Marie-Laure Ryan and Jan-Noël Thon (Eds.) Storyworlds across Media: Toward a Media-Conscious Narratology

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1 Marie-Laure Ryan and Jan-Noël Thon (Eds.) Storyworlds across Media: Toward a Media-Conscious Narratology Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2014 ISBN: (paperback) Luc Herman and Bart Vervaeck Storyworlds across Media can be read as a sequel to Narrative across Media, published in 2004 and edited by Marie-Laure Ryan. The substitution of narrative with storyworld reflects changes within narrative theory in the past decade. The term world stresses the constructive and imaginative aspect of narratives: they create universes. They do so with the help of readers, who use their cognitive and imaginative faculties to turn the narrative text into an imagined storyworld. So, the shift in terminology shows the increasing importance of constructivism and anthropocentrism: narratives are worlds constructed by humans. In addition, the Media mentioned in the title have proliferated since 2004 and have received much more attention from narratologists, who traditionally limited their analytic efforts to textual narratives. The digital age has not just seen the birth of new media, but has also encouraged their interaction and convergence. In this book, Ryan and the contributors take the deliberate step of placing narrative at the center of media convergence. (2) For this step to be successful, the traditional toolbox and concepts of narratology have to be adapted to the field of media. Roughly speaking, there are three possibilities in this adaptation: some concepts are medium free (e.g. setting ) and can be used as they are. Others are medium specific (e.g. the gutter of comics) and need extensive revision when applied to another medium. In between there are concepts such as interactivity, which are transmedially valid yet not medium-free. (4) The confrontation and combination of approaches and media is much more prominent in this book than in the earlier Narrative across Media. While the latter was structured on the basis of media (e.g. a part on still pictures, another on music ), the various parts of Storyworlds across Media all focus on mixes of approaches, modalities and media. The first part of the book is devoted to theoretical elaborations of narratological tools and concepts for other media, ranging from narrator and focalization to fictionality and narrative frames. The second part deals with two different kinds of relationships between media that seem particularly relevant for the project of a media-conscious narratology multimodality and intermediality. (9) The first indicates the combination of different sign systems within one form (e.g. text and pictures in comics); the second indicates one medium referring to another (e.g. a text about a piece of music or trying to sound like music). Films, multimodal novels, video games, and comics are the favorite media discussed in this part of the book. 128

2 The third and final section devotes attention to storyworlds in transmedial storytelling, e.g. in video games that elaborate the worlds created in novels or films. The consumers of these transmedial worlds are typically very active and may be quite fanatic. As a result, they feature prominently in this part of the book. Their active involvement illustrates the wider social relevance of transmedial storytelling and shows that storyworlds are sites of creative activity in which cultures elaborate their collective social imaginary. (19) What makes the world go around A storyworld is a cognitive construct that consists of recurring elements. In the first chapter, Ryan proposes the following components: existents (characters and objects with special significance for the plot); setting; physical laws; social rules and values, events and mental events (i.e. characters reactions). In chapter 11, Jason Mittell reduces these aspects to three basic ingredients: events, characters and settings. Lisbeth Klastrup and Susana Tosca in their analysis of Game of Thrones state that the experience of worldness is informed by three different dimensions (297): mythos ( the establishing story of the world), topos (the temporal and spatial setting of the world), and ethos (the moral code of the world). As long as these three dimensions are recognizable in transmedia transformations of the world, the audience has no problems recognizing a basic storyworld through its various incorporations. On a more abstract level, storyworlds are not studied in terms of the concrete elements appearing in them, but in terms of the rules that govern them. Jasper Juul shows how video games are ruled by abstract prescriptions that sometimes give the player more freedom than in real life, sometimes less. He distinguishes between various types of rules and demonstrates how the skill of a player goes hand in hand with an increasing grasp of the abstract level governing the game and a decreasing grasp of the concrete details. In other words, storyworlds are far more than their concrete components. Jeff Thoss adds to this multidimensionality of storyworlds by looking at the story and discourse levels of the Scott Pilgrim comics and films. On both levels, these two media try to imitate video games. On the story level, films and comic books reduce the plot to the simplicity of beat- em-up games and fighting games. On the discourse level, both comics and films quote the formal procedures of video games, such as the use of levels, points, and status bars. Worlds can circulate, go around, in many ways. Mittell distinguishes between centrifugal expansions and centripetal elaborations. The first case, typified by the transmedia extensions of the TV series Lost, allows for new events and settings in the storyworld. For instance, while the TV series restricts itself to the island, the extensions also reveal underwater depths and layers. (264) The storyworld itself expands. In the second case, typified by the extensions of the TV series Breaking Bad, secondary characters are the main target of the transformation, while the setting and the events largely remain intact. Van Leavenworth shows that the almost endless migration of H.P. Lovecraft s storyworld to video games, films, comics, fan art, and so on typically focuses on the mythos, rather than on the topos or ethos. The theme of humanity s hopeless encounter with an indifferent cosmic reality (333) surfaces in all transmedia forms, as does the quest for knowledge and the desire for a satisfying aesthetic experience. 129

