Transmedia/Genre: Rethinking Genre in a Multiplatform Culture 9783031155826, 9783031155833

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction or: Why We Still Need Genre
A Brief History of Genre Studies
A Multiplatform Approach to Genre
The Structure of the Book
References
Part I: Media Conglomerates
Chapter 2: Transmedia Superhero: Marvel, Genre Divergence and Captain America
Introduction
Conceptualising the Transmedia Entertainment Franchise
Industrial Constructions of the Superhero Genre
Creating Genre Divergence Across Media
Superheroes in Industry Paratexts and Participatory Culture Across Media
Conclusion
References
Chapter 3: Transmedia Western: Lucasfilm, Genre Linking and The Mandalorian
Introduction
Star Wars and the Western
Proposing the Western in The Mandalorian’s Entryway Paratexts
Foregrounding the Western in The Mandalorian Narrative
The Mandalorian as Western in Practitioner Discourses, Journalistic Criticism and Participatory Culture
Conclusion
References
Part II: Digital Platforms
Chapter 4: Transmedia Horror: Netflix, Genre Empowerment and Stranger Things
Introduction
Conceptualising Netflix
Constructing Horror
Reflecting on Horror
Playing with Horror
Conclusion
References
Chapter 5: Transmedia Docudrama: ITV Hub, Genre Democratisation and Quiz
Introduction
Conceptualising ITV Hub
Constructing Docudrama
Customising Docudrama
Democratising Docudrama
Conclusion
References
Chapter 6: Transmedia Comedy: BBC Three, Genre Distribution and Pls Like
Introduction
Institutional Contexts of Pls Like’s Transmedia Distribution
Pls Like as a Workplace-Mockumentary Sitcom
Pls Like’s Construction of Stereotypes
Conclusion
References
Chapter 7: Transmedia Fantasy-JRPG: Kickstarter, Genre Leveraging and Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes
Introduction
Crowdfunding Campaigns as Paid-for Media Experiences
Genres of Fiction and Interactivity in Video Games
Constructing Genre on Kickstarter: Top-of-the-Page Content
Constructing Genre on Kickstarter: Campaign Trailer
Constructing Genre on Kickstarter: Detailing Fiction and Gameplay
Constructing Genre on Kickstarter: Stretch Goals and Backer Rewards
Constructing Genre on Kickstarter: Project Updates
Conclusion
References
Part III: Emerging Technologies
Chapter 8: Transmedia War: Virtual Reality, Genre Embodiment and The Day the World Changed
Introduction
Conceptualising Virtual Reality
Documenting War
Embodying War
Conclusion
References
Chapter 9: Transmedia Science Fiction: Deepfake Technology, Genre Fictioning and Reminiscence
Introduction
Conceptualising Deepfake Technology
Living Science Fiction
Reliving Science Fiction
Conclusion
References
Chapter 10: Conclusion: Towards a Conceptual Framework of Transmedia Genre
References
Index

Citation preview

TRANSMEDIA/ GENRE Matthew Freeman Anthony N. Smith

Rethinking Genre in a Multiplatform Culture

Transmedia/Genre

Matthew Freeman • Anthony N. Smith

Transmedia/Genre Rethinking Genre in a Multiplatform Culture

Matthew Freeman Bath Spa University Bath, UK

Anthony N. Smith University of Salford Salford, UK

ISBN 978-3-031-15582-6    ISBN 978-3-031-15583-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15583-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

This book has been a long time in the making. It was originally contracted back in 2017 and promised to focus on ‘emergent transmedia’, exploring all those developing and often indie practices of transmedia storytelling that started to materialise around that time. Genre was a core part of this thinking, as it became clear that, even as transmediality was evolving into a whole multiplicity of meanings, practices, applications and understandings, the concept of genre was central to how stories spread across multiple media. Even if few talked about it. Time went on, our lives went in new directions, and new challenges presented themselves. (If nothing else, Freeman became a father—twice!). Thankfully, Smith joined the project in 2018, bringing a fresh perspective that dovetailed perfectly with Freeman’s interest in looking at how the technological and participatory affordances of transmedia entertainments relate to contemporary workings of genre. And it was Smith who really consolidated the vision for the project as something even more ambitious: put simply, this book seeks to understand genre as it works today, theorising a new model for genre in the age of media convergence. This marks a contribution that we are both very proud of, and one that we hope was worth the wait. Of course, we need to thank and appreciate those people who helped us along the way. As ever, Freeman would like to offer a genuine thanks to Carley, whose love remains utterly unwavering. He also offers a big thanks to his dad for his continued support, especially during a difficult period in his own life, and to Beth Wakefield for her friendship. Smith would like to thank Zoë, Lucinda and Aimee for their love, support and good humour throughout the writing of this book. Finally, we both want to thank the editors at Palgrave, who have been nothing but patient and understanding since the very beginning of this project.

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Contents

1 Introduction or: Why We Still Need Genre  1 Part I Media Conglomerates  19 2 T  ransmedia Superhero: Marvel, Genre Divergence and Captain America 21 3 T  ransmedia Western: Lucasfilm, Genre Linking and The Mandalorian 47 Part II Digital Platforms  65 4 T  ransmedia Horror: Netflix, Genre Empowerment and Stranger Things 67 5 T  ransmedia Docudrama: ITV Hub, Genre Democratisation and Quiz 85 6 T  ransmedia Comedy: BBC Three, Genre Distribution and Pls Like105 7 T  ransmedia Fantasy-JRPG: Kickstarter, Genre Leveraging and Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes119

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Contents

Part III Emerging Technologies 137 8 T  ransmedia War: Virtual Reality, Genre Embodiment and The Day the World Changed139 9 T  ransmedia Science Fiction: Deepfake Technology, Genre Fictioning and Reminiscence153 10 C  onclusion: Towards a Conceptual Framework of Transmedia Genre167 Index175

CHAPTER 1

Introduction or: Why We Still Need Genre

Imagine you are searching through the interface of Netflix, as we assume you must have done at some point or another. You are browsing its catalogue of seemingly unending content. As you do so, it quickly becomes apparent that Netflix’s entire navigation principle is based on coded sets of tags—otherwise known as genres. Some basic online research reveals that, as of 2021, Netflix has over 27,000 genres listed on its platform (Lilly 2021), which does not even include its so-called hidden genre codes (Spencer 2018). So, two observations immediately come to mind when browsing Netflix in this way. The first is that Netflix’s approach to ‘tagging’ content under particular genre categories is not in any way bound by medium, production context, country of origin, year of release and so on. Its entire approach to genre is instead something much wider, broader and more diverse than many studies of film or literary genre have considered previously. A quick search for ‘thriller’, for example, brings up everything from Netflix Original Before I Wake (2016) to The Silence of the Lambs (1991), both mixed in with television series The Alienist (2018). And the second observation is that by mixing film and television from many eras and production contexts, Netflix’s genre tags function as the platform’s marketing mechanism, grouping titles together so as to engage certain demographics. Genre, recalibrated for Netflix, creates personalisation out of chaos. Netflix’s use of genre tags may be commonplace and even fairly obvious to describe, but it demonstrates a very important point: that genre, while working differently when viewed from either industrial, technological or participatory perspectives, remains the bedrock of today’s transmedia landscape. So says Alison Norrington, Creative Director at StoryCentral Ltd., a transmedia consultancy firm that works globally with clients including the likes of Walt Disney Imagineering, SundanceTV, AMC Networks and FOX International: ‘In this messy, fragmented media landscape, where content is everywhere and so too are our audiences, genre is perhaps the only remaining constant’ (2020). Which is all in spite of the fact that genre, at least in academic circles, has largely fallen © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Freeman, A. N. Smith, Transmedia/Genre, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15583-3_1

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away in recent decades, precisely at a time when academics need it the most. We are all part of a media convergence age where the meaning-making power of genre is both more important and less stable than it was before, with audiences increasingly fragmented across an ever-diversifying set of platforms and channels. Yet operating complexly within such fragmentation, today’s genres— often formed via a set of interconnected, hyperlinked digital platforms that afford highly individualised perspectives on media—are being shaped and reshaped almost continuously by these different platforms and channels. Each of these genres is thus in constant dialogue and re-negotiation with one another as a result of the extensive transmedia experiences that surround them. And yet as Norrington declared, with digital platforms characterised by their expansive, fragmentary nature, genre is indeed crucial to how we navigate and make sense of today’s media landscape, even if the processes underpinning this are not fully understood. Which brings us to this book’s first—and main—overarching objective. Genres are perhaps the most innately transmedial of media constructs, formed as they are from all kinds of industrial, cultural, technological, textual and discursive phenomena. Yet very few have attempted to analyse explicitly how genre works in a transmedia context. This book aims to do precisely that, to make a deliberately transmedial contribution to the study of genre in the age of media convergence. Media industries and their various technologies, practices and systems of operation have become more aligned and networked in recent decades, providing a clear model for extending entertainment across multiple media. As Jenkins writes, media convergence—emerging as a concept around the start of the Internet era in the early 1990s—describes ‘the flow of content across multiple media, … the co-operation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of audiences’ (2006: 2), which makes ‘the flow of content across media inevitable’ (Jenkins 2003). This book considers the implications of this inevitability for genre, looking across different kinds of convergences, in turn expanding the critical toolkit via which genre can be analysed by developing a new conceptual model. But let’s back up for a moment. Convergence is really only an umbrella term for making sense of the proliferation of interconnected screens that dominate our contemporary media culture, and refers most broadly to convergences at the level of technology, industry and culture. Industrial convergence describes a ‘synergy amongst media companies and industries’ (Hay and Couldry 2011: 473), and primarily describes corporate convergences within global media conglomerates, like Disney. Technological convergence, meanwhile, refers to the ‘hybridity that has folded the uses of separate media into one another’ (2011: 493), principally through digitisation. In turn, both of these forms of convergence have an impact at the level of culture and audiences, most notably by enhancing the ‘participatory capabilities of [media texts] and allowing the audience to influence the final result’ (Karlsen 2018: 26). Most famously theorised as ‘participatory culture’ by Henry Jenkins (1992), these participatory capabilities often play out as ‘experience-centered, technologically augmented

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conversations, a sharing between storytellers and audiences, between audiences and other audiences, and between online and offline worlds’ (Freeman and Gambarato 2018: 8). But why are we recounting these oft-cited definitions of media convergence here? It is important to begin with such a clear recounting of these terms, since they underpin precisely why we need a new conceptual framework for analysing genre. According to Rick Altman, whose seminal work on film genre—that is, Film/Genre (1999)—lays much of the grounding for this book (as well as inspiring its title), a problem with many of the genre theorists of the past is their tendency to ‘evince no need to justify their positions’ or to ‘explain why a change in direction is necessary’ (1999: 1). We will not make this same mistake. The need for a new direction stems in part from the vocabulary—and the perception—that has greeted much of today’s convergent media. The likes of films, television series and video games all exist across multiple streams of often portable media and devices, but a notable outcome of convergence culture is that media now has the tendency to be reduced to the standardising and arguably reductive term ‘content’. Christopher Nolan, perhaps Hollywood’s leading purveyor of blockbuster smarts, discussed this point in interview: ‘It’s a term that pretends to elevate the creative, but actually trivialises differences of form that have been important to creators and audiences alike’ (Reynolds 2014). As Nolan further explains: ‘Content can be ported across phones, watches, gas-station pumps or any other screen, and the idea would be that movie theatres should acknowledge their place as just another of these “platforms”, albeit with bigger screens and cup-holders’ (ibid.). It is precisely within this context of standardised (trans)media content where media now circulates or where ‘media content flows fluidly’ (Jenkins 2006: 332) that a question arises over the renewed and seemingly paradoxical role of genre amidst such content-porting—in particular, the workings of genre conventions and its expectations. Genre has long been studied in terms of its categorising potential and its ability to shape how media is understood, but what about the genre dimensions of transmediality, and its use of multiple media to tell stories? Put simply, how does genre open up distinctive strategies for today’s transmedia landscape, and how do transmedial sites change how genre is understood and constructed? Which brings us to the book’s second overarching objective: the creative industries are at the forefront of shaping how a range of emerging digital media technologies, platforms and services are now being used to connect audiences to content. The worlds of innovation and research and development (R&D) now focus on emerging trends such as immersive technologies, artificial intelligence (AI), online streaming and new forms of podcasting, to name just a few examples—each of which affords unique opportunities to tell stories. Though these emerging technologies, platforms and services have certainly not escaped the clutches of academics, little attention has been paid thus far to what the industrial, technological and participatory transformations of such innovative new platforms mean to ideas of genre.

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In responding to this objective, and in setting the stage for the revival of genre theory in contemporary transmedia scholarship, this book interrogates the form and function of genre across a range of media convergence sites, spanning franchises, streaming platforms, catch-up services, immersive technologies, AI, social media and beyond. We show how the conceptual possibilities of genre are reconfigured through their adaptation to emerging technologies and cultural practices across media. In that sense, we might be seen to be picking up where Janet Murray left off, whose seminal book Hamlet on the Holodeck (1999) explored how computer-based interactive narratives might operate in relation to a range of popular genres. As well as discussing science fiction and fantasy forms (both of which will be returned to in our book), Murray also identified more realist forms of drama including soap opera as ripe for enhancement and expansion by then-cutting-edge digital techniques. In many ways the techniques Murray discussed over 20 years ago can be said to have anticipated some of the increasingly ubiquitous approaches adopted by today’s contemporary transmedia producers. For example, Murray looked at how in a television series like ER—a US medical drama that ran from 1994 to 2009—the specific fictional locations frequently seen in the series could be presented virtually for participants to explore, and could thus be used to expand existing storylines or preview forthcoming storylines, or provide more background on characters (Murray 1999: 255–256). Building on Murray’s semi-prophetic consideration of production, technology and participation, we will also analyse three sites of generic construction suitable for today’s age of media convergence: first, industry, where transmedia genres are cultivated and managed; second, technology, through which transmedia genres are communicated and mediated; and, three, audience, where transmedia genres are co-created via participatory means. The first site allows us to consider the contextual influence of industrial convergence, that is, practices of conglomeration and licencing arrangements, on cross-platform manifestations of genre. The second site incorporates not only technological specificities of, say, Netflix, Twitter, BBC iPlayer, virtual reality and so on but also cultural codes and conventions of these platforms and technologies. The final site stresses the role of audiences, individual users, players and watchers on constructing (or reconstructing) genre themselves, acting out and reacting to genre cues whenever they, say, post on social media, engage in a deepfake marketing app and so on. Importantly, across all three sites of media convergence, genre is transformed. Reflecting themes of connectedness and hybridity that characterise the field of transmedia studies, this book is therefore about interrogating the generic mutations (Turner 2015) that must inevitably occur as part of sprawling transmedia experiences. As Glen Creeber once put it, ‘put crudely, genre simply allows us to organise a good deal of material into small categories’ (2015: 1). The problem, however, is that we now live in a transmedia age that is most commonly understood in terms of its interconnectedness and participatory processes across multiple platforms and channels, bringing with it heightened

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accessibility, sharing, co-creation and—as per our Netflix example at the beginning of this introduction—personalisation. The idea of returning to ‘categories’ may feel decidedly at odds with this intrinsically personalised nature of what media is said to be in the twenty-first century—sprawling, breaking free of its borders—but that is precisely why we need to return to genre studies. If genre is essentially ‘a system of organising the world’ (Creeber, 2015: 1), then this book looks at genre as it works today.

A Brief History of Genre Studies Genre theory spans not only decades but centuries, with a history reaching as far back as Ancient Greece. Importantly, across time, genre has been fundamental to categorising culture, but those categorisations and meanings have continued to shift upon changes in culture and society. It is time, then, for understandings of genre to change once more, and for genre studies to catch up with the digitally connected transmedia landscape of today. But before we can make sense of how genre works today, we must first return to the question of genre itself. Genre, as a theoretical concept and method of analysing a large variety of film and television productions, has been highly influential in these fields since the early 1980s. Central to the study of genre, particularly in film studies, is the work of Rick Altman (1999), who set out what he described as a semantic versus syntactic approach to film genre, before later considering pragmatic elements of institutions and audiences. In general, Altman claimed, a genre depends first and foremost on the combination of: semantic properties, which are the textual characteristics that serve as the thematic building blocks of a genre (e.g. nineteenth-century America’s Far West settings in Westerns); and syntactic properties, which relate to the patterns by which the semantic elements are structured and formally represented—and the meanings that might be interpreted from this (e.g. the representation in Westerns of the American frontier as a border separating civilisation from barbarism and chaos) (Altman 1999: 218–220). Furthermore, Altman’s understanding of genre is based on the cumulative effect determined by the replication of textual modes—narrative, thematic and iconographic—and the surrounding discourses that contribute to genre formation. Our book will both build on and rethink Altman’s assumptions, making the case that while semantic, syntactic and discursive properties of genre are all absolutely at work in the transmedia environment, today’s industrial, technological and participatory affordances have the potential to transform these properties in new and uncharted ways. Which is fitting, since for Altman, ‘the debate over genre has consistently taken place in slow motion’, with ‘decades—or even centuries—separate[ing] major genre theory statements’ (1999: 1). That said, much of the debate concerning genre has tended to revolve around the balance between genre as a textual or material construct, and one that is socially or culturally discursive. A genre, James Naremore argued (1995: 14), ‘has less to do with a group of

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artefacts than with a discourse—a loose evolving system of arguments and readings, helping to shape commercial strategies and aesthetic ideologies’. Altman (1999) further notes: ‘Genre is not your average descriptive term, but a complex concept with multiple meanings’, while Steve Neale (1999) emphasises how ‘in the public sphere, the institutional discourses are of central importance’, arguing for a more ‘multi-directional’ approach to analyses of genre. Christine Cornea, too, points out that ‘while early genre critics liked to see genres as more or less fixed (if not by their academic theorising, then by the industry), this has been challenged by discrepancies in genre definition that occur in the way a film is categorised at different times’ (2010: 8). Our book will build on these ideas by showcasing the ways in which genre itself can provide new insights into the production, distribution, marketing and reception of cross-platform entertainments by adopting a transmedial lens. In some ways, adopting a transmedial lens through which to analyse genre is a very natural development of what genre studies has been doing for a very long time, albeit less explicitly and more discursively. For instance, following the seminal work of Altman, Jason Mittell explored the ‘extra-textual’ ways in which genres are culturally operated (2004). By shifting the focus away from analyses that attempt to provide the definition of a genre, Mittell looked towards new ways in which genre interpretations and evaluations operate as part of the larger cultural workings of genre. For example, instead of asking questions such as ‘What do police dramas mean?’ or ‘How do we define quiz shows?’, Mittell’s cultural approach (also see Mittell 2001) led to new kinds of critical questions being posed, such as ‘What do talk shows mean for a specific community?’ or ‘How is the definition of animation articulated by socially-­ situated groups?’ (2004: 14). Importantly, as Mittell clarifies, ‘such an approach demands cultural specificity, recognising that a genre might have various categorical boundaries and meanings in different cultures’ (2008: 12). Mittell’s point is that the cultural meanings, industrial practices and consumer expectations of a given genre are likely to change if examined transnationally, pointing to how the cartoon genre was perceived as ‘a low-value, highly commercialised kids-only genre’ in the US compared to its ‘legitimate role as a site of social commentary and artistic innovation’ in Japan (2008: 12). Genres shift transnationally according to cultural specificity, then, but how do they evolve transmedially according to medium-specific cultural practices? In other words, if culturally specific discourses contribute—through defining, interpreting, evaluating—to the formation of a genre, then we need to track the variability of genre-forming discourses across media. Indeed, it is worth clarifying that our book aims to focus on how genres adapt to the variable cultures of a contemporary transmedial setting. Therefore, while we recognise that traditional media texts, such as films and television programmes, contribute to genre formation, ours is largely a ‘cultural approach’ to genre analysis (Mittell 2004). This book, therefore, does not adopt a strictly definitional approach to genre, whereby genres are chiefly understood, and taxonomically classified, in formal and aesthetic terms,

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as is typical of more traditional genre theory. Neither are we concerned with a more interpretive approach to genre whereby, what Fredric Jameson described as, ‘the ideological basis for genre’ is explored (1975: 136). Via such an approach, genres are interpreted as reflecting broad societal structures and tensions; Sara Humphrey’s study of how video games activating the Western and film noir genres reinforce retrograde ideologies related to race and gender is a recent example of such an approach (2021). However, rather than broadly interpret what a genre might mean, we should, as Mittell argues, consider instead ‘what genre means for specific groups in a particular cultural instance [emphasis in orig.]’ (2004: 5). Accordingly, in line with a cultural approach to how genre operates transmedially, we examine how genre is culturally constructed, by industries and audiences, in particular instances across platforms and technologies as part of transmedia practices. Furthermore, via this cultural approach, we pay particular attention to paratextual influences on genre formation. Writing about the role of book covers in how readers engage with literary novels, Gerard Genette (2001) approached genre as the work done by an author or publisher to write text that accompanies a book. Genette calls this statement of genre ‘the genre indication’ (ibid.). For Genette, genre is part of a paratext insofar as it is stated in the material authorised as part of the publication or distribution of the book (ibid.). Years later, building on these ideas, Jonathan Gray’s concept of the paratext refers to those media items that sit in-between products and alongside  products, between ownership and cultural formation, between content and promotional material. For Gray (2010), the meaning of contemporary media stories is no longer located solely within the main texts themselves (e.g. in films, television episodes), as it also extends across multiple platforms such as online materials, promotional additions and toys. These kinds of media paratexts can aid the audience’s ‘speculative consumption’ of a story as ‘entryway paratexts’ and in turn extend the storyworld by providing new narrative content (Gray 2010: 25). Moreover, ‘genre is part of this in that if you have experience with a particular genre, for example Dollhouse and sci-fi, you go into watching the show with different expectations than someone who has no experience with science fiction’ (Gray 2010: 112). Paratexts, Gray would argue, are texts that control how we see and interpret the main text. In terms of genre, they are frequently the vehicles for what Mittell identifies as ‘the culturally circulating practices that categorise texts’ (2004: 13). Furthermore, paratexts are, in effect, transmedial by nature and by definition, thus they serve as a useful concept for thinking about both the textual and discursive nature of genre across media. Echoing both Mittell’s calls for a cultural specificity approach to analysing genre, and Genette’s and Gray’s approach to factoring in paratextual influences on genres, Sue Harper notes that ‘even five years in cultural history is a very long time, and generic shifts can take place at breakneck speed’ (2017). By way of example, Harper points to the thriller genre:

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In the post-war period in British cinema, films such as Odd Man Out and Mine Own Executioner shared a visual rhetoric and view of trauma. The genre was pretty homogenous as a whole during the period from 1945 to 1950. But right through the 1950s and into the early 1960s, the thriller genre became bewilderingly diverse: it could be bifurcated between black and mild, between fascinated and repelled, between liberal and repressive. It is possible to argue that the multiplicity of the genre is due to the unease in the period about transgression and taboo. The thriller genre could be seen in this period as responding, in an indirect manner, to the lack of consensus about the outsider in society. In the 1970s, with films such as Gumshoe, the thriller genre became a site of irony and disavowal. (2017)

Harper’s point is valid, and in a study of genre across a diverse number of media it is important to narrow down the focus of this book to a particular period of time and to define each genre according to its manifestations today. Suffice to say, this book is deliberately contemporary, examining case studies produced during the last decade—specifically, between circa 2014 and 2022. Another way of conceptualising the importance of textual and cultural influences on genre is the work of Anne Friedman, who used the metaphor of the ‘ceremony’ to explain this dynamic between the ‘material and situational dimensions of genre’, writing: Any performance of a text takes place within a broader ceremonial frame, and involves all the constituents of the occasion: the audience, the actions of opening and concluding the performance, talk about the performance, and its demarcation from other performances. (1986: 88)

Friedman elaborates: ‘Such things as reading a book, attending and giving lectures, dinner conversations, filling in forms and interviews are all ceremonial frames’ (1986: 88). Now, a question: what happens to the material codes of genre if its situational frame is continually in flux given the different affordances of multiple media platforms all being used to tell different parts of a story? To extend Friedman’s metaphor to today’s transmedia landscape, then, we might say that genre now operates within and across multiple proverbial ceremonies, with each ceremony feeding into, overlapping and even distorting the others. In other words, understanding genre in a transmedial context means taking a medium-specific approach to transmediality, looking at different genres across different platforms and technologies, and thus connecting a specific generic characteristic to the nature of the platform being used. Such an approach means conceiving of genre as what Harper calls ‘an industrial category’, as ‘an economically determined structure which exemplifies a neat match between audience pleasure and production profit’ (2017). This industrial consideration is indeed a key perspective of our book, building on studies that, observes Christine Cornea (2010: 8), concern themselves ‘with the ways in which the industry is able to use genre to maximise efficiency of

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production’ or studies that ‘look at how genre operates as a branding device or how it functions in association with audience expectations’. These kinds of industrial perspectives are useful in the age of media convergence, as a notable problem with previous genre theory is that much of this work does not theorise genre as a media-spanning system. As noted earlier, though genre has been a preoccupation of scholars for a long time, it tends to be specific to one medium in any given study, limited to a single disciplinary perspective. For example, think of the seminal work on film genre (Grant 1986; Altman 1999), television genre (Mittell 2004; Creeber, 2015) or literary genre (Rosen 2001). The same criticism can also be made of the countless books on particular genres within a given medium, such as the quiz show (Holmes, 2008), the fantastic (Todorov and Howard 1975), the crime drama (Turnbull 2014), the Western (Rollins and O’Connor 2009), the sitcom (Mills 2009), the teen movie (Driscoll 2011) and so on. In spite of the absence of transmedial dynamics in much of existing work on genre, said work is still crucial to underpinning many of the conceptual categories that will be developed in this book to establish a new model for understanding and analysing genre transmedially.

A Multiplatform Approach to Genre That being said, this tendency to theorise genre through a single medium does arguably explain why genre theory has struggled in recent years to adapt to today’s digitally connected, hybridised and hyperlinked transmedia culture. Few studies have explored the realm of transmediality in terms of genre, despite the former emerging as perhaps the most well-theorised component of media convergence and the latter having been a preoccupation of scholars for a very long time, as we have seen. Critical debates around the idea of genre as a transmedial construct tend to consist of occasional asides and consideration. Colin Harvey’s Fantastic Transmedia book (2015) delves into concepts of memory and play in relation to science fiction and fantasy cases of transmedia storyworlds. But despite opting to focus on the likes of the Hulk, Star Wars, The Lord of the Rings and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Harvey still engages with ‘a broad definition of transmedia storytelling’ (2015: 1), rather than thinking about how multiplatform contexts influence fantasy and science fiction genres to adapt and reformulate. Notably, our book does specifically explore how transmedia practices reshape sci-fi and fantasy genres, as well as adjacent story types concerned with the fantastic, such as horror and superhero genres. Furthermore, a key contribution of our book is that it approaches transmedia entertainments far beyond just science fiction and fantasy scenarios. The question of how both fantastic and non-fantastic genres play out in practice across multiple media platforms will be explored throughout the pages of this book, but for now allow us to hint at some of the conceptual considerations that enable us to understand the relationships between transmediality and genre. As noted above, any given genre is based in part on well-defined

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textual components (both semantic and syntactic). And in a textual sense, we can say that a genre exists when those recognised components come back and repeat themselves. Thus, one could say that the establishing of the horror genre coincides with Frankenstein (1931), the second horror film after Dracula (1931), while the consolidation by virtue of imitation would happen with The Mummy (1932), even if a crucial role, from this perspective that focuses on repetition, is played by the abundant set of sequels of those first horror films. Genre thus concerns the repetition of formulaic qualities that are easily identifiable and consequently marketable due to familiarity. As Linda Ruth Williams notes, there is an interplay between generic conventions and the audience that functions as a ‘social currency’ (2005: 18). Vivian C. Sobchack also claims that ‘there is a pattern these movies follow, and the pleasure we get from them is the pleasure of re-experiencing the familiar’ (1974: 59). Conceptually speaking, then, transmediality has an awful lot in common with genre. Barry Keith Grant famously theorised genre as the production of variation on sameness, noting that ‘stated simple, genre movies are those commercial feature films which, through repetition and variation, tell familiar stories with familiar characters in familiar situations’ (2003: xiv). Similarly, Freeman has discussed the importance of conceptualising transmediality as a system of building variation on sameness: Insofar as it works to extend existing stories and expand established fictional worlds, transmedia storytelling is on the one hand about sameness—since all of the various stories in a given story world are somehow required to ‘feel like they fit with the others’, as Jenkins puts it (2006: 335), as parts of the same fictional storyworld. But on the other hand transmedia storytelling is simultaneously about variation—since each of the various stories in a given storyworld must also expand that same storyworld, telling different events about that world. (Freeman 2016: 8)

In the simplest and narrowest sense, transmediality and genre might appear to be opposites of each other, with the former seemingly about expansion across borders and the latter about categorisation within borders. But as we have learnt, genre is both a textual and a paratextual construction—both a system (or systematic) series of markers, cues, conventions and structures that make up the textual fabric of texts and a far more discursive, industrially produced, market-oriented set of cues around a text that signals its mode of classification to an audience. And this amalgamation of text and paratext echoes Freeman’s own definition of transmediality as ‘both an expansive form of intertextuality and intertextuality that builds textual connections between stories while allowing stories to escape their textual borders and exist in between them as well as across them, folding paratext into text’ (2016: 190). Looking forward, it is therefore key to follow in the footsteps of the ‘extra-­ textual’ approach to genre analysis argued by Jason Mittell (2004), as well as the ‘multi-dimensional’ approach suggested by Steve Neale (1999), whereby

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genre ‘encompasses systems of expectations, categories, labels and names, discourses, texts and groups or corpuses of texts, and the conventions that govern them all’ (1999: 2). As such, we ourselves will analyse three sites of generic construction suitable for today’s digital and multiplatform culture: one, industry, through which transmedia genres are created and managed; two, platform, through which transmedia genres are communicated and mediated via technology; and, three, audience, through which transmedia genres are co-created via participatory and performative means. This latter site, in particular, stresses the importance of audiences constructing genre themselves within today’s multiplatform environment, essentially acting out genre when posting on social media, playing VR games and so on. What is key to stress, however, is that across all three of these sites, genre is transformed, evolving in line with the user experience that is being constructed across and between the borders of multiple media platforms. Many of the aforementioned conceptions of genre will be returned to throughout this book, re-applied, re-contextualised and re-imagined for the age of multiplatform media. And as we have established, taking a media-­ traversing approach to making sense of genre in the twenty-first century broadly means taking into account (and also triangulating) three contextual factors of industrial, technological and participatory convergence. But what does this mean in practice? Put simply, what is the research method for taking a multiplatform approach to analysing genre? We will now lay out the methodological approach taken in this book, an approach which means folding in analyses of media industry practices, promotional paratexts, textual and brand analysis, online ethnography and wider audience research. Methodologically, approaching transmedia practices as the building of personalised experiences via technology—studying both ‘the techno-social development of digital media and the sociocultural development of fan studies’ (Booth 2018: 61)—will provide a useful starting point for making sense of genre in today’s transmedia culture, one that emphasises relationships between what Booth calls ‘interactive elements’ and ‘the influence of fans’ in the process of reconstructing and renegotiating genre across media (Booth 2018: 67). Hills (2018: 224), too, has called for the ‘need to consider transmedia not just as storytelling but also as a kind of experience’, noting: ‘Given that transmedia extensions occur within a proliferating, ubiquitous screen culture, the issue of transmedia’s locatedness in space and place has generally been underexplored’ (2018: 224). While Hills is referring specifically to set tours and walkthrough experiences, our own multiplatform approach to genre is not only about the idea of ‘being there’ (Hills 2017: 245). More than this, our work puts genre right at the heart of the multifaceted, multi-perspectival systems through which the use of multiple media across diverse screens, technologies and locations work together in different ways to engage audiences in a highly experiential and often personalised manner. Studying the personalised transmedial workings of genre hints at the importance of returning, somewhat contradictorily perhaps, to a technology- or

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platform-­specific approach. After all, though it is perhaps the defining claim of Rick Altman’s seminal research into film genre that genres have always spanned multiple media, Altman did not consider genre to be something that naturally extends itself across those multiple media. As Altman commented, ‘it cannot be taken for granted that film genre is the same thing as literary genre’ (1999: 12). Explains Altman: ‘Even when a genre already exists in other media, the film genre … cannot simply be borrowed for non-film sources—it must be re-­ created’ (1999: 53). In his work, Altman always struck a careful balance between positioning genre as ‘an on-going process’ (1999: 54) that transitions from many different forms of media—literature to film, for example—and as something that requires constant ‘realignment’ (1999: 43) according to the medium in which it is based. Where, then, does that leave our transmedial perspective, where creators construct new yet interconnecting tales by crossing multiple media platforms and by telling those new tales on each of those media? Are we to assume, therefore, that as a story or entertainment franchise is told across multiple media platforms that its genre is actually being realigned and re-created from platform to platform as an on-going transmedial process? Taking such an approach to genre means focusing not necessarily on individual media per se, but instead on converged sites of generic mutation and innovation, such as streaming services, social media platforms and deepfake technology, which each  fuse and layer multiple screens and other forms of media on top of one another. Looking at these sites of convergence on a case-­ by-­case basis will allow us to better understand the role that these specific sites play in terms of genre-building in and across today’s transmedia landscape. In turn, this approach to genre will also recalibrate our overall understanding of what transmediality actually is. And this is very important. As was stated at the beginning of this introduction, there is a danger that comes with describing the convergences of contemporary media—namely, that convergence often becomes directly synonymous with the outright blending of all forms of media into single, standardised forms of digital media content. For even amidst a time of apparent technological and industrial convergence, mobile media, connected viewing, immersive engagement and so on, it is still crucial to remember that the likes of streaming platforms, catch-up services, immersive technologies and social media channels all operate with largely specific sets of affordances, practices, policies and consumption habits (Smith 2018). And so in order to fully understand the transmedial genre-building potentials of these emerging media platforms and technologies, we first need to better understand what each of these platforms—as a specific technology with distinct affordances, embedded within a wider industrial and participatory cultural context—can actually do. Looking, not at genre, but at the transmedia dispersal of another pan-media concept—that is, ideology, Dan Hassler-Forest notes the need to consider the role of medium specificity in the creation of political messages across entertainment media franchises (2018: 299). As per Altman’s ideas about genre realignment, we similarly argue that the specificities of particular

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platforms, technologies, industrial practices and participatory cultures underpin the shaping of genre across media and must, therefore, be accounted for. A formal but conceptual point about the approach of this book: Why the focus on what might be described as Anglo-American media industries, platforms and participatory contexts? In some ways, this focus goes against the grain of the most recent work in the field of transmedia studies, which has ‘expanded from an early focus on popular genres to more diverse media (publishing, music, location-based experiences), from entertainment to documentary and journalism, activism and mobilization, education, religion, diplomacy, sports, and branding (see Freeman and Gambarato 2018). Indeed, Freeman and Proctor previously pushed for this field ‘to fully interrogate transmedia cultures—in the plural—and to establish a cultural specificity approach to transmediality’, which would provide far more ‘localized, cultural perspectives on transmediality’ (2018: 2). We are also aware of more recent research in genre studies, such as that by Costanzo (2014), Chung and Diffrient (2015) and Dibeltulo and Barrett (2018), which traces the impact of globalisation and transnationalism on issues of film genre. The Dibeltulo and Barrett collection, in particular, demonstrates the need for genre studies to cast a transnational, cross-cultural and indeed more global outlook. In line with their approach, the book editors rightly observe the need to consider ‘generic transition across space, time, systems of production, distribution, exhibition, and reception’ (2018: 4). While we concur wholeheartedly with this outlook, it is also notable that this collection, and the other two projects noted above, narrow their focus to film genre, and thus neglect to engage with the question of transmediality that justifies the need for our book. Moreover, we have chosen to focus on so-­ called popular genres of entertainment, but not to elicit any kind of general explanation about the workings of all transmedia genres everywhere. Rather, we focus on US and UK examples because it is necessary to first analyse, theorise and fully understand a more overarching model of transmedia genre before one considers more localised, cross-cultural or national approaches to transmedia genre. It is for this same reason that we do not delve into questions of sub-genre. The book is structured around ‘top-level’ genres, as it were, such as horror, comedy, science fiction, fantasy and so on, although we are not claiming that any of our chosen case studies should be classified exclusively as one genre over another. On the contrary, taking a multiplatform approach to genre means acknowledging the multitude of influences and hybrid relationships at play at any one time. Instead, then, our approach is based on analysing genre activation—that is, attempting to understand the industrial influences, technological augmentations and user engagement practices of a genre’s codes and conventions, however discursive. In other words, our approach is based on examining what it means to construct and reconstruct a genre from one platform to another. That said, we hope that this book inspires others to consider alternative approaches to transmedia genre, tackling the question of sub-genres.

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The Structure of the Book In terms of chapter structure, the remainder of the book is divided into ten chapters, organised into three parts. The first part considers entertainment franchises and is rooted in analyses of media conglomerates, namely Disney and its sub-divisions Marvel and Lucasfilm. The second part examines a range of digital platforms—Netflix, ITV Hub, BBC iPlayer, YouTube and Kickstarter— and considers how each of these platform’s industrial, technological and participatory properties work to (re)shape a particular genre as it flows, augments and mutates across multiple media. The third part, finally, looks at emerging technologies, namely virtual reality and AI-driven deepfake apps. These sites may seem diverse (which they are), but they each represent particular industrial, technological and participatory transformations in the make-up of twenty-­ first-­ century convergence culture. We therefore use each of our eight case-study chapters to exemplify different ways through which genre works in a transmedia context, identifying new conceptions specific to a given genre that provide rich additions to genre studies. Each chapter will reveal and analyse a new conception of transmedia genre, such as ‘genre divergence’, ‘genre empowerment’ and ‘genre fictioning’, to name just three, before returning to these conceptions in the conclusion, where we will use them to lay out a new conceptual framework for analysing genre in the transmedia age. Specifically, Chaps. 2 and 3 consider the workings of media conglomeration and its impact on contemporary genre formation. Chapter 2 looks at Marvel and uses the character of Captain America to examine how today’s conglomerate media culture interacts with the cross-platform construction of the superhero genre. It reveals how, at Marvel, industrial conditions motivate instances of what we term genre divergence, as industry discourses and corporate techniques combine to manage genre contrasts and discrepancies within the Marvel franchise. This chapter also demonstrates how the actions of fan and journalistic practices contribute to the process of minimising genre divergence in Marvel’s fictional multiverse. Chapter 3, which looks at another of Hollywood’s leading entertainment franchises, Star Wars, explores how the Disney-owned Lucasfilm has formed franchise connections between Disney-produced products and the Star Wars of old, primarily through genre intertexts and the practice of what we term genre linking. Via an analysis that takes both a textual and cultural approach to the Western genre in relation to the Disney+ series The Mandalorian (2019–), this chapter identifies how genre develops associations between this series and with what is culturally perceived to be the core of the Star Wars franchise: the original Star Wars film trilogy (1977–1983). Chapter 4—the first of four chapters that explore genre activation practices in relation to particular digital platforms—charts how the global streaming service Netflix has built its flagship series Stranger Things (2016–) into a series of referential, intertextual portals that channel how audiences respond to and participate with the genre of horror. By conceiving of transmedia genre as

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emotional empowerment for the multiplatform audience, this chapter examines how a streaming service such as Netflix orchestrates not so much a horror entertainment across its digital platforms, but rather its reactional, emotional fallout. Chapter 5 continues to explore the impact of digital platforms on twenty-­ first-­century manifestations of genre, but this time examines how the UK broadcaster ITV’s streaming platform, ITV Hub—along with its online marketing strategies and its digital spread across social media channels—transforms the genre of docudrama into a mode of engagement specific to today’s multiplatform culture. Looking at ITV’s high-end docudrama Quiz (2020), this chapter argues that the docudrama genre has evolved into an aesthetic, discursive and interactive engagement strategy that works to scaffold today’s digital infrastructures of catch-up TV, namely heightened customisation and democratic voice. Chapter 6 looks at BBC Three sitcom Pls Like (2017–) and considers how its dissemination across multiple online platforms including YouTube relates to the widespread contemporary practice of transmedia distribution. This chapter demonstrates how emergent transmedia distribution practices can inform new approaches to the comedy genre. In particular, we consider how uses of genre can, in the creation of online programming, suit the cultural specificities of multiple digital platforms as part of a transmedia distribution rollout. Chapter 7 explores the world of digital crowdfunding, analysing how genre is constructed on the online platform Kickstarter as part of campaigns designed to secure media project funding. Using the Kickstarter campaign content for the Eiyuden Chronicle video game project as a case study, the chapter examines how this paratextual material establishes the fantasy Japanese role-playing game (or JRPG) genre in line with the affordances and conventions of the Kickstarter platform. Chapter 8—the first of two chapters that aim to consider the impact of emerging technologies on transmedia genre practice—examines virtual reality and explores how this emerging medium shapes (and reshapes) the war genre. We use this chapter to analyse how an innovative VR experience produced about the bombing of Hiroshima, The Day the World Changed (2018), evolves the war genre into an altogether more panoramic experience, lending a liminal, God-like perspective over the otherwise grounded stories of war. Chapter 9, finally, analyses the emerging trend of using deepfake apps as part of transmedia marketing, which we contextualise via research into artificial intelligence. Using the film Reminiscence (2021) and its accompanying deepfake app as a case study, this chapter considers what deepfake technology means to our understanding of science fiction. We argue that the emergence of deepfakes—and AI more generally—has obliterated the former divide between ‘science’ and ‘fiction’, fully amalgamating the tensions at the heart of this genre. We should note that these particular pairings are not mutually exclusive. Netflix creates any number of genres, not just horror, while the affordances of the ITV Hub impact many different genres beyond the docudrama. The genres

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examined across this book are likely to be determined differently depending on the technological-industrial-participatory context. In other words, a docudrama constructed and extended via the ITV Hub is not necessarily the same kind of docudrama that might be constructed and evoked via Netflix. Nevertheless, while all chapters demonstrate our model of how genre works transmedially, the pairings identified in each chapter also work to highlight key practices or concepts of transmedia genre. Each pairing exemplifies the relationships between particular affordances of media convergence and specific strategies for constructing genre across multiple media that those affordances engender. Importantly, then, while each chapter considers a different site of media convergence, spanning various creative industries such as film, television, immersive and video games, altogether the book’s eight chapters work as a whole to establish what we consider to be a new conceptual framework for understanding genre across media. The conclusion chapter will outline this model, pulling together the themes from the previous chapters to consider new meanings of genre across media. For as Cornea (2010: 6) once said, ‘if anything immediately creates a conceptual frame for meaning … it is the notion of genre’.

