This week’s readings focus on paratexts and transmedia, exploring how stories can span beyond a film or TV show through both official and fan-created works. How do such extensions shape narrative comprehension and experience? Are there examples from your own experiences that point to the power or importance of transmedia paratexts as part of storytelling & consumption?
11 thoughts on “Responses for 11/23”
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I just saw the new Harry Potter movie this weekend and I, personally, thought the sole reason it was enjoyable was because I had read the source material. If it wasn’t for the Harry Potter books working for me as a paratext, I don’t think I would have understand the syuzhet or enjoyed the fabula nearly as much, if whatsoever. I was wondering if anyone else has seen the movie and what they think. Since it was the seventh movie adapted from a seven-book series, how do you think the film was shaped purposely knowing most viewers are entering the source material with a wealth of paratextual knowledge that varies from person to person?
I agree Josh! To give you the opposite end of the spectrum, I haven’t read the Harry Potter books nor seen any of the movies. I was invited to go see the movie tonight, and I wanted to go, but have decided not to simply because I’m worried that I won’t have any clue about what is happening!
Besides Harry Potter, I think there are a ton of tv shows that rely on paratexts for their jokes to make sense. Southpark is a good example, and I think The Simpsons is the same way. The Simpsons have episodes where they will make fun of everything from current cultural phenomena to classic literature. Still, I enjoyed The Simpson’s growing up even though I may have missed the jokes that my parents found funny because of the paratext.
I think the simpsons and especially South Park eliminate this worry by working on multiple levels, even within the same joke. In one of my favorite episodes of South Park, Bono is made fun of for always wanting to be number 1. At the very end of the episode, it is revealed that this want comes from Bono trying to deny that he is actually a piece of feces (a.k.a number 2), not a human being. For those that know about Bono and his constant drive to be seen as an excellent, care-giving person this is a hilarious, ridiculous explanation for why. For those that don’t know who Bono is, it’s still a man made out of poop, which is hilarious
I totally agree with you to a particular point. I agree that having a source text to be able to enjoy—and in most cases, critic—a serial story such as the Harry Potter film series is important, but at the same time the films are no more explorative into the narrative. If anything, I’m constantly hearing fans of the book series become upset with the films, because the films are not always an accurate portrayal of the world constructed by the books. I feel Harry Potter and other film series made from novels often do there best to adapt key features that make the story worth experiencing at the movies, but they do not add any substantial relevance to a creating a larger, extended narrative to the already existing text. This is where I feel Harry Potter and those like it fail in the realm of extended storytelling.
As the readings show, through consuming paratexts, viewers are able to construct a more coherant and unified universe. They may flesh out some questions of the primary text’s background history or character relationships. Also, they have the ability to comment and critique the primary text as the too many dicks on the dancefloor video we watched in class showed us.
One interesting example of the power of paratexts is form the Halo Universe. Along with the six games set in the halo universe, there have been a number of short novels and comics published set in the halo universe. The novels dramatize pieces of narrative either before or in between the time of the games. For example, the first novel is a prequel to the first game. Another novel takes place during the time between the first game and the second game. By consuming the novels and comics, fan can fill in the gaps presented and flaunted by the video games. These paratexts also simply offer more adventures in the halo universe, developing the world more. For some consumers, more time in this universe is all they want and the novels are able to provide that for them.
The most interesting part of Gray’s discussion on para-texts for me was the positive factors spoilers can play in a film or television show. I think this is especially true with bad movies. If previews, ad campaigns, game tie-ins or whatever else is now done to promote movies and tv shows doesn’t hook you, knowing exactly what happens in a narrative could be a “last pull” for bad, or badly publicized films, to pull in viewers. This has happened to me once in my personal experience. I occasionally read spoilers on films I had a very light interest in, but would definitely not pay for and would probably never get around to watching. After watching the first three Saw movies, I vowed never to go see one again in theaters and instead read the spoiler for Saw 4, just to see how they could possibly beat the dead horse even more. Yet, after reading the spoiler, which gave away all of the major plot details (not very hard) as well as all the kills, my sick mind and I decided we couldn’t pass up watching the gruesome executions that had been described to us.
I enjoyed Gray’s chapter about how the Star Wars action figures not only extended the narrative for fans, but may have ultimately influenced the prominence of Boba fett in the more recent movies.