3 (338) One recurring problem these transmedia extensions face is how to represent the unrepresentable, the world that is out there and out of our reach. An interesting point made by Van Leavenworth near the end of his contribution has to do with the change in Lovecraft s status from xenophobic pulp writer to literary author and equal of E.A. Poe (345). Leavenworth explains this change partly in terms of the wide circulation of Lovecraft s world, which thereby gained prestige and became both a brand and a form of cultural capital. He also points to the changed cultural context, including media studies as collected in this volume: Cultural studies, media studies, and several sociopolitical critical perspectives have led to a revaluing of popular culture artifacts. (345) A similarly broad and historical view on changes in transmedial storytelling is at the heart of the outstanding contribution by Jared Gardner. He looks at the changing relations between two multimodal media, films and comics, and points to a concomitant change in the attitude of the audience. At the beginning of the twentieth century, films and comics engaged in complex transmedial storytelling (195) and the interaction between the two media called for active readers and viewers. In a second step, the streamlining by Hollywood (and its institutional power) not only forced readers and viewers into a passive attitude but also tore the two media apart. Only recently did the audience regain its active status and did the two media meet again. Gardner links that reunion with the increasing technical possibilities: Digital compositing allows animation and photography to blend seamlessly in a digital environment, such that in both special effects-dependent films ( ) and indie films ( ) the distinction between live action and animation often feels as anachronistic as the obsession with box office. (202) Institutionally, the two major comic book companies in the United States are now wholly owned subsidiaries of two of the Big Six [film companies]. (230) It is, still, money that makes the world go around. What makes narratology go around How do narratological concepts and tools stand the test of storytelling across media? In an incisive contribution of her own, co-editor Marie-Laure Ryan describes the advantages of storyworld for a media-conscious narratology. To begin with, it offers a basis for distinguishing two types of narrative elements: intradiegetic elements, which exist within the storyworld, and extradiegetic elements, which are not literally part of the storyworld but play a crucial role in its presentation. (37) This can help, for instance, when considering the role of the chorus in Greek tragedy, which can represent either an (extradiegetic) idealized spectator or an (intradiegetic) group of distanced obeservers. Second, the distinction between world-internal and world-external features can also be applied to the various semiotic channels of multimodal texts. (40) Example: in the work of W.G. Sebald, the storyworld incorporates real world pictures by redirecting their reference. (40) The concept of storyworld also highlights the distinction between single-storyworld and many-storyworlds texts, (41) and finally, it helps to focus on the ways in which our constructions while reading are affected by the types of signs that a medium uses. (42) In an illuminating contribution on transmedial strategies of subjective representation in films, graphic novels, and computer games, co-editor Jan-Noël Thon tries to overcome the problems with the 130

4 classical concept of focalization. He distinguishes between three modes of representation: the subjective mode (storyworld elements are offered through the mind of a single character), the intersubjective mode (in which case they are perceived by a group of characters) and the objective mode (with events, characters and setting not perceived by any character in the storyworld at all). Thon submits that in contemporary feature films, graphic novels and computer games, intersubjective representation is the unmarked case. (70). More generally, he warns that certain strategies of subjective representation of (quasi-)perceptual aspects of characters consciousness may be treated as transmedial phenomena on a certain level of abstraction, but, on the other hand, a transmedial narratology that remains media conscious also needs to focus on the medium-specific realization of these strategies and on the mediumspecific functions they fulfill. (68) Patrick Colm Hogan looks at the usability of narratological concepts such as plot and narration for drama, traditionally considered as a mimetic rather than a diegetic form. Colm Hogan maintains that drama not only involves a storyworld (what is represented), but also a discourse or a means of representing the storyworld and thus how that storyworld is represented. (50) Emplotment and narration make up discourse. Emplotment comprises selection, organization, and construal. (50) Colm Hogan uncovers general principles in the emplotment of Hamlet, such as trajectory interruption, which occurs when on emotionally significant causal sequence remains incomplete because another such sequence is initiated. (51) The essay concludes with a long analysis of Hamlet, esp. of Acts 1 and 2. Going beyond narrative theory, Frank Zipfel considers three elements in an attempt to devise a transmedial concept of fictionality: fictional worlds (including deviation from the real world), makebelieve (for which he turns to the work of Kendall Walton and Thomas Pavel), and institutional practice. Specific qualifications are needed (109) on top of these three elements in order to describe each art form s fictionality. For instance, according to Zipfel, the conventions of the institutional practice of literary fiction stipulate that the author has composed the text with the specific intent that readers adopt the make-believe stance to the fictional story, and readers will actually adopt this stance toward the narration because they recognize this intent. (110) Werner Wolf s research question is perhaps the most fundamental of all in this collection: How do we know a particular represented world (verbal, visual, acoustic) is a storyworld? (126) Narrative itself appears as a major cognitive frame whose application is elicited by certain clues, keys, or framings, typically and preferably at the outset of a reception process. (126) So the question becomes: How are we induced to think that a represented world is a storyworld? (127; our emphasis) Various framings are possible, depending on elements such the framing agency, the framings extension, and the location of framings in the process of reception. Wolf s subsequent analyses of initial framings in literature and painting suggest just how important an eye for detail can be, and, by implication, just how much readers and viewers can differ from one another. The story of the world reader Storyworlds are not given; they need to be constructed by the audience in all sorts of ways: they are imagined, performed, embodied, enacted, and so on. All contributions to Storyworlds across Media recognize those creative activities of the audience, and some analyze it extensively. Wolfgang Hallet 131