References Altman, Rick. 1999. Film/Genre. London: BFI Publishing. Booth, Paul, ed. 2018. A Companion to Media Fandom and Fan Studies. London: Wiley-Blackwell. Chung, Hye Seung, and David Scott Diffrient. 2015. Movie Migrations: Transnational Genre Flows and South Korean Cinema. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Cornea, Christine. 2010. Genre and Performance: Film and Television. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Costanzo, William V. 2014. World Cinemas Through Global Genres. London: Wiley-Blackwell. Creeber, Glen, ed. 2015. The Television Genre Book. London: BFI. Dibeltulo, Silvia, and Ciara Barrett, eds. 2018. Rethinking Genre in Contemporary Global Cinema. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Driscoll, Catherine. 2011. Teen Film: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Berg Publishers. Freeman, Matthew. 2016. Historicising Transmedia Storytelling: Early Twentieth-­ Century Transmedia Story Worlds. New York: Routledge. Freeman, Matthew, and Renira Rampazzo Gambarato, eds. 2018. The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies. New York: Routledge. Freeman, Matthew, and William Proctor, eds. 2018. Global Convergence Cultures: Transmedia Earth. New York: Routledge. Friedman, Ann. 1986. Le genre humain (a classification). Australian Journal of French Studies 23: 809–874. Genette, Gerard. 2001. Introduction to the Paratext. New Literary History 22 (2): 261–272. Grant, Barry Keith. 1986. Film Genre Reader. Austin: University of Texas Press. ———, ed. 2003. Film Genre Reader III. Austin: University of Texas Press.

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Gray, Jonathan. 2010. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. New York: New York University Press. Harper, Sue. 2017. Genre Studies Now. BAFTSS 5th Annual Conference 2017, University of Bristol, 20–21 April. Harvey, Colin. 2015. Fantastic Transmedia: Narrative, Play and Memory Across Science Fiction and Fantasy Storyworlds. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hassler-Forest, Dan. 2018. Transmedia Politics: Star Wars and the Ideological Battlegrounds of Popular Franchises. In The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies, ed. Matthew Freeman and Renira Rampazzo Gambarato, 297–305. New York: Routledge. Hay, James, and Nick Couldry. 2011. Rethinking Convergence/Culture: An Introduction. Cultural Studies 25 (4): 473–486. Hills, Matt. 2017. Traversing the “Whoniverse”: Doctor Who’s Hyperdiegesis and Transmedia Discontinuity/Diachrony. In World Building: Transmedia, Fans, Industries, ed. Marta Boni, 343–361. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. ———. 2018. From Transmedia Storytelling to Transmedia Experience: Star Wars Celebration as Crossover/Hierarchical Space. In Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling, ed. Sean M.  Guynes and Dan Hassler-Forest, 213–224. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Holmes, Su. 2008. The Quiz Show. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Humphreys, Sara. 2021. Manifest Destiny 2.0: Genre Trouble in Game Worlds. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Jameson, Fredric. 1975. Magical Narratives: Romance as Genre. New Literary History 7 (1): 135–163. Jenkins, Henry. 1992. Textual Poachers : Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge. Jenkins, Henry. 2003. Transmedia Storytelling. MIT Technology Review, January 15. Accessed February 4, 2021. http://www.technologyreview.com/news/401760/ transmedia-­storytelling/. ———. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New  York: New York University Press. Karlsen, Joakim. 2018. Transmedia Documentary: Experience and Participatory Approaches to Non-Fiction Transmedia. In The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies, ed. Matthew Freeman and Renira Rampazzo Gambarato, 25–34. New York: Routledge. Lilly, Chris. 2021. Complete Searchable List of Netflix Genres with Links. Finder, April 15. https://www.finder.com/uk/netflix/genre-­list. Mills, Brett. 2009. The Sitcom. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Mittell, Jason. 2001. A Cultural Approach to Television Genre Theory. Cinema Journal 40 (3): 3–24. ———. 2004. Genre and Television: From Cop Shows to Cartoons in American Culture. New York: Routledge. ———. 2008. Genre Study—Beyond the Text. In The Television Genre Book, ed. Glen Creeber, 2nd ed., 9–13. London: BFI Publishing. Murray, Janet. 1999. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Massachusetts: MIT Press. Naremore, James. 1995. American Film Noir: The History of an Idea. Film Quarterly 49 (2): 12–28.

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Neale, Steve. 1999. Genre and Hollywood. New York: Routledge. Norrington, Alison. 2020. Author Interview (June 2). Reynolds, Simon. 2014. Christopher Nolan and Cinema’s “Bleak Future” and How It Can Survive. Digital Spy, July 9. https://www.digitalspy.com/movies/a583051/ christopher-­nolan-­on-­cinemas-­bleak-­future-­and-­how-­it-­will-­survive/. Rollins, Peter C., and John E.  O’Connor. 2009. Hollywood’s West: The American Frontier in Film, Television and History. Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press. Rosen, Michael. 2001. Shakespeare: His Work and His World. London: Walter Books Ltd. Smith, Anthony N. 2018. Storytelling Industries: Narrative Production in the 21st Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Sobchack, Vivian C. 1974. The Violent Dance: A Personal Memoir of Death in the Movies. Journal of Popular Film 3 (1): 2–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/0047271 9.1974.10661713. Spencer, Samuel. 2018. Netflix Secret Codes: What Are the Netflix Secret Genre Access Codes? The Express, December 27. https://www.express.co.uk/showbiz/tv-­ radio/1035393/Netflix-­secret-­codes-­genre-­access-­search-­how-­to-­find-­decide-­ what-­to-­watch. Todorov, Tzvetan, and Richard Howard. 1975. The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre. New York: Cornell University Press. Turnbull, Sue. 2014. The TV Crime Drama. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Turner, Graeme. 2015. Genre, Hybridity and Mutation. In The Television Genre Book, ed. Glen Creeber, 3rd ed. London: BFI. Williams, Linda Ruth. 2005. The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema. Indiana: Indiana University Press.

PART I

Media Conglomerates

CHAPTER 2

Transmedia Superhero: Marvel, Genre Divergence and Captain America

Introduction Captain America is a superhero, of course, famously fighting for justice and liberty in the pages of superhero comics for many decades. Marvel’s patriotic super soldier is indeed an icon of the superhero genre, which we explore here. Fittingly, therefore, the Marvel Cinematic Universe film Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014) is widely perceived as a superhero movie. Yet a combination of the film’s textual characteristics and related public discourses additionally position the film as a political thriller. For example, demonstrating the role of journalistic reviews in this process of genre construction, The Atlantic (Orr 2014) claimed, on the film’s release, that the film ‘harkens to the political thrillers of the 1970s’. Simultaneous to this genre-forming process, Marvel’s Captain America comic-book title was being similarly situated, not only as a superhero title but also within an additional genre context. Dissimilar to The Winter Soldier, however, the Captain America comic book was constructed, during the writer Rick Remender’s 2012–2015 run on the title, not as a serious political thriller but as an eccentric science-fiction fantasy. For example, epitomising the positioning of the title at this time, Marvel’s (Comixology) accompanying blurb labels Remender’s run as a genre soup of ‘high-adventure, mind-melting … sci-fi, pulp-fantasy’. There are two key insights to extrapolate from the case of Captain America’s genre construction in 2014. Firstly, the superhero genre is a highly elastic one, stretching to accommodate a range of other genres, as we detail. Secondly, contemporary transmedia entertainment franchises, such as the Marvel superhero franchise, can each contain instances of significant genre divergence, leading to a kind of genre disunity. This second insight is central to the contribution this chapter makes to the book’s study of genre and transmediality. Using the Marvel franchise as a case study, we specifically examine how contemporary conglomerate media culture, through the development of © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Freeman, A. N. Smith, Transmedia/Genre, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15583-3_2

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franchises, interacts with the construction of genre. In so doing, we reveal how, at Marvel, industrial conditions motivate instances of simultaneous genre divergence, as the above case suggests. However, we furthermore show how industry discourses and techniques, including branding and promotional practices, combine to manage and de-emphasise such genre contrasts and discrepancies within the Marvel franchise. Finally, we demonstrate how the activities of journalistic and participatory cultures contribute to the process of minimising genre divergence in the Marvel franchise. Therefore, we ultimately show how the conglomerate-owned transmedia entertainment franchise, a dominant industrial model of fictional content creation within our media convergence culture, can give rise to a fluid, complex and sometimes contradictory set of genre formations. To begin this exploration, we first establish the contemporary transmedia entertainment franchise as a distinct site of genre construction within media conglomerate contexts.

Conceptualising the Transmedia Entertainment Franchise A given transmedia entertainment franchise is a set of media texts stemming from the same core intellectual property, such as a set of fictional characters and worlds, which are dispersed across a range of media platforms with some degree of coordination. The Marvel franchise, for example, incorporates a myriad of different content and product forms (e.g. films, comics, video games, TV series, toys, clothes) concerning Marvel’s universe of superhero characters. The logics of industrial convergence have served as a key factor driving the prevalence of the transmedia entertainment franchise within contemporary media culture (Ndalianis 2004: 25; Jenkins 2006: 106–107). The increased tendency, since the 1980s, for mergers and acquisitions among companies across film, television, music, publishing and other media sectors has resulted in vast conglomerates operating across media platforms (Balio 2013). Such media conglomerates are motivated to develop entertainment franchises across their various platforms, divisions and subsidiaries. By doing so, a conglomerate is able to generate income from different revenue streams via the same intellectual property (Johnson 2013: 4–5). The Walt Disney Company’s acquisition of Marvel Entertainment in 2009 is indicative of this strategic goal. By dispersing Marvel properties across its media platforms Disney has been able to generate income from this acquisition via film, television, comics, music, theme park and consumer products divisions.1 Practices of media licencing further motivate the development of transmedia entertainment franchises (Johnson 2013). For example, Disney, the world’s leading brand licensor 1  What we refer to as Disney-owned ‘Marvel’ throughout this chapter is currently structured as two distinct subsidiaries situated within the Disney conglomerate structure, namely, Marvel Studios, which produces Marvel films, and Marvel Entertainment, which includes Marvel Comics. At the time of writing, Kevin Feige oversees both divisions in his role as chief creative officer of Marvel.

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(License Global 2019), permits (on the basis of financial return) a range of other businesses to license the Marvel brand and characters so as to create their own merchandise. Scholarship has tended to emphasise how a given media corporation coheres a given franchise’s many fragments so as to present a consistent media-­spanning brand. Scholars, for example, observe how IP-governing companies centrally coordinate transmedia storytelling within a given franchise, ensuring narrative consistency between texts produced for different media industries (Jenkins 2006: 95–134; Harvey 2015: 182–202). Disney-owned Lucasfilm’s Story Group’s tight regulation of Star Wars transmedia storytelling is an example of this process (Harvey, 146). Scholars similarly observe how media companies engineer visual consistency between a given franchise’s texts (Johnson 2007; Freeman 2014; Smith 2018: 18). Freeman (2014), for example, shows how the noir-influenced visual style of Batman: The Animated Series (1992–1995) was designed to resonate with the gothic aesthetic of the Tim Burton-directed Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992) films. This approach therefore worked to unify the brand identity of the Warner-owned Batman franchise. In line with such strategies, Marvel consistently aims to cohere the many pieces of content that it circulates across media. Marvel has, for example, adopted transmedia storytelling techniques by extending the Marvel Cinematic Universe storyworld (hereafter, MCU), first established by Marvel Studios-­ produced films, across television, streaming platforms and a limited amount of comics (Harvey 2015; Flanagan et al. 2015). The case of the MCU furthermore reflects the film medium’s economic and cultural primacy within conglomerate media empires and the transmedia entertainment franchises they develop (Smith 2018: 16). Accordingly, franchise-owning corporations often ensure that stories and styles of franchise content across media are subordinated to film narratives (Johnson 2013: 97–98; Atkinson 2019: 15), as in the case of Marvel’s MCU content. Practices at Marvel Comics, which forms part of Disney subsidiary Marvel Entertainment, have, in the twenty-first century, aligned to this transmedia model of film dominance to some degree. It is true that most of the publisher’s output contributes not to MCU narrative continuity but rather to the vast Marvel Universe comics storyworld (hereafter, MU), which the publisher began developing in the early 1960s; therefore, bar a limited number of publications, Marvel comic books are not MCU transmedia extensions. However, Flanagan et al. (35–36) argue that industrial circumstances have nevertheless motivated Marvel Comics to adopt, at least in certain instances, a ‘films lead’ policy ensuring that ‘things happening in Marvel comics should not contradict what is going on in the MCU’ (despite them not sharing the same narrative continuity). Marvel Comics has frequently used techniques to cohere these two separate fictional storyworlds by tweaking MU comics’ story elements so as to make their narratives reverberate with those of the MCU (Flanagan et al. 2015: 36–37; Smith 2018: 157–162). An example of this approach is evident in the Marvel Comics title Peter Parker: Spectacular Spider-Man (2017–2018),

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which was launched to coincide with the release of the Spider-Man: Homecoming film (2017). By returning Peter to his hometown of New York City, the comic-­ book narrative was designed to resonate with Spider-Man: Homecoming’s NYC-set story (Smith 2018: 158). Yet, in contrast to such practices, the case of genre divergence concerning Captain America identified at this chapter’s outset appears to undermine the standard media conglomerate aim of franchise brand coherence. It is furthermore important to note that this case of genre divergence in relation to Captain America content is not an isolated occurrence at Marvel. Instead, it is exemplary of some wider franchise practices within Disney-owned Marvel. A similar instance of simultaneous genre divergence occurred between Marvel Comics’ Daredevil title and the Marvel Television-produced Daredevil (2015–2018) series, which was made for Netflix.2 The latter’s ‘dark and gritty’ (Crow 2016) take on The Man Without Fear was constructed as a ‘street level noir’, according to then-Marvel Chief Creative Officer Joe Quesada (Jagernauth 2014). In contrast, at the moment the Daredevil series first ‘dropped’ on Netflix in 2015, the Daredevil comic book was providing ‘fun, swashbuckling superhero adventures’ (Hoffer 2017) under the stewardship of the writer Mark Waid, which spanned 2011–2015. A tale of two very different Hulks provides a further example of genre divergence within the Marvel franchise. Since his first appearance in The Avengers (2010), Hulk has most typically been used in MCU film sequences to activate action and comedy genres (Singer 2019), as he typically battles enemies or provides comic relief. Published simultaneous to the release of some of these films, however, Marvel Comics’ The Immortal Hulk (2018– present) has steered the character into a different genre territory. As its writer Al Ewing (Mclaughlin 2018) acknowledges, the book was designed as a horror narrative, which its ‘horrible … iteration’ of the title character exemplifies. How, then, is a media corporation, such as Disney, able to permit such genre divergence across media when guided by broader brand coherence aims? To address this question, one must first establish the various means by which the superhero genre is constructed. To help provide this necessary foundation, the following section establishes key practices by which media industries activate the superhero genre. The section focuses, in particular, on industrial practices within the US comic-book sector. A focus on genre conventions within comics is appropriate, as this is the sector that initiated the superhero genre as an industrial category. This industry furthermore continues to serve as a cornerstone to superhero-centred transmedia entertainment franchises, having introduced a multitude of popular superheroes to media culture.

2  Marvel Television was at this time a division of Marvel Entertainment, though Marvel Studios has since taken over responsibility for television and streaming series.

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Industrial Constructions of the Superhero Genre The superhero genre initially emerged as an industrial category out of the nascent comic-book industry of the 1930s, and more specifically the introduction in 1938 by DC Comics (then National Allied) of Superman within the pages of Action Comics. As Bradford W. Wright (2001: 14) observes, the tremendous sales success that Superman comics enjoyed ‘had a strong residual impact on the rest of the industry, which expanded as new publishers entered the field and flooded the market with various [Superman] imitations’. The eponymous hero of Captain America Comics, first published by Marvel (then Timely) in 1941, was born of this process. As Peter Coogan (2007: 24) observes, by 1942, if not before, the US comic-book sector appeared to understand and discursively identify such narratives centred on hyper-abled altruists as forming a ‘superhero’ category. To determine the particular techniques by which the comic-book industry has given rise to the superhero genre, it is instructive to first review existing definitions of this industrial category. Via his textual approach to defining this genre in comics, Coogan ultimately concludes that the distinctive character of the superhero is at the category’s ‘core’ (2007: 28). According to Coogan (2007: 24–26), this character is typically defined by being (A) super-powered; (B) selflessly intent on defeating evil and protecting society; (C) in possession of a secret identity and (D) dressed in an iconic, abstract-design costume. This definition, however, does not account for the genre’s particular complexities, which result from the genre’s prevalence within the comic-book industry since the 1960s. Prior to this decade, but following the emergence of the superhero genre in the late 1930s and early 1940s, the industry became overtly diverse in terms of genre, drawing on a range of themes from American pulp fiction traditions. For example, during the late 1940s and 1950s both Marvel and DC diversified their lines, publishing crime, war, sci-fi, horror, romance and Western comics. Such rich genre diversification is typical of media industries, as media companies tend to draw from, and combine, many different genres as a means to ensure cultural products are novel and differentiated. On the face of it, however, such genre diversification appears to have been largely absent from US comic books since the superhero genre’s steadfast domination of the industry from the 1960s onwards (Wright 2001). Yet, as Henry Jenkins argues (2009: 17), within this atypical industrial context, genre difference has become routinely constructed within superhero comics, with the superhero genre proving adept at ‘absorbing and reworking all other genres’. Examples of other genres being configured within the bounds of the superhero genre at Marvel Comics include: • horror, as in Marvel Zombies (2005–2006), in which Marvel heroes transform into a super-powered flesh-eating horde; • war, as in Punisher: Born (2003) and Punisher: The Platoon (2017), which each detail the Vietnam Conflict experiences of the Marvel Universe’s deadliest vigilante, the Punisher;

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• science fiction, as is the Marvel 2099 imprint (started in 1992), which resituates Marvel heroes in a cyberpunk dystopian world; • romance, as in Mr. & Mrs. X (2018–2019), which centres on the mutant duo Rogue and Gambit’s relationship as a married couple. • crime, as in Daredevil during Brian Bendis’ lengthy run as a writer (2001–2006), in which the title character tackles not only supervillains but also the (relatively) mundane organised crime of New York City. US superhero comics furthermore rework and incorporate other genres specific to global comics’ culture. In the case of Marvel, for example, it has produced comics that draw on the textual characteristics of Japanese manga genres (Jenkins 2006: 112; Smith 2018: 151–152). It is this apparent malleability of the superhero genre that has led the comic-­ book writer Grant Morrison (quoted in Anders 2009) to question its existence: ‘I’m not even sure if there is a superhero genre or if the idea of the superhero is a special chilli-pepper-like ingredient designed to energise other genres’. What Coogan, therefore, identifies as the defining features of the superhero genre, Morrison conceptualises here as, not the elements of a singular genre, but instead of a narrative supplement to be administered across a range of genres. Yet, while Morrison’s position is a reasonable outcome of focussing on the modern history of comic-book narratives, it neglects to account for the genre-forming work of the US comic-book industry beyond the pages of comic-book stories. The industry has constructed the superhero genre not only through producing series centred on superhero characters, but also via the creation of paratextual material as part of publishing practices. Such paratexts, which we move on here to discuss, have traditionally served as an important means by which Marvel Comics, and the wider industry, has bolstered the superhero genre. Marvel Comic’s approach to comic-book cover design throughout its history serves as one key example of the company’s use of paratexts to shape and reinforce the superhero genre. Following its inception in 1961, the publisher initially presented several of its now famous characters, not as superheroes specifically, but as science fiction and fantasy horror phenomena more generally. Such genre-contextualisation occurred as the publisher inaugurated certain characters within the pages of existing anthology series, including Amazing Fantasy (which introduced Spider-Man), Tales of Suspense (which launched Iron Man) and Journey into Mystery (in which Thor debuted). Yet Marvel Comics soon standardised cover-design techniques to distinguish many of its narratives as superhero tales first and foremost, de-emphasising associations with other genres. This is evidenced by the inclusion, in Marvel cover designs throughout much of the publisher’s history, of the ‘corner box’ convention. Initially

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conceived for the Fantastic Four #14 (1963) cover, and used consistently until the early 2000s, the corner box is situated in the top left corner of the front cover.3 A boldly lettered comic-book title (typically the name of a superhero character or team) occupies the space spanning the right of the box to the right-hand side of such covers. The box typically contains date, price, publishing brand and an image of the title character(s), or a logo of the superhero team (such as the Fantastic Four or The X-Men), contained within a given issue. The device was born out of industry traditions of signalling a given issue’s contents in the top left corner of an issue so as to suit the staggered arrangement of comic books on magazine racks. Via this paratextual practice, therefore, a superhero character or team name, plus an image (or logo) of the title character (or team), abstracted from any fictional storyworld context, dominates the top quarter area of a given Marvel cover. The consequence of this in terms of genre construction is significant, as this approach to cover design separates the superhero genre from, and prioritises it above, other genres. Therefore, while a given superhero comic book’s narrative might draw upon other genres, this graphic design approach subordinates other evoked genres to the superhero genre. Marvel Comics ceased continuous use of the corner box device in early 2000s. Yet variations of these paratextual practices persist up to the present day. Via the use of such techniques from the 1960s onwards, therefore, Marvel Comics has made the Marvel brand synonymous with the superhero genre. The company has been able to continually, and innovatively, combine the superhero genre with other genres, so as to ensure market demands for novelty are met. Yet Marvel Comics’ paratextual practices have consistently maintained the pre-eminence of the superhero genre, to which the publisher’s brand identity is tied, thereby signalling the subsidiary status of other evoked genres. As we detail further on, this paratextual approach that the comic-book industry developed has been scaled across media so as to mitigate instances of genre divergence in the Marvel franchise. Prior to this, however, the following section, via a focus on Captain America in particular, further examines simultaneous genre divergence at Marvel. It additionally accounts for the cultural conditions and practices within media industry contexts that give rise to them.

Creating Genre Divergence Across Media Genre construction in the film Captain America: The Winter Soldier clearly aligns with the discussed superhero comics’ practice of combining the superhero genre with other genres. As indicated at the chapter’s outset, the textual characteristics of what is, ostensibly, a superhero film, specifically evoke the US political thriller film genre cycle of the 1970s. This was very much by design, as the comments of those involved with production demonstrate. Marvel 3  While initially conceived for the Fantastic Four #14 cover, Patsy Walker #106 (1963) was the first of Marvel’s corner-box-carrying covers to reach publication (Cronin 2017).

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Studios President and Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Kevin Feige, for example, notes that the film was conceived as a ‘70s political thriller masquerading as a big superhero movie’ (Plumb 2013). He furthermore claims that the production team specifically drew inspiration from three particular paranoid political thrillers that Hollywood produced in the 1970s under the shadow of the unfolding Watergate scandal, namely The Parallax View (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975) and All the President’s Men (1976) (Smith 2014: 79). As intended, The Winter Soldier’s narrative themes clearly echo those of these thrillers, as it shares these films’ preoccupation and disillusionment with institutional immorality and corruption. Whereas, for example, in Three Days of the Condor, the protagonist uncovers a dangerous, powerful conspiracy operating within the CIA, in The Winter Soldier, Captain America faces off against the morally ambiguous government espionage agency SHIELD following its infiltration by the terrorist group Hydra.4 The Winter Soldier’s sombre colour scheme furthermore recalls the muted aesthetic of the aforementioned thrillers, which indicate these films’ pessimism concerning the corruption of all-­ powerful government institutions. Captain America’s costume design in The Winter Soldier epitomises the film’s drab palette. Intended by Winter Soldier co-director Joe Russo (McMillan 2014) to ‘represent, thematically’ its film’s story, the outfit is without the bold red, white and blue of the character’s tradition, and instead largely consists of navy blue, with punctuations of dull metal and brown leather. A more obvious evocation of Hollywood’s 1970s political thriller genre occurs through The Winter Soldier’s inclusion of Robert Redford within its cast, who plays a corrupt politician. Redford’s presence functions as an intertext connecting The Winter Soldier to Three Days of the Condor, in which Redford stars as its protagonist. Marvel Comics’ practice of combining superheroes with other genres as a means to ensure its products achieve novelty clearly influenced Marvel Studios’ own approach to genre here. According to Feige, the studio’s objective to ensure each MCU film ‘feel[s] unique and feel[s] different’ (Smith 2014: 79) motivated The Winter Soldier’s absorption of textual traits of the political thriller. As Feige (Plumb 2013) observes, with the first Captain America film, Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), the studio drew upon the characteristics of 1940s World War II movies. However, the studio aimed to utilise ‘a completely different genre’ with The Winter Soldier (Plumb 2013). In rationalising this variable approach to genre, Feige notes that superhero comics ‘do it all the time’ (Plumb 2013). This influence that comic-book creative practices had on The Winter Soldier is reflective of a cultural flow of ideas that runs through Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios. It also speaks to Marvel Comics’ uniquely influential role at Marvel. As comic-book creators and industry observers point out, Marvel Comics effectively operates as the franchise’s R&D department (Boucher 4   Within the MCU, SHIELD is an acronym for the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division.

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2018; Holloway and Donnelly 2019). While, then, Marvel Comics narratives are, as noted, sometimes subordinated to Marvel Studios output, Marvel Comics content can be an important influence on Marvel Studios productions. Of course, Marvel Comics most obviously serves as a source of creative inspiration by virtue of having created a range of perennially popular superhero characters many decades previous. However, as the case of The Winter Soldier suggests, the wider Marvel franchise additionally takes inspiration from more recent creative approaches taken by Marvel Comics to these valuable intellectual properties. Marvel Comics not only inspired Marvel Studios approach with The Winter Soldier of combining the superhero genre with a further distinctive genre; the publisher’s content more specifically provided some groundwork for Captain America’s pivot towards the political thriller in the MCU. The Winter Soldier story arc published in the pages of the Captain America comic book (vol. 5, issues #1–9, 11–14, 2005–2006), and written by Ed Brubaker, served as a basis for some of the Winter Soldier film’s story material (and title). The Captain America comic’s frequent evoking of the political thriller during Brubaker’s seven-year run on the title furthermore likely influenced Marvel Studio’s own gravitation to the genre. According to Brubaker (Spurgeon 2012), he infused his run with a ‘tone’ of ‘24 meets Tom Clancy’, two fictional worlds that often each combine espionage with murky political machinations. Brubaker’s approach resulted in a comics’ narrative containing themes of political pressure and corruption, with illustrations often fittingly bathed in shadow. His take on Captain America therefore prefigured and likely informed, to some degree, Marvel Studios’ approach to The Winter Soldier in relation to genre. While the source Brubaker narrative clearly held some influence upon The Winter Soldier’s genre, however, the film’s specific activation of Hollywood’s 1970s genre cycle of political conspiracy thrillers is, within the Marvel context, distinctive. Nevertheless, at least in a more general sense, The Winter Soldier’s construction of the political thriller aligns in genre terms with the previously published Marvel Comics material. Yet this flow of influence between these sibling conglomerate divisions did not prevent clear genre contrast between Marvel Comics output and The Winter Soldier at the time of the film’s release. As The Winter Soldier opened in theatres, situating Captain America within the political thriller genre, the Captain America comic book simultaneously placed its hero in a bizarre and fantastical science-fiction adventure. Having established the construction of the 1970s political thriller film in The Winter Soldier, we move on here to detail this contrasting genre activation in the Captain America comic book, which resulted in simultaneous genre divergence for the Marvel franchise. The writer Rick Remender led this drastic genre shift within the pages of Captain America following his replacement of Brubaker on the title. The maiden story arc of Remender’s run, Castaway in Dimension Z (vol. 6, issues #1–15 2013–2014), is indicative of this transformation in genre. The arc concerns Captain America’s perilous adventures in Dimension Z, a strange, hostile

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and dystopian wasteland ruled by the hero’s long-time enemy, Arnim Zola. As IGN (Bailey 2012) observed of the arc’s second issue, the ‘dark espionage’ that had previously characterised the title had been replaced by outlandish sci-fi elements including the peculiar technologies and ludicrously odd alien creatures that characterise Dimension Z. As AV Club’s (Sava 2013) review of the arc suggests, Castaway in Dimension Z is ‘sci-fi worldbuilding’ on a ‘grandiose scale’, with this bold approach complemented by penciler John Romita Jr.’s ‘expressive [and] exaggerated artwork’. However, as is the case with many superhero narratives, the arc draws on adventure genre tropes via its many exciting and fanciful action sequences. As a CBR (Richards 2012) preview for the arc observes, the narrative fuses ‘rough and tumble’ adventure into its ‘psychedelic sci-fi’. Due to this combination of elements, the Castaway in Dimension Z narrative, along with Remender’s entire run on the Captain America title, can be more specifically classified as a space opera in the tradition of John Carter, Flash Gordon and the Star Wars saga; that is, a ‘colourful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure … usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds’ (Hartwell and Cramer 2007: 10). Remender’s activation of the space opera in Captain America therefore transitioned the comic book away from Brubaker’s genre construction, as well as from the genre destination that the Captain America film series was headed towards. Here we account for this divergence, noting in particular how medium specificity factored into this process. As we show, even within a conglomerate-­ owned media franchise such as Marvel’s, a given medium’s specific culture of content production, circulation and consumption still influences medium-­ specific approaches to genre. Indeed, in the case of Captain America, key industry and broader cultural differences between the two media sectors of film and comics motivated the identified genre divergence. While, as we have acknowledged, there is a cultural flow of ideas related to genre that runs between Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios, medium-specific circumstances nevertheless give rise to distinct approaches to genre. A particular focus on Marvel Comics and its authorisation of Remender’s space opera approach on Captain America demonstrates this. While Marvel Comics might operate as a quasi R&D department for the wider Marvel franchise, it also maintains a central position within a distinct industrial culture, namely the US comic-book industry. As Smith (2018: 160) observes of contemporary industry approaches to comic-book narrative, wider franchise needs and concerns can certainly factor into editorial practices at Marvel Comics. However, as he further points out (2018: 161), medium-specific conditions nevertheless still motivate many editorial decisions related to narrative. The culture of the US comic-book industry, including its own distinct practices, contexts and histories, similarly informs approaches to genre. This is evident in the way that Marvel Comics’ placement of Captain America within a space opera context formed part of a creative response to medium-­ specific market conditions and editorial objectives. The Captain America

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comic book’s abrupt genre transformation more specifically served as part of a Marvel Comics’ editorial initiative to revamp its entire product line in 2012. The publisher branded this initiative Marvel Now!. According to then-Editor-­ in-Chief Axel Alonso (Marvel Comics 2012), the aim of this revamp was to attract ‘old, lapsed or new’ readers by providing each of its titles with a ‘new creative team and a driving concept’. As then-Chief Creative Officer of Marvel Entertainment Joe Quesada (Marvel Comics 2012) noted prior to the Marvel Now! launch, there would be ‘a lot of changes to the character status quos, alter egos, costumes, creator shifts [and] design shifts’. Captain America’s genre about-turn complemented this broader set of changes across Marvel Comics’ output. So as to appeal to potential new readers, Marvel Now! comic-­ book titles were, as Marvel Comics executive editor Tom Brevoort (Marvel Comics 2012) observes, all narratively designed to offer ‘about as clean a point of entry as there’s ever likely to be’. However, shifts in creative teams and genres, such as that which occurred on the Captain America title, as well as other changes, were specifically designed to attract old/lapsed comic-book readers through the offer of novelty. Attention-grabbing product line revamps such as Marvel Now! have been a common feature of the comic-book industry from the late 2000s onward, as both Marvel and DC have looked to expand their readerships during a period in which comic-book sales have consistently declined (Smith 2018: 137–149). Therefore, medium-specific conditions, in terms of market pressures particular to comics, motivated Marvel Comics, with their Captain America title, to significantly deviate from the genre being constructed by Marvel Studios with The Winter Soldier. For Marvel Studios, their utilisation of the political thriller genre was a means to enable The Winter Soldier to stand out as a distinctive proposition to film-going audiences. Simultaneously, genre themes of espionage and political corruption were, for Marvel Comics, something to move Captain America far away from as it looked to regain consumer interest in a struggling industry. The specificities of the comic-book market therefore necessitated that Marvel Comics divert the MU Captain America to a different genre context from that where MCU’s Cap was headed. A further factor driving this instance of genre divergence at Marvel, and which again relates to medium specificity, is a particular and prevalent tendency among creative practitioners across media; that is, a tendency of practitioners to draw upon genre traditions particular to the medium in which they are operating. Remender’s approach on Captain America certainly reflects this tendency, as his comic-book run’s activation of genre is partly a product of his utilisation of the cultural history of American comic books. In other words, historical manifestations of genre within the comics medium specifically influenced Remender’s construction of the space opera genre. We detail here this medium-specific process of what Noël Carroll (1982: 64) labels ‘genre memorialisation’, which is typical within the Marvel franchise. We furthermore demonstrate how this postmodern mode of engagement with genre history contributes to genre divergence at Marvel.

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Analysing Hollywood films of the 1970s and 1980s, Noël Carroll (1982: 52) claims that ‘allusion, specifically allusion to film history, has become a major expressive device’; he uses the term ‘historical pastiche’ to label films that adhere to this trend. Carroll (62) additionally notes that genre memorialisation forms part of these practices; that is, ‘historical pastiche’ texts can include the ‘loving evocation through imitation and exaggeration of the way genres were’. He furthermore cites Raiders of the Lost Ark’s ‘reverie of the glorious old days’ of 1930s’ adventure movie serials as an example of genre memorialisation (62). Such postmodern practices of subjecting earlier constructions of genre to what Frederic Jameson (1991: 19) refers to as the ‘aesthetic colonization’ of the past continue to be pervasive in entertainment media, including in comics’ narratives. As Marc Singer (2018: 62–70) observes, American comics have frequently been attentive to the superhero ‘genre’s history and conventions’ (64) to the extent that the genre itself has become a ‘primary subject’ (62). As an example of this practice, he cites ‘reconstructionist’ comics, such as Marvel’s Marvels (1994) mini-series, which echoes, valorises and elaborates upon superhero genre constructions across Marvel Comics’ history.5 As the examples of both Raiders and Marvels suggest, despite the cross-­ media spread of the trend, postmodern approaches to genre often draw upon the cultural history of the specific medium in which they are carried out. This is the case with the construction of genre in Remender’s Captain America, as the run memorialises American comics’ own space opera tradition. For example, to create Dimension Z’s rugged yet spectacular landscape, he and Romita applied the aesthetic of Wally Wood, a writer-illustrator lauded for the quirky sci-fi narratives he produced for EC Comics in the 1950s (Richards 2013; Truitt 2012). As part of their genre memorialisation approach with Castaway in Dimension Z, Remender and Romita furthermore drew on a history of space opera constructions within superhero comics. In particular, the duo engaged with industry legend Jack Kirby’s mid-1970s run on Captain America. Kirby had co-created the title and character decades earlier, and his return stint on the title is famed for its extravagant and visually spectacular sci-fi elements. The character of Arnim Zola, who Kirby invented during this run, and who Remender would later employ as Castaway in Dimension Z’s main villain, is one such element. Zola, a mad scientist who has transferred his consciousness into a robot body, is an extravagant sci-fi design, with the villain’s face presented on a screen encased on the host robot’s chest. Remender indeed intended Castaway in Dimension Z as a homage to Kirby’s 1970s run (Khouri 2013); by drawing narrative inspiration from, and alluding to, this earlier period of the Captain America title, Remender claimed that he had created a ‘treasure chest of amazing Kirby insanity for readers’ (Richards 2012). 5  Such practices of genre memorialisation in film and comics frequently align with a conceptual framework in genre theory that claims that a given genre, as part of its evolution, comes to selfreflexively engage with its own conventions and traditions (Schatz 1981: 37–38; Bailey 2016: 6–7).

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At Marvel, such practices of medium-specific genre memorialisation are not restricted to comics, as the approach is, for example, also common among MCU filmmakers. As noted, Marvel Studios, in the tradition of Marvel Comics, fuses the superhero genre with further genres as a means to ensure each MCU film appears novel to audiences. However, as is the case in  film culture more generally, MCU filmmakers have tended to draw inspiration from, as well as pastiche and memorialise, historical constructions of genre within film specifically. This is the case with The Winter Soldier’s allusions to Hollywood’s 1970s genre cycle of paranoid political thrillers. It is also the case with Ant-Man (2015), which was, as Feige (Butler 2013) notes, modelled on the ‘heist-film’; Black Panther (2018), which was conceived as MCU’s version of a James Bond film, as Ryan Coogler, its director, acknowledges (Prell 2018); and Spider-­Man: Homecoming (2017), which, at the behest of Marvel Studios, emulates and pays homage to story themes and textual features of John Hughes’ run of 1980s teen movies, as the film’s director Jon Watt (Desowitz 2017) explains. There are clear cultural factors that explain why these postmodern practices of historical pastiche and genre memorialisation are often medium-specific in nature. Firstly, creative practitioners operating with a given medium are often immersed in and passionate about the cultural history within that same given medium, and therefore typically draw from that history specifically. For example, in the case of Remender, his love of and fascination with sci-fi adventures from earlier eras of American comics motivated his pastiches of Jack Kirby and Wally Wood within his Captain America run. Secondly, there is an industrial incentive for those engaged in allusion and pastiche to reference cultural artefacts from the medium in which they are operating, as the result has the potential to attract audiences steeped in that medium’s culture. For example, as the US comic-book industry’s dedicated readership is highly knowledgeable of its long history (Pustz 1999; Smith 2018), Remender’s allusions to Kirby and Wood’s space opera works resonate with this audience specifically. This is evident in specialist press writing on Castaway in Dimension Z, which typically identifies and approves of Remender’s medium-specific pastiche practices (Bailey 2012; Truitt 2012). By drawing from comics history specifically as part of his genre memorialisation, Remender’s Captain America is well suited to its industry’s core readership. Crucially, such historical pastiche processes are a determinant factor in instances of simultaneous genre divergence in the Marvel franchise. Fundamentally, this is because creative practitioner approaches of drawing upon genre influences internal to their own medium have the potential to drive contrasting genre outcomes across media. This is evident not only in the case of Captain America but also in the aforementioned examples of genre divergence in relation to Daredevil and the Hulk. Regarding the former, the aim of genre memorialisation underpinned the construction of the swashbuckling adventure genre on Mark Waid’s Daredevil comic-book run. As Waid notes, in the decades prior to his time on the title, Daredevil had been cast as a ‘dark,

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dour, grim … crime-noir’ book (Tipton 2012). While these previous noir constructions would inform Marvel Television’s Daredevil Netflix series (McMillan 2015), the types of fun ‘swashbuckling’ Daredevil adventures that Waid enjoyed reading as a child in the 1960s inspired his own take on the title (Toucan 2012). A vibrant and carnivalesque colour palette, and a swashbuckling adventurer for a title character—who beams a smile in the face of danger— resulted from this genre shift. For commentators, Waid’s genre construction here is a clear attempt to connect and pay homage to the character’s narrative roots (McGloin 2013; Mooney 2014). The consequence of Waid’s genre memorialisation was a comic-book run that appears diametrically opposed to the Noir-infused Daredevil streaming series that was released simultaneously with it. In the case of the Hulk-related instance of genre divergence, an aim to memorialise the character’s comic-book origins similarly influenced the activation of horror in the writer Al Ewing’s aforementioned run on The Immortal Hulk. Despite the book’s title being introduced in 2018, the book is in fact a retitled continuation of The Incredible Hulk, which debuted in 1962; as with Waid’s approach on Daredevil, Ewing, on The Immortal Hulk, draws from the genre starting point of the particular title on which he is assigned. As Ewing (Mclaughlin 2018) acknowledges, The Incredible Hulk began as a ‘horror comic’, in which the title character was a monstrous antagonist. With a narrative rich in grotesque body horror, and which, according to Ewing (Mclaughlin 2018), is designed to make us ‘feel nervous when we see [Hulk] with characters we like’, the writer aligned the title to its initial genre. Ewing’s narrative additionally makes direct allusions to this earlier genre construction. For example, the title of Ewing’s first issue, ‘Or is He Both?’, is an intertextual reference to a line included in the cover design of The Incredible Hulk’s debut issue, namely, ‘IS HE MAN OR MONSTER OR … IS HE BOTH?’. Therefore, Ewing’s motivation to honour the Hulk’s genre history has underpinned the comic book’s clear divergence from the action and comedy genre contexts to which the MCU Hulk is most associated. These postmodern genre practices also appear to encourage genre divergence due to the fact that genre memorialisation in one medium is not always scalable across media. For example, Ewing’s horror in The Immortal Hulk, Remender’s space opera in Captain America and Waid’s swashbuckling adventure in Daredevil each make intertextual connections to the cultural history of their respective comic-book title. In other words, each of the three writers has memorialised genre in the same publication in which the memorialised genre construction initially occurred. As noted, these postmodern genre constructions hold significant intertextual meanings for many comic-book consumers; however, as film-going audiences have less collective knowledge of, or interest in, the cultural history of American comics, these intertexts would be of little value in film culture. There is, therefore, less incentive for Marvel Studios to activate these respective genres in relation to these respective characters. While, then, there is always a cultural exchange of genre ideas between media at

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Marvel, some genre constructions have a medium-specific value, which demotivates their transmedia circulation. To put it another way, because the cultural value of certain genre constructions in relation to certain superheroes is variable across media, some genre activations at Marvel have remained mediumspecific, thereby contributing to genre divergence. By accounting for genre divergence at Marvel, this section has explained how medium-specific cultural factors give rise to clear genre differences between the varied narrative texts of a single given franchise. Simultaneous genre divergence, as an industrial outcome, appears to contradict the logics of conglomerate-controlled franchise media. As stated, for conglomerate media corporations, their aim is typically to achieve brand synergy between the various franchise texts they produce and authorise. Instances of genre divergence, such as having Captain America simultaneously situated in contrasting genre contexts across media, seem to fall short of the objective. Yet media corporations’ transmedia branding and marketing techniques can work to alleviate the impact of such instances of genre divergence, thereby strengthening franchise brand coherence. As the next section shows via its study of Marvel marketing techniques, franchise owners can de-emphasise instances of genre divergence by drawing on a range of paratextual approaches. As the section furthermore demonstrates, wider cultural activity, including journalistic discourses and online participatory practices, can contribute to this minimisation of genre divergence.

