196
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
one example, consider the contemporary role of authors and how they are
now required to tell and sell their stories in a market hungry for transmedial
spreadability. In Simone Murray’s work on The Adaptation Industry, she
explains how the ways in which storytelling has become part of the “creative
industries” make it desirable for authors to engage in “twin-track writing,”
simultaneously producing novels and screenplays, and eventually game
scenarios, while they “acknowledge that content proliferates across multiple
platforms, often simultaneously and frequently with print its subsequent not
its initial incarnation”. 49 This is just one of the many ways that transmedia
storytelling reflects the economics of media consolidation and convergence,
or what industry observers call “synergy,” rather than the free play of the
signifier, the random combination of story elements, or the potential products
of just anyone’s imagination – unless these can be co-opted as playbor.
Conclusion: Freedom Friday or T.A.K.O.S. Tuesday?
In Mark Wolf’s essay on Star Wars and LEGO, he explains that the adaptation
of a film “into a physical playset is qualitatively different from narrative
adaptation between audiovisual media,” at least in part because “[t]he design
[of LEGO playsets] has a way of compartmentalizing the film’s action, even
though […] a number of locations are adjacent” as they were in the film,
and then rendered in brick sets. 50 These observations capture the double
message of The LEGO Movie and indeed, of the LEGO enterprise more generally, namely its acknowledgement, use, and self-conscious critique of the
constant oscillation between the poles of free play and corporatized fun.
LEGO negotiates inherent contradictions such as those entailed in promoting
the creation of random “weird dorky stuff,” as the characters in the movie
call it, in playworlds in which “everything is thought out,” or in following
“the rules [to an] inter-locking brick thing” and “embrac[ing] what is special
about you.” So, as Lauwaert pointed out, there are rules and requirements that
49 Simone Murray, The Adaptation Industry: The Cultural Economy of Contemporary Literary
Adaptation (New York and London: Routledge, 2012), 93, 95. Note that, at the time of writing, a quick
trip to amazon.com will yield any number of spin-off products and titles from The LEGO Movie,
including children’s books and novelizations of the film with titles such as The LEGO Movie: Junior
Novel by Kate Howard, The LEGO Movie: Calling All Master Builders! by Helen Murray, The LEGO
Movie: Meet Unikitty! by Shari Last and The LEGO Movie: Emmet’s Awesome Day, by Anna Holmes.
50 Mark J.P. Wolf, “Adapting the Death Star into LEGO: The Case of LEGO Set #10188.” in LEGO
Studies: Examining the Building Blocks of a Transmedial Phenomenon, edited by Mark J.P. Wolf,
15–40 (New York and Oxon: Routledge, 2014), 15, 28.
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
one example, consider the contemporary role of authors and how they are
now required to tell and sell their stories in a market hungry for transmedial
spreadability. In Simone Murray’s work on The Adaptation Industry, she
explains how the ways in which storytelling has become part of the “creative
industries” make it desirable for authors to engage in “twin-track writing,”
simultaneously producing novels and screenplays, and eventually game
scenarios, while they “acknowledge that content proliferates across multiple
platforms, often simultaneously and frequently with print its subsequent not
its initial incarnation”. 49 This is just one of the many ways that transmedia
storytelling reflects the economics of media consolidation and convergence,
or what industry observers call “synergy,” rather than the free play of the
signifier, the random combination of story elements, or the potential products
of just anyone’s imagination – unless these can be co-opted as playbor.
Conclusion: Freedom Friday or T.A.K.O.S. Tuesday?
In Mark Wolf’s essay on Star Wars and LEGO, he explains that the adaptation
of a film “into a physical playset is qualitatively different from narrative
adaptation between audiovisual media,” at least in part because “[t]he design
[of LEGO playsets] has a way of compartmentalizing the film’s action, even
though […] a number of locations are adjacent” as they were in the film,
and then rendered in brick sets. 50 These observations capture the double
message of The LEGO Movie and indeed, of the LEGO enterprise more generally, namely its acknowledgement, use, and self-conscious critique of the
constant oscillation between the poles of free play and corporatized fun.
LEGO negotiates inherent contradictions such as those entailed in promoting
the creation of random “weird dorky stuff,” as the characters in the movie
call it, in playworlds in which “everything is thought out,” or in following
“the rules [to an] inter-locking brick thing” and “embrac[ing] what is special
about you.” So, as Lauwaert pointed out, there are rules and requirements that
49 Simone Murray, The Adaptation Industry: The Cultural Economy of Contemporary Literary
Adaptation (New York and London: Routledge, 2012), 93, 95. Note that, at the time of writing, a quick
trip to amazon.com will yield any number of spin-off products and titles from The LEGO Movie,
including children’s books and novelizations of the film with titles such as The LEGO Movie: Junior
Novel by Kate Howard, The LEGO Movie: Calling All Master Builders! by Helen Murray, The LEGO
Movie: Meet Unikitty! by Shari Last and The LEGO Movie: Emmet’s Awesome Day, by Anna Holmes.
50 Mark J.P. Wolf, “Adapting the Death Star into LEGO: The Case of LEGO Set #10188.” in LEGO
Studies: Examining the Building Blocks of a Transmedial Phenomenon, edited by Mark J.P. Wolf,
15–40 (New York and Oxon: Routledge, 2014), 15, 28.