170
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
contexts or non-sanctioned products; it is not an incidental by-product
or solely due to remediation – although this certainly plays an important
role. Nevertheless, it is actually a logical and inevitable consequence of
fictional storyworlds as possible worlds. Total control, full orchestration,
is impossible: neither can we predict or know exactly how an audience will
receive a particular storyworld and make sense of it within a particular
fictional universe and within their very own constellation and selection
of that fictional universe as they have “consumed” it so far. In addition,
audiences can be amazingly creative in dealing with differences, divergences,
and apparent incompatibilities by coming up with their own explanations,
interpretations, complements, and other “sense-making” strategies; in some
other cases, they may simply not care.
Consequently, what Linda Hutcheon writes with regard to video games
is also true of franchise storytelling: it is “less the story itself than the story
world […] that [is] being adapted.” 27 She calls this a heterocosm (but makes
no reference to Doležel) that allows for “multiple possible story lines”; 28 in
the section on transmedia storytelling in his online blog, Henry Jenkins
makes a similar point: “[T]ransmedia stories are based not on individual
characters or specific plots but rather complex fictional worlds which can
sustain multiple interrelated characters and their stories.” 29
Clare Parody is one of the few to elaborate on what this implies, noting
that there are “specific dynamics at work when a text adapts a franchise
rather than a single source,” because in franchises a new text usually engages
with “more than one specific text.” 30 Within franchises, every new storyworld
text is “unavoidably structured in relation to the entire franchise multitext,”
which is “diffuse and unstable.” 31 There is, she writes, a whole “array” (a term
she takes from Jim Collins) of “versions, origin points, coexisting, overlapping,
and contradictory narrative realities, rather than a master narrative and
stable textual corpus.” 32 Her conclusion is that there are “cohering principles
other than narrative continuity, such as brand identity, adaptations, remakes,
and similar re-versionings and re-visionings.” 33 I think she is right in that
27 Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation (New York: Routledge, 2006), xxiv.
28 Ibid.
29 Henry Jenkins, “Transmedia Storytelling 101,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog
of Henry Jenkins, last modified March 22, 2007, accessed February 15, 2019, http://henryjenkins.
org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html.
30 Parody, “Franchising/Adaptation,” 212.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid., 215–216.
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
contexts or non-sanctioned products; it is not an incidental by-product
or solely due to remediation – although this certainly plays an important
role. Nevertheless, it is actually a logical and inevitable consequence of
fictional storyworlds as possible worlds. Total control, full orchestration,
is impossible: neither can we predict or know exactly how an audience will
receive a particular storyworld and make sense of it within a particular
fictional universe and within their very own constellation and selection
of that fictional universe as they have “consumed” it so far. In addition,
audiences can be amazingly creative in dealing with differences, divergences,
and apparent incompatibilities by coming up with their own explanations,
interpretations, complements, and other “sense-making” strategies; in some
other cases, they may simply not care.
Consequently, what Linda Hutcheon writes with regard to video games
is also true of franchise storytelling: it is “less the story itself than the story
world […] that [is] being adapted.” 27 She calls this a heterocosm (but makes
no reference to Doležel) that allows for “multiple possible story lines”; 28 in
the section on transmedia storytelling in his online blog, Henry Jenkins
makes a similar point: “[T]ransmedia stories are based not on individual
characters or specific plots but rather complex fictional worlds which can
sustain multiple interrelated characters and their stories.” 29
Clare Parody is one of the few to elaborate on what this implies, noting
that there are “specific dynamics at work when a text adapts a franchise
rather than a single source,” because in franchises a new text usually engages
with “more than one specific text.” 30 Within franchises, every new storyworld
text is “unavoidably structured in relation to the entire franchise multitext,”
which is “diffuse and unstable.” 31 There is, she writes, a whole “array” (a term
she takes from Jim Collins) of “versions, origin points, coexisting, overlapping,
and contradictory narrative realities, rather than a master narrative and
stable textual corpus.” 32 Her conclusion is that there are “cohering principles
other than narrative continuity, such as brand identity, adaptations, remakes,
and similar re-versionings and re-visionings.” 33 I think she is right in that
27 Linda Hutcheon, A Theory of Adaptation (New York: Routledge, 2006), xxiv.
28 Ibid.
29 Henry Jenkins, “Transmedia Storytelling 101,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog
of Henry Jenkins, last modified March 22, 2007, accessed February 15, 2019, http://henryjenkins.
org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html.
30 Parody, “Franchising/Adaptation,” 212.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid., 215–216.