Superheroes in Industry Paratexts and Participatory Culture Across Media As previously detailed, Marvel Comics’ series titling and cover designs have positioned superhero characters as primary narrative elements, thereby downplaying a given comic-book narrative’s evocation of other genres. In the context of media conglomeration and franchise building, Marvel has adapted this well-established approach across its transmedia franchise. This is apparent in the way Marvel’s paratextual framing of films, television and streaming series most typically positions the superhero character as the principal means by which the narratives should be perceived and organised. As also noted, the superhero genre is chiefly activated via the superhero character specifically. Therefore, this transmedia strategy encourages Marvel’s narrative texts to be primarily understood as being of the superhero genre. Marvel, via this strategy, thereby soft-pedals instances of genre divergence across media. For example, industry paratexts work to minimise the marked genre difference between The Winter Soldier film and Remender’s Captain America. This is evident, for instance, in the cover design and cover art for issue #1 of Remender’s run. The bold lettering of the ‘CAPTAIN AMERICA’ title occupies approximately the top 20 per cent of the cover. Below this, the figure of Captain America dominates John Romita, Klaus Janson and Dean White’s

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cover art image, with the super soldier adopting a battle-ready pose; one hand clutches his shield, the other is a clenched fist. The cover art backdrop alludes to the space opera genre on which Remender’s Captain America narratives consistently draw. The hero stands in front of a landscape that recalls many 1950s illustrated depictions of sci-fi environments; in the hero’s far distance a peculiar retro-futuristic structure sits at the foot of desert crags, as an oppressive soot-tinged red sky bears down upon the hero and his setting. This backdrop usefully signals to consumers the comic’s novel space opera sci-fi genre context. However, the cover design clearly subordinates the depicted space opera signifiers to the superhero genre, as the features of this setting are distant and/or largely obscured by the book title’s lettering and Cap’s colossal figure. Reflecting the transmedia marketing logic of the Marvel franchise, the main US theatrical poster for The Winter Solider film takes a similar approach to the evocation of genre. The bottom 20 per cent (approx.) of the poster is devoted to the film title and credits. The main title ‘CAPTAIN AMERICA’ takes precedence in this portion of the poster, with the subtitle ‘THE WINTER SOLDIER’ reduced to around half the size of the main title. Above this portion of the poster, an image of Captain America in uniform dominates the poster’s centre. Portrayed by Chris Evans, who is sporting a grimly determined look on his face, the hero is depicted striding towards the viewer with his shield in hand. An image of Captain America’s ally Nick Fury (portrayed by Samuel L. Jackson) is positioned to the left of the main hero; to the right of Cap is his other key ally Natasha Romanoff (portrayed by Scarlett Johansson). Each of the images of these characters is smaller in size than Captain America (as each is positioned further into the poster’s background) but is still prominent in comparison to most of the poster’s other depicted narrative elements. Pushed even further into the poster’s background are small images of the titular Winter Soldier (portrayed by Sebastian Stan) and Robert Redford’s character, Alexander Pierce. Above them a foreboding blue-grey sky is populated with the various militaristic aircraft that feature in the film. Elements of the poster can be interpreted as activating the political conspiracy thriller that The Winter Soldier film narrative evokes. The poster’s sombre blue-grey colour palette aligns with the political conspiracy genre’s themes of moral greyness and its convention of downcast visual styles. The presence of Fury, who heads the SHIELD agency, and Romanoff, a SHIELD agent with a murky past, furthermore indicates the film’s concern with secretive institutions engaged in clandestine activities. Fury and Romanoff’s presence therefore aligns The Winter Soldier with political conspiracy films. As his inclusion does in the film, Redford’s presence on the poster serves as an intertext connecting The Winter Soldier with Three Days of the Condor specifically. However, while the political conspiracy genre is activated, the images of Captain America and his moniker (in the form of the film’s title) are nevertheless the poster’s primary elements. Similar to the cover design for Captain America #1, the film poster subordinates an additional genre—in this case the political conspiracy thriller—to the superhero genre.

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The prominence in The Winter Soldier poster given to the image of Captain America, as well as the film’s title, of course, reflects the conventions of theatrical film posters and film promotion in general. For example, Captain America’s dominance of the poster, both in terms of his image and moniker reflects an industrial aim to emphasise to potential moviegoers that the film is both part of the MCU franchise and the sub-franchise concerning Captain America, which forms part of the MCU. Yet by placing the main emphasis on the figure and name of Captain America, the poster conforms to Marvel’s wider transmedia marketing practices. The poster awards precedence to Marvel’s heroes, and— by implication—primacy to the superhero genre, thereby signalling that other genres evident in the film are ancillary to the superhero genre. Alongside film posters and comic-book covers, Marvel Entertainment’s Marvel.com platform forms part of this transmedia paratextual strategy of framing Marvel texts as superhero narratives first and foremost. The website serves as both an online reading platform for Marvel Comics and a source of news and information about the Marvel franchise more generally. The concept of character serves as a chief structuring logic guiding how the site’s content is organised and linked together. For users, this means that the idea of Marvel characters becomes a key means by which they are able to navigate the site. A user may, for example, click the main menu button ‘CHARACTERS’, which leads to a list of Marvel characters containing 2588 entries, with each entry linking to information concerning that character. For instance, the Captain America entry links to a set of pages containing character summaries for both the MU and MCU Captain Americas. These Captain America pages link to related character pages within this database, such as Captain America allies (e.g. Falcon) and enemies (e.g. Baron Zemo). The character pages furthermore serve as portals to Marvel content in various media forms. For instance, the Captain America character pages link to further pages whereby: digital versions of Captain America comics can be viewed via a Marvel Unlimited subscription; MCU films featuring Captain America can be purchased in digital or physical form, or viewed via the Disney+ streaming platform; and bite-sized YouTube-­ style video content about Captain America, such as the ‘listicle’ video ‘Top 10 Captain America Costumes’, can be viewed. Due to its structural design, Marvel.com ultimately elevates the Marvel superhero characters as the most important and noteworthy components of these media texts that they occupy; by implication, the most significant aspect about a given Marvel film or comic book is the fact that it serves as a vessel for a given superhero character. Therefore, users accessing films and comic books via the Marvel.com character pages are primed to understand Marvel films and comics as superhero narratives specifically. Similar to the typical design of Marvel comic-book covers and MCU film posters, the organisational logic of Marvel.com, and the user experience it facilitates, prioritises the concept of Marvel characters. Combined, these different paratextual elements—web platform, film posters and comic-book covers— indeed signal that the idea of Marvel’s superhero characters, untethered from

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any specific media texts, should be the primary paradigm via which the Marvel franchise is conceptualised and navigated. Through prioritising the concept of the Marvel superhero character, this paratextual signalling works to relegate the significance of any one narrative text, such as a film or comic book. This paratextual approach thereby de-emphasises specific generic elements in any given text, downplaying the clear genre contrasts that occur between multiple texts, such as that which exists between The Winter Solider film and Remender’s Captain America comic-book run. These transmedia paratextual practices, by situating Marvel superhero characters, extracted from any specific narrative text, therefore establish the franchise as being of the superhero genre at its core. By implication, the narrative texts released under the banner of the Marvel brand are to be considered to be superhero narratives fundamentally. This paratextual approach ultimately unifies Marvel’s transmedia entertainment franchise brand, thereby meeting conventional conglomerate media aims. The franchise evokes a range of different genres across its texts, often simultaneously. Marvel will, as this study evidences, indeed promote its use of different genres, via industry discourses and marketing elements, so as to ensure each individual narrative text is shown to have sufficient novelty. However, paratextual practices nonetheless emphasise that Marvel is a superhero franchise in essence, and thus a producer of superhero narratives; the diverse range of genres that the franchise evokes are thereby subordinated to the superhero genre. For Marvel, this paratextual genre construction therefore works to strengthen brand coherence across media. The branding and promotional practices of Marvel are, however, not alone in enforcing this brand unity for the franchise vis-à-vis genre. A range of wider public discourses and participatory practices continuously contribute to the construction of the Marvel franchise and its texts as being of the superhero genre primarily. This is evident in the 2010s, for example, in the many industry and journalistic discourses concerning the potential for ‘superhero-movie fatigue’ (Bramesco 2016). Within these types of discourses, journalists and industry insiders, in an industrial context in which Marvel films are so remarkably successful in commercial terms, consider the extent to which audiences’ desire for superhero movies can endure. Such discourses include columnist James Moore (2018) counselling Marvel on how they can stop filmgoers ‘succumbing to superhero fatigue’ and former 20th Century Fox Film CEO Stacy Snider (Barraclough 2018) warning the film industry against an overreliance on superhero features. Such discourses help to enforce the idea that MCU movies, and other films featuring superhero properties, are fundamentally superhero movies. A related set of discourses, in which journalists and industry figures bemoan the popularity and pervasiveness of films featuring superheroes, similarly fortifies the uniform understanding of MCU films as superhero films in essence. Not only do these critical voices label MCU films as superhero films specifically, they additionally often lament what they regard as these films’ homogeneity. The critic Matt Zoller Seitz (2014), for example, expresses distaste for the

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‘sameness’ of Marvel films, while filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola (Dessem 2019) lambasts Marvel for making the ‘same movie over and over again’. Such discourses, by implication, disregard the genre novelty that each MCU film is designed to offer. Some of these criticisms indeed appear to follow in the Frankfurt School (Adorno and Horkheimer 1997) tradition of perceiving the product differentiation that mass entertainment provides as ‘illusory’. These perceptions of MCU films as identikit clearly undercut Marvel Studios’ efforts to distinguish, to some extent, each of its features in genre terms. Nevertheless, these discourses ultimately serve to help solidify Marvel’s wider brand identity as a purveyor of superhero narratives. In line with Marvel’s transmedia paratextual practices and many discourses emanating from journalists and industry insiders, participatory cultures also contribute to this ‘extra-textual’ defining of the Marvel brand. Application of the affirmational/transformational dichotomy, which is frequently applied in fan studies to distinguish between audiences’ participatory practices (obsession_inc 2009; Pearson 2012; Hills 2015), is useful to understanding this process. According to this framework, affirmational fan practices are activities whereby audiences analyse, interpret and discuss a source media text, but in no way alter it. ‘Forensic fan’ (Mittell 2015: 44, 52) communities closely scrutinising MCU films for ‘Easter eggs’ and sharing information about their finds online would be an example of this kind of practice. Transformational practices, however, concern fans’ ‘changing and manipulating’ a given source text to their ‘own desires’ (Stein and Busse 2012: 15–16). Transformational practices, in particular, are prone to de-emphasise or omit non-superhero genre elements identifiable in source Marvel texts. In so doing they work to reinforce the uncomplicated Marvel brand profile; that is, of being superhero in genre. GIFs sourced from MCU movies serve as examples of this kind of transformational participatory practice. The GIF is a digital format in which multiple images are configured into a brief animation and is frequently shared on social media. GIFs are, furthermore, typically sourced from popular film and television content. Accordingly, a myriad of GIFs is assembled from the frames of MCU blockbusters and widely circulated. One common type of MCU GIF displays instances of Marvel superheroes exercising their superpowers. For example, one GIF, which includes a snippet of action from The Winter Soldier, depicts Captain America performing a super-strength roundhouse kick on Winter Soldier, sending the enemy crashing into a car (Tenor 2018). A further GIF of this type, sourced from Spider-Man: Far from Home (2019), shows the film’s titular hero swinging across a city skyline to escape enemy attack (Giphy 2019). Another common type of GIF sourced from MCU films is one that presents more subtle moments of action involving a titular superhero character. For example, a GIF sourced from The Winter Soldier shows Captain America walking purposefully while single-handedly placing his shield on his back in one smooth, unbroken motion (Giphy 2016). A GIF, sourced from The Avengers (2012), in which Thor, performed by Chris Hemsworth, delivers a cocky smile (Giphy 2015), is a further example of this type. This second type

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of GIF can appear to venerate or fetishise a character, their costume and/or the performer playing the role; this type of GIF, in particular, is also frequently used to signify media users’ responses as part of online social interactions. ‘As frame grabs get circulated across the web and social media platforms as part of GIFs,’ notes Jennifer Gillan (2016: 22), ‘they become detached from any context offered by the original source and the GIF creator’. This point clearly applies in the case of many MCU GIFs, including the above examples, as they isolate Marvel superhero characters from their broader film narrative contexts. In so doing, these GIFs omit the complicated genre constructions of these films, in which the superhero genre is typically combined with another. For example, unlike their source text, The Winter Soldier GIFs discussed above do not evoke the political thriller genre. Furthermore, despite its source text frequently evoking an American ‘road-trip’ film tradition, as identified by critical discourses (Berry 2019; Duralde 2019; Grierson 2019), the aforementioned Far from Home GIF fails to evoke this genre as part of its instance of action. By extracting each of these superhero characters from their respective film’s elaborate genre construction, MCU GIFs inevitably jettison the contextual genre information signified in source texts. GIFs such as these are therefore transformational due to their eradication of their source texts’ genre complexities. However, by emphasising the image and actions of iconic superhero characters, these GIFs can be regarded as affirmational of the Marvel brand, if not the film narratives from which they were derived. This is because, similar to Marvel’s own promotional paratexts, these types of GIFs contribute to the streamlining of the Marvel brand as being, simply, superhero in genre. They therefore form part of a long process of extra-textual genre construction that has framed Marvel narratives as being superhero in essence since the company began prioritising the genre in the 1960s.

Conclusion Via our Captain America case study, we have revealed the complex ways by which genre can be constructed in conglomerate media contexts, and with specific regard to the transmedia entertainment franchise form. We have detailed how, at Marvel, certain creative decisions in relation to genre are made on a medium-specific basis and are influenced by medium-specific cultural factors, resulting in genre divergence within its franchise. We examined medium-­ specific market conditions as key cultural factors in this process: as shown, Marvel Studios’ construction of the political thriller genre in The Winter Soldier film and Marvel Comics’ activation of the space opera genre in the Captain America comic book were each, in part, a response to sector-specific market requirements. The influence that a given medium’s own genre history exerts is a further driver of genre divergence,  which  we explored via examination of genre memorialisation in relation to Captain America and the wider Marvel franchise. As we detailed, the practice of industry practitioners drawing upon

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genre influences specific to the medium in which they operate can encourage contrasting genre outcomes within franchise culture. We showed, therefore, that medium-specific cultural preferences combined with the industrial necessities of individual media sectors can motivate genre divergence in transmedia franchises. However, while we focused here on the impact of medium-specific contexts and practices, and the genre inconsistencies that these can give rise to, it is important to also consider the importance of the flow of ideas between media in genre formation across franchise culture. As we have suggested, cultural exchange between different media sectors can be an important influence on genre construction across transmedia franchises, despite the role of medium specificity potentially leading to genre divergence. For example, at Marvel, its designated ‘R&D’ division, Marvel Comics, influences approaches to genres in the wider franchise. As this study acknowledges, Brubaker’s Captain America apparently informed the construction of the political thriller in The Winter Soldier, at least to some degree. As also noted, comic-book narratives influenced Marvel Television’s activation of film noir in Netflix’s Daredevil series. However, as an earlier comic-book run served as an influence in each of these instances, simultaneous genre divergence still occurred. Nevertheless, it is apparent here that genre construction in franchise culture can be a product of both medium-specific and cross-media industrial/ cultural influences and determinants. That a cultural system such as this can give rise to genre discrepancies across a conglomerate media setting can, as discussed, potentially undermine media conglomerate aims of franchise brand unity. However, as we clarified here, genre activation in paratextual material can serve to help smooth out inconsistencies in genre construction across a media franchise. Marvel’s paratextual material, through minimising or omitting genres that film and comics narratives activate, establishes the franchise as being uniformly and uncomplicatedly superhero, thereby instilling brand consistency. Therefore, we demonstrated the potential significance of genre in promotional paratexts to the establishment of brand coherence for transmedia entertainment franchises. As this study has also shown, public discourses and participatory practices can contribute to this process of genre activation at the level of transmedia franchise. In the case of Marvel, journalist and industry practitioner discourses, combined with online GIF creation and circulation practices, appear to complement Marvel’s efforts to elevate its association with the superhero genre. It is clear, therefore, that wider discursive and participatory activity can, via its genre activations, contribute to the formation of franchise brand identities. This chapter’s main headline point, then, is that, within conglomerate media and entertainment franchises, medium-specific factors can motivate genre divergence. Yet, we also showed how, in the case of Marvel, paratexts de-­ emphasise such divergence by framing Marvel narrative texts across media as primarily superhero stories. For Marvel, therefore, the superhero genre serves as a meta category ensuring brand consistency. In the following chapter, we further explore how and why, within conglomerate media, continuities of

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genre are developed across entertainment franchises. Using the Star Wars franchise as a case study, we demonstrate how its consistent use of the Western genre serves a distinct industrial function.

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Ndalianis, Angela. 2004. Neo-Baroque Aesthetics and Contemporary Entertainment. Cambridge: The MIT Press. obsession_inc. 2009. Affirmational Fandom Vs. Transformational Fandom. obsession_ inc, June 1. https://obsession-­inc.dreamwidth.org/82589.html. Accessed August 20, 2020. Orr, Christopher. 2014. A Somber, Super Captain America: The Winter Soldier. The Atlantic, April 4. https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/04/ a-­somber-­super-­em-­captain-­america-­the-­winter-­soldier-­em/360155/. Accessed August 20, 2020. Pearson, Roberta. 2012. ‘Good Old Index’: Or, the Mystery of the Infinite Archive. In Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom, ed. Louisa Ellen Stein and Kristina Busse, 150–164. McFarland: Jefferson. Plumb, Ali. 2013. Marvel Boss Kevin Feige on Phase 2. Empire, March 4. https:// www.empireonline.com/movies/news/mar vel-­b oss-­k evin-­f eige-­p hase-­2 /. Accessed August 20, 2020. Prell, Sam. 2018. Black Panther Is Meant to Be the James Bond of the MCU, According to the Director. Games Radar, January 18. https://www.gamesradar.com/uk/ black-­p anther-­i s-­m eant-­t o-­b e-­t he-­j ames-­b ond-­o f-­t he-­m cu-­a ccording-­t o-­t he-­ director/. Accessed August 20, 2020. Pustz, Matthew J. 1999. Comic Book Culture: Fanboys and True Believers. Jackson: University of Mississippi. Richards, Dave. 2012. Remender Battles Bio-Fanaticism on Captain America. CBR, August 14. https://www.cbr.com/remender-­battles-­bio-­fanaticism-­in-­captain-­ america/. Accessed August 20, 2020. ———. 2013. Remender Captain America Battles the Tyranny of Dimension Z. CBR, March 19. https://www.cbr.com/remender-­captain-­america-­battles-­the-­tyranny-­ of-­dimension-­z/. Accessed August 20, 2020. Sava, Oliver. 2013. Rick Remender’s Captain America #10 Concludes an Outstanding Sci-Fi Arc. AV Club, August 30. https://aux.avclub.com/rick-­remender-­s-­captain-­ america-­10-­concludes-­an-­outsta-­1798240607. Accessed August 20, 2020. Schatz, Thomas. 1981. Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Hollywood Tradition. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Seitz, Matt Zoller. 2014. Things Crashing into Other Things: Or, My Superhero Movie Problem. RogerEbert.com, May 6. https://www.rogerebert.com/mzs/things-­ crashing-­into-­other-­things-­or-­my-­superhero-­movie-­problem. Accessed August 20, 2020. Singer, Marc. 2018. Breaking the Frames: Populism and Prestige in Comics Studies. Austin: University of Texas Press. Singer, Matt. 2019. Edward Norton Says His Original “Hulk” Plan was for Two “Long, Dark and Serious” Films. Screen Crush, October 7. https://screencrush.com/ edward-­norton-­original-­hulk-­plan/. Accessed August 20, 2020. Smith, Adam. 2014, February. Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Empire, 78–83. Smith, Anthony N. 2018. Storytelling Industries: Narrative Production in the 21st Century. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Spurgeon, Tom. 2012. CR Sunday Interview: Ed Brubaker. The Comics Reporter, June 24. http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/cr_sunday_interview_ed_brubaker2012summer/. Accessed August 20, 2020. Stein, Louise Ellen, and Kristina Busse. 2012. Introduction: The Literary, Televisual and Digital Adventures of a Beloved Detective. In Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom, ed. Louisa Ellen Stein and Kristina Busse, 9–24. McFarland: Jefferson.

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Tenor. 2018. Steve Rogers The Avengers GIF. Tenor. https://tenor.com/view/steve-­ rogers-­t he-­a vengers-­c aptain-­a merica-­c hris-­e vans-­w inter-­s oldier-­g if-­1 0698289. Accessed August 20, 2020. Tipton, Scott. 2012. The Blastoff Video Interview  – Mark Waid, Part 1. YouTube, January 24. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX4KtJ68H_U. Accessed August 20, 2020. Toucan. 2012. Mark Waid: A Banner Year Part One. Comic-­Con.org, December 18. https://www.comic-­con.org/toucan/mark-­waid-­banner-­year-­part-­one. Accessed August 20, 2020. Truitt, Brian. 2012. Remender Gives a Pulp Sci-fi edge to Captain America. USA Today, November 19. https://eu.usatoday.com/story/life/2012/11/19/captain-­ america-­marvel-­now-­comic-­book-­series/1714467/. Accessed August 20, 2020. Wright, Bradford W. 2001. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

CHAPTER 3

Transmedia Western: Lucasfilm, Genre Linking and The Mandalorian

Introduction A bounty hunter rides calmly through a remote desert mining outpost. The town’s inhabitants keep their distance, appraising the stranger, regarding him warily. Beyond the diegesis, the moody picking of a flamenco guitar plays on the soundtrack, complementing the taut mood of this moment. The gun for hire arrives at the centre of town, dismounts and languidly moves to the saloon. At the establishment’s doorway, he coolly surveys the saloon’s interior. Of course, we could be describing a Western movie scenario here, as various tropes of the genre are evident in this description. However, we are, in fact, detailing a sequence from the live-action Star Wars streaming series, The Mandalorian (2019–present)—from the episode ‘Chapter 9, The Marshal’ (2:1), to be precise. According to the actor Temuera Morrison (Brook 2020), who portrays Boba Fett in the series, The Mandalorian ‘has this cowboy feel. A Western feel. A gunslinger feel’, and our above description suggests as much. With this chapter, we analyse how this genre ‘feel’ is constructed in, and around, The Mandalorian. Furthermore, we examine how this approach to genre serves an industrial transmedia function by strengthening connectivity across the Star Wars franchise. As we ultimately show, genre activation within The Mandalorian works to structure distinct intertextual connections in the Star Wars franchise, thereby establishing a unique link between The Mandalorian and key Star Wars texts. When thinking about the transmedia strategies used to cohere the many media texts of the Star Wars franchise, one might initially think of transmedia storytelling, rather than genre practices. After all, Star Wars serves as one of the most expansive and large-scale examples of transmedia storytelling within entertainment media. For instance, since its acquisition by The Walt Disney Company in 2012, Lucasfilm has centrally coordinated the extension of a single, coherent Star Wars storyworld across films, books, comics, video games, © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Freeman, A. N. Smith, Transmedia/Genre, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15583-3_3

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cable television, theme-park resorts and the Disney+ streaming video-on-­ demand platform. As noted in the previous chapter, and as Star Wars exemplifies, transmedia storytelling is used in media industries to ensure narrative consistency, thereby forging meaningful connections for audiences between a given franchise’s many texts (Jenkins 2006: 95–134; Harvey 2015: 182–202). Transmedia storytelling is certainly present in The Mandalorian, which is exclusive to Disney+. Within the chronology of the Star Wars storyworld, The Mandalorian’s narrative events take place five years after those depicted in the Star Wars film, The Return of the Jedi (1983). Such connections operate on what Robert C. Allen (1985: 69) refers to as a ‘syntagmatic axis’ of a narrative continuity. That is, connections form via the sequences of fictional events that take place within the Star Wars storyworld as presented by films and other media texts. This is one means by which The Mandalorian connects to the wider franchise. However, as we show here, Lucasfilm has, parallel to its transmedia storytelling approach, used genre in relation to The Mandalorian as a further means to contribute to franchise connectivity. By this we mean that the streaming series connects to other Star Wars media via the activations of the Western genre that occur within its narrative, as well as in the promotional materials and practitioner discourses that surround the series. Therefore, The Mandalorian’s constructions of genre imply connections along what Allen refers to as the ‘paradigmatic axis’ (1985: 69–71) of the Star Wars narrative universe. Via this genre practice, associations between distinct stories are not contingent on a chronology of depicted events but are dependent instead on an inferred thematic parallelism. We will refer here to this development of thematic association, whereby franchise content connections are formed by genre intertexts specifically, as genre linking. We saw something of this practice in the previous chapter regarding how Marvel emphasised the superhero genre within marketing paratexts across media to de-emphasise and mitigate against genre divergence. In this chapter’s study of how the Western is activated in, and in relation to, The Mandalorian, we will outline a far more consistent, and less disrupted, case of genre linking. Therefore, whereas we placed an emphasis on genre divergence and its causes in the previous chapter, we conversely focus more here on the industrial harmonisation of genre within our case study transmedia entertainment franchise. Furthermore, we additionally examine the potential industrial function of such genre linking across entertainment media franchises. In the previous chapter, we showed how Marvel used the superhero genre as a franchise-wide connective tissue in the service of brand coherence. However, as we show here, Lucasfilm’s implementation of the Western with The Mandalorian serves a separate and more specific industrial purpose. Via an analysis that takes both a textual and cultural approach to genre in relation to The Mandalorian, we argue that genre linking develops associations between the streaming series and with what is culturally perceived to be core of the Star Wars franchise. That is, firstly, Lucasfilm’s genre practices in relation to The Mandalorian connect it to the initial three Star Wars films, which are known as the Original Trilogy. This film trio,

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which is comprised of Star Wars (1977, henceforth, A New Hope), The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and The Return of the Jedi, is—as we will see—typically understood within media culture as the franchise’s primary texts. Secondly, and relatedly, The Mandalorian’s uses of the Western align the series with what many, including fans, industry practitioners and cultural commentators, regard as a founding creative vision for Star Wars. As writer and director of the first Star Wars film, A New Hope, and originator of the Star Wars storyworld, George Lucas is typically regarded as the author of this creative vision. As a cultural construction, this creative blueprint is nebulous, but, as we will detail, it reflects a consensus, among many, concerning the creative origins of the Star Wars franchise. Contemporary Star Wars texts, including The Mandalorian, are typically compared and evaluated in relation to both the Original Trilogy and the creative vision that is seen to underpin it. Through developing a close connection to the Original Trilogy and its perceived origins, we contend, The Mandalorian’s applications of the Western earn the series legitimacy in the eyes of many fans and critics. Therefore, we show the cultural significance and industrial benefit of genre linking within a sprawling transmedia franchise, such as Star Wars. To appropriately contextualise this study of genre in and around The Mandalorian, the following section details the association between the Star Wars franchise and Western genre, which A New Hope began, and which The Mandalorian continues.

Star Wars and the Western When pitching A New Hope to studio executives, Lucas is said to have sold the film as ‘cowboys in space’ (Brode 2012: 1). His promise simply, but no less usefully, indicates how the film would come to activate the Western genre. That is, by transplanting the textual markers of the Western genre into outer space in the manner of what has come to be known as the subgenre of the ‘space Western’ (Silverman and Brode 2020). One way in which A New Hope does this is by incorporating a significant general theme of the Western, namely ‘the frontier’, within its fictional universe. In the Western, the frontier of the American West is a space beyond civilised society and its universal laws. It is where lawlessness and unpredictable violence pervade; it is the Wild West of American myth. As Stephen McVeigh (2017) notes, Star Wars resonates with such frontier narratives. This is evident in the scenes from A New Hope set in Mos Eisley, a spaceport described within the film as a ‘wretched hive of scum and villainy’. Most of these scenes are set in an uninviting Mos Eisley cantina, where we witness the kind of grizzled outlaws, rowdy dustups, ruthless gun violence and macho intimidation that is typical of the frontier saloons of Western fiction. As Noah Berlatsky (2020) argues, it is such use of the Western genre, ‘which makes the Star Wars universe feel unstable and thrilling and lawless, despite that authoritarian empire—like the whole galaxy exists on some wild, only sporadically policed frontier’. This theme of the frontier remains strong throughout the Original Trilogy narrative. Activation of the Western in the Original Trilogy also occurs via its homage to specific Western films. Serving as another example of what Carroll (1982)

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refers to as ‘historical pastiche’ (see Chap. 1), these films incorporate references to Western films that memorialise movie history. This is evident in the scene from A New Hope in which Luke Skywalker returns to his aunt and uncle’s desert-planet moisture farm to find his aunt and uncle killed, and the farm buildings on fire. As has been frequently observed (Brode 2012: 6; Young 2015), this sequence clearly parallels, in terms of both story and visuals, a scene from the celebrated Western, The Searchers (1956), in which Ethan Edwards returns to his brother’s farm to find the homestead ablaze and family members murdered. A further example of homage to the Western in Star Wars is the character of Boba Fett, who first appears in the second Star Wars film of the Original Trilogy, The Empire Strikes Back (but who also features in The Mandalorian). As Lucas (Rinzler 2010) observes of his creation, Fett echoes Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name, the antihero of Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy of Spaghetti Western movies. Like the Man with No Name, Fett is a cool, calm and ruthless bounty hunter who is spare with his words but fast with his gun. In character design terms, the muted beige and sepia cape draped over Fett’s armour recalls the Man with No Name’s iconic brown poncho. Additionally, the horizontal line that runs across the eye line of Fett’s helmet mirrors the edge of the hat brim that sits above the eyes of Eastwood’s gunslinger. Furthermore, Jeremy Bulloch’s performance of Fett in The Empire Strikes Back, and the final film of the Original Trilogy, The Return of the Jedi (1983), was modelled on Eastwood’s deliberate and minimal movements as the Man with No Name (Young 2012). Having established how the Star Wars text incorporates Western themes and homage, it is important to also acknowledge that this is just one of a range of genres that the franchise activates. For example, A New Hope can be interpreted as an ambitious collage of genre references. As Robert G. Collins (1977) observed in the year of A New Hope’s release, the film offers a ‘pastiche’ of Arthurian legend and the ‘the myths of twentieth century popular art forms’. Following in this vein, Forrest Wickman (2015) considers A New Hope to be a ‘hyper referential’ genre mash-up, as its narrative memorialises World War II epics, Japanese cinema, and space opera movie serials of the 1930s, as well as the Western. Therefore, just as A New Hope pastiches Western films, it similarly references the British war epic The Dam Busters (1950), Akira Kurosawa’s Jidaigeki samurai sagas and Flash Gordon action sci-fi serials. However, while A New Hope textually alludes to a myriad of genres, many discourses nevertheless prioritise a perception of the film, and the Star Wars franchise, as the Western genre fundamentally. This is evident in an online video that went viral prior to the production of The Force Awakens (2015), Lucasfilm’s first Star Wars film following the company’s acquisition by Disney. The animated video (The Oregonian 2015), which was originally posted in 2013 and produced by independent design agency Sincerely, Truman, addressed The Force Awaken’s director J.J.  Abrams, offering the filmmaker ‘rules you can follow to make Star Wars great again’. One of these rules was that Abrams should avoid setting Star Wars in sophisticated and technocratic

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metropolises, as George Lucas’ so-called Star Wars Prequel Trilogy films of the 1990s and 2000s do. Instead, Star Wars stories should be, as the Original Trilogy films often are, situated at the ‘frontier …, away from civilisation, amidst smugglers and bounty hunters’ because the franchise ‘is a Western’. To understand the cultural logics underpinning the activation of the Western in, and around, The Mandalorian, it is necessary to identify the rhetorical move the Sincerely, Truman video makes. The video not only advocates for the Star Wars franchise to prioritise the Western genre. It is furthermore positing that the Western genre resides at the core of the franchise. That is, the Original Trilogy’s activations of the Western are Star Wars at its purest. The implication here being that any departures from the perceived genre precedent set by the Original Trilogy should be considered sacrilegious. In other words, the video implies the Western genre can serve as a benchmark for quality and legitimacy by which Star Wars texts should be measured. As this suggests, while Lucas’ initial Western vision for Star Wars is apparently revered, this reverence frequently fails to extend to the creative directions that Lucas subsequently took regarding the franchise. To be clear, we are identifying the rhetorical positioning of only one specific item of participatory content here. However, industrial, journalistic and fan responses to the video suggest the widespread support that exists for the video’s position. For example, online ‘geek culture’ sites and blogs, such as io9 (Anderson 2013), CNET (Kooser 2013) and Geek Tyrant (Paur 2013), not only amplified the video’s messaging through sharing but also unquestioningly praised the video. Additionally, Abrams (Blakely 2013), himself, endorsed the video’s position by noting, in his response to the video, that it conveys ‘a feeling that we share very much’. Further reflecting support amongst Star Wars fandom for the video’s entreaties, the online petition Sincerely, Truman set up to accompany the video attracted more than 126,000 signatories (Oatley n.d.). One can speculate why Star Wars fans and commentators work to emphasise the bond between the franchise and the Western genre. It could be that, by cementing associations between Star Wars and the Western, a genre now universally regarded as an artistically worthy film form, fans aim to legitimise their fandom for a franchise that has historically been dismissed as childish entertainment. However, whatever the motivation for these attitudes around Star Wars and the Western, our contention is that The Mandalorian and its accompanying promotional paratexts and practitioner statements are intended to cater to these preferences. In other words, The Mandalorian narrative, together with marketing material and production discourses, activates the Western to appeal to these attitudes. The reason for doing so, we argue, is to invite associations between The Mandalorian and the Original Trilogy, as well as what is perceived to have been George Lucas’ creative approach to the initial Star Wars films. Doing so thereby increases The Mandalorian’s cultural value and legitimacy within the views of fans that have come to privilege the genre in relation to the franchise. To begin our analysis of how the Western is activated in, and around, The Mandalorian, we demonstrate, in the following section, how industry

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paratexts for the series, such as promotional material, utilise the Western. We contend that such paratexts present the genre to audiences as a means of orientation when viewing The Mandalorian. That is, the Western is offered as a primary means by which to understand the streaming series.

Proposing the Western in The Mandalorian’s Entryway Paratexts Before analysing marketing paratexts designed to promote The Mandalorian, it is important to first establish the role promotional materials play in terms of activating genre for audiences. As Jonathan Gray (2010: 48) notes, media promotion, such as trailers, posters and so on, begins ‘the process of creating textual meaning, serving as the first outpost of interpretation’ for prospective audiences for media texts such as films and television series. Gray terms such advertising material ‘that sets up, begins and frames many of the interactions that we will have with … texts’ as ‘entryway paratexts’ (49, 72). One of the ways an entryway paratext does this, notes Gray (50–51), is through delineating a genre, thereby establishing for new audiences ‘a set of rules for interpreting a text’. In the case of the promotional material for The Mandalorian, the Western genre is frequently proposed, thereby inviting audiences to understand the series in terms of this genre. This is evident, for example, in a widely distributed promotional poster for season one of The Mandalorian. In the said image, the Mandalorian of the series title, Din Djarin, strides towards the viewer in arid desert environs, with sand at his feet and a glowing orange sun behind him, its colour tinting the skyline. He is adorned with traditional Mandalorian armour and helmet, complete with a flowing cape, that he wears throughout (almost all of) the first two seasons. Furthermore, the ends of the rifle that hangs on Din Djarin’s back are visible, as is the ammunition slotted into a rifle strap that runs diagonally across his chest. For those with prior Star Wars knowledge, the image of Din’s armour might connote the Western due to it being like that of fellow Mandalorian Boba Fett (who, as discussed, was configured to activate the genre). But, putting aside the possible signification of the armour, the poster incorporates general Western motifs, namely the mysterious gun-toting figure wandering a harsh desert landscape. Furthermore, the poster’s basic design—the gunfighter with the desert sun as a backdrop—is a recurrent feature of Spaghetti Western poster art, as well as the promotion for other Western texts, such as box art for the popular video game Western, Red Dead Redemption II (2018). Disney’s marketing copy for The Mandalorian similarly performs a Western-­ activating function. For example, Disney.com (n.d.) states, regarding The Mandalorian, ‘We follow the travails of a lone gunfighter in the outer reaches of the galaxy, far from the authority of the New Republic’. As with the promotional image analysed above, the Western ‘lone gunfighter’ trope is emphasised here. However, by describing the narrative setting as ‘the outer reaches …, far

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from authority’, the copy also highlights the frontier theme present within the series, thereby further aligning it with the Western. While not strictly promotional material, other entryway paratexts that prime viewers to anticipate The Mandalorian as a Western include certain episode titles for the series. These function as entryway paratexts, as the title for a given episode is presented on-screen on the Disney+ streaming platform prior to viewing and as an intertitle at the beginning of the episode. Examples of episode titles that frame The Mandalorian narrative as the Western include ‘Chapter 5: The Gunslinger’ and ‘Chapter 9: The Marshal’. Each of these titles refers to, and promises viewers, a conventional Western character type: the former being the gun-wielding character who is especially skilful and dangerous with their firearm, often a Wild West gun for hire; the latter, the town marshal of the American frontier, bringing outlaws to brutal justice. As is evidenced by this section, entryway paratexts invite audiences to view The Mandalorian as a Western. We now demonstrate how the actual narrative of the series complements these paratexts by foregrounding the genre. To be clear, we do not mean to argue that The Mandalorian predominantly conforms to Western conventions. As is the case with the wider Star Wars franchise, it is possible to identify other popular genres being activated across The Mandalorian’s narrative. For example, the episode ‘Chapter 10: The Passenger’ (2:2) primarily activates the ‘monster movie’ horror genre, as it concerns Din Djarin having to escape from a nest of terrifying ice spiders whilst trapped in a snow planet’s subterranean cave. A further example: ‘Chapter 13: The Jedi’ (2:5), in which Din Djarin and the Jedi, Ahsoka Tano, team up to overthrow an evil magistrate on the planet of Corvus, includes many signifiers specific to Japanese samurai films. This is evident in the forests and manicured garden settings of the planet, and in the robe costumes of its inhabitants. It is also evident in a combat sequence between Ahsoka Tano and the magistrate that is akin to a samurai sword fight. However, while acknowledging that other genres can certainly be identified in The Mandalorian narrative, our point is that the narrative’s genre activations, like the discussed entryway paratexts, primarily position the series as a Western.

