere]]'' is told when a little girl finds the books telling each character's role in the tale of Armageddon in her attic and starts reading them. In the end when she finishes reading the last book, she notices that a Pooka coin is lodged in the back cover. She offers a silent prayer to the people in the story before leaving the attic {{spoiler|and in the True Ending Pooka!Cornelius and Pooka!Velvet take the coin to complete their collection to make the wish that restores their humanity.}}

 

== [[Web Animation]] ==

* ''[[Bowser's Kingdom]]'' episode 9 had the Karate Duo explain the story of they tried to steal the [[Super Mario RPG|Seven Stars]] and failed.

 

** And Don, {{spoiler|the current Dream King, was given the position by technically "killing" Fiona through sending her back, since ownership of Nod works via [[Klingon Promotion]] and she took the title from [[Big Bad|Sadako..]]}}

* The bulk of ''[[Spacetrawler]]'' is a personal history that Nogg is sharing with Mr. Zorilla.

 

== [[Web Original]] ==

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

** Actually, a few years before Shining Time Station was conceived, the Thomas series had existed as a series of shorts created for British television, making the above a subversion.

* A show named ''[[The Noddy Shop]]'' framed episodes of the BBC's stop motion ''[[Noddy]]'' series as being stories the child characters told to each other.

** The first one had Homer listening in on Bart and Lisa exchanging stories in a treehouse ([[Artifact Title|hence the name of the series' Halloween episodes]]).

** The second one had Bart, Lisa, and Homer eating too much candy before bed, with the [[Three Shorts]] themselves presented as prolonged [[Nightmare Sequence]]s. The last short appears to have ended with a return to the frame story, only to continue where the short left off by {{spoiler|revealing that Mr. Burns had his head grafted to Homer's body}}. Cue fake [["On the Next..."]].

* ''[[Futurama]]'' Used a similar Framing Device in it's "Anthology of Interest" stories, using the "[[What If]]" machine. In the first episode it turns out that the Framing Device was itself a product of the professor asking the [[What If]] machine a question.

* ''[[The Town Santa Forgot]]'' opens and ends with an old man (who it turns out {{spoiler|is the now-elderly main character}}) telling the story to his grandkids.

* The ''[[Kim Possible]]'' episode "Rewriting History" has a story of Kim's great-grandmother (who vanished in disgrace at the start of the century), which is framed by Kim uncovering what really happened, while her [[Arch Enemy]] Dr. Drakken chases his own ancestor's involvement in the same events, piling up into [[Generation Xerox]] and [[Contrived Coincidence]] {{spoiler|and ending as [[All Just a Dream]]}}.

* The ''[[Avatar: The Last Airbender]]'' episode [[Villain Episode|"Zuko Alone"]] features this: the A-story of Zuko wandering around the Earth Kingdom and being offered hospitality by a peasant family mirrors the story (told in flashbacks) of Zuko's childhood and how Ozai became Firelord.

* Early ''[[Caillou]]'' episodes start with a grandmother telling her grandchilding a story of Caillou's life, which is a setup for the episode itself. Later episodes ditched this beginning though.

* ''[[The Care Bears Movie]]'' is told by {{spoiler|an elder Nicholas about how the Care Bears helped him}}.

 

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