96
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
The blank parody of pastiche according to Jameson is religious intertextuality, recreating the presence of its fetish or God, whereas parody is satirical,
critical, so that parody obviously is undesirable in religious contexts. It is
this religious dimension of fandom that helps explain how the mashup
novel intervenes in all of the three areas singled out by Birke and Christ in
their overview of paratexts in digital culture: materialization, boundaries,
and authorization. 32
Boundaries: Paratext and canon
According to Birke and Christ, textual boundaries have become increasingly blurred and fluid, suggesting the centrifugal textuality discussed by
McCracken and others. As intertexts, both William Shakespeare’s Star Wars
and Two Gentlemen of Lebowski send you out to websites, blogs, Facebook
pages and the paratextual as well as intertextual mayhem unleashed there
in an example of transmedia storytelling. The very titles are paratexts that
crucially contribute to this centrifugal gesture. Consider the confrontational
genres in the parataxis of Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,
Doescher’s clumsy and blatantly misattributive William Shakespeare’s Star
Wars, or the tacit suggestion of the Shakespearean comedy of mistaken
identities, the relaxed Dude, and the wealthy Big Lebowski, in Bertocci’s
Two Gentlemen of Lebowski. In the latter case, the titular reference is clearly
facetious, as it remains the only allusion to Two Gentlemen of Verona – a
rather marginal entry in the Shakespeare canon. Textual knowledge is
essential to the enjoyment of adaptations, but to be familiar with Two
Gentlemen of Verona is no essential prerequisite to either writing or reading
Two Gentlemen of Lebowski.
What often goes unnoticed is the strict re-demarcation that is part of
fandom – in fact, control over boundaries and command of texts are two
of the most contested areas in fandom textuality. This might be described
as centripetal motion as all the textuality emerging around Star Wars and
The Big Lebowski send you back to the canonical texts, reinforcing the
authorized power of the filmmakers, the Coens and George Lucas – or,
to be more precise, the companies controlling the textual universes – by
reinforcing a residual notion of singular authorship, which makes the Star
Wars Lucasfilm/Disney franchise a different case than the less controlled
cult film The Big Lebowski. In the influential web-based peritexts of Star
32 Birke and Christ, “Paratext and Digitized Narrative,” 68.
AdAptAtion in the Age of MediA ConvergenCe
The blank parody of pastiche according to Jameson is religious intertextuality, recreating the presence of its fetish or God, whereas parody is satirical,
critical, so that parody obviously is undesirable in religious contexts. It is
this religious dimension of fandom that helps explain how the mashup
novel intervenes in all of the three areas singled out by Birke and Christ in
their overview of paratexts in digital culture: materialization, boundaries,
and authorization. 32
Boundaries: Paratext and canon
According to Birke and Christ, textual boundaries have become increasingly blurred and fluid, suggesting the centrifugal textuality discussed by
McCracken and others. As intertexts, both William Shakespeare’s Star Wars
and Two Gentlemen of Lebowski send you out to websites, blogs, Facebook
pages and the paratextual as well as intertextual mayhem unleashed there
in an example of transmedia storytelling. The very titles are paratexts that
crucially contribute to this centrifugal gesture. Consider the confrontational
genres in the parataxis of Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies,
Doescher’s clumsy and blatantly misattributive William Shakespeare’s Star
Wars, or the tacit suggestion of the Shakespearean comedy of mistaken
identities, the relaxed Dude, and the wealthy Big Lebowski, in Bertocci’s
Two Gentlemen of Lebowski. In the latter case, the titular reference is clearly
facetious, as it remains the only allusion to Two Gentlemen of Verona – a
rather marginal entry in the Shakespeare canon. Textual knowledge is
essential to the enjoyment of adaptations, but to be familiar with Two
Gentlemen of Verona is no essential prerequisite to either writing or reading
Two Gentlemen of Lebowski.
What often goes unnoticed is the strict re-demarcation that is part of
fandom – in fact, control over boundaries and command of texts are two
of the most contested areas in fandom textuality. This might be described
as centripetal motion as all the textuality emerging around Star Wars and
The Big Lebowski send you back to the canonical texts, reinforcing the
authorized power of the filmmakers, the Coens and George Lucas – or,
to be more precise, the companies controlling the textual universes – by
reinforcing a residual notion of singular authorship, which makes the Star
Wars Lucasfilm/Disney franchise a different case than the less controlled
cult film The Big Lebowski. In the influential web-based peritexts of Star
32 Birke and Christ, “Paratext and Digitized Narrative,” 68.