Foregrounding the Western in The Mandalorian Narrative One significant means by which The Mandalorian narrative foregrounds the Western is by frontloading the genre at the beginning of each of its two seasons, thereby directing audiences to view each season through the lens of this genre. For example, the first episode of season one, ‘Chapter 1: The Mandalorian’, firmly establishes Din Djarin as a conventional Western hero, as he is seen to possess the key features of this character type. As Mary Lea Bandy and Kevin Stoehr (2012: 13) observe of the Western hero: ‘Heroic in a classical sense, he is a courageous, fit and active type’ but also ‘wily and selfish. …

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Cowpoke or gunfighter, he can ride like the wind and rope a horse or steer at a hundred yards. … The Westerner’s instincts, it has been made clear to us in many an opening scene: he knows what to do.’ They add that the Western hero has also ‘mastered the use of a gun’. The first few minutes of the episode immediately align Din Djarin with this definition. In the opening sequence, we see Din enter a saloon as a trio of thugs rough-up a fish-like fellow of the Mythrol race. Din props up the bar only to be aggressively confronted by the thugs who take him to task for interrupting their abuse of the Mythrol man with his entrance. In response, Din swiftly incapacitates two of the thugs using brutal hand-to-hand combat skills, showcasing his classical-hero-like physical skill and prowess in the process. Din then demonstrates his expertise with the Western protagonist’s standard toolkit, namely the gun and lasso. As the remaining thug skedaddles from the bar, Din ensnares him using his Mandalorian fibre-cord whip, and then hauls him back through the drinking hole’s doorway. Din simultaneously fires his blaster—his gun—at the door control panel, leading the door to quickly close in on the roped thug, severing him in two. The episode’s opening sequence, therefore, serves to demonstrate that Din, in accordance with the Western protagonist conventions that Bandy and Stoehr define, can take care of business, in a physical sense, and possesses the key skills and equipment associated with the character type. In the remainder of the opening episode, Din Djarin is further shown to conform to the conventions of the Western protagonist that Bandy and Stoehr identify (2012: 13). As they note, this character type is ‘not a kindly, upright sort of guy’, and is, instead, ‘selfish’. Din reveals this trait immediately after having despatched the thugs in the bar, when he reveals himself to the Mythrol as the bounty hunter that has come to take the Mythrol in. In the face of the Mythrol’s pleading, Din coolly utters his first line of the series, ‘I can bring you in warm, or I can bring you in cold’, reflecting his remorselessness and an apparent lack of empathy. As Bandy and Stoehr (2012: 13) note, however, the Western hero, although initially presented as self-serving, is a ‘good bad man’. That is, a character of this type ‘has a revelation at some point in the plot and sees the errors of his ways or is blinded by the goodness and purity of the heroine’, placing the hero in conflict with the narrative’s ‘real villains’. As Silverman and Brode (2020: 261) identify, Han Solo, the Original Trilogy’s gunslinger character, undergoes such a change in A New Hope, as he transitions from selfish outlaw to brave hero. Following in Solo’s franchise footsteps, Din Djarin charts a similar character arc within the confines of The Mandalorian’s first episode, thereby further aligning him with the conventional Western protagonist. Subsequent to the rough and tumble of the opening sequence, Din accepts a bounty from the evil Empire to track down an ‘asset’ dead or alive. At the episode’s end, however, Din discovers that the ‘asset’ is apparently a child—that is, the adorable Grogu (AKA ‘Baby Yoda), a cute character that became a pop cultural phenomenon alongside season 1 episodes of The Mandalorian being made

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available. At this point, having been apparently ‘blinded by the goodness and purity’ of Grogu (a substitute for the conventional ‘heroine’), Din’s characterisation shifts, as he begins to protect the child from those forces that initially recruited the bounty hunter.1 Therefore, within the first episode, Din follows what Bandy and Stoehr identify as the standard character trajectory of the Western hero. As well as defining its protagonist as a conventional Western hero, the first episode of The Mandalorian activates the genre in other ways. Notably, following the example of A New Hope, ‘Chapter 1’ appears to pay homage to a range of Western films. For example, the location of the saloon from the episode’s first scene, an inhospitable ice planet environment, recalls the wintery wildernesses of several Western features, from Track of the Cat (1954) to The Hateful Eight (2015). Din’s entry to said saloon is, furthermore, configured to recall Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy. Before his altercation with the bar’s thugs occurs, Din deliberately and wordlessly moves through the establishment in the manner of Eastwood’s enigmatic Man with No Name. The music used for this sequence, a simple and lonely recorder solo that serves as a signature score for Din and is the foundation to the series’ end titles music, strengthens its Western intertextuality, as it was intended to. As The Mandalorian’s composer Ludwig Goransson (Topel 2019) acknowledges, he took inspiration for the leitmotif from Western scores to complement the genre’s wider influence on the narrative. Underpinning Goransson’s approach was an understanding that ‘some of the most iconic Western scores’ are ‘just taking one sound, playing one note, just making it so distinctive’ (Topel 2019), and his isolated recorder in this scene follows in this tradition. Complementing the scene’s introduction to Din Djarin, Goransson’s recorder motif more specifically recalls Ennio Morricone’s Dollars Trilogy scores, such as his flute opening to the main theme for The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (1966). Other Western films that this episode appears to pay homage to include The Wild Bunch (1969). As various critics (Fisher 2019; Phipps 2019; Sherlock 2020) observe, the episode’s spectacular final-act shoot-out echoes the bloody climax of Sam Peckinpah’s acclaimed Western epic. For instance, Din Djarin’s application of a laser cannon turret to fend off those foes who outnumber him recalls the use of a mounted machine gun by William Holden’s character in The Wild Bunch’s titanic gunfight. As the above makes clear, The Mandalorian’s opening episode is designed to foreground the Western, inviting audiences to understand the series along these lines. As indicated at the outset of this chapter, season two of The Mandalorian similarly frontloads the Western genre, as its opening episode (‘Chapter 9: The Marshal’), observes Nick Allen (2020), ‘leans heavily into the Western influence on the series’. Broadly speaking, the narrative of the episode 1  Din Djarin’s change here more specifically recalls the John Ford-directed Western film, The Three Godfathers (1948), in which three outlaws are moved to protect an orphaned baby (Fisher 2019).

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tells a story that is conventional to Westerns, with versions of this tale evident in such Western films as High Plains Drifter (1973), Pale Rider (1985) and Tombstone (1993). That is, the episode concerns a Western hero (the Mandalorian) and his efforts to aid the marshal of an isolated frontier town in hunting down and defeating an ongoing threat to the vulnerable community (a greater krayt dragon). Further activations of the Western include the episode’s casting of Timothy Olyphant as the town marshal. Olyphant brings to the role strong connotations of the ‘Western law enforcer’ character type, as he memorably played this type in the TV dramas Deadwood (2004–2006) and Justified (2010–2015). Similar to ‘Chapter 1’, the episode also liberally references Sergio Leone’s spaghetti Westerns. For example, prior to theming up, Din Djarin and the Marshal face off against each other in a tense, Western-style showdown that utilises the visual grammar of Leone’s spaghetti Westerns. As the marshal and the Mandalorian square off, for instance, the scene builds tension by cutting between two slow zooming shots, the first tightening around the Marshal’s anxious face, the second around the Mandalorian’s helmet. This is a visual style that Leone developed and implemented in the various bloody showdowns that punctuate his Westerns. As this narrative analysis shows, the season-opening episodes of The Mandalorian’s first two seasons assert the Western, thereby aligning the series with its entryway paratexts. Due to the Western being so heavily activated in its season premieres, as well as in promotional material, viewers are invited to utilise the genre as an overriding paradigm with which to comprehend The Mandalorian. Moving beyond the narrative text of The Mandalorian and its promotional media, the following section analyses a range of public discourses and participatory practices that surround The Mandalorian. Such examined discourses include journalistic criticism, fan tweets and fan-made YouTube videos, plus statements from practitioners who work on the series. We show that these discourses and practices frequently complement The Mandalorian’s promotion and narrative by constructing the series as a Western. However, we furthermore demonstrate how such discourses orbiting The Mandalorian articulate the idea that The Mandalorian’s activation of the Western aligns the series with Star Wars’ venerated Original Trilogy and Lucas’ perceived creative vision for these films. Therefore, such discourses articulate, and crystallise, the otherwise implied genre linking between The Mandalorian and Original Trilogy, thereby boosting its legitimacy among, and cultural value to, Star Wars fandom.

The Mandalorian as Western in Practitioner Discourses, Journalistic Criticism and Participatory Culture Practitioner discourses surrounding The Mandalorian suggest that its creator and co-executive producer, Jon Favreau, along with his co-executive producer, Dave Filoni, drive a Western influence across many aspects of the series’

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production. This is evident in the following examples: composer Ludwig Goransson (Topel 2019) acknowledges that he incorporated a Western influence into his score for The Mandalorian at Favreau’s urging; Temuera Morrison (Brook 2020), who plays Boba Fett in The Mandalorian’s second season, notes that Favreau and Filoni ‘often referenced classic Western actors like Lee Van Cleef, Richard Harrison, and Clint Eastwood as touch points’ for his performance; and series cinematographer Greig Fraser (Holben 2020) observes that, due to Favreau being ‘deeply influenced’ by Westerns, he wanted the visual aesthetic to ‘borrow’ from the genre. In line with practitioner discourses, as well as The Mandalorian’s narrative and industry paratexts, journalistic commentary and criticism have followed this industry lead by interpreting the series as a Western. Many press discourses have furthermore placed an emphasis on this interpretation, as is evident in the journalistic article headlines connecting The Mandalorian to the genre. For example, the headline for The Irish Times’ review for the series identifies The Mandalorian as ‘a spaghetti Western in space’ (Bramesco 2019), while a headline for a Screen Crush (Singer 2019) opinion piece about the series declares that The Mandalorian is ‘definitely a Western’. By referring to a conventional character type of the genre, the headline for The New York Times (Hale 2019) review—‘The Mandalorian, a Gunslinger in a Galaxy Far, Far Away’—also activates the Western in relation to the series. Various other journalistic articles (Fisher 2019; Gaughan 2020; Sherlock 2020) about The Mandalorian place strong emphasis of the Western by listing and detailing the instances in which the series pays homage to specific Western films, including Rio Bravo (1959), The Searchers, The Magnificent 7 (1960) and For a Few Dollars More (1965). Such journalistic discourses, therefore, complement Lucasfilm practitioner statements, as well as The Mandalorian’s narrative and promotion, by similarly inviting viewers to comprehend the series as a Western. So, too, do various media texts born of participatory culture. This is evident, for example, in the fan-made YouTube video called ‘10 Reasons Star Wars: The Mandalorian is a Cowboy Western’ (Mr. G 2020), which makes comparisons between The Mandalorian and various Western films. A YouTube video titled ‘Star Wars: The Mandalorian Theme—WESTERN VERSION’ (Krutikov Music 2020) alternatively constructs the Western in relation to The Mandalorian by musical means. The video’s soundtrack is a cover version of The Mandalorian theme that is even more redolent of the Dollars Trilogy score than the source music, as it draws upon a range of signature Ennio Morricone sounds and instrumentation, such as whistling, harmonica and tremolo guitar. Complementing the unsubtle genre work of this music, the video’s image is a pastiche of the promotional art for Red Dead Redemption 2, in which the image of the game’s Western outlaw protagonist has been replaced with the visage of Din Djarin. Further aligning The Mandalorian with Ennio Morricone’s Western music is a YouTube video called ‘The Mandalorian—Spaghetti Western trailer’ (Kingkida 2020). The video cleverly combines footage from The Mandalorian with Ennio Morricone’s opening titles score for A Fistful of Dollars (1964), along with

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original graphics, to form the trailer for a fictional 1960s spaghetti Western film, Il Mandaloriano. Such participatory practices are what fan studies term ‘transformational’ (Stein and Busse 2012: 15–16), as users have altered the text in line with their preference. Yet, despite their altering of the source texts, these user-generated videos are nevertheless broadly ‘affirmational’ (Stein and  Busse, 2012, 15–16)  of how genre has been industrially constructed in relation to The Mandalorian. That is, by its narrative text, promotional paratexts and practitioner discourses. Furthermore, such user-generated content has the potential to be assimilated into this industrial positioning, as when Jon Favreau (@Jon_ Favreau, January 12, 2020)  shared a link to ‘The Mandalorian—Spaghetti Western trailer’ via Twitter. We have seen here how many practitioner discourses, journalistic criticism and fan practices have coalesced around the position of The Mandalorian as a Western. Therefore, they align with how The Mandalorian is positioned by its narrative and promotional paratexts. However, the discourses of practitioners, journalists and fans do not merely echo the genre constructions of The Mandalorian narrative and promotion, they additionally articulate how these uses of genre should be understood. That is, many public discourses articulate the idea that, through activating the Western, The Mandalorian continues the genre work of the Original Trilogy, thereby furthering the realisation of what are perceived as the initial creative objectives for the franchise. Such discourses, therefore, spell out how The Mandalorian, as a transmedia extension, connects to what is perceived as the core of the Star Wars franchise. In this vein, practitioner discourses suggest that a desire to continue the creative process that Lucas commenced with the Original Trilogy has motivated Favreau and Filoni’s constructions of the Western in The Mandalorian. For example, Favreau (Connelly et al. 2019) claims that, with The Mandalorian, he aimed to be ‘in tune with what influenced George in making [A New Hope]’. Filoni, who previously worked alongside Lucas making The Clone Wars (2008–2020) animated series, similarly shares this objective to align with what is perceived as Lucas’ vision of Star Wars. This is made apparent in Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian (2020–present), a documentary series covering the production of The Mandalorian. In the series’ second episode, titled ‘Legacy’ (1:2), cast and crew on The Mandalorian reflect upon the influence of the Star Wars franchise. As part of the episode, Filoni acknowledges the obligation he feels to remain faithful to Lucas’ creative vision and offers his rationale for doing so: ‘When you say George Lucas … created [Star Wars], I don’t think people give enough full value to what that means. … It’s his story, … he created the universe. You just need to tap into that to kind of stay true to what this this.’ Therefore, these discourses suggest that drawing from Lucas’ initial creative vision for Star Wars is Favreau and Filoni’s objective, and that leaning into the Western genre is a means to do this. For example, Favreau acknowledges that he likes the image of Din Djarin’s Mandalorian character, which he regards as (like Boba Fett’s image) a ‘deconstructed version’ of Clint Eastwood as The

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Man with No Name, ‘because it really harkened back to the Westerns … that had originally influenced Lucas’. The actor Pedro Pascal, who portrays Din Djarin, similarly frames the application of the Western in The Mandalorian. He suggests that, by harnessing a Western influence, The Mandalorian’s producers further Lucas’ initial creativity. ‘I think that George Lucas played with the Western undertones with the first movie [A New Hope]’, he says, ‘and now they’re taking the suggestions of that tone and infusing it with steroids’ (Thorne 2019). Such discourses as these both articulate and perpetuate the idea that The Mandalorian is, due to its genre constructions, a spiritual successor to the Original Trilogy and representative of a continuation of Lucas’ creative vision. By invoking Lucas and the Original Trilogy, these discourses seem, in part, intended to validate the practitioners’ genre work on The Mandalorian and the series more generally. The discourses, indeed, imply that the use of the Western to intertextually connect The Mandalorian to the Original Trilogy, and to be faithful to Lucas’ creative vision and his influences, is—self-evidently—an optimal approach. In other words, implicit in these discourses is that Favreau and Filoni’s uses of the Western are how Star Wars should be done. Many fan and journalistic discourses appear to reflect this same mindset by articulating, and positively framing, this genre linking between The Mandalorian and the Original Trilogy. This is evident, for example, in tweets commending The Mandalorian for aligning with Lucas’ creative vision via the use of the Western. For instance, one Twitter user (@ambernoelle, February 9, 2020) applauds Favreau and Filoni for doing that ‘spaghetti western thing that inspired Lucas in the first place’. Another Twitter user (@kjba77, December 16, 2019) also relates The Mandalorian’s use of the Western to the genre’s influence on Lucas and shows their appreciation for this: ‘I love how George Lucas always said western serials were a huge inspiration on Star Wars and now we’re actually getting a Star Wars western serial in THE MANDALORIAN’. Furthermore, some discourses suggest that the uses of the Western genre elevate it as a Star Wars text above previous franchise content. This is apparent in a Tech Radar (White 2019) review of The Mandalorian’s opening episode. The article’s headline claims that The Mandalorian ‘is the space Western Star Wars fans have been waiting for’, implying that a Western-infused Star Wars is something fans both desire and have been deprived of with recent Star Wars content. This position that The Mandalorian is superior to recent Star Wars media due to its application of the Western is made explicit in the social media activity of Star Wars fans. For example, several tweets structure a clear binary between what are perceived as Western-influenced Star Wars content (The Mandalorian and the Original Trilogy) and Lucasfilm’s Prequel and Sequel Trilogy films, which are deemed not to share this influence and are, therefore, inferior.2 For example, one tweet (@_JGGibbster, January 19, 2020) states, ‘George Lucas is an indie filmmaker who liked westerns (the Original Trilogy). The Star Wars 2  The Sequel trilogy comprises the three films that extend the chronology of the Original Trilogy, and which Lucasfilm made following Disney’s acquisition of the company.

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prequels are an opera—and Lucas wasn’t great at opera. The sequels are also opera—still not great. The Mandalorian is a western and that’s why it’s the best post-Disney SW content.’ Regarding The Mandalorian’s improvement on the prequel trilogy specifically, the following tweet (GabbbarSingh, December 25, 2020) makes a similar point: ‘Finished the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy. From a Space western, they converted it to a Video Game. So glad they rescued the franchise from George Lucas. And now Mandalorian has brought the franchise back to life.’ The following tweet (@jonthomasjazz, December 4, 2020) makes a similar argument by reducing fans’ preferences for the Star Wars franchise as a simple equation. According to the tweet, ‘Star Wars is a space western’, and, therefore, fans ‘BOO!’ the prequel and sequel films, as they ‘ARENT space westerns’. However, The Mandalorian ‘does space western stuff’, and, therefore, Star Wars fans say, ‘YAY, we’re pleased!’. These tweets imply, then, that the cultural value of a Star Wars text is contingent on its activation of the Western, and that The Mandalorian resuscitated the franchise by drawing on this genre following the Prequel and Sequel Trilogies’ perceived failure to do so. Putting aside any questions we might have about the accuracy of such genre claims made about the Prequel and Sequel films, these discourses do express the more general cultural orthodoxy that seems to exist around Star Wars and genre. That is, Star Wars is a Western at its core, at its most pure, and that it is preferable for franchise content to adhere to this principle, and The Mandalorian is validated for doing so. Therefore, these fan discourses demonstrate how Lucasfilm has, through The Mandalorian’s genre linking, proved able to benefit from pre-existing cultural assumptions around Star Wars and genre. Even though The Mandalorian has been widely perceived as a Western within media culture, it is important to note that the series has not been universally positioned this way by public discourses. Demonstrating how the genre-labelling of media texts can be a contested process in journalistic and participatory culture, The Mandalorian has also been frequently identified within discourses as adhering to a genre tradition of Japanese samurai films (Anderson 2019; LoreFreak 2020). Indeed, a Twitter debate arose in 2019 concerning whether The Mandalorian should primarily be considered a Western or samurai text, and whether Din Djarin operates in the tradition of a frontier bounty hunter or a wandering ronin (Hellerman 2019). This debate largely results from the two genres being historically entwined, as each of the genres has influenced the other. For example, Akira Kurosawa’s Jidaigeki films often drew on Western influences (Desser 1983; Prince 1999), and, in turn, Kurosawa’s films significantly influenced Westerns, such as Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars, which is an unofficial remake of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961). Therefore, the Twitter debate, in part, reflects how The Mandalorian’s genre references can sometimes be read as simultaneously activating Western and Jidaigeki films (hence this confusion over genre labels). However, despite this apparent lack of consistency within public discourse, this genre contestation has done little to undermine the industrially constructed genre links between The Mandalorian and the Original Trilogy. Those discourses labelling The

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Mandalorian as a samurai narrative also typically identify the influence that the genre had on Lucas when making A New Hope (Anderson 2019; Johnston 2020). Such discourses thereby construct an alternative, but complementary, genre connection between The Mandalorian and the Original Trilogy, thereby furthering transmedia franchise coherence.

Conclusion We showed, with our study of The Mandalorian, how a transmedia franchise extension can be perceived to connect to other texts within its franchise via genre linking. Through being positioned as a Western via narrative text, promotional materials and practitioner discourses, The Mandalorian developed associations with what are regarded as the franchise’s primary texts (the Original Trilogy). We also considered the industrial purpose of this practice, observing how such genre linking can result in distinct and significant meanings. As we saw, by strengthening associations between The Mandalorian and the Original Trilogy, Lucasfilm’s use of the Western lent their Disney+ streaming series legitimacy, thereby apparently elevating its cultural worth. Additionally, in line with the findings of our previous chapter regarding Marvel, our Mandalorian case study demonstrated the potential for journalistic discourses and fan practices to support and contribute to processes of transmedia genre linking. This is evident in the way many fan and journalistic responses affirm how The Mandalorian has been industrially constructed in genre terms. Furthermore, we showed how audiences can positively receive, and highly value, genre linking as a transmedia practice. This is apparent in the way in which fans and journalists have opted to focus on, highlight and enthuse over The Mandalorian’s genre associations, as this chapter revealed. By identifying the potential effectiveness of genre linking as a transmedia practice, we do not mean to suggest that audiences do not still value more obvious means of achieving coherence in relation to a franchise’s fictional universe, such as transmedia storytelling. The rapturous response that met the surprise introduction of Luke Skywalker, the central hero of the Original Trilogy, to the season two finale of The Mandalorian (Towers 2020), clearly indicates that many Star Wars fans continue to enjoy the pleasures of transmedia storytelling. Nevertheless, this chapter demonstrated that genre linking within a given transmedia entertainment  franchise framework can provide audiences with the opportunity to perceive and appreciate unique and significant connections between the content of that franchise. Via the focus on conglomerate-media-owned transmedia entertainment franchises in this and the preceding chapter, we have shown the complex ways in which genre can operate in this context. Firstly, we established how variances in cultural conditions across media can influence genre divergences in entertainment franchises, which can be paratextually mitigated against, as in the case of Marvel. Secondly, we demonstrated how genre linking practices can develop intertextual connections between a given franchise’s texts, as in the case of Star

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Wars. Having established, in our first two case study chapters, how genre functions in media conglomerate environments, we now explore, in the following four chapters, how genre is activated on, and in relation to, specific digital platforms as part of transmedia practices.

References Allen, Nick. 2020. Disney+’s The Mandalorian Makes a Valiant Return in Season Two Opener. RogerEbert.com, October 30. https://www.rogerebert.com/streaming/ star-­wars-­the-­mandalorian-­season-­two-­review. Accessed September 23, 2021. Allen, Robert C. 1985. Speaking of Soap Operas. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Anderson, Charlie Jane. 2013. A Beautifully Animated Open Letter to J.J.  Abrams About Star Wars. Gizmodo, September 26. https://gizmodo.com/a-­beautifully-­ animated-­open-­letter-­to-­j-­j-­abrams-­about-­1397273170. Accessed September 23, 2021. Anderson, Kyle. 2019. The Samurai Movies That Inspired The Mandalorian. Nerdist, November 12. https://nerdist.com/article/mandalorian-­samurai-­movie-­inspiration-­ disney-­plus/. Accessed September 30, 2021. Bandy, Mary Lea, and Kevin Stoehr. 2012. Ride, Boldly Ride. Berkley: University of California Press. Berlatsky, Noah. 2020. A Long Time Ago, on a Ranch Far, Far Away: Star Wars as a Space Western. Tor.com, October 6. https://www.tor.com/2020/10/06/ a-­long-­time-­ago-­on-­a-­ranch-­far-­far-­away-­star-­wars-­as-­a-­space-­western/. Accessed September 23, 2021. Blakely, Rhys. 2013. J. J. Abrams and Star Wars VII. The Times, November 2. https:// www.thetimes.co.uk/article/j-­j-­abrams-­and-­star-­wars-­vii-­0th005msjrs. Accessed September 23, 2021. Bramesco, Charles. 2019. Star Wars: The Mandalorian is Just a Spaghetti Western in Space. The Irish Times, November 13. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-­ radio-­w eb/star-­w ars-­t he-­m andalorian-­i s-­j ust-­a -­s paghetti-­w ester n-­i n-­ space-­1.4081603. Accessed September 23, 2021. Brode, Douglas. 2012. “Cowboys in Space”: Star Wars and the Western Film. In Myth, Media, and Culture in Star Wars: An Anthology, ed. Douglas Brode and Leah Deyneka, 1–12. Lanham: Scarecrow Press. Brook, Dan. 2020. Boba Fett is Back: Temuera Morrison on the Return of a Star Wars Icon. Star Wars, December 9. https://www.starwars.com/news/temuera-­ morrison-­the-­mandalorian-­interview. Accessed September 23, 2021. Carroll, Noël. 1982. ‘The Future of Allusion: Hollywood in the Seventies (and Beyond)’. October 20 (spring), 51–81. Collins, Robert G. 1977. Star Wars: The Pastiche of Myth and the Yearning for a Past Future. The Journal of Popular Culture 9 (1): 1–10. Connelly, Chris, Ashley Riegle, and Anthony Rivas. 2019. The Mandalorian Creator Jon Favreau Talks Show’s Inspiration, “Personal Connection” to Filmmaking. ABC News, November 15. https://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/mandalorian-­ creator-­jon-­favreau-­talks-­shows-­inspiration-­personal/story?id=67023193. Accessed September 23, 2021.

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Desser, David. 1983. Kurosawa’s Eastern “Western”: Sanjuro and the Influence of Shane. Film Criticism 8 (1): 54–65. Disney.com. n.d. Star Wars: The Mandalorian. https://disneyplusoriginals.disney. com/show/the-­mandalorian. Accessed September 23, 2021. Fisher, Kieran. 2019. The Western and Samurai Influences of The Mandalorian. Film School Rejects, December 5. https://filmschoolrejects.com/mandalorian-­ influences/. Accessed September 23, 2021. Gaughan, Liam. 2020. The Texas-Set Westerns That Inspired The Mandalorian. Dallas Observer, November 3. https://www.dallasobserver.com/arts/the-­texas-­set-­ westerns-­that-­inspired-­the-­mandalorian-­11959021. Accessed September 23, 2021. Gray, Jonathan. 2010. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers and Other Media Paratexts. New York: New York University Press. Hale, Mike. 2019. The Mandalorian, a Gunslinger in a Galaxy Far, Far Away. The New  York Times, November 15. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/arts/ television/review-­mandalorian-­disney-­plus.html. Accessed September 23, 2021. Harvey, Colin. 2015. Fantastic Transmedia: Narrative, Play and Memory Across Science Fiction and Fantasy Storyworlds. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Hellerman, Jason. 2019. Is The Mandalorian a Western or a Samurai Show. No Film School, December 13. https://nofilmschool.com/mandalorian-­western-­samurai. Accessed September 30, 2021. Holben, Jay. 2020. The Mandalorian: This is the Way. American Cinematographer, February 6. https://ascmag.com/articles/the-­mandalorian. Accessed September 23, 2021. Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture. New York: New York University Press. Johnston, Dais. 2020. The Mandalorian Finally Did Something Star Wars Has Been Teasing Since a New Hope. Inverse, November 27. https://www.inverse.com/ entertainment/mandalorian-­c hapter-­s eason-­2 -­e pisode-­5 -­s amurai-­i nfluence. Accessed September 30, 2021. Kingkida. 2020. ‘The Mandalorian – Spaghetti Western Trailer (Updated!)’. YouTube (6 January). https://youtu.be/IJH_RbnrGUs. Accessed September, 23, 2021. Kooser, Amanda. 2013. How J.J.  Abrams Can make Star Wars Great Again. Cnet, September 30. https://www.cnet.com/news/how-­j-­j-­abrams-­can-­make-­star-­wars-­ great-­again/. Accessed September 23, 2021. Krutikov Music. 2020. Star Wars: The Mandalorian Theme, WESTERN VERSION, Red Dead Redemption (Season 2 Soundtrack). YouTube, November 20. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZc6EZAt_X8. Accessed September 23, 2021. LoreFreak. 2020. Ahsoka Tano vs Elsbeth The Magistrate, Star Wars: The Mandalorian Akira Kurosawa Tribute. YouTube, December 28. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=wuWFRIViGKQ. Accessed September 30, 2021. McVeigh, Stephen. 2017. Star Wars is a Fantasy Film Firmly Based on America’s Real Conflicts. The Conversation, May 25. https://theconversation.com/star-­wars-­is-­a-­ fantasy-­film-­firmly-­based-­on-­americas-­real-­conflicts-­76098. Accessed September 23, 2021. Mr. G. 2020. 10 Reasons Star Wars: The Mandalorian is a Cowboy Western. YouTube, January 6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VleknshQA3Q. Accessed September 24, 2021. Oatley, Chris. n.d. Dear JJ Abrams: How an Animated Star Wars Fan Film Renewed Hope for the Franchise. ChrisOatley.com. https://chrisoatley.com/dear-­jj-­abrams/. Accessed September 24, 2021.

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Paur, Joey. 2013. 4 Rules to Make STAR WARS Great Again—Animated Open Letter to Abrams. Geeky Tyrant. https://geektyrant.com/news/4-­rules-­to-­make-­star-­ wars-­great-­again-­animated-­open-­letter-­to-­abrams. Accessed September 24, 2021. Phipps, Keith. 2019. The Mandalorian Premiere Recap: A Bounty Hunter Walks into a Bar…. Vulture, November 12. https://www.vulture.com/2019/11/the-­ mandalorian-­recap-­episode-­1-­chapter-­1.html. Accessed September 24, 2021. Prince, Steven. 1999. The Warrior’s Camera: The Cinema of Akira Kurosawa. Revised and expanded ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Rinzler, J.W. 2010. The Making of The Empire Strikes Back: The Definitive Story Behind the Film. New York: Del Ray Ballantine Books. Sherlock, Ben. 2020. The Mandalorian: 10 Times the Show Referenced Classic Movies. Screen Rant, December 9. https://screenrant.com/mandalorian-­cinematic-­ influences-­references-­disney-­plus-­star-­wars-­show/. Accessed September 24, 2021. Silverman, David S., and Douglas Brode. 2020. The Western Didn’t Die It Just Went Off-World. In The Twenty-First Century Western: New Riders of the Cinematic Stage, ed. Douglas Brode and Shea T. Brode, 259–268. Lanham: Lexington Books. Singer, Matt. 2019. The Mandalorian is Definitely a Western. And Not Just One Specific Kind. Screen Crush, December 6. https://screencrush.com/the-­ mandalorian-­episode-­5-­recap/. Accessed September 24, 2021. Stein, Louise Ellen, and Kristina Busse. 2012. Introduction: the Literary, Televisual and Digital Adventures of a Beloved Detective, in Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom, edited by Louisa Ellen Stein and Kristina Busse, 9–24. Jefferson: McFarland. The Oregonian. 2015. Four Rules to make Star Wars Great Again. YouTube, December 15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZndaefxVOSs. Accessed September 24, 2021. Thorne, Will. 2019. The Mandalorian: Jon Favreau and Pedro Pascal on Creating a Western on Steroids. Variety, November 11. https://variety.com/2019/tv/features/the-­mandalorian-­jon-­favreau-­pedro-­pascal-­western-­1203399015/. Accessed September 24, 2021. Topel, Fred. 2019. The Mandalorian Composer Luwig Goransson on How His Score Gives the Title Character a Face [Interview]. /Film, December 2. https://www.slashfilm.com/570796/the-­m andalorian-­c omposer-­i nterview/. Accessed September 24, 2021. Towers, Andrea. 2020. This Famous Jedi Showed Up in The Mandalorian and Fans Have Lost Their Minds. The Wrap, December 18. https://www.thewrap.com/ famous-­j edi-­s howed-­u p-­m andalorian-­s eason-­2 -­f inale-­f ans-­l ost-­t heir-­m inds/. Accessed September 24, 2021. White, James. 2019. The Mandalorian is the Space Western Star Wars Fans Have Been Waiting For. Tech Radar, November 13. https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/ the-­mandalorian-­review. Accessed September 24, 2021. Wickman, Forrest. 2015. Star Wars is a Postmodern Masterpiece. Slate, December 13. http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/cover_story/2015/12/star_wars_is_a_pastiche_ how_george_lucas_combined_flash_gordon_westerns.html. Accessed September 24, 2021. Young, Bryan. 2012. The Cinema Behind Star Wars: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. Star Wars, December 17. https://www.starwars.com/news/the-­cinema-­behind-­ star-­wars-­the-­good-­the-­bad-­and-­the-­ugly. Accessed September 24, 2021. ———. 2015. The Cinema Behind Star Wars: The Searchers. Star Wars, April 27. https://www.starwars.com/news/the-­c inema-­b ehind-­s tar-­w ars-­t he-­s earchers. Accessed September 24, 2021.

PART II

Digital Platforms

CHAPTER 4

Transmedia Horror: Netflix, Genre Empowerment and Stranger Things

Introduction Back in July 2019, when the third season of Stranger Things had been released on Netflix, the series’ official Twitter account posted a meme. The post was captioned ‘the three moods while watching this season’, which came before an image of the characters Hopper (David Harbour), Alexei (Alec Utgoff) and Joyce (Winona Ryder), all gazing into the distance. Each of the characters are expressing a different emotion—Hooper dread, Alexei joy and Joyce shock— and each of them has the word ‘me’ plastered over their chest. This meme works as more than a humorous acknowledgement of how Stranger Things takes its audience on an emotional journey. It is also an example of the kind of self-referential, postmodern reworking of the horror genre that is possible in the age of streaming and social media. More than that, it points to how social media allows people to creatively reflect on their reactions to horror. This chapter—the first of four to examine how the industrial, technological and participatory properties of particular digital platforms come together to (re)shape a specific genre as it flows, augments and mutates across multiple media—examines the impact of Netflix on reshaping the horror genre. Focusing on elements of streaming, including Netflix’s digital interface on the Netflix Official Site, and the social media channels linked to this site, the chapter looks exclusively at online content. First, we consider the Netflix-produced Stranger Things itself, paying particular attention to the role of genre in how the series is presented on the Netflix interface. Second, we look at Beyond Stranger Things, an aftershow also produced by and streamed on Netflix, exploring this series as a streamed extension of the horror genre. And finally, we analyse the official Stranger Things social media, in this case paying particular attention to Twitter and its user-led meme- and GIF-making that tend to support and accompany the series online. Analysing these kinds of social media practices as an inherent part of online television recognises the cultural and infrastructural © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Freeman, A. N. Smith, Transmedia/Genre, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15583-3_4

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transformation of television in a transmedia context, where ‘the “goggle box” in the corner of the living room [is transformed] into a multifaceted site of media entertainment’ (Johnson 2019: 2). Specifically, we argue that as audiences move between and within these online sites of media entertainment, intertextual references to—in this case— horror-inflected film and literature from the 1980s establish sites for cast, crew and fans to dissect and recreate the horrors of the television series in new ways. We will show how Netflix determines this conception of transmedia horror, exploring its approach to tagging content that transcends medium, year of release and so on. Conceiving of transmedia horror as genre empowerment for the multiplatform audience, we discuss how streaming and its on-demand (as opposed to live, temporally organised) interface orchestrates not a horror entertainment across platforms, but rather the reactional fallout of those involved. Which is to say that, by re-constructing horror as intertext—sometimes textually, sometimes paratextually and sometimes textually within paratexts—Netflix shifts the key preconception of horror, that is to be scared, and replaces it with referential portals that channel how audiences respond to and participate with horror.

Conceptualising Netflix The contemporary television landscape is becoming increasingly characterised by streaming and other online strategies that allow access to television content via laptops, tablets and smartphones. In some ways, the technologies via which we now engage with television content disentangle the watching of television from any particular temporality. Television, traditionally, is a collection of segments of content brought together into a larger whole and guided by an ever-­ present, though invisible, time-based organisational structure. Streaming services such as Netflix, however, shatter television’s liveness and the time-­ based structure described by Gripsrud (1998) and Carroll (2003). Sarah Arnold (2016: 51) is one of many scholars to explain how Netflix provides a substantially different viewing experience to linear television insofar as it presents not ‘a fixed linear flow of content, [but rather] a finite catalogue of content from which the viewer selects’. Yet Netflix operates within a television industry that equally adopts inherently transmedial approaches to distribution that augment televisual experiences across platforms. As Elizabeth Evans (2018) argues, transmediality is entirely predicated on the strategically organised relationships amongst multiple platforms, with transmedia television often timed to complement linear programming (Freeman 2019). This chapter will consider this contradiction head-on, further exploring what kind of relationship Netflix creates across its digital interfaces, and what role horror as a generic construct plays within this relationship. Or to put it another way, if the relationship between Netflix content and, say, its social media channels is not a temporally organised one, then what kind of relationship is it? Jowett and Abbott (2013) have previously examined how televisuality reshapes horror genre, mapping how familiar generic set pieces are extended

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into serial narratives. But how do ‘individual consumer choice, atomized reception, and customizable interfaces’ (Kompare 2005: 198) further reshape workings of the genre? Answering this question first means thinking about Netflix as a global library, one with questionable allusions of choice for the audience. For, as Mareike Jenner (2016: 260) writes, ‘Netflix … offers a large online library of film and TV in North and South America, the Caribbean, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Netherlands’. Technologically speaking, Netflix is best conceptualised as a digital library. Since 2007, its entire approach to content production and distribution has been predicated on a business model based on individual subscribers who can, by entering this digital library, watch any and all of this content, when and wherever they choose. It is a result of this library construct that Daniel Smith-­ Rowsey (2016: 64) discusses Netflix ‘as a re-definition of genre, genre being a core aspect of Netflix’s business model and projected appeal to consumer’. For example, he discusses ‘how regular people define “Classics” may evolve because Netflix currently includes films from the twenty-first century’ under this classification (2016: 21). The point here is that the specific choices made by Netflix when categorising its library of content—that is which genre categories are privileges over others, which tags it employs and which films or television series it assigns to these categories at a given time—‘to some degree reconstitutes what Netflix’s sixty million users think when they think of film and TV’, and indeed when they think of a particular genre (Smith-Rowsey 2016: 67). This question of how the digital library interface of Netflix and its choice of semantics informs genre construction will be explored shortly in terms of categorising Stranger Things as horror. It is true that the Netflix interface offers a finite catalogue of choice for the user, a set of recommendations that audiences can navigate and browse. But equally there is a structure to this navigation, an algorithm that dictates which content is grouped with others, how this grouped content is then ordered and ultimately presented to a given viewer. Again this system is based on genre tagging, and later on we will explore what the divergence in tagging between Stranger Things and Beyond Stranger Things means in terms of evoking a stable genre. Importantly, scholars including Arnold (2016: 59) have argued against the idea of Netflix being conceptualised as a portal of choice, insisting that ‘although Netflix’s brand identity centers on notions of user choice, its algorithms work to actively negate choice’: Human agency is infringed on through the discreet operations of the PRS [personalisation, recommendation and search] functionality, which masks its own operations. The user’s ability to act, to determine among the totality of the Netflix service and without reference to their profile, is impeded. The PRS commandeers choice so that the user will not experience the burden of self-definition and autonomy. Netflix acts so that the user does not have to. Human agency, here, is posited as an encumbrance, something best surrendered so that the user

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is not overwhelmed with uncertainty and, in the worst case, indecision. (Arnold 2016: 59)

Arnold’s characterisation of Netflix as the negation of choice is an idea that has been picked up by Smith-Rowsey (2016: 65), who coins the term intentional instability to describe the way in which the streaming platform operates on an uneasy, combustible balance between ‘a user’s taste and Netflix’s authority to create that user’s taste’. As Smith-Rowsey (2016: 65) explains: ‘Netflix maintains an algorithm of what its users prefer, but then intentionally offers content that both follows and subverts that algorithm’. In other words, Netflix’s algorithm works to provide users with variations on sameness—recommending certain kinds of content to users, based on similarities of genre tags. And with regards to notions of genre, then, one might say that Netflix’s algorithmic structure works in much the same way as classical genre production, which similarly is based on the cumulative effect determined by the replication of both textual modes—narrative, thematic and iconographic—and paratextual modes, namely discourse. Barry Keith Grant (1986: vi) famously theorised genre as itself the production of variation on sameness, noting that ‘stated simple, genre movies are those commercial feature films which, through repetition and variation, tell familiar stories with familiar characters in familiar situations’. There are thus interesting conceptual implications for understanding the textual and paratextual modes of the horror genre in the age of Netflix. How, for instance, does the former’s typical depiction of ‘a world filled with chaos’ (Boggs and Pollard 2003: 163) play out across the intentional instability of Netflix, pushing its users in clear directions? This question will be explored shortly, as will the kinds of creative practices pursued on Netflix’s Stranger Things Twitter page, analysing these practices in terms of what they bring to a construction and discourse of horror. Streaming platforms are often said to threaten the universal experience of television’s social function. Arnold (2016: 55), for example, discusses how streaming’s lack of liveness creates a ‘type of knowledge produced by Netflix [that] works to negate the sense of a public, of a socially shared experience’. Yet moments of socialising can and do occur online, as one’s viewing behaviour is tweeted or shared on Facebook. Online audiences are still likely to discuss and share their viewing experiences, even if these experiences are not synchronised (Jenner 2018). For example, Stranger Things is one of the most tweeted-about television shows around, with the second series generating more than 3.7 million tweets in just three days, itself breaking a Twitter record (Wagmeister 2017). As such, perhaps a more productive way of reconciling the atomised reception and personalised choice of Netflix with the communicative sharing of social media is to consider the emotional and psychological behaviour of binge-­ watching Netflix content. Zachery Snider (2016: 117–118) has studied how binge-watching has the potential to ‘modify patterns of behaviour … to bring about enduring and emotional behavioural change’. This means that regardless of whether viewers watch alone or with others, the binge-worthy shows for

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which Netflix is famous ‘demand a high degree of engagement, a form of participation whereby viewers interact with the story world in order to discern complex plot and character development’ (Snider 2016: 118). Beyond plot and character, the final part of this chapter will look at how the participatory affordances of Netflix’s social media provide audiences with opportunities to not only congregate and gain emotional support, but also reshape complex forms of genre to their liking, engaging in creative, collaborative online practices as a way to essentially channel their own emotions triggered by bingeing a Netflix horror series. Let’s, then, now explore how Netflix reshapes our understandings of horror as a genre, including its technological status as a digital library, its balancing of taste and authority and the participatory way in which it inspires emotional behavioural change.