5 shows what the increase in multimodal novels since the 1990s has done to the process of novel reading. It becomes a multiliterate act, involving sensory channels and symbolic pathways (166) beyond language. Marco Caracciolo uses Monika Fludernik s term experientiality, defined as the quasimimetic evocation of real-life experiences (230) to chart the processes by which readers come to terms with unexpected and distorted experiences of characters in a storyworld. He starts from the idea that characters experiences can be represented only because stories tap into the experiential reservoir shared by the recipients. (231) This tapping into is a process that oscillates between identification with the characters experiences and distancing oneself from those experiences. Caracciolo studies hallucinatory experiences in Burroughs s novel Naked Lunch and in a video game. Relying on his own experiential background, (245) he traces the process by which the reader tries to balance the experiences on offer in the storyworld and his or her own experiential reservoir. While Caracciolo focuses on the reader s efforts to build up a sensible storyworld by adapting it to his or her background, other contributions stress the deviations that readers and audiences can indulge in. Two pairs of terms are used here: canon versus fanon and what is versus what if. Canonical extensions of storyworlds remain faithful to the basic components (such as setting or ethos), they respect what is, whereas fanonical extensions (exemplified in fan fiction) wildly diverge from this canon and try to find answers to hypothetical questions. They focus on what if. Mittell (273-6) shows that these two forms of reception imply two forms of transmedia extensions. Typically, canon is placed above fanon. In contrast to this, Maria Lindgren Leavenworth claims in her study of fan fiction based on The Vampire Diaries that the concept of storyworld holds great potential for allowing a leveling of hierarchies between sanctioned and unsanctioned products. (315) A fanon storyworld is not inferior to a canon version. What matters is how the two interact, where they meet and where they part company. Lindgren Leavenworth analyzes the various liberties fans take for instance with the dimension of ethos as a play with the archive or encyclopedia of story elements belonging to the storyworld of The Vampire Diaries. Colin B. Harvey s contribution offers an intriguing combination of a reader-study with an analysis of abstract rules governing storyworlds. In transmedial storytelling, the reader must remember certain aspects of the storyworld circulating through the various media. However, he must also forget others. Sometimes, one medial version contradicts another and can only be enjoyed if this other is forgotten; some extensions will stay away from storyworld aspects that are important for others. Harvey finds a system of rules that control these do s and don ts in transmedia storytelling. He presents them as a legal taxonomy consisting of six rules that vary according to the freedom they grant the extension and the activity they allow the reader/ audience. His case studies, Doctor Who, Highlander, and Tron illustrate how transmedia extensions can be approached from this taxonomical viewpoint combining laws and readerly memory. What narratologists even the media-conscious types say about readers is most often based exclusively on their own experiences as readers. Only rarely do they use empirical data. In this book there is one exception to this rule, viz. the online survey conducted by Klastrup and Tosca to find out how the Game of Thrones audience reacted to an online game (the results of which were supposed to be shared on facebook and twitter) used by the producers to make publicity for the TV series that was about 132

6 to be aired. The authors discover that respect for mythos, topos and ethos of the storyworld is essential if the audience (in this case: the player of the online game) is to react positively. Fans who are into the storyworld of Game of Thrones were more likely to appreciate the game and very few people were inclined to share their results (and fascination with Game of Thrones) on social media. All in all, Storyworlds across Media offers a diverse and challenging collection of essays. It does not propose an integrated view on transmedial narratology or an all-encompassing introduction to the field, but it does offer interesting and sometimes new perspectives. On the down side, some of the contributions seem to generalize and categorize on the basis of a limited corpus. This being said, the collection as a whole abundantly proves that a media-conscious narratology is a must if narrative theory wants to keep up with the times. Luc Herman is professor of American Literature at Antwerp University. Bart Vervaeck is professor of Dutch Literature at Leuven University. s: luc.herman@ua.ac.be and bart.vervaeck@arts.kuleuven.be 133