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.

Anthologies and [[Clip Show|Clip Shows]]s often use framing devices to connect the unrelated elements into a unified whole. The earlier "Treehouse of Terror" specials of ''[[The Simpsons]]'' use a framing device in this way, though the practice was eventually abandoned.

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|Star Trek the Original Series]]'' episodes) they appear to have been written after the fact.

The [['''Framing Device]]''' is [[Older Than Dirt]]: It goes right back to the Old Kingdom of [[Ancient Egypt]] with the Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor, c. 2300-2100 BCE. Sometimes the trope is written using nested framing devices that are several layers deep, as in the ''[[Arabian Nights]]''. ''Frankenstein'' is framed by a story of an arctic expedition coming across the dying Dr. Frankenstein; ''[[The Rime of the Ancient Mariner]]'' is framed by the mariner foisting his story on an unwilling wedding guest. One of the first (if not ''the'' first) examples in film is from ''[[The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari]]'', which (on a suggestion from [[Fritz Lang]]) framed the original story as a [[Flash Back]] in an asylum.

* 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—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.

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

* ''The Book of Lost Tales''--the—the original draft of the book that would later be published as ''[[The Silmarillion]]''--employs—employs a [[Framing Device]] in which a Man from England, Ælfwine/Eriol, discovers the lost island of the Elves and is told the ancient tales of their folk by a succession of characters.

* [[Lampshaded]] in a later chapter of ''[[Sophie's World]]''. [[The Philosopher]], after coming to the conclusion that they are [[No Fourth Wall|characters in a book]] written by a UN Major for his daughter's fifteenth birthday, says that the latter two shouldn't get too cocky either, because even they themselves might be just a [[Framing Device]]... which they are, of course.

* Dan Simmons' ''[[Hyperion]]'' is more or less explicitly based on Chaucer's ''Canterbury Tales'' [[Recycled in Space|IN SPACE]]!, down to the fact that the storytellers are on a pilgrimage. [[Shout-Out|Literary allusions]] and [[Genius Bonus|Genius Bonuses]]es abound. As it turns out, the stories framed all shed light on the frame story, and the sequel ''The Fall of Hyperion'' picks up from the end of the frame story.

** 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.

* 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.

* And let's not forget the original ''[[Star Trek: The Original Series|Star Trek the Original Series]]'' frame story, "The Menagerie," the only 2-parter of the original series, which was a frame story added around the original pilot episode -- whoseepisode—whose differences from the regular series were justified by claiming it took place 13 years earlier.

* The [[Traveller]] universe has a [[Standard Sci Fi History]] as a sort of [[Framing Device]].

== [[Video Game|Video Games]]s ==

** The second one had Bart, Lisa, and Homer eating too much candy before bed, with the [[Three Shorts]] themselves presented as prolonged [[Nightmare Sequence|Nightmare Sequences]]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..."]].

:: Whatever plot the subsequent Halloween episodes had outside of the three stories is mostly confined to the [[Cold Opening|Cold Openings]]s.

* ''[[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.