Constructing Horror Matt Hills (2005) once noted that, due to the scheduling, regulation and marketing patterns of broadcast television, horror was largely invisible on television, often identified as something else. Fast forward a decade and Hills’ claim is no longer true—a transformation that is linked to all kinds of complex industrial developments involving cable channel practices alongside the rise of streaming. Indeed, the past decade has witnessed a sustained resurgence of horror on American television, exemplified by the success of True Blood (2008–2014), The Walking Dead (2010–), American Horror Story (2011–) and of course Stranger Things (2016–), amongst others. Stranger Things, first released on Netflix in 2016, represents horror for the digital streaming age—a product of ‘the convergence between feature film and high-end TV drama production’ (Dunleavy 2017: 45). And such a convergence between media breeds the potential for intertextuality between these media. Created by the Duffer Brothers, Stranger Things is set in the 1980s and plays as an intertextual homage to the popular culture of that decade, in particular the works of John Carpenter, Steven Spielberg and Stephen King. Intertextually—itself describing purposeful references within a text to other texts—harks back to Roland Barthes (1977) and, most explicitly, Julia Kristeva (1980), who argues that multiple media texts exist and operate in relation to others. Barthes similarly argues that a media text is ‘a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings … blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations’ (1977: 48). By way of example, Stranger Things’ status as an intertextual homage to the horror and science fiction films and literature of the 1980s is evoked immediately by the series’ title sequence. The introduction features a sharp neon red outline of the letters merging together to form the title, known as kinetic typography. The title sequence was inspired by Richard Greenberg who designed sequences for Alien (1979) and The Goonies (1985) amongst other notable films from the 1980s (Griffiths 2017). The moving of the letters is suggestively reminiscent of the supernatural and evokes the horror elements

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of the series’ genre. Essentially, the title sequence creates a mood that represents the series as a whole: it is mystical, dark and ominous. These terms could also be applied to describe the covers of any number of Stephen King novels, which were in fact given to the series’ creative director as inspiration for the title design, inspiring a use of intertextuality. Looking beyond the sorts of playful intertextual references within this series itself (see Tallerico’s recent article in The New York Times for a ‘guide’ to these references (2019)), it can be argued that conceiving of horror as intertext allows us to make sense of the role of genre within Netflix’s technological construct as a digital library. For instance, by asserting ‘a kind of capitalist-driven postmodernism’ (Smith-Rowsey 2016: 67), Netflix’s status as a global producer, distributor and exhibitor of digital content—mixing its own original content with a range of films and television series from other studios and networks, from diverse eras—provides the streaming platform with a unique model for directing content to audiences. Based on individual user data that is algorithmically weighted, particular genres are displayed to the user as a row on their home screen. As Reed Hastings, CEO of Netflix, explains: ‘Members connect with these rows so well that we measure on increase in member retention by placing the most tailored rows higher on the page instead of lower’ (Murgia 2016). Thus films and television series that belong to specific genres, each coded as such via Netflix’s tagging system that literally makes them more visible on the user interface, help to establish a genre-led framing device for how Stranger Things is presented to audiences. There is an innate intertextuality to Netflix, then, not just in the textual references in the series of Stranger Things itself, but also in the paratextual way that the films and series that surround Stranger Things on Netflix’s online interface function as intertexts. Jonathan Gray’s (2010) concept of the paratext—itself describing the kind of intertextual forms found in the fuzzy threshold between television series and the promotional materials around them—lies between products and by-­ products, and between content and promotion. Paratexts—such as ‘film publicity, posters, fanzine articles, interviews with stars, promotional stunts, etc.’ (Bennett and Woollacott 1987: 248)—create meaning and organise expectations about what a television series is, how we relate to it, why we are engaged by it and so on. Paratextual framing thus has significant implications for genre, of course, but these expectation-setting sites take on particular intertextual meanings when on a streaming site. For example, the series description that is listed on the Stranger Things Netflix Official Site reads: ‘This nostalgic nod to ‘80s sci-fi and horror classics has earned 31 Emmy nominations, including two for Outstanding Drama’. Significantly, located next to this series description is a tab to ‘More Like This’ recommendations, where a number of these horror classics are presented to users as suggested viewing, such as The Thing (1982). By promoting content that the platform distributes but did not produce, Netflix is thus able to better market the content it did. This strategy has been discussed before (see Jenner 2018), but the framing of Stranger Things in this

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way—amidst other films, past and present—is key to promoting Stranger Things as a multiplatform product, that is as an online hybrid mixing textual pasts with a digital future, instilled with expectations of individualised consumption and reception. Genre, in this case, is therefore re-crafted as something that is actually rather ahistorical in how it blends multiple kinds of production contexts, historical eras and media forms together. Netflix helps to refute Jane Feuer’s (1992) notion of a ‘life cycle’ of genre, that is the idea that genres go through phases of popularity before becoming ‘dormant’ or disappearing entirely. Instead, Netflix reinforces Altman’s (1999: 62) argument that ‘in the genre world, however, every day is Jurassic Park day’, meaning that ‘genres can be cross-­ fertilised at any time with any genre that ever existed’ (Smith-Rowsey 2016: 69). More than that, Netflix’s use of genre as intertext thus mirrors the atemporality of streaming services and their innate shattering of television’s liveness and time-based organisational structure. This crafting of horror intertexts as an ahistorical framing device for evoking and marketing genre to audiences is a consistent strategy across the Stranger Things Netflix Official Site. Horror is ‘predicated on the interruption and destabilization of normality, replacing safety, norms and depictions of the status quo with representations of danger, abnormality and violence’ (Jowett and Abbott 2013: 44). Consider how these textual modes of horror—narrative, thematic and iconographic—are communicated on the Stranger Things Netflix Official Site. As of 2019 this page contains a header image of the series’ child stars, all huddled together as they stare in fright at a threat that remains unseen to the audience. Below this image is a brief description of the series: ‘When a young boy vanishes, a small town uncovers a mystery involving secret experiments, terrifying supernatural forces and one strange little girl’. Note the use of language here that sets up a destabilisation of normality, replacing safety with threats of abnormality and danger, as Jowett and Abbott (2013) write. The textual expectations of horror as the destabilisation of normality in favour of danger are quite similarly baked into the episode synopses further down the Stranger Things Netflix Official Site. Chapter 1, for example, titled ‘The Vanishing of Will Byers’, reads: ‘One his way home from a friend’s house, young Will sees something terrifying. Nearby, a sinister secret lurks in the depths of a government lab.’ Chapter 2, titled ‘The Weirdo on Maple Street’, is similar in its use of horror-inflected syntax: ‘Lucas, Mike and Dustin try to talk to the girl they found in the woods. Hopper questions an anxious Joyce about an unsettling phone call.’ Accompanying these synopses are thumbnail images for all episodes that, for the most part, are visually dark, shadowy and feature characters frozen in moments of fright or shock. The chosen images act as almost ‘literal representations of fear and claustrophobia’, as James Francis Jr. (2013: 9) characterises of horror more generally. If these horror cues are not made apparent enough, then the Stranger Things Netflix Official Site ends with an explicit listing of the series’ genre tags (‘TV Thrillers’, ‘Horror Programmes’ etc.), before declaring: ‘This programme is …

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Ominous, Scary, Exciting’. Thus in evoking horror’s most classical of narrative, thematic and iconographic cues, and doing so in such an ahistorical manner, genre itself becomes less of the ideological construction once theorised by Robin Wood (1976), who famously emphasised the specificity of personal authorship and social context in making sense of a genre. In the digital terrain of Netflix’s global library, at least, genres are no longer socially formed but only technologically formed.

Reflecting on Horror Netflix’s construction of genre may be technologically formed at the level of user interface, but that is not to say that the cultural factors associated with technology do not impact it elsewhere. In fact, Stranger Things exemplifies how the horror genre can be extended within and across the same digital platform, itself reflective of today’s multiplatform environment. Perhaps the most notable—or at least immediate—example of Stranger Things being extended across the same platform is Beyond Stranger Things, an aftershow for the main series, also streamed on Netflix. The aftershow, consisting of seven episodes, was launched alongside the release of the second season. It is primarily a cast show, showing behind-the-scenes of the main series’ production and filming, featuring the cast and producers in a talk show format. Earlier we pointed to Smith-Rowsey’s idea of intentional instability as a way of characterising Netflix’s algorithmic balance between ‘a user’s taste and Netflix’s authority to create that user’s taste’ (2016: 65). We will now examine what this algorithm means in terms of extending the experience of horror from one piece of streamed content to another. But it is also important to consider the impact of Netflix’s distribution of Beyond Stranger Things in reshaping the meaning of horror. For Beyond Stranger Things is no ordinary aftershow. Indeed, unlike almost all other aftershows or companion talk shows whose episodes are broadcast straight after individual episodes of their parent series, all seven episodes of Beyond Stranger Things were released on Netflix on the same day as the entirety of Stranger Things season 2. Interestingly, while the intentional instability of Netflix works to push Stranger Things viewers in the direction of Beyond Stranger Things, it does not do so until viewers have finished watching all of season 2. It is at that stage that Netflix auto-queues the first episode of the aftershow to start immediately. Such was the message of the Beyond Stranger Things press release, too, which explicitly advised audiences ‘not to start watching Beyond Stranger Things until after they have finished watching the entire new season of the drama’ (Sandberg 2017). Most live-­ broadcast aftershows—such as Talking Dead, AMC’s aftershow companion to The Walking Dead (2010–)—share a sense of immediacy that often leads to more emotional interviews and in-the-moment audience reactions to the narrative events depicted in whatever the latest episode of the series is (see Freeman 2019). In contrast and as Wired magazine’s Angela Watercutter (2017) writes of Beyond Stranger Things: ‘After-shows aren’t an asynchronous institution;

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they follow an episode in order to capitalize on whatever residual WTF-ness you’re feeling when the credits roll. … Beyond Stranger Things can’t do that’ (Watercutter 2017). What, then, does Beyond Stranger Things tell us about the practice of extending horror in the context of streaming? The first thing to reiterate here is the significance of what Smith-Rowsey (2016: 67) described earlier as Netflix’s ‘capitalist-driven postmodernism’. This remark was more than a throwaway description, and actually goes to the heart of how scholars such as Jenner (2018) have theorised Netflix. In general, and amongst other characteristics, the postmodern tends to blur distinctions between high and low culture; in postmodern architecture, for example, buildings incorporate both historical and contemporary details and styles. The postmodern has real significance for the horror genre, too, with scholars such as Isabel Cristina Pinedo (2004) previously analysing how the abolishment of binaries operates as an underlying trait of the postmodern horror film. For Pinedo (2004: 86), ‘the universe of the contemporary horror film, including Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and Halloween (1978), is an uncertain one in which good and evil, normality and abnormality, reality and illusion become virtually indistinguishable’. Written well before the dawn of streaming, of course, Pinedo’s description of postmodern horror could just as easily be used to describe how the Netflix platform works to make diverse forms of content virtually indistinguishable from one another. With Beyond Stranger Things, a chat-based aftershow, playing automatically come the end of the fictional horrors of Stranger Things, Netflix creates the most natural of digital extensions via its intentional instability. However, Netflix’s postmodern abolishment of boundaries does come at a price in terms of genre construction. Beyond Stranger Things is a perfect exemplar of how the above-mentioned technological forming of genre as a digital library works to steer users towards particular content. Still, there are discrepancies in how this content is tagged generically. Note, for instance, that the ‘Horror Programmes’ tag disappears from the Beyond Stranger Things Netflix Official Site. Its aftershow format means that for all intents and purposes, it is not horror, despite its status as an aftershow creating an intertextual relationship with its parent series. To put it simple, Beyond Stranger Things changes the experience of horror. For one thing, the sites created to extend a horror experience in ways that are naturally suited to the digital era—such as a streamed, auto-queued aftershow—give audiences a chance to escape the immediate confines of a horror scenario. As established earlier, horror worlds are characteristically fixed, rigid and claustrophobic; their stories typically present an ‘ominous atmosphere of ruination’ (Worland 2007: 11). Yet Beyond Stranger Things, rather than extending the claustrophobia, fixity and emotional trauma of experiencing, say, a character’s death, instead explains how said character’s death was conceived or changed throughout production. In the case of Bob Newby (Sean Astin), for example, the aftershow discusses how the actor helped to develop Bob into more than a single-episode character, helping to change which character was

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scripted to kill him. Conceptually, then, a series like Beyond Stranger Things provides its audiences with a break from the intensity of consuming horror— offering a kind of emotional respite. Just like we now have multiple platforms that are able to extend a fictional story across devices, these same platforms can also work to recalibrate the emotional behaviours of audiences. But as well as allowing audiences to escape from horror, it is equally apparent that as a streaming-based online extension, Beyond Stranger Things also provides audiences with answers to horror. We can thus observe a discernible shift in the make-up of the genre, transformed from being ‘the most psychological of genres’ (Francis Jr. 2013: 9) to being rationalised across formats. Indeed, the abolishment of borders on a technological level between Stranger Things and Beyond Stranger Things—even with their differences in terms of generic tagging—altogether shifts the meaning and function of what horror actually is. We are talking about a shift in emotional behavioural change, then. Horror is largely based on the primal and the irrational; Robin Wood (1986: 90) once said that the horror film invokes ‘the authentic quality of the nightmare’. We jump or shout when we see a horror film even though we know it is not true because it taps into a primal instinct. The scariness of these fictional moments supersedes our rational thought process that knows they are not real. In other words, a preconception of horror is to not explain the evil, for as Dean (2015) notes: The genre of horror is rooted in the unknown. It’s what makes a scary movie scary to begin with. We don’t know what lurks behind the closet door. Nobody can figure out why all of the children in town are acting strange. That guy with the machete and hockey mask that just killed your best friend? Okay, that’s scary, but why did he do it and where did he come from? … Fear in horror stems from questions, but the answers paradoxically make that fear vanish.

And yet explaining the source of the evil, making the unknown known again, is precisely the function of Beyond Stranger Things in extending the experience of Stranger Things. It is even stated as such in the description of the series on the Netflix Official Site: ‘Secrets from the Stranger Things 2 universe are revealed as cast and guests discuss the latest episodes with host Jim Rash. Caution: spoilers ahead!’. In one episode, for example, it is revealed that, in one of season 2’s most powerful and shocking moments, Eleven’s (Millie Bobbie Brown) blowing out of the cabin windows—glass shattering everywhere—was not achieved digitally, but was instead a practical stunt based on painstaking set planning. Today’s culture of binge-watching, then—itself about gaining and mastering knowledge (Smith 2018)—points to how audiences can find pause from the emotional manipulations of a genre, as horror’s innate destabilisation of safety here becomes meticulously re-stabilised. More than that, it also hints at how audiences can start to exert more control and power over how that genre plays out.

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Playing with Horror Indeed, if Netflix-bound extensions provide audiences with opportunities to escape the terror of horror, then the participatory channels of social media only further impact how the horror genre is becoming recalibrated in a transmedia landscape. Much has been written about the importance of social media in transmedia dynamics. Carlos A. Scolari et al. (2018: 49) argue that social media is ‘the entrance point for transmedia fandom, lending a more dynamic television experience based on conversations and, importantly, on those conversations being sustained over time’ (see also Mittell 2015; Cascajosa Virino 2016). Migration to social media channels provides audiences with different opportunities to connect not only with other audiences but also with the marketing teams of their favourite series, who may initiate these conversations to encourage engagement (Proulx and Shepatin 2012). With some fans embracing live-­ tweeting and GIF-making, for example, social media has become an integral component of transmediality, with Netflix promoting such activity themselves through links to social media included as part of its interface, ‘channeling user interaction with TV content’ (Association of Internet Researchers 2014: 1). But beyond fandom alone, how may we understand the relationship between social media, a streaming service and the active recalibration of the horror genre? Much has been written about how viewers now access television on their own schedules, but we also need to consider how the broad circulation of images on social media, each grabbed from media works and re-contextualised, might impact the perception of a genre. Moreover, earlier we cited Snider’s claim that binge-watching can ‘modify patterns of behaviour … to bring about enduring and emotional behavioural change’ (2016: 117–118). And so if horror is, as James Francis Jr. (2013: 9) suggests, ‘the most psychological of genres’, then what happens when binge-watching, social media and horror all come together? What emotional behavioural change is encouraged when engaging with the most psychological of genres? Engaging with this particular question means thinking about social media as intertext, and how the technological and participatory affordances of these channels reconstruct horror textually within paratexts—creating wholly new texts on paratextual sites. Intertextuality can of course be more than mere references; it can also expand those references into something more. And in seeing intertextuality as itself an expansion of meaning across different texts and platforms, as Lesnik-Oberstein (2004) also proposes, intertextuality creates a scenario where meaning may be built in relation not only to the individual text in question but also in relation to a range of other media that may be invoked in the reading process. With social media, too, the creative, participatory behaviour of audiences opens up rich avenues to (re)create meaning in relation to all kinds of other sources, allowing audiences and media producers alike to more easily reshape and adjust the meaning of genre. It is here, then, where our conception of transmedia horror as affording genre empowerment for the multiplatform audience becomes most meaningful.

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So what do we mean by this term? Most simply, through links to the likes of Twitter located on the Stranger Things Netflix Official Site, Netflix promotes and provides the fandom of Stranger Things with a clear intertextual structure for allowing users to deal with the emotions of horror through participatory culture and its creative practices. Sometimes, for example, it is the official @ Stranger_Things Twitter account that provides users with the kind of reassurance that horror customarily denies, referencing earlier Stranger Things scenes in less horrific circumstances. Consider the following example: in 2019, Netflix re-tweeted a behind-the-scenes video that arguably works to stabilise the innate psychological emotions of terror that may be experienced during the act of watching the Stranger Things series. This particular re-tweet, originally posted by See What’s Next (a Netflix news account), featured a 10-second video showing the intricate camera rig, green screen technology and technical prowess that was used to shoot a scene from season 3 where Eleven falls through a void. Whereas the original scene was intentionally designed to be traumatic for Eleven and thus evoked visceral feelings of horror for the audience, the behind-­ the-­scenes re-tweet video effectively undermines the horror by reminding users of the safety and control of production. In effect, then, social media is here behaving in a similar way as Beyond Stranger Things. Consider another case, though—this time a seven-second video posted by the @Stranger_Things Twitter team themselves. This video was a montage of the Stranger Things characters, taken from disparate moments from various episodes, all screaming frantically. The post was tagged ‘last 4 brain cells’, triggering a large string of user comments that, for the most part, offered witty asides of individuals reflecting ironically on the apparent terror and horror of watching Stranger Things. ‘This is me after watching last season’, one user wrote, to which another user replied, again in reference to the montage of streaming: ‘Me after watching season 3 in a day then realising the next season won’t be out for years’. In effect, and while a fairly simple example, the highly de-contextualised circulation of these kinds of social media posts plays a hugely transformational role in terms of reshaping a genre. Elsewhere, and in reference to the GIFs produced about Twin Peaks, Jennifer Gillan (2016: 11) argues that social media ‘works toward making Twin Peaks more mainstream by allowing the images to exist and be appreciated outside of the serial narrative’. Meanwhile, the case of Stranger Things indicates a different story: back in 2005 Hills had said that due to the industrial and regulatory affordances of television, horror was largely invisible on the medium, with the genre identified as something else. Now, it is the technological and participatory affordances of social media that have made horror, if not invisible as such, then certainly represented on these platforms as something else. Specifically, horror’s customary absence of explanation in terms of where its evil comes from or how it works is at odds with the participatory nature of social media, where once terrifying scenes can be shared, dissected and discussed with others. Conversation, one might argue, breeds comfort out of discomfort.

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More significantly, it is notable that these intertextual Twitter posts exemplify how social media creates a space for users to deal, psychologically, with the emotional unease of consuming horror through participatory culture and its shared, conversational affordances. This is especially true in more creative participatory practices, such as user-led GIF-making. How, though, do these forms adjust the meaning of horror as a genre? As will now be shown, we can think of GIFs as a wonderful demonstration of how a genre is transformed in the age of media convergence: in this case, through the use of intertextual references to past horror films, users can essentially reassert their control over the once uncontrollable horror genre. GIFs, as Jesse Walker (2014) explains, ‘are tiny snippets from movies and TV, ripped from one context and plugged into another’ so that they function as ‘a disposable little gag to stick in a Tumblr post or a BuzzFeed article’. Gillan (2016: 12) calls GIF-making a form of ‘textural poaching’, which ‘involves repurposing top-of-the-mind textural content—a series’ most arresting elements of costuming, set design, and dialogue—and posting it to a visual interface’. Textural poaching is terminology that builds on Henry Jenkins’ (1992) seminal theory about fans who poach media content in order to rework it within their own creative productions. The aforementioned @Stranger_Things Twitter account regularly retweets GIFs created by users. While a good proportion of these are character-oriented, it is notable how many of these GIFs are also rooted in or aim to capture an essence of horror from the series. For example, popular Stranger Things GIFs include 3-second clips that, in terms of textual modes, certainly evoke the iconography of horror: shots of fearful hands reaching into the darkness, or of a child walking through an empty house, or of a strobe-lit Demogorgon monster. Though literarily posting an ephemeral version of the scenes that likely terrified them, the users creating these GIFs paratextually change the meaning of the scenes into something comedic, and deliberately so. GIFs, after all, operate on the principle of repetition, looping 3-second clips. And ‘repetition arguably dulls the horror of [its own] iconography’, Jowett and Abbott (2013: 30) write, as ‘it also allows for comedy through variation’. For example, dulling horror through the comedy of repetition and variation is at the heart of one of the most re-tweeted GIFs to accompany Stranger Things’ second season in 2017. In said GIF, a scene depicting the Stranger Thing protagonists, lying in the grass screaming demonically is spliced next to a scene from Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), as Donald Sutherland’s Dr Bennell reacts manically to a very different horror in that film. Juxtaposed together, on a loop, the horror of both sequences is replaced with a clip that essentially illustrates a rather crazed-looking man pointing crazily at seemingly excited children. In some ways, the GIF is another example of how crafting horror as intertext creates an ahistorical framing device for meaning-making. Textually speaking, too, the meaning-making potential of repetition is central to the kinds of repeat viewing practices associated with both Stranger Things and Netflix more generally, given the latter’s status as a digital library of

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streamed content. For as Trisha Dunleavy (2017: 148) argues: ‘Important to the narrative and aesthetic complexity of Stranger Things is the expectation that viewers will re-watch its text so as to mine it for additional understandings’. In the case of the GIF, however, this is not so much a work of pastiche as it is a complete repurposing of horror; this kind of GIF exemplifies perfectly how users are now taking action against the psychological and emotional ordeals that horror conventionally inflicts upon its audiences. Most significant of all is the fact that the references to classic horror films in many of the GIFs on Netflix’s Stranger Things Twitter feed are almost never in the context or with the aim of scaring people. Instead, the intertextual references to horror’s back catalogue retain the iconography of the original moment of horror but strip it of its narrative and thematic context. Essentially, the success of the GIF is in its ability to almost instantly reformulate horror into a pastiche of textual pasts whose screen terrors become emotionally distanced from the lives of users. Gillan (2016: 14), in this vein, writes that ‘the fact that GIFs are detached from the original context from which they take their textual meaning matters less in fan spaces where everyone has a deep familiarity with the source, but is more significant when the images get scooped up and re-circulated by interfaces like Google Images’. Indeed, the likes of earlier film publicity, posters and fanzine articles may have allowed fictions to exist in the gaps in-between their textual exploits, but social media now sees the horror genre fully escaping its preconceived thematic and narrative constraints; the construction of terror, dread and fear so integral to the genre is now very quickly deconstructed with little more than a smartphone. For as Stine Lomborg and Mette Mortensen (2017: 7) rightly conclude: ‘Cross-media use is not only a question of the availability of communication sources. It also concerns the users’ orchestration of the media menu to select, consume, share and take action on information.’ Thinking in such cross-medial terms, then, the horror genre is now operating at a time where audiences can—and indeed do—reassert at least some degree of control over the once uncontrollable genre of horror. The customisable interface of Netflix combined with the participatory affordances of social media mean that horror remains on the one hand an even more inward and individual genre than it did before, with the streaming platform’s promotion of what Kompare (2005: 198) described earlier as ‘atomized reception and customizable interfaces’ perfectly in line with ‘the most psychological of genres’ (Francis Jr. 2013: 9). But equally horror has become thoroughly reimagined through the social media platforms linked to Netflix, offering spaces for audiences to react to, comment on, play with and even deal with the emotional aftermath of horror. In a way, we might even wish to conceive of the relationship between Netflix and its linked peripheral, ephemeral online media as one not totally dissimilar to the process of dealing with trauma. Of course, the lack of linear temporal organisation in the world of streaming means that there can be no collective journey between these platforms and, say, emotions of denial, anger, bargaining, depression or acceptance. Nevertheless, all of the digital platforms analysed in this chapter offer spaces for audiences to both react and

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express responses to horror in their own time, be it by venting their denial or anger over horrors on Twitter, or by watching the cast debating the future of characters on a streamed aftershow, or by showing public acceptance for horrors via GIF-making practices.

Conclusion Through the lens of Stranger Things, we have considered what it means for the horror genre—a dark, secluded and, as Mark Jancovich (2002: 3) describes, an ‘inward-looking style of storytelling’—to be developed as an outward-looking, participatory transmedia experience. Conventionally, horror looks ‘inward’ (Grant 2004: 18), specialising in the ‘confined’ (Worland 2007: 23) and in the ‘shutting down of full story comprehension’ (Sobchack 1987: 61). Transmediality, meanwhile, looks outward and encourages the participation of audiences as they move multiple media platforms, opening up full story comprehension (Jenkins 2006). Despite this irrevocable contradiction, this chapter has demonstrated how conceiving of horror as intertext allows us to make sense of how the genre works in the age of streaming. Firstly, the intertextuality afforded via Netflix’s technologically formed interface frames genre as something that transcends boundaries. Secondly, this transcending of boundaries (i.e. production context, medium, historical era) reflects Netflix’s algorithmic balance between user taste and Netflix authority, which together works to transform the make-up of a genre once it is then extended from one piece of streamed content to another. Finally, social media—promoted and encouraged by Netflix as part of the user’s streaming activity—allows users to outright recalibrate genre in whatever way they see fit, be it reflectively or playfully. In one sense, the aforementioned Stranger Things GIFs exemplify how the horror genre—in particular—works in the media convergence age. Horror thrives on the temporary feelings of terror constructed within a film, a book and so on, but its depictions of fantasised terror cannot be sustained over a longer period of time. It would be like asking visitors to a theme park to ride a rollercoaster over and over again; sooner or later, there needs to be a return to a state of calm and normality. Conceptually speaking, then, transmedia horror cannot—or rather must not—sustain what is arguably the genre’s principle preconception: to scare people. The genre’s expansion within and across online materials results in peripheral, ephemeral media effectively working to restore a sense of calm and normality for the audience, or to reassure audiences following moments of horror, in whatever form that takes. As part of this book’s aim to understand how genre opens up distinctive strategies in today’s media convergence age, questioning how different transmedial sites change workings and understandings of genre, this chapter has ultimately demonstrated what is a new way of thinking about transmedia—not as storytelling, or as branding, or even as distribution, but as genre empowerment for the multiplatform audience, creating new spaces for audiences to react to and participate with the horrors consumed on another medium. Importantly,

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though, there is an ahistoricality and atemporality to today’s transmedia horror, with the technological and participatory properties of Netflix and its linked social media channels often stripping horror of its context, primacy and immediacy, giving way to rationality and control. Rather than seeing this shift as a kind of negation of the power of horror, however, we would argue that this emerging role for the genre is nothing if not intrinsic to the nature of horror itself. For as Grant (2004: 18) claims, horror is about ‘positioning something as horrifying in contrast to the normal … world’. In the world of Stranger Things, that contrast emerges from the Upside Down, an alternate dimension existing in parallel to the human world. In the world of Netflix, however, it is the ephemeral, peripheral media extensions of social media and streamed aftershows that become the ‘normal’ against which the horrifying compares. In the next chapter, which focuses in particular on digital catch-up TV, we develop this thinking further by exploring how ITV Hub works to push the boundaries of the docudrama genre into something that quite similarly invites the customisation of audiences into the genre.

References Altman, Rick. 1999. Film/Genre. London: BFI Publishing. Arnold, Sarah. 2016. Netflix and the Myth of Choice/Participation/Autonomy. In The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century, ed. Kevin McDonald and Daniel Smith-Rowsey, 49–62. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Association of Internet Researchers. 2014. Social TV: Quantifying the Intersections between Television and Social Media. In Selected Papers of Internet Research 15: The 15th Annual Meeting of the Association of Internet Researchers, 1–23. Daegu, Korea: Association of Internet Researchers. Barthes, Roland. 1977. Image Music Text. London: Fontana Press. Bennett, Tony, and Janet Woollacott. 1987. Bond and Beyond: The Political Career of a Popular Hero. London and New York: Routledge. Boggs, Carl, and Tom Pollard. 2003. A World in Chaos: Social Crisis and the Rise of Postmodern Cinema. London: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Carroll, Noel. 2003. Engaging the Moving Image. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Cascajosa Virino, Concepción. 2016. La Cultura de las Series. Barcelona: Laertes. Dean, Tres. 2015. Horror Films That Were Ruined By Revealing Too Much. Looper, June 3. https://www.looper.com/88741/horror-­films-­ruined-­revealing-­much/. Accessed July 21, 2019. Dunleavy, Trisha. 2017. Complex Serial Drama and Multiplatform Television. London and New York: Routledge. Evans, Elizabeth. 2018. Transmedia Distribution: From Vertical Integration to Digital Natives. In The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies, ed. Matthew Freeman and Renira Rampazzo Gambarato, 243–250. London: Routledge. Feuer, Jane. 1992. Genre Study and Television. In Channels of Discourse, Reassembled: Television and Contemporary Criticism, ed. Robert C. Allen, 138–159. London and New York: Routledge. Francis, James, Jr. 2013. Remaking Horror: Hollywood’s New Reliance on Scares of Old. Jefferson, MC: McFarland.

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Freeman, Matthew. 2019. The World of the Walking Dead. London and New  York: Routledge. Gillan, Jennifer. 2016. Textural Poaching Twin Peaks: The Audrey Horne Sweater Girl GIFs. Series: International Journal of TV Serial Narratives 2 (2): 9–24. Grant, Barry Keith. 1986. Film Genre III. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. ———. 2004. Sensuous Elaboration: Reason and the Visible in the Science Fiction Film. In Liquid Metal: The Science Fiction Film Reader, ed. Sean Redmond, 17–23. London: Wallflower Press. Gray, Jonathan. 2010. Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. New York: New York University Press. Griffiths, Eleanor Bley. 2017. What’s the Story Behind the Nostalgic 80s-Style Stranger Things Opening Titles? Radio Times, October 28. https://www.radiotimes.com/ news/2017-­1 0-­2 8/whats-­t he-­s tory-­b ehind-­t he-­n ostalgic-­8 0s-­s tyle-­s tranger-­ things-­opening-­titles/. Accessed July 4, 2019. Gripsrud, Jostein. 1998. Television, Broadcasting and Flow: Key Metaphors in TV Theory. In The Television Studies Book, ed. Christine Geraghty and David Lusted, 17–32. London: Hodder Arnold. Hills, Matt. 2005. The Pleasures of Horror. London: Continuum. Jancovich, Mark, ed. 2002. Horror, The Film Reader. London and New York: Routledge. Jenkins, Henry. 1992. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New  York: New York University Press. Jenner, Mareike. 2016. Is this TVIV? On Netflix, TVIII and Binge-watching. New Media & Society 18 (2): 257–273. ———. 2018. Netflix and the Reinvention of Television. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Johnson, Catherine. 2019. Online Television. London and New York: Routledge. Jowett, Lorna, and Stacey Abbott. 2013. TV Horror: Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen. London and New York: I.B. Tauris. Kompare, Derek. 2005. Rerun Nation: How Repeats Invented American Television. London and New York: Routledge. Kristeva, Julia. 1980. Desire in Language: A Semiotic Approach to Literature and Art. New York: Columbia University Press. Lomborg, Stine, and Mette Mortensen. 2017. Users across Media: An Introduction. Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 23 (4): 343–351. Mittell, Jason. 2015. Complex Television: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York University Press. Murgia, Madhumita. 2016. Reed Hastings on Netflix’s Global Algorithm. Financial Review, March 28. https://www.afr.com/technology/reed-­hastings-­on-­netflixs-­ global-­algorithim-­20160327-­gnrq9m. Accessed July 22, 2019. Pinedo, Isabel Cristina. 2004. Postmodern Elements of the Contemporary Horror Film. In The Horror Film, ed. Stephen Prince, 85–117. New  York: Rutgers University Press. Proulx, Mark, and Stacey Shepatin. 2012. Social TV: How Marketers Can Reach and Engage Audiences by Connecting Television to the Web, Social Media and Mobile. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.

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Sandberg, Bryn Elise. 2017. Netflix to Launch ‘Stranger Things’ Aftershow (Exclusive). The Hollywood Reporter, October 26. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-­ feed/stranger-­things-­aftershow-­set-­at-­netflix-­1051984. Accessed July 20, 2019. Scolari, Carlos A., Mar Guerrero-Pico, and María-José Establés. 2018. Spain: Emergences, Strategies and Limitations of Spanish Transmedia Productions. In Global Convergence Cultures: Transmedia Earth, ed. Matthew Freeman and William Proctor, 38–55. London: Routledge. Smith, Anthony. 2018. Storytelling Industries: Narrative Production in the 21st Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Smith-Rowsey, Daniel. 2016. Imaginative Indices and Deceptive Domains: How Netflix’s Categories and Genres Redefine the Long Tail. In The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century, ed. Kevin McDonald and Daniel Smith-Rowsey, 63–80. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Snider, Zachery. 2016. The Cognitive Psychological Effects of Binge-watching. In The Netflix Effect: Technology and Entertainment in the 21st Century, ed. Kevin McDonald and Daniel Smith-Rowsey, 117–128. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Sobchack, Vivian. 1987. Screening Space: The American Science Fiction Film. New York: Ungar. Tallerico, Brian. 2019. Stranger Things 3: A Guide to the Major Pop Culture References. The New York Times, July 4. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/04/arts/television/stranger-­things-­season-­3-­references.html. Accessed July 20, 2019. Wagmeister, Elizabeth. 2017. Stranger Things Season 2 Breaks Twitter Record. Variety, October 30. https://variety.com/2017/digital/news/stranger-­things-­season-­2-­ twitter-­record-­1202602413/. Accessed August 10, 2019. Walker, Jesse. 2014. Avant-Gifs: Turning Online Animations into High Art. Reason. com, October 1. http://reason.com/archives/2014/10/01/avant-­gifs. Accessed July 20, 2019. Watercutter, Angela. 2017. Can a Stranger Things After-show Compete With Social Media. Wired, October 27. https://www.wired.com/story/beyond-­stranger-­ things-­after-­show/. Accessed July 21, 2019. Wood, Robin. 1976. Ideology, Genre, Auteur. Film Comment 13 (1): 46–51. ———. 1986. Hollywood From Vietnam to Reagan. New York: Columbia University Press. Worland, Rick. 2007. The Horror Film: An Introduction. London: Blackwell Publishing.

CHAPTER 5

Transmedia Docudrama: ITV Hub, Genre Democratisation and Quiz

Introduction In James Graham’s Quiz, a three-part ITV docudrama based on the notorious Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? ‘coughing scandal’ from 2001, Major Charles Ingram (here played by Matthew Macfadyen) is sat in a police interrogation room. Charged with cheating his way to winning the one-million-pound prize on ITV’s biggest game show, Ingram is asked outright by the interrogating officer, ‘Why did you change your mind so often?’ Ingram, visibly stressed and confused by the situation, explains that what may have looked like erratic or even suspicious behaviour was merely an act of showmanship—the work of a man playing up to the TV cameras. ‘Look, it’s what the producers want. It’s the tension … the drama.’ This chapter will continue to explore the impact of specific digital platforms on twenty-first-century manifestations of genre, but this time explores how the ITV Hub—along with its commercial and online marketing strategies, and its digital spread across social media channels—transforms the genre of docudrama into a mode of engagement specific to today’s multiplatform culture. We first analyse the ITV drama Quiz, identifying its narrative strategies for building actualised tension and drama that are themselves being dissected within the series itself. We do so in order to make sense of these drama-­building strategies in the context of today’s digitised world of catch-up TV, later questioning to what extent these strategies—in this technologically converged setting—replace a cultural adherence to known facts with multiple, sometimes opposing perspectives on a narrative with no final answer.

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This idea of blending known facts with fictionalised reimaginings is at the heart of docudrama,1 a genre that features dramatised re-enactments of actual events. As such, this chapter uses the docudrama Quiz as a lens through which to examine the ways that narrative tensions emerging from different points of view within a television docudrama now play out as engagement strategies by producers and audiences alike, as new versions of actual and fictional events are scattered across digital platforms. And herein lies the real million-pound question: to what extent has today’s technological convergence of television and the internet, where user-led digital interfaces proliferate perspectives on content, created a culture of blurred boundaries between fact and fiction that is becoming far less interested in the former? Specifically, we will explore how, as catch-up TV interfaces such as the ITV Hub ‘have become gateways to the content we desire, enabling individualized viewing patterns and subtly reformatting our televisual experiences along vectors of customization and control’ (Chamberlain 2010: 85), the docudrama genre has been recalibrated for the multiplatform audience. Which is to argue that the docudrama—a genre that fundamentally describes the ‘use [of] emotional tactics in order to engage the viewer with public issues’ (Corner 2015: 51)—has evolved into an aesthetic, discursive and interactive engagement strategy that works to scaffold today’s digitised infrastructures of heightened customisation, heightening what we term genre democracy. We will analyse the different ways in which digitised interfaces shape how audiences customise their engagement with facts and fictions, as well as how such digital interfaces lead to audiences creating their own cross-platform docudramas—dramatising and documenting new interpretations of what they have seen.

Conceptualising ITV Hub In September 2015, ITV launched a new service called ITV Hub. Positioned as a ‘digital destination’ for the broadcaster online, ITV Hub aimed to ‘present all of ITV’s family of channels and services front and centre with a distinct digital look and feel’ (Rufus Radcliffe, Group Marketing Director for ITV, cited in ITV 2015). According to Catherine Johnson, this marked a period in which the UK’s terrestrial broadcasters were reconceptualising their video-on-demand players as hybrid digital spaces where ‘linear TV broadcaster, catch-up service, on-demand player and provider of interactive content all rolled into one’ (2015: 121). The affordances of ITV Hub and their relationship to workings of genre must first be understood in terms of its place as a product of much larger 1  According to John Corner, ‘Drama-documentary’ is the label most often used in Britain and parts of Europe to indicate the combination of dramatic and documentary elements in a programme. In the US, the term ‘docudrama’ has been the preferred term. Rather than a distinct sub-genre of programme, it is best to see the classification as pointing to a very wide range of different mixtures’ (2015: 49).

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technological convergences. As defined in the introduction to the book, technological convergence refers most broadly to the ‘hybridity that has folded the uses of separate media into one another’ (Hay and Couldry 2011: 493). In the television industry, it encompasses the transition from ‘an over-the-air analogue signal to a digital one’ (Petruska 2014: 19). Scholarly discussions in the present often concern the multiplatform potentials of this digital media economy (Holt and Sanson 2014; Evans 2011; Doyle 2015). Jennifer Holt and Kevin Sanson (2014: 1), for instance, discuss ‘connected viewing’, which refers to ‘a multiplatform entertainment experience, and relates to a larger trend across the media industries to integrate digital technology and socially networked communication with traditional screen media practices’. The development of a non-broadcast, multi-channel, interactive television environment has meant that broadcasters and networks ‘no longer succeed by isolating and locking on to consumers within traditional or discrete media or “channel” categories’ (Caldwell 2014: 180). Instead, as Caldwell elaborates, television broadcasters today ‘are effective only to the degree that they can manage flow and loosely guide users/viewers through two increasingly common situations: as they cycle and “flow” sequentially from one multimedia platform to another … and as they “multitask” simultaneously across various media platforms’ (2014: 180). Later we will examine what these digitised practices of guiding audiences across platforms means to understandings of docudrama as a genre, and specifically how conventions of docudrama are used as a strategy to initiate and maintain this guiding of audiences. Ways of managing the flow of audiences across digital platforms have been explored previously in Grainge and Johnson’s work on BBC iPlayer. According to their BBC research uncovered in 2014, 42 per cent of visitors to the iPlayer did not come for a particular programme (2018: 27). Instead, the BBC had ‘realised its goal of making the iPlayer a place where audiences potentially start their entertainment journey—to browse for something to watch, rather than specifically catch up on a particular title’ (Grainge and Johnson 2018: 27). This idea of digitisation as perusal reflects Chamberlain’s earlier characterisation of digital television interfaces as ‘vectors of customization’ (2010: 85), prioritising individual needs. Such scaffolding of customisation through the use of connected online content, such as links to a YouTube channel, a social media page, a trailer, and so on, exemplifies what Will Brooker (2004: 323) once described as ‘television overflow’; that is, ‘the tendency for media producers to construct a lifestyle experience around a core text, using the Internet to extend audience engagement’. With digital and mobile technologies continuously developing and expanding their functionality and reach, further cementing their essentiality in daily life (Evans 2011, 2019), the television industry is finding novel and creative ways to approach and successfully engage target audiences. For our purposes, it will be key to consider the role of genre in the digital promotion that flows from and feeds into a site like ITV Hub, namely the online marketing used to promote Quiz that works to allow viewers to customise how they go about identifying with particular points of view. Doing so means considering the role of genre in terms of digital distribution and analysing when such

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content is made available online—before, during or after the broadcast of the series on television. Alisa Perren (2013: 167), in this vein, argues that the changes wrought by digital technologies have placed a spotlight on questions of distribution—‘the ways that content moves through space (flows) and time (windowing)’. In building on Perren’s definition of digital distribution, the connections to transmediality become clear: Elizabeth Evans argues that transmedia logics are as much about the ways in which content moves through space and time as they are about content itself, explaining how ‘transmedia marketing … relies on distribution strategies that carefully spread content across different media platforms and spaces’ (2018: 243). These practices of digital and transmedia distribution will be important to how we go about understanding codes of the docudrama genre as key to augmenting tension and fact-based narrative intrigue amongst audiences across a range of digital platforms and interfaces. However, just as ITV Hub must be seen ‘in the context of [ITV’s] transition away from a purely broadcast world, to more of a hybrid world in which broadcast continues to be important … [but] where the internet allows you to do other things’ (Grainge and Johnson 2018: 38), newer, more user-led digital interfaces also allow for docudramas to become other things. Social media, itself characterised according to its ‘connectivity, feedback, interactivity and increased levels of information’ (McStay 2010: 2–3), exemplifies these ‘other things’. Analysing social media as an inherent component of technologically converged television recognises the cultural and infrastructural transformation of this medium in a transmedia context, where ‘the “goggle box” in the corner of the living room [is transformed] into a multifaceted site of media entertainment’ (Johnson 2019: 2). But beyond social media leading to audiences becoming ‘curators and aggregators’ of content (Schackman 2013)—something that will be analysed shortly in terms of its implications for genre—platforms like Twitter provide audiences with opportunities to connect and feedback with other audiences, but also with producers and marketing teams who may initiate conversations online as a way of encouraging further engagement (Evans 2019). Through live-tweeting, for example, social media has become an integral industrial mechanism through which digital interfaces reinforce traditional live broadcasting models, itself representative of what Grainge and Johnson call ‘a hybrid strategy where the worlds of linear broadcasting and digital collide’ (2018: 37). What, then, does this ‘hybrid strategy’ mean to workings of the docudrama, a genre whose key preconception is itself based on the hybridity of fiction and fact? Broadly, social media is characterised by its sense of democracy—that is, its technological ability to publish content from anyone, from anywhere. More than that, social media affords the proliferation and thus potential contradiction of content, as countless voices, perspectives, interpretations, accounts and documentations are all published, consumed and shared together. This idea of digitisation as genre democracy also reflects Chamberlain’s earlier characterisation of digital interfaces as ‘gateways to the content we desire’ (2010: 85). Which itself raises a number of pertinent questions: in a transmedia context of multiple platforms, which elements of a docudrama become privileged over

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others? Whose opinion on what may or may not have actually happened within this hypothetical docudrama holds the most weight? And given the way that docudrama concerns the dramatised re-enactment of actual events, which of these elements and opinions become understood as adherence to fact and which are classified as mere dramatic licence, that is those that are broadcast live or those shared online? Rethinking the docudrama amidst these circulating online perspectives is the focus of this chapter.