When I was a kid, we had an extensive collection of X-men action figures. We bought them because my brother liked the comics, and then started watching the TV show because we liked the action figures. Whenever we bought a character we hadn’t read about/watched, we’d look them up in our X-men Encyclopedia to learn their back story so we could figure out where they fit in our games. My experience with the narrative was definitely generated by the toys more than anything else. I was really excited when the X-men movie came out in 2000, but didn’t find myself sucked back into the narrative like I had expected.
There’s a closeness to the text achieved by allowing a viewer to interact with/control a narrative that television and movies alone can’t accomplish.
That’s hilarious that you bring up X-Men, Nora. I had a TON of X-Men figures (I think I still do…) and I collected them in order to match the storyworld I saw in both the cards and the TV series and create something totally different (matching mutants up with different ones), sort of along the same lines of what Jenkins mentioned. I collected the cards as well, and I remember HI-C had a promotional campaign where they had character illustrations and bios on the back of their juice boxes–I collected those, too. Each piece of text helped me understand the characters more.
I think that that one piece of text can definitely help influence extensions that follow, and so on and so forth. The raspy voice Wolverine had in the cartoon was clearly something added to the character–it might have been the first time the characters were voiced, but I’m not completely sure. If that was the case, I can definitely see its influence in the film adaptations, with Hugh Jackman and his somewhat aped voice attribute. I also remember a reference in the first one when Wolverine mentioned how he’d prefer not wearing yellow spandex, which was a clear wink at the cartoon’s outfit.
i have a hard time differentiating ‘paratext’ from ‘merchandise’ sometimes. I find it interesting that the paratextual ‘augmentation’ of the narrative/narrative universe is most often motivated by financial gains rather than narrative expansion.
For two distinct reasons, I feel paratext have now become as important as the text itself. First, the paratext allows one to gain information and develop a fabula of expectations pertaining to the genre, style, and possible syuzhet of the story about to be watched, which is what David Bordwell would initially comment on from the perspective of the ideal viewer. Secondly, the paratext allows audiences to develop a larger text beyond the story-world, where investigative accuracies and detours may elaborate or expand the movie going experience. I feel successful films separate themselves from “mediocre” films with the use of paratext to build a timeless world audiences—specifically the millennial generation—can immerse themselves in. For example, The Expendables (2010) is the most recent summer action film that combines many of the present and past action stars together for one large film. Although many of the stars are well known, their star quality of previous films would bring audiences to expect nothing short of a large-scale film with large explosions and violence. I can not comment on my opinion about the film—I didn’t like it—but because of the outside text a narrative is constructed prior to seeing the actual film. However, when the film is done there is no expanded paratext to further support the film and keep audiences interested. Contrasted with the film, Inception (2010), there are forums which comment on psycho dream sequences, auteur theories and concepts regarding author presence within the film, and various other merchandising extensions (i.e. Inception soundtrack) that allows the audience an extended, expanded experience of the actual text.
At the same time, I wonder how games use the same methods to create a larger experience for the players when the game itself serves as a source text?
I think paratexts are important in terms of storytelling and consumption because they do provide a richer experience of a narrative universe. The notion of a narrative universe is important because I think paratexts need a substantial story world to build off from, inhabited by compelling characters. Obviously, fantasy genres are not the only stories that can provide this: the webisodes of Gossip Girl come to mind. A narrative universe such as this is more likely to inspire stronger audience engagement and thus spawn paratexts. Conventional wisdom holds that an individual (original) text should tell a story that is independent of any other text or paratext in order to be aesthetically compelling; texts and paratexts should compliment one another. This is certainly the model that Hollywood aspires to in terms of aiming for the broadest possible appeal of most movies; Bordwell’s bias toward the “original” or “primary” text is confirmed by this. I’m not sure that the increasing emergence of transmedia narratives will ever be able to completely shake this convention. This is most relevant for narratives where narrative canon is of the utmost importance for transmedia texts: Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, The Matrix. The case of comic book superheroes is very interesting because, most of the time, narrative canon does not transcend media (Christopher Reeve Superman and Dean Cain Superman do not exist in the same fabula) and vastly different iterations of the same characters are an intrinsic norm of the genre.