26
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
markets. What is particularly remarkable is how the film, in a case of what
Fredric Jameson would call postmodern “blank parody” or pastiche, 36
self-consciously parodies its own rhetoric, while ultimately endorsing as
inevitable the very notions of corporate control it both evokes and pokes
fun at. From an economic perspective, the film functions to boost sales for
all products in the LEGO franchise and other franchises incorporated into
it, while it displays a cultural self-awareness that works to cushion LEGO’s
moneymaking machinery in an aura of self-aware irony that is not unlike
a magnified version of the pseudo-subversive stance taken by the mashup
novels examined earlier by Voigts.
In the collection’s final chapter, Werner Schäfke-Zell brings yet another
layer into the examination of adaptations and franchises in an increasingly
globalized environment. Schäfke examines how legal frameworks limit
and influence storyworlds in different national media cultures. 37 Looking at the popular Wolfenstein video game franchise, he shows how the
makers of the various Wolfenstein games manage the content to facilitate
its international distribution. Schäfke describes legal limitations in the
German market that influence depictions of National Socialism and the
Holocaust, as well as marketing limitations linked to the self-inscribed
“family-friendliness” of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Turning to the
games themselves, Schäfke argues that the process of “narrative filtering,”
which removes or recodes references to the games’ Nazi antagonists to
avoid complications with German laws, actually amplifies a mythologization of Germany’s Nazi past that is already embedded in the original
game’s Verfremdung (transformation) of historical reality. Ironically, this
mythologization becomes much stronger through some of the f iltered,
superf icially de-Nazif ied alterations released on the German market.
As such, a legal framework established to prevent a positive depiction
of National Socialism could, in the case of the Wolfenstein franchise’s
adaptation to legal limitations, actually work to strengthen the games’
“appeal of the forbidden.”
36 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1991), 17.
37 Recently Roberta Pearson has pointed to the function of laws as foundational for the
material we study in adaptation and transmedia studies. As Pearson writes, “the beloved
fictional worlds we study rest upon the legal and business practices that create, sustain, and
protect them” (Roberta Pearson, “World-Building Logics and Copyright: The Dark Knight and the
Great Detective.” In World Building: Transmedia, Fans, Industries, ed. Marta Boni (Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 2017), 110).
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
markets. What is particularly remarkable is how the film, in a case of what
Fredric Jameson would call postmodern “blank parody” or pastiche, 36
self-consciously parodies its own rhetoric, while ultimately endorsing as
inevitable the very notions of corporate control it both evokes and pokes
fun at. From an economic perspective, the film functions to boost sales for
all products in the LEGO franchise and other franchises incorporated into
it, while it displays a cultural self-awareness that works to cushion LEGO’s
moneymaking machinery in an aura of self-aware irony that is not unlike
a magnified version of the pseudo-subversive stance taken by the mashup
novels examined earlier by Voigts.
In the collection’s final chapter, Werner Schäfke-Zell brings yet another
layer into the examination of adaptations and franchises in an increasingly
globalized environment. Schäfke examines how legal frameworks limit
and influence storyworlds in different national media cultures. 37 Looking at the popular Wolfenstein video game franchise, he shows how the
makers of the various Wolfenstein games manage the content to facilitate
its international distribution. Schäfke describes legal limitations in the
German market that influence depictions of National Socialism and the
Holocaust, as well as marketing limitations linked to the self-inscribed
“family-friendliness” of the Nintendo Entertainment System. Turning to the
games themselves, Schäfke argues that the process of “narrative filtering,”
which removes or recodes references to the games’ Nazi antagonists to
avoid complications with German laws, actually amplifies a mythologization of Germany’s Nazi past that is already embedded in the original
game’s Verfremdung (transformation) of historical reality. Ironically, this
mythologization becomes much stronger through some of the f iltered,
superf icially de-Nazif ied alterations released on the German market.
As such, a legal framework established to prevent a positive depiction
of National Socialism could, in the case of the Wolfenstein franchise’s
adaptation to legal limitations, actually work to strengthen the games’
“appeal of the forbidden.”
36 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham: Duke
University Press, 1991), 17.
37 Recently Roberta Pearson has pointed to the function of laws as foundational for the
material we study in adaptation and transmedia studies. As Pearson writes, “the beloved
fictional worlds we study rest upon the legal and business practices that create, sustain, and
protect them” (Roberta Pearson, “World-Building Logics and Copyright: The Dark Knight and the
Great Detective.” In World Building: Transmedia, Fans, Industries, ed. Marta Boni (Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 2017), 110).