Constructing Docudrama On the face of it, Quiz, broadcast on ITV over three consecutive nights in April 2020, retells the ‘true’ story of when seemingly hopeless contestant Charles Ingram found himself in the hotseat on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? in 2001. It is a television series that builds drama from the multiple perspectives and contradictory accounts that emerge from the way in which the events are told. The series dissects those multiple, contradictory perspectives, but also extracts entertainment from them, inviting its audience to actively contemplate the very nature of truth in a mediatised world (see Graham 2020). None of which is especially novel in genre terms: as with many recent docudramas, Quiz ‘organise[s] its looks and sounds in relation to established fictional genres, rather than imitating a documentary appearance’ (Corner 2015: 50). And yet Quiz perfectly exemplifies the changing role of the docudrama in the multiplatform age: both a product and a critique of today’s digital culture—a world of fact-adjacent social media, customised TV interfaces, transmedially distributed fake news and personalised modes of media consumption—Quiz reveals much about how digitisation has shaped genre, particularly a genre that is predicated on the combining of fact and fiction.2 Let’s, then, start by delving into the conventions of docudrama that are employed throughout ITV’s Quiz. Corner notes that the docudrama genre warrants continued scholarly examination of its ‘motives, methods and forms’ (2015: 50), and so this textual analysis will specifically analyse those formal features that serve to construct drama and build tension. Our textual analysis will be built upon in the second part of the chapter, where we will then explore how the digitised sites of ITV Hub, its marketing strategies and its digital spread across social media all work to evoke and recalibrate docudrama as a genre. As will be argued, Quiz, for the most part, gives relatively equal weight to the widely held public opinion that the Ingrams are guilty of cheating as well as to the far less popular (and mildly controversial) theory that Charles Ingram simply knew all of the answers to those questions. Importantly, these opposing perspectives on what really happened on ITV’s biggest quiz show are 2  Corner distinguishes between two kinds of documentary/drama productions: First, there is ‘dramatised documentary’, describing a ‘work that has developed as a documentary project with degrees of dramatisation (through scripting and acting) added to give it stronger projection’. Second, there is ‘documentary drama’ (or ‘docudrama’), describing a ‘work that has developed very much in the conventional manner of a play (a script … which is then cast and shot)’ but which is a fully dramatised version of real events, sometimes employing ‘some of the looks and sounds of documentary material to deliver a more “realist” impact’ (Creeber 2006: 49).

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communicated through specific media techniques, each of which encompasses specific formal elements of docudrama as a genre: performance, debate and non-linearity. We will now analyse how each of these formal elements of the genre works in the case of Quiz. Docudrama as a genre was born out of the need for television, as a new popular medium, to inform and entertain (Lipkin 2011). Yet, from Glen Creeber’s point of view (2006), the genre followed trends in artistic representations and particularly the trend from modernism to postmodernism, from classic and authored single plays to hybridity and self-reflexivity that prevailed during the last decades of the twentieth century. Despite ongoing questions over its recognisability as a genre, remember that ‘whatever genre may be, its function is to be recognized. If it’s tragedy or comedy, or mixed, we recognize it; if we can’t recognise the genre, we recognize that. And, of course, we recognize that what we are attending to is drama, not something else’ (Goldman 2000: 8). Quiz can be recognised as a docudrama by applying Corner’s logic that when examining this genre, ‘a good general principle is to separate off questions of reference from questions of depiction, even if this is sometimes hard to do’ (2015: 49). For Corner, questions of reference, the first of these principles, concern ‘how a programme relates itself to the real world, with what degree of specificity as to people, places, times, events and actions’ (ibid.: 49). There is a spectrum here, running all the way from the loose ‘based on a real incident’ model through to the tightly researched reconstruction of, say, a trial (where transcripts are available upon which to ground the dialogue). Quiz establishes itself at the former end of this spectrum, opening with a disclaimer: ‘This drama is based on real events. Some incidents and characters have been changed for dramatic purposes.’ On the other hand, the series also incorporates actuality footage, including snippets taken from past TV awards ceremonies where Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? won numerous accolades and awards. Real news footage of 9/11 is also shown on TV screens within the series. Of course, what this sort of actuality footage achieves is to give weight to the sense that what we are watching is true. As such, Quiz is deliberately contradictory in terms of how it relates itself to the real world—a status that is established in the Pablo Picasso quote that opens the first episode: ‘We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realise truth.’ Fittingly, this quote speaks to the discourse at the heart of Quiz: this is not a docudrama where the dramatised elements in any way work to undermine the credibility of the programme; rather, this is a docudrama that specifically invites its audience to consciously reflect on the nature of the programme’s own construction. One of Quiz’s key questions of reference that exemplifies this focused emphasis on the nature of televisual or mediatised construction concerns the use of performance. Goldman claims that something ‘we always recognize in drama [is] the presence of acting’ (2000: 8). For Goodman, indeed, our recognition of drama ‘depends on our knowledge that there is such a thing as theatrical performance’ (ibid.: 8). Logically, acting and performance lend themselves more closely to the workings of drama than they do to documentary, and Quiz’s creative decision to focus on the desires of individual

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characters gives it the feel of a drama. For as Letwin, Stockdale, and Stockdale write, ‘a key … structural arrangement of a dramatic plot is the use of several stories, each with a different leading character pursuing a different goal’ (2008: 10). In his vein, the characters of the Ingrams and Celador TV producer Paul Smith (played by Mark Bonnar) lead their own plots; ‘they are all responding to different inciting incidents and have separate objectives—what’s good for one may not be good for, or even related to, another’ (Letwin et al. 2008: 10). However, the programme’s emphasis on the notion of ‘acting up’ or performing to the camera equally works to convey both a sense of deception and a possible insight into the kind of truth that actuality footage cannot convey. For example, consider the sequences of Charles Ingram in the Millionaire hotseat, working his way through the fifteen questions. At the end of episode one, Charles seemingly looks directly at the camera, breaking the fourth wall for the first and only time in the series. This is a dramatic technique juxtaposed within a recreation of an actual moment in television history that is used almost as a knowing wink between Ingram and the audience (‘you all know what happens next, right? I cheated my way to one million pounds on television’). The glance to the camera is brief, but it serves to characterise Ingram as deceitful, all the while indicating that the character’s palpable displays of nerves are merely a performance. On the other hand, performance is also a dramatic technique used to paint the Ingrams as innocent: numerous scenes depict the couple alone—behind closed doors, or walking their dog in the woods—following ITV’s accusation that they cheated. In all cases, the Ingrams appear genuinely horrified at the prospect that they are being accused of fraud—in other words, ‘acting up’ is reserved almost exclusively for when the television cameras are on, thereby aligning deceptive exaggeration with the practices of television, not of people. To take this idea further, thematically, it can be argued that Quiz is commenting on today’s cultural privileging of opinion over fact, as well as our culture’s related reliance on second-hand knowledge as debate (Graham 2020). Which brings us back to Corner’s second principle of docudrama—the question of depiction, which ‘concerns the extent to which the audiovisual depiction follows the “rules” either of dramatic or documentary representation’ (2015: 49–50). For instance, is voiceover commentary used? In what ways are we asked to relate to the characters as real people appearing before the camera rather than as acted roles? If the key overarching preconception of docudrama is the ‘use [of] emotional tactics in order to engage the viewer with public issues’ (Corner 2015: 51), then the public issue at the heart of Quiz is surely the way in which people now understand the world by consuming the views and opinions of others that have come to saturate daily life in the age of contemporary digital media. The following exchange between Charles and Adrian (Trystan Gravelle), discussing the film Casablanca (1942), exemplifies this point nicely. ‘When did you last see it?’, asks Charles, to which Adrian responds: ‘I’ve never seen it, but you learn things in encyclopedias, books, TV’. ‘Might be nice to actually watch the film’, Charles interjects. ‘Don’t have the time’,

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says Adrian. Personal knowledge, then, is subject to the constructions of our media. This idea regarding the innate subjectivity of truth in a mediatised world starts to play out in Quiz as if it were a direct battle between the core aims of documentary (famously theorised as ‘the creative treatment of actuality’) (Grierson 1946) and those of drama (which is so often synonymous with fiction) (see Fournier 2013). In episode three, for example, two opposing perspectives on the exact same event are depicted straight after the other, one more documentary-esque, the other more drama-esque: first, we hear the recounted story of an ITV studio manager walking into the Ingrams’ dressing room to see them arguing moments after they have just won 1 million pounds. (This represents the documentary version, if you will, i.e. based on interview testimony with the real studio manager.) Second, we are shown the same scene again, this time with the camera already in the Ingrams’ dressing room as the studio manager enters. (This version represents the dramatic recreation.) Importantly, this second, more fictionalised perspective serves to reveal a so-­ called truth: that the couple were not arguing at all—the studio manager had simply misinterpreted what was really happening in that room. The implication here is that the mechanics of drama (i.e. fiction) can be equally as effective at shaping public opinion as the actuality of documentary (i.e. fact). In narrative theory, ‘progressive complications provide the audience with reference points for determining the shifting fortunes of leading characters as they struggle to achieve their objectives. Ideally, every beat, scene and act of a drama should bring the leading character either closer or further away from their goal’ (Letwin et al. 2008: 25). In Quiz, however, the progressive complications of the drama are less to do with the fortunes of the Ingrams and more to do with the seeming impossibility of ever really knowing the truth. Visually, this discussion of opinion versus fact (drama vs. documentary) manifests as a juxtaposition between fictional and actuality footage. The title credits sequence is a split screen, showing both archive footage of old quiz shows (i.e. real) and the names of the cast and crew (i.e. fiction). This explicitly draws attention to the programme’s own construction and asks us to consider both the nature of construction within the docudrama and—more importantly—the possibility that the media constructs ‘real’ meaning through fictional form. Another example of this kind of debate: having chatted to the Ingrams the morning after their victory, two producers return to ITV studios to report back on what they heard. ‘Guilty as sin’, one of the producers declares. ‘Oh bollocks! They’re just quiz fanatics’, the other producer responds in frustration. In many ways, this particular exchange encapsulates the thematic through-line of Quiz: it does not matter which of these two opinions is right or represents the ‘truth’; what matters here is the argument between the two opposing opinions—that is to say, what carries the most weight is the significance of opinion in today’s truth-making practices. To quote the Ingrams’ defence attorney

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from episode three, ‘it doesn’t matter if the theory is nonsense or not. What matters is that my client thought it was true.’ Structurally, too, Quiz uses non-linearity as a tool to reflect this idea that we organise bits and pieces of media according to our own customisable preferences at any given time. As with the definition of non-linear storytelling, events are portrayed out of chronological order, and episode one is heavily re-­ structured to emphasise the widely held public assumption that the Ingrams cheated: the episode opens with the Ingrams on trial, where we are shown the prosecution explicitly telling the jury that they are guilty (‘this is theft, plain and simple’). This episode also spends time informing audiences about the deceptive, illegal actions of ‘the syndicate’—a network of con artists that helped to get aspiring contestants past the phone line stage and even provided them with answers through the ‘phone a friend’ lifeline. Here, ITV are represented as victims: the tenacious but likeable producer who puts his own house on the line in order to finance the show; the ITV boss who supports the show despite a poorly produced pilot; and behind-the-scenes sequences showing the producers becoming concerned as many of the same contestants suspiciously start to appear again and again. Meanwhile, episode one largely depicts Diana Ingram (Sian Clifford) and her brother Adrian as obsessive (a pub quiz fanatic) and desperate (looming financial debts), respectively. Indeed, the first forty-five minutes of character drama serve to establish these obsessive, desperate character traits as a kind of pointed narrative rationale for why they might wind up cheating. This theme continues at the start of episode two: structurally, we are shown Charles getting into the Millionaire hotseat by winning the ‘fastest finger first’ test (something we know actually happened), before then flashing back to provide the audience with two pieces of information, both of which are likely to be far more dramatised: that (a) Charles’ general knowledge is poor, and (b) he is equally poor at the ‘fastest finger first’ test. The non-linear ordering of these sequences cannot help but convey the feeling that Charles must in fact be a cheat. Moments later in the episode we are also shown Diana’s brother suspiciously leaving the ITV studio twice in order to make a phone call during the filming of Charles’ first-night in the hotseat. Finally, this episode ends with Diana calling Tecwen Whittock (played by Michael Jibson) (the man alleged to have helped Charles by coughing at the correct answers) the evening before Charles returns to the studio. Importantly, these scenes employ the techniques of drama: a style that foregrounds the mechanics of storytelling. Interestingly, such mechanics of drama are used to both convict and redeem Charles at different points. Back in episode two, the recreation of the Millionaire episode where he wins is a fairly close re-enactment of what was actually filmed in a documentary-esque manner (including recreations of the same camera angles used during the original filming). For Derek Paget (2011), the purpose of re-enactment in the docudrama is not to deceive the viewer in any way, but to make it possible for viewers to catch a glimpse of the ‘spirit of the time’, by allowing the camera to capture a simulacrum of actuality. Meanwhile, Steven

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Lipkin’s theory of docudrama is that the genre’s ‘lack of indexicality is replaced by a quasi-indexical narrative’, meaning that it essentially tries to make up for the lack of indexical un-staged images by being faithful to what actually happened and what was said (1999: 372; also see 2011). But in Quiz, the addition of new unseen dramatic moments during this recreation sequence works primarily to highlight and re-emphasise aspects that public media had drawn attention to when prosecuting the Ingrams twenty years ago. Examples include additional shots of Tecwen Whittock coughing, and shots of the production crew starting to suspect that Charles could well be cheating. These new sequences largely reinforce the commonly held public perception that the Ingrams indeed cheated, and the fact that they are formed as a dramatisation arguably cements this perception even more than if they were an outright documentary. After all, almost 17 million people in the UK had watched ITV’s ‘Major Fraud’ episode of Tonight with Trevor McDonald in 2003,3 a 90-minute documentary fronted by Martin Bashir that explained to mass audiences how the Ingrams unequivocally cheated their way to one million pounds; many more people would have witnessed the media’s own unofficial trial of the Ingrams through the press. And so Quiz’s dramatised recreation plays like the public’s collective interpretation of what happened. At first glance, the visual grammar of this sequence seemingly convicts the Ingrams all over again, rather like an additional media platform reinforcing the message of the others. ‘Say something loud enough, long enough, it becomes de facto truth’, one character says in the final episode. And yet, while drama is used in episode one to communicate the Ingrams’ apparent guilt (the characters constructed as obsessive and desperate etc.), in episode three, character drama is used to construct the Ingrams as victims of potential media manipulation. Here, we are shown incidents that were not shown in the press or on the aforementioned Tonight with Trevor McDonald documentary: the family being egged, bullied and having their dog killed. Altogether, then, the mechanics of drama are used throughout Quiz to give weight to the perspective that the Ingrams had cheated and that they are innocent, at different points. Interestingly, in contrast, the mechanics of documentary (i.e. use of actuality footage, facts and statistics obtained through archive research) are used almost exclusively throughout Quiz to support the possibility that the Ingrams are innocent. These documentary-esque techniques comprise dialogue based on transcripts from the actual court hearing, factual statistics about total numbers of recorded coughs during the filming of Charles’ episode, previously undisclosed medical conditions of specific people in the audience that may have 3  The ‘Major Fraud’ episode of Tonight with Trevor MacDonald was broadcast on April 21, 2003. It had an average audience of 15.1 million, peaking at almost 17 million. Almost 56 per cent of that night’s entire television audience watched the episode. See Wells, Matt. 2003. ‘Millions Tune in to Fraud Show’, The Guardian (April 23). https://www.theguardian.com/media/2003/ apr/23/broadcasting.uknews (accessed August 14, 2020).

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triggered a genuine need to cough, as well as exploring the possible psychological impact of confirmation bias during the alleged cheating episode and ITV’s openly edited version of the numerous coughing incidences that were used as prosecution evidence in court. Moreover, the fact that it is the final episode of Quiz that chooses to focus more heavily on the Ingrams’ possible innocence also functions in a structural story sense to foreground and even privilege this alternative perspective, simply because it sits at the end of the story. Traditionally, of course, endings represent the point in any story—both dramas and documentaries—where resolution and truth are offered. In classic literary theory The Sense of an Ending (1968), Frank Kermode theorised how narrative endings are the means by which we make sense of the preceding narrative. With that in mind, Quiz says a great deal about how the ordering of facts and fictions in and across media shapes how we perceive the line between those things.

Customising Docudrama Quiz may be openly seeking to comment on the ways in which the ordering of facts and fictions shapes meaning-making in television, but this idea also has implications for how docudrama as a genre is now being used across media as an engagement tool, specifically to scaffold today’s digitised infrastructures of heightened customisation and democratic voice. As promised, we will now use the above textual analysis—in particular those identified concepts of performance, debate and non-linearity—to examine how these three concepts play out paratextually across transmedial digital interfaces and promotional platforms in ways that work to both evoke and recalibrate the docudrama genre for the multiplatform age. Hugh Davies, who is formerly the Head of Marketing for BBC Studios and BBC Drama, explains in interview how ‘a great way to engage today’s audiences—especially via use of digital marketing platforms—is to enable them to experience the drama, get into the drama’ (2017). For example, Davies discusses how for the fourth series of Sherlock (2010–), the BBC marketing team had the idea of building drama outside of the series by pretending that Moriarty (Andrew Scott), Sherlock’s arch-nemesis, had ‘taken over’ the marketing campaign. ‘We started by staging a graffiti attack by a mysterious person on a poster that we had’, Davies explains. ‘We then extended this visual across all social channels, so it felt like Moriarty’s attack stretched across the BBC and Sherlock pages’ (2017). When audiences looked at these BBC social media sites, ‘it felt like something very exciting or abnormal was going on. It was a really simple idea that could work across multiple platforms’ (2017). In effect, the marketing strategy was based on using promotion to build drama transmedially. The BBC’s Sherlock example is indicative of the current approach to marketing drama, and even docudrama, across digital platforms in UK television. ‘Drama. Tension. Drama. Inbuilt into everything.’ Such is Celador producer Paul Smith’s demand at one point in Quiz when designing the Who Wants to

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Be a Millionaire? set. In many ways, the thrusting of drama into everything might well be a useful way of characterising the role of docudrama in the digital content that flowed from and fed into the ITV Hub, namely the online marketing used to announce Quiz. Indeed, at least in terms of the role of genre in first establishing Quiz to audiences, ITV’s descriptions and initial marketing across its digital interfaces are entirely those of the fictional, not the actual. On the ITV Hub, for example, Quiz is categorised in the ‘Drama & Soap’ section, and its summary reads: ‘The extraordinary and sensational story of how Charles and Diana Ingram attempted an “audacious heist” on the quiz show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ Note how Quiz was described as a ‘story’ (and an ‘extraordinary and sensational’ story at that) that is emphasised as a heist (a similarly fiction-evoking genre of entertainment)—labels that are foregrounded over the actuality of Charles and Diana Ingram. Also note how such fictional dramatisation tactics are used to reinforce the popular public perception that the Ingrams are cheats, that is fictionalisation serving to communicate truth. The official trailer, too, leans much more heavily into the ‘rules’ of dramatic representation over those of documentary: the focus is entirely on individual characters over any kind of bigger social topic; fast-cut editing works to establish conflict between characters; and pop music—Bryan Ferry’s ‘Let’s Stick Together’—communicates a sense of fun and a lightness of touch. But there may well be a contextual, more technological reason for why drama is so heavily emphasised over documentary in this early promotional material, beyond the strong marketability of the former genre. As the likes of Grainge & Johnson and Chamberlain argued earlier, today’s digitised interfaces bring with them degrees of customisation for the audience, and this customisation of media experience has implications for how genre guides audiences across platforms. Today’s audiences may be used to customising their content through on-demand services, as well as links to social media channels, trailers and so on, but in genre terms such customised practices arguably fuel a sense of the subjective, the personal, the opinionated. As Kate Pullinger (2020: 22) argues, ‘There has been and will continue to be a huge boom in the customisation and personalisation of art. … [But] it keeps you in your bubble and re-­ enforces your world view rather than challenging it, which is what art should do.’ Docudrama as a genre really took off in the UK in the 1960s because it afforded a way for television to expand its then-popular realist approach to tackling widespread social issues. But as Pullinger alluded, digital practices of customisation cannot help but encourage people to engage with the world in narrower and more singular terms—my world over the world, if you will. We see this all the time, such as the use of ‘My News’ selection tabs on news apps, where users can pre-select precisely which categories or types of news stories they wish to see. There is, one might argue, a sense of the fictional about such customisation practices, with greater emphasis on individuals constructing chosen narratives out of the available facts. Are today’s digital audiences, in other words, more familiar with or comfortable consuming the subjective fictions of a fantasised drama over the wide-reaching facts of documentary?

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Customisation is certainly baked into more of Quiz’s marketing. After all, the series’ tagline was ‘Are you ready to play?’, a phrase that is both a soundbite of Chris Tarrant (here played by Michael Sheen) from the dramatised Millionaire sequences and an attempt on the part of the ITV marketing team to forge a personalised relationship with their audiences in a way that implies choice and agency. Importantly, however, while we have argued that much of the initial promotion for Quiz foregrounded drama in depiction terms, something that can be linked to technological context, it is equally true that more of the later promotional content leaned into the series’ documentary aspects. And it did so primarily through broadening the perspectives. To return to the concept of performance analysed in relation to Quiz itself, previously we analysed how ‘acting up’ functioned in the series itself to convey either deception or truth at different times. But in the online arena, performance becomes a way for different pieces of promotional content to focus on different subjectivities within a wider social context of media-by-trial. Subjectivity refers to looking at the same events from multiple points of view. Henry Jenkins has theorised subjectivity as a characteristic of all transmedia stories, arguing that different media platforms are capable of switching from one character’s point of view to another—‘exploring the central narrative through new eyes, such as secondary characters or third parties’ (2009). For Jenkins, ‘this diversity of perspective often leads to considering who is speaking and who they are speaking for’ (ibid.). Communicating a diversity or equality of perspectives absolutely speaks to the rules of documentary (Winston 2000), and it also links to the chapter’s earlier analysed concept of non-linearity, that is the way that Quiz’s marketing campaign is ordered to emphasise certain perspectives over others. ITV’s social media posts in the final lead up to the broadcast of the series were careful to focus as much on the series’ depiction of multiple real events from the past, such as the origins of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, the struggles of its producers to get the quiz show made, and how host Chris Tarrant became involved. And non-linear depictions of Quiz as a documentary became a tool for maintaining audience engagement, too, especially on Twitter. For example, ITV’s tweets in-between the broadcasts of the three episodes discussed the series as if it were an outright documentary. An April 14 tweet, accompanied by a scene from the series, read: ‘This is what happened during the last ad break before Charles Ingram won £1 million. Possibly the longest 50 seconds of Charles’ life.’ And actors are referred to as their real-life counterparts: ‘Chris Tarrant and Paul Smith discuss the controversial events during Charles Ingram’s time on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ Presumably, shifting the focus of the marketing away from drama and towards documentary was a strategy designed to lean into the series’ most ‘talkable’ points. According to Davies, the BBC’s approach to marketing drama as a multiplatform narrative entity boils down to one thing: the currency of talkability: ‘Younger audiences, in particular, are far more likely to say that it is important that a show is being talked about by their friends and family’ (2017).

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Twitter may well have served as a platform for diversifying perspectives presented within Quiz and for reigniting the series’ more ‘talkable’ documentary elements, but other social media audiences were presented with far less actualised content. Over on Instagram, many of ITV’s posts about Quiz took the form of comedic captions that aimed to address that platform’s younger audience and thus conveyed a strong sense of the fictional and even the farcical as a result. Consider one representative post, which shows an ITV camera man talking into a microphone on the set of Millionaire, accompanied by the following: ‘Yeah I’ll have a Stuffed-Crust Meat Feast Pizza please and a tub of Cookie Dough Ben “N” Jerry’s’. In effect the multiplatform environment, with different digital platforms like ITV Hub, Twitter and Instagram catering for slightly different audiences, breeds very different tones, messages and even generic affordances. In one sense, it makes sense that ITV tailored their platform-­specific promotions in these ways, given how Twitter generally has a stronger association with news and political communication, and Instagram is typically more entertainment-focused. But when all of these platforms come together to communicate a genre like docudrama, it therefore becomes possible for producers to customise the fluidity of this genre, depending on who they are addressing. Equally, it becomes possible for audiences to customise their perception of the docudrama’s questions of reference and depiction, sliding more along the drama or documentary continuum depending on their choice of social media.

Democratising Docudrama However, if we live in a culture where audiences can customise their own media, then we are selecting which viewpoint we choose to consume, as argued previously. Such customisation brings with it a privileging of diverse perspectives—digitised infrastructures essentially scaffolding audience democratisation. And as countless interpretations and documentations all become published, consumed and shared together on social media amidst what Grainge and Johnson described previously as a hybrid model of broadcast television and the internet, a genre like docudrama arguably becomes even further distorted across platforms. In this final section, we will consider how the chapter’s earlier analysed concept of debate plays out across social media. In terms of the implications for genre, we argue that democratisation of online debate both reinforces basic distinctions between drama and documentary and also leads to online audiences creating their own docudramas, dramatising their interpretations. Even in the 1960s, the major appeal of the experimental television docudramas lay in the reflexive dimension which would lead some directors to emphasise filmic technique so as to break the suspension of disbelief and to encourage viewers to think critically about the ambiguities being offered to them. David Edgar defines this reflexive dimension as ‘one of the salient elements of an ambitious, politically committed TV docudrama which meant to promote the

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education of citizens’ (1999: 185). Interestingly, however, we would argue that one of the key outcomes of democratising the contemporary docudrama across social media—at least in the case of ITV’s Quiz—is the way that ambiguities innate to this genre are ironed out. That is to say that the divides between drama and documentary—complex boundaries between ‘fiction’ and ‘fact’ that Quiz itself problematised—become unchallenged once again. Indeed, on the democratised social platform of Twitter, Quiz’s subsequent audiences largely operated within the ideological confines of ‘drama is fake’ and ‘documentary is fact’. In essentially reasserting the distinction between these two forms and thus sidestepping the more critical, reflexive nature of Quiz, a number of Twitter users argued that dramatised elements must be untrue while moments presented in documentary-esque aesthetics must in fact be true. Moreover, such users often use available media as evidence, as if making a case. For example, @danny_boy_21 tweeted the following on April 15, 2020: ‘After watching #Quiz I’ve changed my mind on the Ingrams, all these years I thought they cheated from what the media has said about them and the video of the show that had been changed, but seeing all the facts I find it hard to believe they did it #quizitv’. In response, a seemingly agitated @SevenSeasSoBlue replied: ‘Please just watch the Bashir documentary again. Watch it objectively. I think the evidence of their guilt speaks for itself.’ The ‘Bashir documentary’ refers to the 2003 Tonight with Trevor McDonald episode mentioned earlier. By way of context, in 2005 Peter Kosminsky—a British TV writer, director and producer—commented on whether the value of docudramas should be questioned because they rely on elements of fiction, arguing: ‘If you have a statement at the start of a film saying “this is a true story”, you have to apply the same editorial processes and rigour you would to a documentary’ (Deans 2005). According to Kosminsky, ‘as professional [makers of docudramas] we are fully aware of the capacities and limits of the genre; they neither twist reality nor cheat with facts and chronology but offer a point of view that is their own’ (ibid.). Perhaps it is this underpinning logic to the fictionality of the docudrama that accounts for the continued online debate surrounding Quiz in 2020, despite the series itself going to great lengths to point out that the ‘Bashir documentary’ is as much a construction as anything else. Because when extending the debate onto social media, the form of documentary often remains shorthand for unequivocal truth. Consider the following Twitter thread, which is largely representative of the Twitter discourse: on April 16, 2020, @SpaceToffee tweeted: Having watched Quiz I felt the Ingrams probably were innocent. But then I watched the Martin Bashir documentary and now I’m 100% convinced they’re guilty. There’s not a shred of doubt. They showed far more of the real footage and it leaves you in no doubt. Quiz was a drama designed to leave you wondering. But the documentary really breaks it down, with actual footage and interviews #quizitv.

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Following a debate with multiple users, @SpaceToffee eventually tweeted: ‘So can we all agree they’re completely guilty then?’ In response, @Hugobossdre wrote: ‘I don’t think so’, to which the original posted replied: ‘I guess you’ve not watched the Bashir documentary then?’ ‘The one made by the same people who took them to court?’, @Hugobossdre stated. Finally, in response to such knowing sarcasm: ‘Yeah but you see the real footage, not a dramatised story. I honestly can’t see how anyone could watch it and come away with any opinion other than “totally guilty”. They left loads out of the drama. You should watch it.’ An alternative, perhaps more nuanced way of theorising the transmedial debate surrounding Quiz (and thus the docudrama genre) on social media is to argue that online audiences are in fact creating their own docudramas through social media, fully aware of the reflexive complexities concerning truth-making in the age of multiplatform media. After all, the same Twitter thread cited above does demonstrate instances of critical distance: on April 15, 2020, @ dunnace tweeted: ‘Wow it was incredibly cheeky for ITV to make #quizitv. “Lol maybe we ruined two people’s lives anyway we won thanks for watching.”’ But consider the following thread, which shows audiences going to the ‘real’ Charles Ingram on Twitter to try and find out the ‘truth’ concerning the Ingrams’ alleged guilt (i.e. creating their own documentary), before later questioning the very real possibility that they are not in fact speaking to the real Charles Ingram after all (i.e. thus dramatising their own storytelling): on April 15, 2020, @di4charles (which may or may not be the real Charles Ingram) tweeted: ‘The truth is that #Quiz is a much fairer representation than the original case. It was then that you were “sucked in”. We shall see.’ One of the people who responded to this tweet, @The FootyTog, then posted: ‘How any jury convicted you on the evidence we saw is crazy. There must have been an element of doubt in their mind. There must have!’ In direct response, @di4charles tweeted: ‘It took jury 3 days, 1 thrown off, a weekend & majority verdict. But worst thing was they returned after 3 days stating Whittock and I were guilty, and Diana they couldn’t decide! This showed they were in chaos as the prosecution case made clear judge was three or none #Quiz.’ Following a further lengthy discussion about the intricacies and unknowns of the Ingrams’ court case back in 2003, @Lyn20341444 stopped to question: ‘Do we know if this is really Charles Ingram???’, to which @gailingtonford commented: ‘I asked him that a few days ago. He gave me an enigmatic answer ie didn’t say. I think it IS him.’ This particular Twitter thread could be analysed from a whole range of perspectives, but what we wish to highlight at this stage is thus: more than enabling audiences to concoct their own transmedial docudramas through the participatory affordances of social media, what we are witnessing here is a kind of post-­ truth entertainment, an idea which speaks to the way that debate amongst online audiences is formed through different opinions, and where the heightened currency of individual opinion only further amplifies the potential for new ambiguities and alternative interpretations within the already murky waters of

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the docudrama genre. Early in Poetics, Aristotle (1961) explains that at the climatic point of a drama, there is a discovery of some kind, and even if the discovery is unpleasant or shocking, this reveal is part of the dramatic climax. In the case of Quiz and its spread across a range of digital interfaces, however, the dramatic discovery of its multiplatform climax is that we know less than we thought about Charles Ingram’s notorious stint on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

Conclusion ITV’s Quiz hints at how frighteningly easy it is to perpetuate falsehoods once they become accepted as fact. That was true twenty years ago at the time of the Millionaire scandal, but in a multiplatform landscape where more digital platforms exist than ever before—all of which serve to reinforce, augment or potentially oppose the others—it is even truer today. Above all else, Quiz is a docudrama that asks us to consider whether we really know what happened— and whether it is possible to ever know what happened in a mediatised world. This is a good analogy for one of the key ways that today’s technologically converged media culture has impacted genre: we all think we recognise what genre is, yet the multitude of platforms that now surround a genre all work to recreate, extend and sometimes counter the way that genre is constructed, meaning that genre is now constantly being reimagined into something new. In the case of the docudrama, this chapter has demonstrated how conceiving of the docudrama as a product of the ITV Hub allows us to make sense of how this genre operates in the age of customised TV interfaces, democratic social media and non-linear, personalised modes of media consumption. For one thing, in a transmedial context, elements of drama and documentary become equally privileged, albeit on different platforms and at different times. As argued, both dramatic and documentary depictions are repurposed as marketing strategies, communicating tension and intrigue respectively. But across the likes of the ITV Hub and the promotion that feeds into this digitised interface, such depictions allow audiences to customise how and when they engage with facts, fictions or a continuum between the two, all of which is informed by the choice of digital platform. Equally, in terms of which elements of docudrama become understood as adherence to fact and which become classed as dramatic licence in this multiplatform context, we have shown how digitised TV culture leads to audiences creating their own cross-platform docudramas via online debate—dramatising and documenting their interpretations of what they have watched on television. Nevertheless, even as multiple platforms proliferate the number of perspectives on a docudrama, perhaps this chapter’s most intriguing finding is that by expanding docudrama across customisable, democratised digital platforms, it arguably works to reinforce the line between drama and documentary. Corner posits that ‘the biggest issue in public discussion of docudrama … is that of possible confusion among the audience’ (2015: 50). Says Corner: ‘A confusion

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about the fundamental status of what is being watched (is it really happening or is being acted out?) is far less likely than a confusion about how what is dramatically depicted relates to what did actually happen or what might well have happened’ (ibid.: 50). We return back, then, to the million-pound question that opened this chapter: to what extent has today’s technological convergence of television and the internet, where user-led digital interfaces proliferate perspectives on content, created a culture of blurred boundaries between fact and fiction that is becoming far less interested in the former? Looking forward, the next chapter will further develop these ideas by analysing what happens when— in this case, the comedy genre—is evoked on BBC Three and re-activated on YouTube as part of the transmedia rollout of a television series. But for now, and through the lens of Quiz, we have shown how audiences can challenge the potential for digital media to dramatise and actualise in equal measure, while at the same time drawing on ideas about the so-called fictionality of drama and the perceived actuality of documentary to make sense of the reality of their media. Perhaps it is simply that—as Diana Ingram attests when defending herself in court during the final episode of Quiz—‘in a world of uncertainties, I like the idea that something can be known’. In a multiplatform context, therein lies the drama. And that is our final answer.

References Aristotle. 1961. Aristotle’s Poetics. New York: Hill and Wang. Brooker, Will. 2004. ‘Living on Dawson’s Creek: Teen Viewer’s, Cultural Convergence and Television Overflow. In The Television Studies Reader, ed. Robert C. Allen and Annette Hill, 569–580. London and New York: Routledge. Caldwell, John T. 2014. Post-Network Reflexivity: Viral Marketing and Labor Management. In Wired TV: Laboring Over and Interactive Future, ed. Denise Mann, 140–160. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. Chamberlain, Daniel. 2010. Television Interfaces. Journal of Popular Film and Television 38 (2): 84–88. Corner, John. 2015. Docudrama. In The Television Genre Book, ed. Glen Creeber, 2nd ed., 49–51. London: BFI Publishing. Creeber, Glen. 2006. Tele-visions: An Introduction to Studying Television. London: BFI. Davies, Hugh. 2017. Marketing BBC Drama (Author Interview). Deans, Jason. 2005. Kosminsky Defends Docudrama. Media Guardian, October 17. Accessed August 6, 2020. http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/oct/17/ broadcasting2. Doyle, Gillian. 2015. Multiplatform Media and the Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes. Journal of Media Business Studies 12 (1): 49–65. Edgar, David. 1999. Theater of Fact: A Dramatist’s Viewpoint. In Why Docudrama? Fact-Fiction on Film and TV, ed. Alan Rosenthal, 174–188. Carbondale, Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. Evans, Elizabeth. 2011. Transmedia Television: Audiences, New Media and Daily Life. London and New York: Routledge. ———. 2018. Transmedia Distribution: From Vertical Integration to Digital Natives. In The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies, ed. Matthew Freeman and Renira Rampazzo Gambarato, 243–250. London and New York: Routledge.

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———. 2019. Understanding Engagement in Transmedia Culture. London and New York: Routledge. Fournier, Georges. 2013. British Docudrama. InMedia, 3 November. Accessed August 2, 2020. http://journals.openedition.org/inmedia/591. Goldman, Michael. 2000. On Drama: Boundaries of Genre, Borders of Self. Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Graham, James. 2020. Quiz: TV Q&A. BAFTA, March 4. Accessed August 8, 2020. https://m.soundcloud.com/bafta/quiz-­tv-­qa. Grainge, Paul, and Catherine Johnson. 2018. From Catch-up TV to Online TV: Digital Broadcasting and the Case of BBC iPlayer. Screen 59 (1): 21–40. Grierson, John. 1946. Grierson on Documentary. London: Faber and Faber. Hay, James, and Nick Couldry. 2011. Rethinking Convergence/Culture: An Introduction. Cultural Studies 25 (4): 473–486. Holt, Jennifer, and Kevin Sanson. 2014. Connected Viewing: Selling, Streaming and Sharing Media in the Digital Age. London and New York: Routledge. ITV. 2015. ITV Hub Press Release. ITV, September 28. Accessed August 1, 2020. http://www.itv.com/presscentre/press-­releases/itv-­hub. Jenkins, Henry. 2009. The Revenge of the Origami Unicorn: Seven Principles of Transmedia Storytelling. Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins, December 12. Accessed February 20, 2012. http://henryjenkins. org/2009/12/ the_revenge_of_the_origami_uni.html. Johnson, Catherine. 2019. Online TV. London and New York: Routledge. Kermode, Frank. 1968. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Letwin, David, Joe Stockdale, and Robin Stockdale. 2008. The Architecture of Drama: Plot, Character, Theme, Genre and Style. Lanham, Maryland: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Lipkin, Steven. 1999. Defining Docudrama: In the Name of the Father, Schindler’s List and JFK.  In Why Docudrama? Fact-Fiction on Film and TV, ed. Alan Rosenthal, 370–385. Carbondale, Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press. ———. 2011. Docudrama Performs the Past: Arenas of Argument in Films based on True Stories. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. McStay, Andrew. 2010. Digital Advertising. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Paget, Derek. 2011. No Other Way To Tell It: Dramadoc/Docudrama on Television. 2nd ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Perren, Alisa. 2013. Rethinking Distribution for the Future of Media Industry Studies. Cinema Journal 52 (3): 165–171. Petruska, Karen. 2014. The Digital Television Transition, Consumer Power and the Limits of Cultural Citizenship. Creative Industries Journal 7 (1): 19–32. Pullinger, Kate. 2020. Framing Immersion: Stories from an Emerging Market. South West Creative Technology Network. Schackman, Daniel. 2013. Social Media Content. In The Social Media Industries, ed. Alan B. Albarran, 105–116. London and New York: Routledge. Winston, Brian. 2000. Lies, Damn Lies and Documentaries. London: BFI.

CHAPTER 6

Transmedia Comedy: BBC Three, Genre Distribution and Pls Like

Introduction The commissioning and distribution of the first season of the BBC Three sitcom Pls Like (2017–present) represents a distinctive and well-suited marriage of content and delivery. Set within the online world of ‘vlogging’, the comedy series’ first season focuses on technophobe Liam Williams’ efforts to become a successful YouTuber.1 As Liam is ignorant yet sceptical of YouTuber culture, much of the season’s ‘fish-out-of-water’ humour stems from Liam’s friction with this world. As BBC Three, at the time of Pls Like’s commissioning, operated solely as an online service native to the BBC iPlayer, its first three seasons have been made available on this streaming platform. However, Pls Like’s first season was additionally made available, in full, on YouTube. Therefore, the distinctive and well-suited marriage of content and delivery to which we refer is BBC Three’s creation of a comedy series about YouTube to be viewed on YouTube. BBC Three’s commissioning and dissemination of Pls Like’s first season is indicative of the service’s experimental approach to content creation and delivery in recent years. As we detail here, the service has, as part of these practices, commissioned certain comedy content to be disseminated beyond the BBC iPlayer to the YouTube video-streaming service. Using Pls Like as a case study, we examine how BBC Three’s approach to the comedy genre has been developed for this online distributional strategy. This focus on BBC Three’s dissemination of content on multiple streaming platforms relates to the widespread contemporary practice of transmedia distribution. This is, according to Elizabeth Evans (2019: 244), a process whereby ‘a piece of content’ is ‘placed on multiple platforms either consecutively or simultaneously’. Transmedia 1  In Pls Like, the television comedy performer Liam Williams is playing a fictionalised version of himself (who is named Liam Williams).

