For those of you who haven't seen "Rejected," let me take a moment to describe it to you. The animated short begins with a brief story of the films creator, Don Hertzfeldt as he is asked to do a series of advertisements for the Family Learning Channel. It is explained that every single cartoon that he drew was outright rejected by the Family Learning Channel for reasons which can be seen in the cartoon as you watch it. This hysterical short doesn't have any narrative structure, no antagonist or protagonist, and really no story of any kind, at all. The video proceeds as a series of short commericals for both the Family Learning Channel and later as advertisements for products that Hertzfeldt was asked to draw advertisements for.
Beyond the short being incredibly funny, there is a portion of the cartoon which is very relevant to our discussion of breaking the fourth wall of narratives. at one point in the video, text comes up explaining that the rejected cartoons grow unstable and finally begin to fall apart. this is where the video becomes very interesting. From here, the world of the story begins to fall apart, the pages crumple, the cartoons suffer injury and pain and eventually get sucked into this black hole that is a tear in one of the pages of the annimation.
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