16
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
Going through these developments one by one, the most obvious and basic
novelty is without doubt constituted by new (digital) media. Various internet
platforms or digital entertainment formats such as video games offer new
outlets into which texts from older media can be adapted. This can happen in more or less traditional ways, e.g. by retelling a plot in a different
medium – with all the complications and dimensions adaptation theory
continues to spell out for such seemingly simple “retellings” even in more
stable, “old” media – or it can take new forms that build more strongly on
these media’s affordances. Whereas older media likewise depend on reader
or viewer interaction in the form of interpretation as well as more material,
embodied interaction with a text, digital media “do not simply place us in
front of a static text; they situate us inside a system that continually produces
a dynamic object.” 19 Therefore, one thing that is new about many of these
new media forms is that they offer ways of interaction between consumer
and “text” that transcend those of older media. This can take the form of
interaction with the work in its narrow sense, as is the case in video games
in which users are allowed to impact on the ways in which they experience
the story (at least to the extent that games’ rule-based structure allows
for), or on a broader textual level, as in the case of platforms which allow
participation or immediate feedback (as, for instance, in the YouTube covers,
which Costas Constandinides examines in his contribution). 20 In many of
these media, the consumer’s influence on the unfolding of the text goes
beyond the insistence of poststructuralist and reader-response inspired
adaptation theory that recipients are always and by necessity co-creators,
even in media which allegedly put them in the role of “passive” recipients
(the classic examples being television or film, particularly as conceptualized
by apparatus theory). As such, new media facilitate new ways of engagement
and new forms of storytelling, and this is one direction in which adaptation
theory in a convergence environment can orient itself.
In one early attempt to integrate the increasingly prominent modes of
interactivity into an adaptation framework, Linda Hutcheon proposed the
concept of “modes of engagement” to address the various ways in which users
interact with a variety of media. She suggests three modes of engagement:
19 Marie-Laure Ryan, “Digital Media.” In Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling,
ed. Marie-Laure Ryan (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 329–330.
20 Here I invoke, and somewhat bastardizing, the distinction of work and text introduced by
Roland Barthes in “From Work to Text.” In Image-Music-Text (London: Fontana, 1977), 155–164.
Whereas Barthes is interested in the role of the reader of traditional printed works and their
intertextual involvement with it, participatory culture adds to this possibilities of actual textual
environments and ways of interaction, such as recombining, commenting etc.
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
Going through these developments one by one, the most obvious and basic
novelty is without doubt constituted by new (digital) media. Various internet
platforms or digital entertainment formats such as video games offer new
outlets into which texts from older media can be adapted. This can happen in more or less traditional ways, e.g. by retelling a plot in a different
medium – with all the complications and dimensions adaptation theory
continues to spell out for such seemingly simple “retellings” even in more
stable, “old” media – or it can take new forms that build more strongly on
these media’s affordances. Whereas older media likewise depend on reader
or viewer interaction in the form of interpretation as well as more material,
embodied interaction with a text, digital media “do not simply place us in
front of a static text; they situate us inside a system that continually produces
a dynamic object.” 19 Therefore, one thing that is new about many of these
new media forms is that they offer ways of interaction between consumer
and “text” that transcend those of older media. This can take the form of
interaction with the work in its narrow sense, as is the case in video games
in which users are allowed to impact on the ways in which they experience
the story (at least to the extent that games’ rule-based structure allows
for), or on a broader textual level, as in the case of platforms which allow
participation or immediate feedback (as, for instance, in the YouTube covers,
which Costas Constandinides examines in his contribution). 20 In many of
these media, the consumer’s influence on the unfolding of the text goes
beyond the insistence of poststructuralist and reader-response inspired
adaptation theory that recipients are always and by necessity co-creators,
even in media which allegedly put them in the role of “passive” recipients
(the classic examples being television or film, particularly as conceptualized
by apparatus theory). As such, new media facilitate new ways of engagement
and new forms of storytelling, and this is one direction in which adaptation
theory in a convergence environment can orient itself.
In one early attempt to integrate the increasingly prominent modes of
interactivity into an adaptation framework, Linda Hutcheon proposed the
concept of “modes of engagement” to address the various ways in which users
interact with a variety of media. She suggests three modes of engagement:
19 Marie-Laure Ryan, “Digital Media.” In Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling,
ed. Marie-Laure Ryan (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), 329–330.
20 Here I invoke, and somewhat bastardizing, the distinction of work and text introduced by
Roland Barthes in “From Work to Text.” In Image-Music-Text (London: Fontana, 1977), 155–164.
Whereas Barthes is interested in the role of the reader of traditional printed works and their
intertextual involvement with it, participatory culture adds to this possibilities of actual textual
environments and ways of interaction, such as recombining, commenting etc.