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distribution has clear precedents within media culture (such as home video releases and television broadcasts of theatrically released films). However, the rise of digital multiplatform practices has increased the potential of this dissemination mode. As Evans (2019: 244) observes, within contemporary convergence culture, ‘a “television episode”, … may appear via broadcast, DVD/ Blu-ray, streamed via a VOD service, or downloaded via a digital retail store; it may be experienced on a television set, laptop or computer, tablet or mobile phone.’ As transmedia distribution has proliferated, Evans argues, comprehension of these processes is necessary to fully understanding transmediality (Evans 2019: 244). To this point, we connect Pls Like, here, to the manner of its dissemination, demonstrating how emergent transmedia distribution practices can inform approaches to genre. More specifically, we show how Pls Like applies workplace and mockumentary sitcom conventions in a fashion that befits its multiplatform delivery. Furthermore, we argue that Pls Like constructs comedic stereotypes in such ways as to complement an audience of contrasting cultural preferences, which the programme’s dissemination on two distinct streaming platforms potentially builds. Ultimately, we establish that the series activates television’s sitcom genre in such ways as to suit its placement on both YouTube and BBC iPlayer. Via this study of how transmedia dissemination practices have informed approaches to genre in Pls Like, we contribute here to academic understanding about television industries’ ongoing convergence with technology companies. More specifically, we add to knowledge around traditional broadcasters’ dissemination of television content to internet-native social video platforms, such as YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, Instagram and Snapchat. As Catherine Johnson (2019: 87) observes, some ‘TV providers are seeking to create programming that extends beyond the closed infrastructure of their online TV services and moves out into the broader Internet eco-system’, which BBC Three’s distribution of Pls Like is reflective of. Studies in this area highlight how broadcasters have commissioned shorter forms of content to complement this distributional practice. Academic discussion of the BBC’s commissioning of short-form comedy and drama is exemplary of this (Woods 2017; Grainge and Johnson 2018; Johnson 2019: 87). Studies along these lines also consider how broadcasters carry out what Max Dawson (2007: 233–234) terms the ‘unbundling’ of longer-form broadcast programming into ‘fragmentary, yet self-contained segments’ intended to circulate on social video platforms. Myles McNutt’s (2017) investigation into how segments of CBS’ The Late Late Show with James Corden (2015–present) have been disseminated on YouTube is one such study. In comparison, this article’s examination of how genre is configured for transmedia distribution practices such as those adopted by the BBC provides a new and distinct perspective within this academic field. To appropriately contextualise this study, we account, in the following section, for the institutional conditions and motivations that led to BBC Three’s commissioning of Pls Like and its distinct transmedia distribution of this comedy series’ first season.

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Institutional Contexts of Pls Like’s Transmedia Distribution Since its creation in 2003, BBC Three has, as part of the BBC’s wider public service remit, been tasked with appealing to 16–34-year-olds specifically. BBC Three, therefore, commissions content attractive to this demographic group and aims to reach the desired audience with this content. In 2016, BBC Three transitioned from a linear-broadcast channel to an online BBC iPlayer service primarily. While the service returned as a digital linear broadcast channel in 2022, BBC Three Controller Fiona Campbell (BBC Commissioning 1) states that the iPlayer will ‘remain the primary home’ for the service’s content. Since becoming an iPlayer service primarily, BBC Three has commissioned a raft of ‘shorter-form’ comedies, alongside more traditional longform comedies (i.e. 30 minute episodes) as a means to address this audience.2 Examples of such shorter-form BBC comedies include Pls Like (15 minutes approx. per episode), sex-themed sitcom Climaxed (2017–2018, 5 minutes approx. per episode) and coming-of-age comedy Peck ‘Eds (2021, 3 minutes approx. per episode). Being an online-native service since 2016 has enabled BBC Three to create shorter-form content, as the iPlayer platform is not ‘restricted by established conventions or scheduling that shape linear commissioning’ (Grainge and Johnson 2018: 35). However, while the iPlayer’s specificities afford shorter forms of content, this commissioning approach has complemented BBC Three’s audience-targeting objective in three ways. Firstly, the relatively short durations are intended to make the comedies attractive to younger audiences, as these viewers are frequently perceived by media industries as preferring shorter-form content (Kahn 2016; Stears 2019;  Hays 2019; Boger 2020). Secondly, BBC Three’s shorter forms are designed to contribute to such content’s ‘spreadability’ through the informal online networks of younger audiences (Jenkins et al. 2013). As Paul Grainge and Catherine Johnson (2018: 35) note in their study of the BBC’s iPlayer strategy, the BBC intends shorter-form commissions to be hosted on the iPlayer but dispersed by young adults across social media, thereby reaching this desired audience as part of participatory circulation practices. As Faye Woods (2017: 143) observes, the spreadable characteristic of shorter-form videos ‘facilitates BBC Three’s expansion of its boundaries beyond iPlayer, as it reaches out to its target audience in their social media habitats’. Thirdly, and related to Woods’ point, shorter-form comedy, such as Pls Like and Climaxed, has been intended to complement BBC Three’s transmedia distributional strategy of disseminating content beyond the confines of BBC platforms. As BBC Three’s commissioning guidance stated following BBC Three’s transition to an online service, BBC Three aimed to 2  ‘Short-form’ is typically used within media culture to describe video content that is shorter than 10 minutes in duration, while content that is between 10 and 20 minutes in duration (such as Pls Like) is labelled mid-form. ‘Shorter-form’ is used here as a term to incorporate both and is relative to longform (Enders Analysis 2016).

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publish shorter-form programming, not only on the iPlayer but also on YouTube, as well as various social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, for the first five years of each piece of content’s lifespan (BBC Commissioning 2). Shorter-form video content is appropriate for this transmedia distribution strategy, as videos of shorter durations are more typical on these destination platforms. This transmedia distribution strategy is intended to support BBC Three’s audience targeting in the face of a particular challenge that has emerged in recent years. That is, BBC Three is tasked with appealing to, and serving, teens and young adults, during a period when many younger UK viewers have drifted away from traditional broadcasters to global streaming platforms, such as YouTube. This trend in UK audience practices is evident in reports compiled by the UK broadcast regulator, Ofcom (BBC News 2020; Independent Staff 2020). Therefore, BBC Three’s transmedia distribution strategy has been developed in response to changing viewing practices and is intended to support audience-targeting objectives.3 As BBC Three editorial explained after the channel’s transformation into an online service, the aim with this media dissemination approach has been to appeal to younger viewers by delivering its content to platforms ‘where [these] audiences are most likely to find it’ (BBC Commissioning 2). By providing viewers with shorter-form BBC Three content on YouTube, the BBC’s aim has been to reach younger viewers and lure them to iPlayer. For example, in the case of Pls Like, the distribution of its first season on YouTube potentially draws teen and young-adult YouTube viewers to the iPlayer to consume subsequent seasons of Pls Like, as these later seasons are exclusive to the BBC platform. Pls Like, therefore, was commissioned to support a strategy whereby BBC Three programming is posted on digital platforms external to the public service broadcasting corporation to attract its target audience. In other words, Pls Like was partially intended to be YouTube content, as well as iPlayer programming. By applying the genre lens to Pls Like, we examine how the programme’s application of the genre conventions of television comedy complements its transmedia distribution to these two distinct streaming platforms. We show how, through its construction of genre, the programme has been configured to suit the cultural particulars of, on the one hand, the iPlayer and, on the other, YouTube. With the following section, we show how Pls Like’s first season draws

3  Tasked with a similar objective to appeal to 16–34-year-olds and facing the same challenges around attracting this demographic group, the UK’s other public service broadcaster, Channel 4, adopted a similar commissioning and distribution strategy in the 2010s. The corporation has simultaneously published comedy shorts not only on its own video-streaming service, All 4, but also on YouTube. Published under Channel 4’s ‘Comedy Blaps’ banner, such comedy-short series have included video-gamer sitcoms Avatards (2016) and the Muslim punk-band comedy, Lady Parts (2018). Demonstrating the potential for comedy shorts to serve a traditional pilot function, Channel 4 have since developed Avatards and Lady Parts, as well as other Comedy Blaps shorts, into traditional long-form broadcast sitcoms.

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upon textual conventions of the television sitcom genre in such a way as to suit not only its delivery on iPlayer but also its placement on YouTube.

Pls Like as a Workplace-Mockumentary Sitcom Before detailing how Pls Like’s application of TV comedy conventions complements its transmedia distribution, it is useful to first identify these genre conventions on which Pls Like relies. In broad terms, Pls Like’s textual features draw from television’s popular and perennial sitcom form. As a television comedy genre, the sitcom ‘is distinguished by combining comic talent with dramatic character and action’ and is often designed to ‘bring out the comedic in a given [fictional] situation’ (Hartley 2015: 97). Pls Like offers a fictionalised version of the world of professionalised ‘YouTubers’ or ‘vloggers’. That is, individuals that produce, and appear in, videos uploaded to YouTube (or other social video platforms), and who monetise their videos, for example via YouTube ad revenues and product endorsements. Pls Like’s specific sitcom situation is this: a PR company called Beam, which represents YouTubers, challenges YouTuber-sceptic Liam Williams to become a successful YouTuber. As there is a £10,000 prize on offer should he achieve this success, Liam accepts the challenge. Therefore, much of the programme’s comedy stems from Liam’s engagement with YouTuber culture as part of his completion of this challenge. For example, many scenes are built around Liam’s awkward interactions with two of the most successful YouTubers on Beam’s roster, Millipede and Charlie South. In terms of its fiction, Pls Like more specifically follows in the long tradition of the workplace sitcom. That is, a sitcom set in a work environment, in which humour is derived from workers’ occupations and their relationships with each other (Hartley 2015: 97–98). Earlier examples of BBC workplace sitcoms, in which genre tradition Pls Like follows, include the department-store-set Are You Being Served? (1972–1985) and The Office (2001–2003), which is situated within a paper merchant business. In Pls Like, the depicted work is that of the culture of YouTuber labour. As such, Pls Like’s narrative activity is set in such workplaces as Beam’s offices, as well as in the spaces in which YouTubers produce videos, which are usually their homes. As well as aligning with the workplace sitcom, Pls Like also adheres to a further, frequently related, sitcom type. That is, the programme adopts the ‘mockumentary’ mode, whereby its comedy fiction is presented as fact. The BBC version of The Office, which presents itself as a docusoap focussed on the employees of the previously mentioned paper merchant business, helped to popularise this sitcom mode in British and American television comedy (Jacobi 2015: 307). As a mockumentary, Liam’s efforts to become a successful YouTuber, and his engagement with other vloggers as part of that process, are presented as a BBC documentary exploring the YouTuber phenomenon. In keeping with the mockumentary form, Pls Like draws from the mode’s typical visual style. As Brett Mills (2015: 106–107) notes, this aesthetic, which he

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terms ‘comedy verité’, emulates the camera techniques of television documentary and factual programming. For example, Liam’s interviews with YouTubers are presented via a handheld camera that appears to be responding to events as they occur. However, Pls Like episodes additionally include scenes purporting to be footage of the fictional YouTubers’ videos, which conform to the aesthetic conventions of YouTuber content. For example, as is typical of YouTuber vlogs, most of these scenes adopt the single fixed, medium close-up shot—a web-cam style shot—of a given fictional YouTuber. The YouTubers’ addresses to the camera are furthermore frequently fragmented and disrupted via discontinuous editing, which is a ‘common stylistic quirk’ within actual YouTuber videos (Freyne 2020). As the above suggests, through its activation of the mockumentary and workplace sitcom modes, Pls Like draws on textual characteristics that are evident in many previous comedies. Yet, in the lineage of sitcoms, Pls Like perhaps most closely emulates the structural model of The Larry Sanders Show (HBO, 1992–1998), which centres on the production of a fictional late-night talk show. This programme depicts employees’ working ‘behind the scenes’ of the talk show, while also including scenes designed to appear as if they are taken from the broadcasted talk show. Via its mockumentary mode, Pls Like similarly includes ‘behind the scenes’ fiction, as YouTubers discuss their work with Liam, but this is interspersed with footage from the fictional YouTubers’ video content. As with the fictional talk show footage included in The Larry Sanders Show, Pls Like’s fictional vlogs accurately mimic the form and content conventions of the genre being activated within the sitcom fiction (i.e. YouTube vlogs). Pls Like’s uses of the sitcom form complement the respective genre norms and cultural conventions of each of the two video-streaming platforms on which the series’ first season was delivered. The BBC iPlayer mainly functions as a repository for the BBC’s television programming, such as dramas, sitcoms, documentaries and light entertainment. Therefore, Pls Like’s workplace-­ mockumentary sitcom mode complements the programme’s inclusion on the iPlayer, as the series aligns with other BBC comedies that are regularly available on the platform, and which adopt the workplace-mockumentary sitcom form, such as The Office and W1A (2014–2017). Pls Like also aligns with other comedies on the platform that adopt the mockumentary mode, such as BBC Three’s This County (2017–2020) and People Just Do Nothing (2014–2018). Furthermore, Pls Like’s mimicking of presenter-led documentaries, whereby a distinct work culture is examined, potentially develops further resonances across the iPlayer. That is, its mockumentary mode builds associations with the range of genuine factual programming on the iPlayer, including BBC Three’s presenter-led documentaries, such as those fronted by Stacey Dooley. However, while Pls Like’s application of sitcom conventions complements its placement on the iPlayer, this sitcom’s premise suits its distribution to YouTube. In contrast to iPlayer, the YouTube platform does not largely consist of conventional broadcast programming. It is, instead, host to an array of genres that have originated on participatory social video platforms. Examples

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of such video forms include variations on the vlog format, such as ‘haul’ videos, whereby a YouTuber reveals items purchased on a recent shopping expedition; reaction videos, whereby a YouTuber films their initial responses to watching, say, a trailer for an eagerly anticipated blockbuster movie; and ‘let’s play’ videos, whereby a YouTuber records themselves playing through, and talking about, a specific video game. Whilst a significant amount of film and television content is also present on YouTube, this is usually only in the form of trailers of, or clips and segments from, films and television programmes. By virtue of possessing a premise based on textual forms and cultural practices that are specific to YouTube and other social video platforms, Pls Like resonates with YouTube-style content and complements YouTube culture. A comparison between Pls Like’s delivery on YouTube to the television scheduling of the previously mentioned Larry Sanders Show usefully illustrates how this is so. In the case of The Larry Sanders Show, the series was intended to complement its transmission context. Within 1990s American television, episodes of The Larry Sanders Show shared night-time schedules with episodes of actual network late-night talk shows, including NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (1992–2009, 2010–2014) and CBS’ The Late Show with David Letterman (1993–2015). The Larry Sanders Show’s fictionalisation of late-night talk show production and programming was, then, designed to resonate with these genuine late-night talk shows with which it was adjacent to within linear-­ broadcast schedules. BBC 2 broadcasts of The Larry Sanders Show indeed increased this resonance by broadcasting episodes of American late-night talk shows, such as The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, immediately after airing episodes of The Larry Sanders Show (Smith 1993). Pls Like’s availability on YouTube develops similar associations on this platform. The series’ fictionalisation of vlogger practices and its authentic-seeming parodies of YouTuber content create intertextual connections to the genuine YouTuber content that is available on the same platform. Therefore, BBC Three’s dissemination of Pls Like to YouTube potentially maximises the resonance of this comedy to YouTube viewers familiar with YouTuber videos. Pls Like, then, was well designed to support BBC Three’s dissemination plans for its first season. While its uses of workplace and mockumentary sitcom forms align it with iPlayer programming, Pls Like’s application of these forms to YouTuber culture ensures that the programme resonates with vlog content on the YouTube platform. The series’ uses of sitcom modes, therefore, give a clear indication of how approaches to conventional genres can be tailored to suit transmedia distribution strategies. Via an examination of the series’ use of stereotypes, we further demonstrate, in the following section, how Pls Like applies the sitcom genre in such ways as to complement its transmedia distribution. In this section, we detail the ways in which Pls Like draws on sitcom conventions of stereotyping cultural identities. We then proceed to argue how Pls Like’s particular uses of stereotypes potentially increase its accessibility to distinct audiences on both YouTube and BBC iPlayer.

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Pls Like’s Construction of Stereotypes Prior to analysing the construction of stereotypes in Pls Like, it is first necessary to establish how stereotypes are more generally used in sitcoms. Television comedy has long relied upon stereotypes of different cultural identities, with identities being formed by such identity markers as age, gender, race, ethnicity, economic class, cultural taste and geographical area (e.g. region or nation). An historical example of stereotype use in sitcoms would be BBC’s Liverpool-set sitcom Bread (1986–1991). As Andy Medhurst (2007: 148) notes, this sitcom stereotypes working-class Liverpudlians as ‘cheeky chancers’, thereby perpetuating the ‘Scouser-as-scally trope’ that continues to permeate UK society. Accounting for the frequency of stereotyped cultural identity in comedy, Steve Neale and Frank Krutnik (1990: 93) identify the utility of stereotypes within the genre. As comedy is often derived from characters veering from societal conventions, they observe, ‘it is hardly surprising that comedy often … draws uncritically on … stereotypes, since they provide a ready-made set of images of deviation from social and cultural norms’. However, by stereotyping groups of people as deviating from socio-cultural conventions, the humour in such sitcoms is based on a given viewer feeling superior to those stereotyped groups. As Helen Davies and Sarah Ilott (2018: 7) point out, the intended laughter prompted by such comedy is potentially derived ‘from a sense of superiority of the self in comparison with those forming the butt of the joke’. Therefore, the constructed humour is ‘resting on a perceived hierarchy between “others” and “ourselves” in which those marked by difference are deemed inferior’ (2018: 7). Pls Like’s use of stereotypes is within this tradition of television comedy. However, this sitcom’s approach to stereotype construction is also distinctly equitable, as it vacillates between presenting both YouTubers and YouTube-­ sceptic Liam as deviating from societal norms. On the one hand, the programme appears to represent YouTubers in line with existing negative stereotypes of this cultural group. Within mainstream media, as Ruth A. Deller and Kathryn Murphy (2020) demonstrate, YouTubers are stereotyped as cynical and false, with their ostensibly authentic presentations of self being identified as performative. YouTubers’ paid promotions of products within their videos are, relatedly, often viewed as insincere recommendations (Wiley 2019). Described by journalists as a ‘send up’ and a ‘satire’ of YouTubers, Pls Like frequently constructs YouTubers in similar ways (Taylor 2017; Aroesti 2019). This is evident in the first season’s second episode, in which we see vloggers promoting health and beauty products whilst being comically unconcerned about the products’ quality. For instance, in this episode, YouTuber Charlie South promotes his own branded cologne in one of his videos even though he finds the scent too revolting to personally wear. The series also implies that YouTubers’ customary perkiness and sunniness is inauthentic. For example, Charlie encourages Liam to adopt a more positive and enthusiastic tone and persona when making his videos. We also see Millipede, in one of her vlogs, advise her viewers to consciously appear happy:

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‘What you have to ask yourself is’, she counsels her audience, ‘is anyone going to like me if I’m just sad all the time?’, as a chyron commands, ‘Don’t be sad!’ Furthermore, while Charlie and Millipede are presented as a blissful couple within their YouTube videos, this relationship is revealed to be manufactured. Liam’s description of vloggers as ‘self-manipulating content puppets’ in his introduction to episode 1 crystallises this presented image of vloggers as cynically performative. In these instances, and others like them, the power dynamics of the programme are such that YouTubers are othered as inferior. On the other hand, the series frequently reverses this power structure by undermining Liam’s position through its construction of the documentary presenter as a different kind of stereotype. That is, Liam is an exaggerated version of a misanthropic, culturally snobbish, pseudo-intellectual type. This is evident in the fitness vlog that Liam creates in episode 4, which utilises a Nietzsche quote and offers the quasi-Marxist guidance that tofu should not be flavoured, as ‘flavour is just a bourgeois indulgence’. Furthermore, Liam’s resistance to contemporary technologies and popular culture is frequently ridiculous in its extremity. For example, in episode 5 Liam describes himself as ‘a man who would rather live alone and be sad forever than suffer the indignity of having to use dating apps’. Moreover, in episode 3, having identified his own music taste as ‘in the neighbourhood of Bob Dylan meets, you know, late Bob Dylan’, he describes the contemporary pop music vocal trope of the ‘Millennial whoop’ as being the ‘the sound of all true hope dying’. Liam’s presentation of himself is also routinely shown to be mere posturing and, therefore, as artificial as any YouTuber performance. This is evident in Liam’s reaction to being asked what the contemporary pop singers Justin Bieber, Carly Rae Jepsen and Lana Del Ray have in common. Liam, in response, adopts a vitriolic tone, declaring, ‘They should all be thrown in a ditch for a’, before ceasing mid-sentence, the wind having dropped from his sails. As a way of explanation for prematurely halting his rant, Liam confides, ‘I was just trying to say something cynical’, before conceding, ‘I don’t even mind Lana Del Ray, I feel bad slagging her off’. With this response, Liam reveals that the image he presents of himself as being culturally superior—as someone who is above contemporary technological and pop culture trends—is a façade. In episode 5, in a scene in which Liam chats with Charlie as the latter plays a video game, Liam’s cultural aloofness is again revealed to be a front. Charlie, offering his video game console controller, asks Liam if he wants to play the game. Liam, in keeping with his constructed persona, replies condescendingly: ‘I used to play games myself as a little kid but, as an adult, I find them [to be] inane distractions from the more important issues of the world’. Soon after this, however, Liam, having become so involved watching Charlie play, is compelled to take the controller from Charlie’s grasp and take over the playing of the game. In such moments, it is Liam who is shown to be deviating from socio-cultural norms due to his comically empty posturing. In contrast, the YouTubers in his company, such as Charlie and Millipede, appear to be relatively normal and reasonable. Therefore, in these instances, it is Liam who is

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marked as different and inferior. Pls Like, then, takes a balanced approach to its use of stereotypes, as it negatively stereotypes, on the one hand, its YouTubers and, on the other, its YouTube-sceptic protagonist. This use of stereotypes maximises the accessibility of the programme to the different audiences, with opposing tastes, that the programme potentially attracts due to being released on two culturally distinct platforms. This is not to suggest that the audiences of either the iPlayer or YouTube platforms are monolithic in terms of taste. Rather, the point is that, due to each of these two platforms hosting content that is distinct from the other, each of these platforms has the potential to attract viewers with distinct cultural preferences. For example, it is reasonable to hypothesise that, on YouTube, Pls Like potentially attracts some viewers that are interested in, and enthusiastic about, vlogging culture, as YouTube serves as a key vlogging platform. In contrast, it appears logical to presume that, on iPlayer, Pls Like has the potential to be watched by viewers who are either oblivious to, uninterested in or sceptical of YouTubers, as (outside of Pls Like) YouTube culture has a relatively minimal presence on iPlayer. Due to its balanced approach to stereotypes, Pls Like is well placed to appeal to an audience with contrasting cultural biases concerning YouTuber culture, which the programme potentially attracts. As Davies and Ilott (2018: 8) note, the way audiences comprehend, and engage with, the humour of a comedy programme can vary, person-to-person, depending on a given individual’s ideology, political allegiance, cultural preferences and so on. Therefore, a given sitcom viewer’s cultural taste can inform which sitcom character they might identify with. Through its stereotyping, Pls Like invites viewers to adopt (at least) one of two main opposing points of character identification, with each identification point offering the viewer the opportunity to find humour in the programme’s construction of stereotypes. For example, a hypothetical iPlayer viewer, who might look down upon YouTuber culture, can identify with Liam and find humour in those instances in which stereotypical YouTuber behaviour is presented. Conversely, a hypothetical YouTube viewer, who is more au fait with, and enthusiastic about, YouTuber personalities, can identify with Millipede and Charlie South, and find laughter in those instances in which the comically snobbish Liam deviates from social norms. It is in this way that the programme’s equitable approach to stereotypes potentially maximises its accessibility to the audiences of the two different platforms. Therefore, Pls Like’s construction of stereotypes suits an audience of differing cultural preferences, which the programme’s transmedia distribution potentially assembles. Furthermore, due to their cultural specifics, each of Pls Like’s destination platforms potentially motivates Pls Like viewers to adopt one of the two modes of identification outlined here. This is because, as Davies and Ilott (2018: 14) also note, ‘the context in which … humour takes place in part shapes the way in which the utterance is received’. Therefore, the branded channel or service on which a comedy programme is viewed can potentially influence how a viewer understands a given television programme. In the case of the iPlayer,

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this platform, due to the BBC’s brand reputation, might prepare a Pls Like viewer to identify more with the YouTube-sceptic, Liam. Viewed from the vantage of a BBC platform, with its associations of public service and culturally worthy content, the viewer is potentially primed to laugh at, and feel culturally superior to, the ‘marked as different’ YouTubers. In contrast, viewing Pls Like on YouTube—that is a hive of vlogging content and culture—potentially prepares an audience to identify more with the YouTuber characters. Therefore, the viewing context of the YouTube platform has the potential to prime viewers to derive laughter from feeling superior to Liam, the risibly haughty host who remains resistant to YouTuber culture. Pls Like, then, enables audiences to find humour in its stereotypes irrespective of which characters a streaming platform might prepare them to identify with.

Conclusion As part of processes of media convergence in the twenty-first century, the merging of television industries with internet cultures and technologies has afforded broadcasters with many new possibilities for media dissemination. This is well evident in the case of BBC Three. The channel transitioned into an iPlayer-native service and developed new transmedia distribution practices involving the dissemination of its content beyond BBC’s digital ‘walled garden’ to web platforms such as YouTube. As we have shown, new modes of transmedia distribution, such as those adopted by BBC Three, can inform approaches to genre intended to ensure that media content complements online multiplatform rollouts. In the case of Pls Like, as our genre analysis here has revealed, the programme’s use of sitcom conventions is configured to suit its presence on both the iPlayer and YouTube platforms. The programme’s combination of workplace sitcom and mockumentary comedy characteristics neatly aligns Pls Like with other BBC Three iPlayer content, as well as the iPlayer’s selection of BBC sitcoms and documentaries more generally. However, the programme’s application of these sitcom forms to the topic of vlogging culture suits the delivery of its first season to YouTube. Furthermore, the programme’s complex construction of stereotypes complements Pls Like’s transmedia distribution. By drawing on cultural  stereotypes in the construction of, on the one hand, Pls Like’s YouTuber characters (such as Charlie and Millipede) and, on the other hand, the programme’s YouTube-sceptic character (Liam), Pls Like’s comedy accommodates divergent cultural preferences within its audience. In so doing, the programme increases its accessibility to viewers, thereby maximising its compatibility with the audiences of two culturally distinct video-streaming platforms. Therefore, we have demonstrated here how genre can be configured and deployed to simultaneously complement the distinct cultural specificities of multiple online destination platforms as part of emergent transmedia distribution practices. In so doing, we have indicated the need to more widely examine how institutions are reconfiguring conventional genres to suit the transmedia

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distribution strategies that continue to arise due to the ongoing convergence of media industries and online technology companies. However, while we have in this and the previous two chapters looked at how genre is constructed as part of television’s contemporary multiplatform practices specifically, we now turn attention to the video games sector. In particular, we examine how genre is activated on online digital platforms as part of crowdfunding campaigns intended to secure financing for video game development.

References Aroesti, Rachel. 2019. Liam Williams: “I’m Still Coated in a Residue of Laddishness, for Better or Worse”. The Guardian, November 23. https://www.theguardian. com/culture/2019/nov/23/liam-­w illiams-­i m-­s till-­c oated-­i n-­a -­r esidue-­o f-­ laddishness-­for-­better-­or-­worse. Accessed October 14, 2021. BBC Commissioning 1. n.d. BBC Three. https://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/ bbc-­three. Accessed October 14, 2021. BBC Commissioning 2. n.d. Short-Form and New Form on BBC Three. https://web. archive.org/web/20180616102912/http://www.bbc.co.uk/commissioning/tv/ articles/short-­form-­bbc-­three. Accessed October 14, 2021. BBC News. 2020. Young Viewers Watching Public Service Broadcasters Less, Say Ofcom. BBC.co.uk, February 27. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-­ arts-­51659699. Accessed October 23, 2021. Boger, Kris. 2020. The Rise of Short-Form Video & the Gen Z Social Revolution. Iabuk.com, October 20. https://www.iabuk.com/opinions/rise-­short-­form-­video-­ gen-­z-­social-­revolution. Accessed October 14, 2021. Davies, Helen, and Sarah Ilott. 2018. Mocking the Weak? Contexts, Theories, Politics. In Comedy and the Politics of Representation, ed. Helen Davies and Sarah Ilott, 1–24. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Dawson, Max. 2007. Little Players, Big Shows: Format, Narration, and Style on Television’s New Smaller Screens. Convergence 13 (3): 233–234. Deller, Ruth A., and Kathryn Murphy. 2020. “Zoella Hasn’t Really Written a Book, She’s Written a Cheque”: Mainstream Media Representations of YouTube. European Journal of Cultural Studies 23 (1): 112–132. Enders Analysis. 2016. Mid-form Video: Beyond the Long and Short of It. Enders Analysis, July 21. https://www.endersanalysis.com/reports/mid-­form-­video-­ beyond-­long-­and-­short-­it. Accessed October 14, 2021. Evans, Elizabeth. 2019. Transmedia Distribution: From Vertical Integration to Digital Natives. In The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies, ed. Matthew Freeman and Renira Rampazzo Gambarato, 243–250. New York: Routledge. Freyne, Patrick. 2020. A Deep Dive into YouTube: So Much of it is Unrelentingly Boring. The Irish Times, June 14. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/tv-­radio-­ web/a-­deep-­dive-­into-­youtube-­so-­much-­of-­it-­is-­unrelentingly-­boring-­1.4274820. Accessed October 14, 2021. Grainge, Paul, and Catherine Johnson. 2018. From Catch-up TV to Online TV: Digital Broadcasting and the Case of the BBC iPlayer. Screen 59 (1): 21–40. Hartley, John. 2015. Situation Comedy, Part I. In The Television Genre Book, ed. Glen Creeber, 3rd ed., 96–98. London: BFI.

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Hays, Katherine. 2019. Creative, Short-form Video: The Secret Weapon in Getting Gen Z on Board with Your Brand. MarTech, January 30. https://marketingland. com/creative-­short-­form-­video-­the-­secret-­weapon-­in-­getting-­gen-­z-­on-­board-­ with-­your-­brand-­256158. Accessed October 14, 2021. Independent Staff. 2020. Younger Audiences Drifting from BBC to YouTube, Ofcom Says. Independent, November 25. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/ bbc-­youtube-­netflix-­ofcom-­younger-­audiences-­b1761757.html. Accessed October 23, 2021. Jacobi, Philip. 2015. Life is Stationary: Mockumentary and Embarrassment in The Office. In British TV Comedies: Cultural Concepts, Contexts and Controversies, ed. J.  Kamm and B.  Neumann. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1057/9781137552952_20. Accessed March 3, 2022. Jenkins, Henry, Joshua Green, and Sam Ford. 2013. Spreadable Media: Creating Value and Meaning in a Networked Culture. New York: New York University Press. Johnson, Catherine. 2019. Online TV. London: Routledge. Kahn, Eleanor. 2016. Short Form Digital Video is Big News for Millennials. Campaign, November 18. https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/short-­form-­digital-­video-­ big-­news-­millennials/1415909. Accessed October 14, 2021. McNutt, Myles. 2017. Classroom Instruments and Carpool Karaoke: Ritual and Collaboration in Late Night’s YouTube Era. Television & New Media 18 (7): 569–588. Medhurst, Andy. 2007. A National Joke: Popular Comedies and English Cultural Identities. London: Routledge. Mills, Brett. 2015. Contemporary Sitcom: “Comedy Verité”. In The Television Genre Book, ed. Glen Creeber, 3rd ed., 106–107. London: BFI. Neale, Steve, and Frank Krutnik. 1990. Popular Film and Television Comedy. London: Routledge. Smith, Giles. 1993. A Bit of This, a Lot of Chat: A Cheap Joke Here, the Chat-Show in America Remains a Serious (and Seriously Rich) Business. Independent, October 17. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-­entertainment/a-­bit-­of-­this-­a-­lot-­of-­chat-­ a-­cheap-­joke-­here-­the-­chatshow-­in-­america-­remains-­a-­serious-­and-­seriously-­rich-­ business-­a nd-­o nem-­m an-­i s-­t aking-­i t-­o ver-­g iles-­s mith-­r eports-­1 511564.html. Accessed October 14, 2021. Stears, Amanda. 2019. Why Short Form Content Resonates with Younger Generations. Midia, October 2. https://www.midiaresearch.com/blog/why-­short-­form-­ content-­resonates-­with-­younger-­generations. Accessed October 14, 2021. Taylor, Frances. 2017. Pls Like: Why You Have to Watch BBC3’s Fantastic YouTube Mockumentary. RadioTimes.com, March 25. https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/ entertainment/pls-­l ike-­w hy-­y ou-­h ave-­t o-­w atch-­b bc3s-­f antastic-­y outube-­ mockumentary. Accessed October 14, 2021. Wiley, Danielle. 2019. It’s All About the Money: The Rise and Fall (And Rise Again) of Influencer Marketing. Forbes, September 26. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2019/09/26/its-­all-­about-­the-­money-­the-­rise-­and-­fall-­and-­ rise-­again-­of-­influencer-­marketing. Accessed October 14, 2021. Woods, Faye. 2017. Streaming British Youth Television: Online BBC Three as a Transitional Moment. Cinema Journal 57 (1): 140–146.

CHAPTER 7

Transmedia Fantasy-JRPG: Kickstarter, Genre Leveraging and Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Introduction Genre served as a chief marketing point for the video game Kickstarter campaign that garnered the most funding in 2020. This crowdfunding venture, which commenced with a funding goal of $500,000, but which raised approximately $4.6 million, was set up to fund Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, which is, at the time of writing, in development (Hall 2020). Rabbit & Bear Studios, the Japanese company that created the campaign, and which is now developing the game, emphasised genre in relation to Eiyuden Chronicle throughout the campaign. For example, a section on the game’s Kickstarter project page (Rabbit and Bear Studios 2020a), titled ‘Celebrating the JRPG’, states that Rabbit & Bear’s aim with Eiyuden Chronicle is to ‘bring fans back to the days of the classic JRPG’. Therefore, Rabbit & Bear appealed for financial backing by framing its Kickstarter campaign as an opportunity to fund the construction of a type of game that is a rarity in contemporary video game industries. That is, the genre of the traditional JRPG (an abbreviation for ‘Japanese role-playing game’). This example clearly indicates that inside online crowdfunding culture, within which Kickstarter is a leading platform, genre can be central to online campaigns designed to secure funding for media content. We refer to this application of genre as part of the transmedia phenomenon of online crowdfunding as genre leveraging. Furthermore, using the Eiyuden Chronicle Kickstarter content as case study material, we explore precisely how genre is activated as it is leveraged in the service of crowdfunding campaigns. Rabbit & Bear’s Kickstarter project page for the game, the studio’s project updates, and Kickstarter users’ responses to those updates comprise this Kickstarter content that we examine. We specifically identify how this Kickstarter material, which we regard as content forming part of the Eiyuden Chronicle game’s transmedia surround, consistently establishes the fantasy and JRPG genres in relation to the in-development game. As this chapter shows, this Kickstarter content, in © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Freeman, A. N. Smith, Transmedia/Genre, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15583-3_7

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certain instances, constructs genre in ways similar to the kind of promotional material examined elsewhere in the book (e.g. posters and trailers). However, as this chapter also demonstrates, due to its adherence to the conventions of Kickstarter, the Eiyuden Chronicle Kickstarter content also activates genre in distinctive, platform-specific ways. Therefore, our textual analysis of this Kickstarter content exposes how genre can be uniquely activated as part of digital crowdfunding campaigns. To appropriately contextualise this analysis, however, we first fully define the crowdfunding process, explaining the distinct cultural experiences that Kickstarter campaigns afford.

Crowdfunding Campaigns as Paid-for Media Experiences Crowdfunding is simply a process whereby a large online group each contributes money to the creation of a cultural product (or any kind of project). Due to the rise of digital crowdfunding platforms, of which Kickstarter is the most high-profile, this method of income generation has funded the development of many video games in recent years. As part of the process by which video game development studios appeal for financial backing, developers maintain a strong media presence on a given crowdfunding platform, via a Kickstarter project page, for example, as well as on social media channels. During a given funded game’s development, a development studio will typically continue to use such platforms to engage with, and invite participation from, the project’s backers (Smith 2015; Tyni 2020). Typically, for example, a development studio will, following the successful funding of a given video game Kickstarter project, post project updates on the Kickstarter platform during the game’s development to communicate the project’s progress to those Kickstarter users who funded the project. The content that a  development studio creates for a crowdfunding campaign and a crowdfunded development process, such as a Kickstarter project page and related project updates, might be regarded as merely ‘entryway paratexts’ (Gray 2010: 49, 72) for a yet-to-be-released primary text. That is, such textual material is designed to, at first, solicit contributions for the proposed game and then maintain a user community’s interest in the funded game in the lead up to its release. However, while Kickstarter campaign material does serve these purposes, it also forms part of what Heikki Tyni and Olli Sotamaa (2019, 76) regard as the ‘“retailization” of development’ that crowdfunding offers. In other words, project backers are not always merely philanthropically supporting cultural production, or essentially only pre-ordering a game that they anticipate they will like (and which might fail to materialise without their backing). Instead, Tyni and Sotamaa (84–85) suggest, backers are also buying a media experience, as part of which they can spectate on, and—in certain circumstances—participate with, the development process. Various online responses to the conclusion of Eiyuden Chronicle’s crowdfunding campaign are indicative of how project backers sometimes understand crowdfunding along these lines. For example, one YouTuber (Game Break, 2021), whose

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videos offer a commentary on Eiyuden Chronicle’s crowdfunding and development process, declared that the game’s Kickstarter campaign had been ‘a wild, awesome ride’. As we show, in the case of the Eiyuden Chronicle Kickstarter project, Rabbit & Bear has made genre central to this process of development ‘retailisation’ by which the studio mediates and represents instances of video game creation. However, prior to detailing, via our Eiyuden Chronicle case study, how genre is activated as part of this type of crowdfunding experience, it is first necessary to establish concepts around genre in video games more generally—and regarding Eiyuden Chronicle specifically. This is because, as we explain in the following section, genres operate in unique ways within the video game medium.

Genres of Fiction and Interactivity in Video Games Elsewhere in this book we have largely focussed on genres of fiction in relation to media content. By this we mean, types of fictional stories, such  as horror, comedy, the Western and science fiction. However, this approach alone is insufficient when considering video games, as it neglects the presence of genres of interactivity in the medium. As interactivity is central to the experience that the medium affords, video games are often categorised within industry and player discourses according to the type of interactivity they enable. For example, the descriptors that the Entertainment Software Association (2021), a US video game trade body, uses to categorise game types include ‘racing’, ‘fighting’, ‘strategy’, ‘shooter’ and ‘role-playing’. These terms, and others like them, are used to refer to a particular type of gameplay with which a player engages, rather than a specific narrative genre in the literary tradition. For some games studies scholars, categorising games along these lines—that is, based on the type of interactivity they enable—is the optimal approach to genre in the medium. For example, Mark J.P. Wolf (2001, 114) argues that classifying video games via iconography and narrative theme is an inadequate approach. Instead, he contends, categorising a game by the type of interactivity a game affords ‘is a more appropriate way of examining and defining video game genres’. Thomas H. Apperley (2006, 21) similarly calls for a focus on ‘genres of interactivity’, whereby games are classified ‘according to their underlying similarities [i.e. in terms of the interactive experience they permit], rather than their superficial visual or narrative differences’. However, while we acknowledge the significance of genres of interactivity within video games, we also recognise the relevance of genres of fiction in the medium. To understand why this is, we must first recognise the necessity of fictions to video games: that is, fictions serve as necessary representations of players’ interactions. As Jesper Juul (2005: 196) puts it, a player’s real-world efforts to achieve a game’s goals—for example, using button presses and thumb-stick movements to win the race, jump the gap, beat the boss, and so forth—‘have a metaphorical relation to … in-game action’. In other words, notes Gordon Calleja (2011: 115),

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a player’s interaction with a game system ‘generates’ that game’s fiction. Because of this, as Sara Humphreys (2021, 1) contends, genres of fiction have ‘a role to play’ in these on-screen representations of gameplay, as the fictional components of many video games adhere to the conventions of traditional film and literary genres.1 Regarding such games, therefore, genres of interactivity and fiction uniquely cohabit. Genres of interactivity categorise the way in which players engage with these games, while the on-screen representations of these interactions are modelled on genres of fiction. For example, the games in Microsoft’s Halo franchise can be classified as the shooter genre of interactivity, as this label defines the style of gameplay that instalments in this franchise predominantly afford. However, Halo games, which depict—via gameplay—futuristic battles between a human army and an invading alien alliance, can also be viewed, via a traditional genre lens, as combining war fiction with sci-fi space opera. Indeed, promotional, critical and participatory discourses typically activate genres of interactivity and fiction in relation to Halo video games. For example, while Xbox.com’s (n.d.) web page for Halo: Infinite (2021) labels the game as a ‘shooter’, the page additionally activates war and science fiction genres. For instance, this web page’s image foregrounds the game’s player character, Master Chief, who is encased in his space-commando armour, thereby activating war fiction, while the technologically advanced cityscape that forms the character’s backdrop establishes the sci-fi genre. In accordance with the unique way in which genres operate in video games, we analyse here how genres of both interactivity and fiction are constructed as part of Eiyuden Chronicle’s Kickstarter campaign. In terms of genres of interactivity, as seen at the outset of this chapter, Rabbit & Bear presents the game as a ‘classic’ JRPG (or Japanese role-playing game). The JRPG is a descriptor related to the broader RPG (or role-playing game) genre, which stems from ‘pen and paper’ role-playing games of the 1970s, most notably Dungeons & Dragons. Via the RPG and JRPG genres of video game, a player guides a player character through a large fictional world, exploring, completing quests and engaging in combat. The ability to ‘level-up’ a player character’s skills and abilities is an additional hallmark of the genre. In terms of what distinguishes the JRPG from the RPG, this can be difficult to establish beyond the fact that JRPGs are Japanese in origin. As Jérémie Pelletier-Gagnon’s (2018) research into how this term has been discursively constructed shows, understandings of the term are unstable and have altered over time. However, the following two features are often regarded in contemporary gaming culture as typical of the 1  For example, as Humphrey’s own research shows, the fiction of Red Dead Redemption (2010) is modelled on the Western genre while the fiction of L.A. Noire (2011) is based on films noir and pulp crime fiction. However, such uses in video games of genres of fiction from literary and cinematic traditions should not be considered indicative of the medium in its entirety. For example, abstract puzzle games, such as Tetris (1984) and Candy Crush Saga (2012), might be regarded as presenting rudimentary fictions, such games are not configured to construct coherent fictional storyworlds and are, therefore, inconsistent with genres of fiction in film and literature.

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traditional JRPG genre’s interactive systems.2 Firstly, compared to RPGs produced in the West, JRPGs have more consistently relied on turn-based and statistic-based combat systems. Via this type of combat system, which draws on the dice-based table-top RPG model, a player character and an enemy NPC (non-player character) each takes it in turns to deliver damage to the other.3 In recent years, some JRPG developers have moved away from this type of game design by offering forms of ‘real-time’ combat in their games (see, for example, the Xenoblade Chronicles series). Nevertheless, the turn-based combat system is commonly present with the JRPGs of the late-1980s, 1990s and 2000s and is, therefore, strongly associated with the genre tag. Secondly, compared to RPGs produced in the West, it is more typical in a JRPG for a given player character, as part of their journey through the game world, to form a ‘party’ with multiple supportive NPCs.4 Therefore, Rabbit & Bear’s labelling of Eiyuden Chronicle as a ‘classic’, or traditional, JRPG, implies that the game promises to include, in ludic terms, an RPG system comprising parties and turn-based combat. As our analysis shows, Rabbit & Bear’s discourses concerning Eiyuden Chronicle consistently promise a game system that conforms to this definition. The genre of fiction that is typically activated in Eiyuden Chronicle’s Kickstarter content is fantasy. Fantasy fiction is typically set within an imaginary world with unrealistic elements, such as magical powers and supernatural creatures. Such fictions, including the Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings book series, often draw upon medievalism specifically, including in terms of props, costumes and architecture. Throughout the history of RPG video games, the fantasy genre has commonly been incorporated within them, which reflects the genre’s origins in 1970s fantasy-themed table-top RPGs. Furthermore, the most enduring, popular and celebrated JRPG franchises, such as the Final Fantasy and Dragonquest series, are typically fantasy in fiction terms. Therefore, Rabbit & Bear’s construction of the fantasy genre in relation to Eiyuden Chronicle, which we analyse in detail, complements the studio’s framing of the game as a ‘classic’ JRPG. Having established how genres operate within the video games medium and identified the genres of fiction and interactivity that are constructed in relation to Eiyuden Chronicle, we turn here to analysing how these genres are activated as part of the game’s Kickstarter content. As we show, constructions of the fantasy and JRPG genres are central to the content—in the form of text, images and video—that Rabbit & Bear has included on this web page, as well as in its Kickstarter updates. As we further demonstrate, these genre constructions 2  This is evident in various recent journalistic discussions of the terms (see, for example, Byrd 2021; Jurkovich 2021). 3  Therefore, this type of gameplay system does not challenge a player’s reaction time or skills of co-ordination. This contrasts with many genres of interactivity, including so-called action RPGs, such as games in the Diablo, Dark Souls and Monster Hunter series. 4  A further defining characteristic of the JRPG, but which is unrelated to a game’s ludic system, is the use of anime art styles as part the presentation of a game’s fiction.

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frequently operate within the forms and conventions of the Kickstarter platform. With specific regard to the comments posted in response to Rabbit & Bear’s project updates, we also show how Kickstarter users can contribute to this process of genre formation on the crowdfunding platform. Each of the following headed sections offers genre analysis of a specific part of the Eiyuden Chronicle Kickstarter material, with the first focussed on the genre-activating content included at the top of the project page.

Constructing Genre on Kickstarter: Top-of-­the-Page Content The content included at the top of the Eiyuden Chronicle project page on the Kickstarter platform serves to initially activate the fantasy and JRPG genres regarding the pitched game (Rabbit and Bear Studios 2020a). The top of any Kickstarter project page is, obviously, of upmost importance in terms of attracting interest to a project, as this web space provides a first impression to the project page’s visitors. Therefore, the platform’s format for the top of a campaign page encourages project creators to reduce their project to its most simplistic elements to encourage ease of understanding. Via this format, whether viewing the page on a phone, tablet, laptop or computer screen, the visitor to a given project page will find the following visible below the Kickstarter platform banner and the given project’s title: a project image and a one-sentence project description. In the case of the Eiyuden Chronicle project page, each of these two elements signifies genre in relation to the game, as we explain here. The one-sentence description provided at the top of this page reads: ‘An epic experience from the creators of classic JRPGs, with an intricate story and gigantic cast of characters.’ Here, genre is evoked regarding Eiyuden Chronicle in three ways. Firstly, this is achieved through its statement that Rabbit & Bear Studios is comprised of ‘creators of classic JRPGs’. This refers to the fact that that the studio includes key creators of the Suikoden JRPG series of the 1990s and 2000s (Yin-Poole 2020). Therefore, the implication here is that Eiyuden Chronicle will be a successor to the Suikoden games and operate within traditional JRPG conventions. Secondly, the promise of a gigantic roster of characters further implies that Eiyuden Chronicle will be in the tradition of the Suikoden series, as these earlier games are notable for their large casts, thereby further linking Eiyuden Chronicle to the JRPG category via Suikoden. Thirdly, the promise of an ‘epic experience’ alludes to the JRPG, and the RPG genre more generally, as well as fantasy genres, as RPG game worlds and fantasy narratives are often vast in scale. This single sentence, then, economically signposts genre in relation to Eiyuden Chronicle. The lead image provided at the top of the Eiyuden Chronicle’s project page, which merely contains the title in logo form, establishes the fantasy genre with a similar efficiency. As is conventional for promotional material for media content built around a fantasy narrative, whether that be a book cover, film poster

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or video game box, the lettering in the Eiyuden Chronicle logo title takes the form of an elegant serif font. Furthermore, as part of the logo, a mystical symbol sits alongside the title, evoking the supernatural element of many fantasy narratives. Finally, the interiors of the title’s lettering contain images of fire raging into blackness, which connote fantasy fiction elements, such as dragons’ breath and fiery landscapes. Therefore, the combination of the logo image and the introductory sentence serves to create a genre-centric first impression at the top of the Eiyuden Chronicle project page by framing the project in relation to fantasy and JRPG genres.

Constructing Genre on Kickstarter: Campaign Trailer Upon scrolling down this Kickstarter project page, the next item of content that a visitor arrives at is the project’s campaign trailer (Rabbit and Bear Studios 2020a). The campaign trailer, which is used to clearly summarise the features of a pitched project, is generally understood to be an integral component of any Kickstarter campaign (Jaeger 2011; Narek 2021). Kickstarter campaign trailers share certain broad characteristics with the types of trailers used more typically in media promotion: like more typical trailers, Kickstarter campaign trailers are, essentially, short promotional videos. However, Kickstarter campaign trailers do not wholly adhere to trailer conventions. For example, whereas regular video game trailers are usually dominated by cutscene and gameplay footage (and/or computer generated representations of gameplay), Kickstarter campaign trailers for video games usually contain footage of developers presenting themselves to camera. One reason for this approach is that project creators mean to appear authentic and passionate about their creative goals, thereby encouraging potential backers to have confidence in the creative team to deliver on promises made. Rabbit & Bear Studios accordingly adheres to this Kickstarter convention via a live-action sequence included in their Kickstarter campaign trailer, in which Yoshitaka Murayuma (Eiyuden’s game and narrative designer) Junko Kawano (Eiyuden’s character designer), Junichi Murakami (Eiyuden’s producer and art director) and Osamu Komuta (Eiyuden’s director) play central roles. In this sequence, which takes up the first two minutes of the three-minute video, these creative figures act out a scenario, in a charmingly amateurish manner, in which they team up to overthrow an enemy—The Boss—that has been terrorising Murayuma. As we show, this sequence serves to activate both the fantasy and JRPG genres. However, before analysing this genre construction, we first outline the purpose that the sequence serves in terms of positively portraying the Rabbit & Bear creative team in line with Kickstarter convention. The live-action sequence serves, in part, as a metaphor for how Rabbit & Bear contextualises their Kickstarter project in industry terms. Following the live-action fictional scenario within this sequence, Murayama, speaking to camera, states that Rabbit & Bear is seeking crowdfunding so that it can ‘fully control’ the Eiyuden Chronicle intellectual property, as well as ‘make the kind

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of game that fans really want’ (i.e. a traditional JRPG). The implication of Murayama’s rhetoric is that Rabbit & Bear would not be able to own the Eiyuden IP, or produce the game they want to, via a conventional industrial model by which video game publishers exert power over development studios. Within this industry context, these game industry veterans’ vanquishing of The Boss as part of the live-action scenario can be viewed as figurative of what Rabbit & Bear means to achieve with the Kickstarter project. That is, with the support of Kickstarter contributors, the studio aims to be free from the constraining publisher model (which The Boss is a metaphorical representation of) to achieve its true creative potential. Therefore, the sequence conforms to Kickstarter campaign trailer conventions by presenting Rabbit & Bear personnel as (A) authentic (in part due to the endearingly awkward performances) and (B) artistically passionate creatives striving to escape (what is implied as) the creatively inhibiting control of traditional publishers. The live-action sequence, however, frames the Kickstarter project not only in industry terms but also in genre terms. For example, the live-action scenario that Eiyuden Chronicle’s creators perform draws on JRPG characteristics in several ways. Firstly, the coming together of the Eiyuden Chronicle’s creative team in the face of adversity mirrors the forming of parties within JRPGs. Secondly, the confrontation between the creative team and The Boss emulates aspects of the stat-based, turn-based combat of traditional JRPGs. For example, as the Rabbit & Bear team attack The Boss, we simultaneously see the number ‘9999’ appear on the screen, registering the power of the attack. We then see The Boss’ health gauge (presented in an on-screen graphic) draining away due to the attack. These simple visual indicators are very much in the tradition of JRPG combat. Finally, when dialogue is delivered in this sequence, a presentational device typical of many JRPGs is used. That is, when Rabbit & Bear personnel or The Boss speak, a dialogue box appears at the bottom of the screen that relays the speaking character’s words and includes a graphical representation of the speaker’s face. This is a presentational form used in many JRPGs (and RPGs more generally). Therefore, this sequence continues the Kickstarter campaign’s activation of the JRPG genre of interactivity in relation to Eiyuden Chronicle. As well as firmly establishing the JRPG genre, the campaign trailer’s live-­ action sequence also activates the fantasy genre through its use of costume and props. For example, the outfits that Murayama and his team don, and the weapons they equip themselves with, evoke medieval fantasy. For example, Murayama, in battle, wears a makeshift knight’s outfit comprising a patterned cloak and a saucepan helmet. He also wields a pair of elaborately bladed implements that he dubs the ‘Weapons of Legend’ (and which feature in Eiyuden Chronicle). Furthermore, Kawano’s outfit clearly activates the supernatural aspect of fantasy. The character designer wears cat-paw gloves, cat ears upon her bucket hat and a face mask with a cat snout printed on it, thereby presenting herself as a human-animal hybrid creature from myth and legend. Within

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this live-action sequence, then, the fantasy genre of fiction is clearly constructed. Following the campaign trailer’s live-action sequence, the video then activates both the JRPG and fantasy genres in ways more in line with conventional video game trailers. That is, via the use of game footage clips. For example, prototype game footage is shown, in which a player’s party of characters battle an enemy, which signals the JRPG genre. In this clip, the party are first shown facing-off against a giant octopus-type creature with glowing pink eyes. Animations then depict members of this party each striking this enormous enemy, who is not seen to retaliate. As each attacking character lands a blow on their foe, a number appears on the screen registering the amount of damage the blow has caused, which is in line with the campaign trailer’s live-action battle sequence, as well as with the conventions of traditional JRPGs. Those with video game literacy are likely to comprehend this footage as demonstrating one turn within a traditional turn-based, party-based combat sequence typical of JRPGs, as opposed to combat in an action-based game (in which an enemy is unlikely to wait their ‘turn’ to retaliate). This selected clip therefore unambiguously signals Eiyuden Chronicle’s JRPG characteristics. Furthermore, due to its combination of supernatural and medieval-inspired elements, this same game footage simultaneously continues the trailer’s construction of fantasy. The genre is activated not only by the clip’s colossal, supernatural enemy but also by the actions, costumes and weapons of the party members that are shown attacking this enemy. For example, as part of the clip, one attacking character is dressed in a flowing robe and is shown conjuring a fireball and directing it towards the enemy. The character’s appearance suggests that he is a mage-like character common to fantasy narratives. Other attacking characters carry swords and are adorned with pieces of armoured plating, which contribute to the construction of medieval fantasy. As well as establishing Eiyuden Chronicle as drawing on traditional JRPG gameplay, then, the same game footage clip also strongly activates the fantasy genre in relation to the game. Therefore, while the first (live-action) part of the campaign video evokes the JRPG and fantasy genres in line with the platform’s distinct conventions, the latter part of the video reinforces these genre activations in ways more typical in video game promotion.

Constructing Genre on Kickstarter: Detailing Fiction and Gameplay The information that developers include about pitched games on crowdfunding platforms is typically more detailed and comprehensive than that included in conventional video game marketing. Indeed, as Heikki Tyni’s (2018, 6–7) research shows, this is one reason why users are drawn to backing video game crowdfunding projects. The text- and image-based ‘Welcome to the Continent of Allraan’ and ‘Gameplay’ sections included below the Eiyuden Chronicle campaign trailer on the Kickstarter project page (Rabbit and Bear Studios 2020a)

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adhere to this convention by extensively detailing the game’s fiction and its ludic design. Furthermore, the fantasy and JRPG genres are extensively activated as part of this detail. In terms of the game’s fiction, the ‘Welcome to the Continent of Allraan’ section combines signifiers of fantasy to convey the game’s fictional realm. This is evident in the following quote from this section, which offers a history of the game’s fictional world: ‘By dint of sword, and by way of magical objects known as “rune-lenses”, the land’s history has been shaped by alliances and aggressions of the humans, beastmen, elves, and desert people who live there’ (Rabbit and Bear Studios 2020a). Here, the game’s presented fictional world is underpinned by fantasy conventions through this sentence’s nod to medieval cultures (‘by dint of sword’) and its detailing of the world’s magical technologies (rune-lenses) and supernatural races (beastmen and elves). Further within this section, seven detailed character biographies serve to further introduce, explain and enrich the fantasy elements of this fictional world. Here are two examples: (1) the entry for Marisa describes the character as belonging to a magic-wielding clan that protects the forest area of the Eiyuden Chronicle world; (2) the entry for the sword-wielding Garr, a wolf-­ human-­hybrid, explains that beastmen like Garr serve as mercenaries during times of conflict in Allran. Such expansive world-building is, perhaps, more akin to the kind of detailing found in a fan wiki site, rather than in the copywriting of most video game marketing. Furthermore, as the above shows, the inclusion of such extensive detail, which is in keeping with crowdfunding projects, has enabled Rabbit & Bear to further align Eiyuden Chronicle with the fantasy genre. The subsequent ‘Gameplay’ section details Eiyuden Chronicle’s ludic elements in similarly extensive detail. As such, this section further contributes to Rabbit & Bear’s positioning of the game as adherent to JRPG conventions. This is most evident in the section’s first three (of ten) subsections, which we examine here. The first of these subsections explains how, in line with JRPG norms, Eiyuden Chronicle has ‘a vast world to explore’, emphasising that exploration is a significant activity when playing the game. The second subsection, titled ‘Turn-based combat’, fully articulates what the pitch trailer implies. That is, the subsection explains that the game ‘employs a traditional turn-based RPG battle system’. Related to both exploration and combat, the third subsection, titled ‘enemies’, explains that players will ‘encounter all manner of creatures’ as part of exploration, which will need to be defeated via combat. Therefore, the combination of these subsections serves to present Eiyuden Chronicle as offering traditional JRPG gameplay. That is, gameplay will, at an abstract level, generally consist of exploration that is punctuated by enemy encounters, leading to turn-based combat. As we have seen elsewhere on its Kickstarter page, Rabbit & Bear explicitly labels Eiyuden Chronicle as a JRPG experience, and also touts its team’s JRPG credentials. However, by following the Kickstarter convention of providing extensive detail about its game, Rabbit & Bear firmly defines Eiyuden Chronicle’s genre of interactivity by clearly articulating the game’s JRPG gameplay experience.

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Constructing Genre on Kickstarter: Stretch Goals and Backer Rewards Two other means by which Rabbit & Bear constructs genre on the Eiyuden Chronicle project page are via the conventional Kickstarter practices of ‘stretch goals’ and backer ‘rewards’ (Rabbit and Bear Studios 2020a). Regarding stretch goals, this term refers (within a Kickstarter context) to a funding target that a project creator sets, and which is higher than the project’s primary funding goal. To entice users to pledge money to achieve stretch goals (even after a primary funding target has been reached), a video game developer typically assigns the promise of an additional game feature to each stretch goal. For example, as part of the Eiyuden Chronicle’s Kickstarter campaign, the promise of the game’s musical score being performed by a full orchestra was assigned to a stretch goal of $2.6 million. Of relevance here, though, is that stretch goal details serve as a further space on the Eiyuden Chronicle project page in which fantasy and JRPG genres are activated. This is evident in the campaign’s stretch goal of $4.25 million, which promises the addition to Eiyuden Chronicle of a ‘hero mode’ titled, ‘The Depths’. According to the project page’s stretch goal section, a player will, via this mode, ‘plumb the depths of special randomized dungeons with [their] party’ to face unique foes not found elsewhere in Allran. This hero mode description, furthermore, advises players to assemble their parties with care to undertake these distinct challenges. The promised fiction here of a party of fighters bravely encountering enemies in underground dungeons is evocative of medieval fantasy. Furthermore, the suggested gameplay of navigating a maze-like environment populated by dangerous foes, and organising a party to maximise chances of success, is typical of JRPGs and RPGs more generally. Indeed, in RPG gaming (whether in video game or pen-and-paper form) the term ‘dungeon crawl’ is commonly used to describe it. In addition to its individual stretch goals activating genre, the Eiyuden Chronicle project page’s visual presentation of its 45 stretch goals also contributes to genre formation. A list of the stretch goals is imposed upon an image of the type of medieval-­ style banner that we might expect to see hanging from a castle wall, which serves to further activate medieval fantasy in relation to the pitched game. Therefore, the Kickstarter convention of stretch goals serves as a further means by which Rabbit & Bear is able to establish genre in relation to Eiyuden Chronicle. A different Kickstarter campaign convention that Rabbit & Bear adhere to, and by which the studio activates genre, is the setting of backer ‘rewards’, which Rabbit & Bear detail on their project page. This conventional practice involves the assigning of different ‘rewards’ to different pledge tiers. Then, once a project is funded, each project backer is due the reward that has been assigned to the amount of money they pledged. For example, based on a contribution of the Eiyuden Chronicle campaign’s lowest-tier pledge (¥6000), a backer is set to be rewarded with a digital version of the finished game. However, many of the offered rewards contribute to the establishing of genre

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due to their strong fantasy and/or JRPG theming. For example, the following are offered as rewards on the Eiyuden Chronicle project page: • physical replicas of a knight’s shield and a bladed Weapon of Legend, which contribute to the construction of medieval fantasy; • the opportunity to name one of the game’s ‘egglegs’, which are strange creatures used for racing in Eiyuden Chronicle’s fiction and which activate supernatural fantasy; • various physical items, including pins, stickers, figurines and a poster, which depict Eiyuden Chronicle with weapons and/or in battle poses, thereby emphasising the game’s fantasy JRPG combat; • an assigned ‘role’ themed around an archetypal fantasy JRPG(/RPG) character type (either ‘knight’, ‘ranger’ or ‘wizard’) that forms part of a given backer’s user profile on Eiyuden Chronicle’s Discord server. Therefore, backer rewards not only serve to encourage funding through the promise of reward items, but they also serve to fortify the perception of Eiyuden Chronicle as a fantasy JRPG. On Eiyuden Chronicle’s Kickstarter project page, then, backer reward details, like stretch goal details, perform a twofold purpose by attracting and maximising funding while simultaneously helping to shape how the pitched game should be understood in genre terms.

Constructing Genre on Kickstarter: Project Updates A further Kickstarter convention that has enabled the construction of genre in relation to Eiyuden Chronicle is the practice of delivering regular project updates. Such Kickstarter updates are blog posts penned by project creators, which are made accessible via a given Kickstarter project page. They serve to keep backers (along with potential backers) informed during a Kickstarter funding campaign. They are also typically delivered to backers following a successful funding campaign, during the development/production of a pitched product. In the case of Eiyuden Chronicles, Rabbit & Bear posted 18 updates during its Kickstarter campaign; at the time of writing, the studio has posted 20 monthly updates following the project’s successful funding. In the main, the updates posted during Eiyuden Chronicle’s Kickstarter campaign typically provide information about the pitched game (e.g. its fictional or gameplay elements) or about the funding campaign (e.g. by offering clarification on stretch goals and rewards); the updates posted following the project’s funding provide details about, and offer reflections on, the game’s ongoing development, as well as provide further information about the game’s features. As noted, one of the appeals of crowdfunding for some project backers is the opportunity to spectate on the production process, and Rabbit & Bear provides this opportunity via their updates. Crucially, however, the information and reflections that Rabbit & Bear includes in such updates frequently serve to further establish

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Eiyuden Chronicle as a fantasy narrative and/or JRPG game system in two main ways, as we detail here. Firstly, this genre activation is routinely achieved via information about the game’s fictional elements, which Rabbit & Bears’ updates frequently provide. For example, posts typically introduce fictional characters, via the use of character designs and biographical details, which further position Eiyuden Chronicle as fantasy. For instance, update #20 (Rabbit and Bear Studios 2020b) introduces an in-game enemy called Marcus the Skeleton King, who is depicted via an illustration of a living skeleton dressed in tattered robes and carrying royal regalia, including a golden crown and sceptre. As with dragons, orcs, dwarfs, elves, and so on, the skeleton creature is a character type that is frequently present in fantasy fictions in video games (see, for example, the Dark Souls, Dragon’s Dogma and The Legend of Zelda game series), as well as in fantasy films and novels. Therefore, the update’s presentation of Marcus strongly signals the fantasy genre. Secondly, genre activation occurs via the insights that the updates offer into the creative process fuelling Eiyuden Chronicle’s development. This is evident in the update sections in which Rabbit & Bear personnel detail their approaches to the game’s design. These entries, which essentially offer a narrative of production from the developers’ perspectives, tend to either imply or explicitly articulate how the game is being shaped to conform to their ideas of the fantasy and JRPG genres. For example, in update #21 (Rabbit and Bear Studios 2020c), the game’s director, Osamu Komuta, details his efforts to ensure that the game’s depictions of war are channelled via a conventional JRPG-style combat system. Komuta explains how, as the fictional world of Eiyuden Chronicles is riven with war, the game’s ‘planning team’ are keen to include a significant ‘war event’ in the game in which ‘a bunch of characters [are] active in the war at the same time’. In thinking about what kind of gameplay this fiction should translate as, Komuta explains that he aims for it to be suitable for JRPG players, and has, therefore, opted for a ‘turn-based type of game’. Via his articulation of his development aims and process, Komuta further strengthens association between Eiyuden Chronicle and the JRPG form. Update #34 (Rabbit and Bear Studios 2021) contains a related example of genre activation occurring via provided development insights, but which concerns the fantasy genre. With further regard to the game’s depictions of war, Murayama details in this update his aim to ‘safeguard how war is staged’ in Eiyuden Chronicle by having the fiction operate within ‘the technological limitations of medieval fantasy’. To this end, Murayama observes, ‘it is imperative that gunpower remains scarce in the world.’ Accordingly, he states, warcraft in Eiyuden Chronicle should involve ‘the use of close-quarter weapons in the form of swords and spears, and bows and magic’. Murayama’s comments demonstrate how Eiyuden Chronicle’s narrative designer is moulding the game’s fiction in line with what he regards as principles of fantasy and medieval fantasy specifically. In so doing, Murayama further encourages the game to be understood as aligning with the fantasy genre.

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The production narratives that Rabbit & Bear creatives provide in their updates service a potential desire for development spectatorship among its project’s backers, which Tyni and Sotamaa (2019) identify as being central to the crowdfunding backer experience in video game culture. However, the above examples of production discourse from Komuta and Murayama show how such development tales included in Rabbit & Bear’s updates also contribute to the Kickstarter project’s consistent process of genre formation in relation to Eiyuden Chronicle. Therefore, such project updates serve as further examples of how genres can be activated via the cultural conventions of Kickstarter projects. A further way in which Kickstarter updates contribute to the construction of genre is via the comments that Kickstarter users post on update pages. In the case of comments left on Rabbit & Bear’s Eiyuden Chronicle updates, those relating to genre are typically ‘affirmational’ (Stein and Busse, 2012, 15–16). That is, they usually complement Rabbit & Bear’s positioning of Eiyuden Chronicle as a JRPG and/or fantasy game. For example, in response to the project’s first update (Rabbit and Bear Studios 2020d), which was issued soon after the campaign’s launch, one user comments, ‘This looks fantastic! These styles of RPGS really are missing in today’s Market.’ This comment echoes Rabbit & Bear’s proposition of the game as the type of traditional JRPG that is currently lacking within contemporary video game industries. Furthermore, some genre-related comments move beyond merely echoing Rabbit & Bear’s genre discourses. For example, several comments query how presented elements of the fantasy fiction will relate to traditional JRPG-style gameplay. For instance, in response to the reveal of Marcus the Skeleton King in update #14, one user comments, ‘I definitely am happy with the Skeleton King, and would be even happier if we could get [him] into our ranks’ (Rabbit and Bear Studios 2020b). In this case, the user raises the idea of Marcus being recruitable as part of a JRPG-style party system. Therefore, the comment explicitly situates the character Marcus in a JRPG game-system context in a way that Rabbit & Bear’s update discourse does not. A comment posted on update #15 (Rabbit and Bear Studios 2020e) similarly considers how fictional elements will integrate with JRPG-mechanics. The comment reads, ‘With 100 characters, I REALLY hope you make some way to fast-grind unused characters to the level of your main party easy or some passive way to earn [experience points] for unused characters in the base!!’ This comment speaks to the fact that, with some JRPGs, recruited characters that are not regularly selected for parties remain stuck at low levels of ability while regularly selected characters ‘level up’ and become more powerful. For some players, such game design is imperfect, as it increasingly disincentivises players to select lower-level characters for their parties as a given game progresses. Therefore, while Rabbit & Bear has promoted the game based on its large cast of characters, this comment questions how the game’s JRPG game system will operate in relation to this sizeable cast. On the one hand, the comment, by querying the ludic implications of the fiction that the Eiyuden Chronicle

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Kickstarter project details, complicates and departs from the specific genre messaging to which it is responding. On the other hand, however, this comment—along with the above comment regarding Marcus the Skeleton King— aligns with Rabbit & Bear’s broader conceptualisation of Eiyuden Chronicle as a fantasy JRPG. Such comments are, therefore, consistent with, and affirmational of, Rabbit & Bear’s more general construction of genre regarding the game. These examples of comments posted on updates, therefore, demonstrate how Kickstarter users can not only spectate on but also participate in the genre formation that can occur on the Kickstarter platform as part of a given crowdfunding project.

Conclusion Crowdfunded media texts, such as films, books and video games, are components in a wider transmedia network of content, including crowdfunding project pages, social media posts and video-streaming activity. We have shown, with our Eiyuden Chronicle case study, how, with specific regard to Kickstarter project pages and updates, genre can be intensely leveraged to help secure funding as part of transmedia crowdfunding processes. Regarding Kickstarter, we have additionally shown how genre formation on the crowdfunding platform arises via the specific cultural conventions of the platform. Rabbit & Bear Studios adhered to the practices expected of a video game Kickstarter project—for example, through setting stretch goals, assigning backer rewards, delivering project updates, thoroughly detailing the pitched game’s fiction and gameplay, and constructing a campaign trailer adherent to the form’s conventions. However, as we have also shown, the development studio has done so in such ways as to also establish Eiyuden Chronicle as a fantasy JRPG. Indeed, our research here suggests that the Kickstarter platform offers considerable opportunity for genre messaging in relation to in-development media texts. In contrast to many promotional media forms that are concise and compressed (such as video game film posters and trailers), Kickstarter projects can be content rich and detail heavy, as is evident in the case of the Eiyuden Chronicle project. Rabbit & Bear, with this project, has exploited this large informational capacity, which Kickstarter project conventions enable, to intricately construct genre. Rather than briefly activate the fantasy and JRPG genres in relation to its in-development game, Rabbit & Bear Studios, via its Kickstarter content, provides extensive genre information, articulates definitions for activated genres, and indicates what the studio’s adherence to these definitions means for Eiyuden Chronicle. For example, Eiyuden Chronicle update discourses establish the studio’s perception of fantasy fiction and JRPG game systems and explain how these perceptions are guiding the game’s development. Therefore, we conclude that the Kickstarter platform’s conventions enable detailed and comprehensive genre formations. We have also shown how the Kickstarter’s facility for user participation via commenting (which is permitted on project pages as well as updates) creates

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opportunities for users to affirm, develop or contest project creators’ genre messaging. While it is beyond the scope of this chapter, which is specifically focussed on the Kickstarter platform, further studies might examine the implications to genre of the user participation that occurs on social media platforms as part of crowdfunding projects. For example, in the case of Rabbit & Bear, the development studio, in addition to producing Kickstarter content for the Eiyuden Chronicle project, also runs related Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts, as well as a Discord server. This social media presence, therefore, enables project backers and other interested media users further opportunities to participate in the project’s expansive process of genre formation. Throughout this and the preceding three chapters, we have extensively examined a range of online digital content platforms and investigated how genre is activated on and around them. As we have shown in these chapters, both media industries and participating audiences construct genres in line with these platforms’ technological affordances and the cultural practices that have developed in relation to these platforms. For our remaining two case study chapters, we shift our attention to how genre interacts with emerging technologies. Specifically, we show how genre is constructed, and identify the functions that genre serves, in relation to virtual reality and deepfake app technologies.

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Jurkovich, Tristan. 2021. 6 Differences Between RPGs and JRPGs. The Gamer, 5 February. Accessed December 18, 2021. https://www.thegamer.com/rpgs-­jrpgs-­ differences-­comparison/. Juul, Jesper. 2005. Half Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge: The MIT Press. Narek, V. 2021. Breakdown of the Best Kickstarter Videos and Lots of Actionable Tips. The Crowdfunding Formula, 12 January. Accessed November 24, 2021. https:// blog.thecrowdfundingformula.com/best-­kickstarter-­videos/. Pelletier-Gagnon, Jérémie. 2018. “Very much like any other Japanese RPG you’ve ever played”: Using Undirected Topic Modelling to Examine the Evolution of JRPGs’ Presence in Anglophone Web Publications. Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 10 (2): 135–148. Rabbit & Bear Studios. 2020a. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes. Kickstarter. Accessed November 24, 2021. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rabbitandbearstudios/eiyuden-­chronicle-­hundred-­heroes. ———. 2020b. October 2020 Update: Painter’s Easel #5. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes updates. Kickstarter, 7 October. Accessed December 18, 2021. https:// www.kickstarter.com/projects/rabbitandbearstudios/eiyuden-­chronicle-­hundred-­ heroes/posts. ———. 2020c. November 2020 Update. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes updates. Kickstarter, 11 November. Accessed December 18, 2021. https://www.kickstarter. com/projects/rabbitandbearstudios/eiyuden-­chronicle-­hundred-­heroes/posts. ———. 2020d. Minimum goal reached in 3 hours! Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes updates. Kickstarter, 27 July. Accessed December 16, 2021. https://www.kickstar ter.com/projects/rabbitandbearstudios/eiyuden-­c hronicle-­h undred-­ heroes/posts. ———. 2020e. Playwright’s Desk: Murayama’s Novel. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes updates. Kickstarter, 26 August. Accessed December 18, 2021. https:// www.kickstarter.com/projects/rabbitandbearstudios/eiyuden-­chronicle-­hundred-­ heroes/posts. ———. 2021. November 2021 Update. Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes updates. Kickstarter, 22 September. Accessed December 18, 2021. https://www.kickstarter. com/projects/rabbitandbearstudios/eiyuden-­chronicle-­hundred-­heroes/posts. Smith, Anthony N. 2015. The Backer-developer Connection: Exploring Crowdfunding’s Impact on Video Game Development. New Media & Society 17 (2): 198–214. Stein, Louise Ellen, and Kristina Busse. 2012. Introduction: the Literary, Televisual and Digital Adventures of a Beloved Detective, in Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom, edited by Louisa Ellen Stein and Kristina Busse, 9–24. Jefferson: McFarland. Tyni, Heikki. 2018. Spectating Development and Other Backer Perspectives on Game Crowdfunding. Proceedings of Nordic DiGRA. Accessed November 26, 2021. http://www.digra.org/wp-­c ontent/uploads/digital-­l ibrar y/DiGRA_ Nordic_2018_paper_38.pdf. ———. 2020. Double-duty: Crowdfunding and the Evolving Game Production Network. Games and Culture 15 (2): 114–137. Tyni, Heikki, and Olli Sotamaa. 2019. Game Retail and Crowdfunding. In Point of Sale: Analyzing Media Retail, ed. Daniel Herbert and Derek Johnson, 75–90. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Wolf, Mark J.P. 2001. Genre in Video Games. In The Medium of Video Games, ed. Mark J.P. Wolf, 113–134. Austin: University of Texas Press.

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Xbox.com. n.d. Halo Infinite (Campaign). Accessed November 17, 2021. https:// www.xbox.com/en-­GB/games/store/halo-­infinite-­campaign/9NP1P1WFS0LB. Yin-Poole, Wesley. 2020. Kickstarter for Suikoden Spiritual Successor Eiyuden Chronicle Ends with £3.4m Raised. Eurogamer, 30 August. Accessed November 24, 2021. https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-­0 8-­3 0-­k ickstarter-­f or-­s uikoden-­ spiritual-­successor-­eiyuden-­chronicle-­ends-­with-­gbp3-­4m-­raised.

PART III

Emerging Technologies

CHAPTER 8

Transmedia War: Virtual Reality, Genre Embodiment and The Day the World Changed

Introduction When Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk was released in 2017, many commented on the film’s ambitious narrative structure. Dunkirk is, most ostensibly, a war film, depicting the historic events of the Dunkirk evacuation during World War II.  Structurally, the film plays around with the time elements of the real-life story, which is to say it is told from three points of view: the air (from the perspective of pilots flying the planes), the land (from the perspective of the soldiers on the beach) and the sea (from the perspective of the navy during the evacuation). Of course, for the many soldiers involved in the conflict, these events took place on different timelines, as if were, something that the film explores in experimental fashion: on land, the soldiers were trapped on the beach for one week; on the water, the events lasted around a day; and for those flying to Dunkirk, the spitfires could carry an hour of fuel. But Nolan’s Dunkirk was notable for other reasons, too—namely its approach to characters. It seems fair to say that Dunkirk is not particularly interested in traditional character development or arcs. Nobody, for example, is ever seen carrying a photograph of their sweetheart back home. You would be forgiven for sitting through Dunkirk and not recalling a single character’s name. Even characters in the sky have no clearer perspective on events: although they have the perfect vantage point, the Royal Air Force pilots often miss key details or struggle to take in everything that is needed. ‘They’ll come out of the sun,’ one pilot observes to his colleague. As they search frantically for their squadron leader, one complains, ‘I didn’t see a parachute.’ There is a sense of something very ambiguous and unfixed in all this, as if the characters have somehow stumbled into something far beyond their own comprehension. On a storytelling level, then, Dunkirk is an exercise in what happens when no single character is privileged over another. In Nolan’s hands, the story of Dunkirk is not about a single perspective; following these events through one © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Freeman, A. N. Smith, Transmedia/Genre, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15583-3_8

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person’s eyes would miss the point. Instead, the story of Dunkirk lies in its very collectivity; it is the actions and reactions of countless lives—scattered across land, sea and air—that all unite to form the story. Dunkirk’s multi-perspectival approach to narrative and character is an interesting case study, but it begs the question: what happens when this same approach extends beyond a single film and traverses multiple media? Put simply, what if part of this story was told using immersive technology, itself known for its ability to heighten emotion and empathy? Would this particular medium—through its technologically augmented sense of liminality, empathy and agency—lead to audiences feeling more or less connected to any one given perspective? This chapter—the first of two chapters to consider the impact of emerging technologies on transmedia genre practice—examines the technology of virtual reality (VR) and considers how this emerging medium shapes (and reshapes) workings of genre. In particular, we are interested in the impact of audience embodiment on the transmediality of genre. We use this chapter to explore how VR—specifically, one particularly innovative VR experiences produced about the bombing of Hiroshima, The Day the World Changed (2018)—evolves the war genre into something more specific to the emerging world of immersive media. Firstly, we analyse the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum website, looking at how the real-life facets of war stories are communicated and activated online. Second, we then analyse how such strategies are evoked and reimagined inside a 360-degree VR setting. Specifically, we explore how VR’s innate characteristics of liminality, empathy and agency all work together to recalibrate the war genre into an altogether more embodied and panoramic experience, with multiple facets, themes and conventions of this genre perceived all at once, rather than things that are dispersed systematically across multiple platforms. Which is to argue that the war story—a genre that most typically explores themes of combat, survival, sacrifice and the effects of war, most typically from a certain point of view—has evolved in the realm of VR into something that transforms audiences into God-like beings, watching over the events and catastrophes of war as if they were their own distant memories, powerless to intervene. By conceiving of transmedia genre in such embodied terms, we will pinpoint throughout this chapter the different ways in which VR both evokes the war genre and shapes how audiences feel an immersed part of this genre, as well as how the relationship between physical and virtual spaces in VR lends a new perspective on the stories of war.

Conceptualising Virtual Reality From 360-degree virtual reality experiences to mobile-based augmented reality overlays, immersive technologies are providing the creative industries with new ways to blend physical and virtual worlds, folding different environments into one another. Immersive technologies can make participants out of us all, just as they can cocoon us inside our own imaginations. VR, termed by and

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originating from Jaron Lanier while working on ‘simulation projects’ and ‘virtual environments’ in the 1980s, is still most commonly known as an ideational computer-generated environment that allows users to have realistic interactions with it through the use of supporting equipment, namely VR headsets and sensory gloves (Hillis 2014: 512). As in other chapters, first it is important to outline some of the key industrial, technological and participatory affordances of—in this case, virtual reality—in order to examine what these affordances mean in relation to understandings of war as a genre, and specifically how conventions of the war genre are recalibrated by immersive storytelling. In other words, the affordances of VR and its relationship to workings of genre must first be understood in terms of how this technology has been theorised as a form of storytelling. So, what defines VR as a form of storytelling? The immersive sector has become synonymous with cutting-edge technology innovation. According to the Culture is Digital report commissioned by the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, ‘immersive and augmented reality are changing the way in which we are able to experience the world around us, offering a particular opportunity as international demand is increasing’ (2018). However, understanding how immersive technology is reshaping genre (and indeed how genre may be reshaping immersive technology) means looking beyond the technological, and characterising VR in more narrative-based terms. Author Kate Pullinger writes that ‘over the past several centuries, as printed books and, more recently, paperbacks have become more and more readily available, we have learned how to be immersed in a book to such a degree that the technology—the book itself—disappears’ (2019). The concept of ‘immersion’ can broadly refer to being immersed in a space (spatial immersion) or being mentally immersed (strategic immersion, narrative immersion and tactical immersion). According to the International Society for Presence Research, tactical immersion is experienced when performing tactile operations that involve skill; strategic immersion is more cerebral and is associated with mental challenge, like a chess game; and narrative immersion, finally, describes the way that an audience may become invested in a story, like when reading a book. Duncan Speakman believes that we should rethink our idea of immersion by shifting the emphasis away from being a creator of or a participant within, say, a VR experience, and instead focus on the ways that VR as a medium allows us to become more aware of what we are already immersed in: ‘Immersive media is a way of exposing how we exist deep inside the tangled ecologies of [the world] rather than external viewers’ (2020). Explains Speakman: Immersion … might in one instance conjure images of being underwater and in another reading a book. It might mean being immersed in a task or immersed in the invisible microwaves of digital networks. Yet when we talk about immersive media it often feels there is a lean towards describing a kind of cocooning. Whether that’s a darkened room filled with sound or the forward-looking and body-forgetting embrace of a VR headset, it’s often a totality—immersive media

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meaning something where the media itself is all-encompassing in some way, where the only “thing” you are immersed in is the work. (2020)

Speakman’s way of thinking about immersive technology—and specifically VR—means redefining it as ‘not just that you are “in” something’, but as that which ‘highlights, reveals or creates one or more of the multiple layers of things we are already immersed in’ (2020). In other words, VR storytelling is all about liminality, that is, the state of transition between one space and another, and the psychological effect that this transitional in-betweenness has on how we make sense of the world around us. This echoes the ideas of Jaron Lanier, one of VR’s most recognisable figures, who claims that through VR we are able to experience a far broader range of identities and are capable of seeing the world in a more profound way. Later in the chapter we will consider how VR’s uncanny liminality and often otherworldly ability to reveal new layers of reality between or around us relates to workings of genre, particularly the war genre, which is otherwise closely associated with the groundedness of history. Beyond perceptions of reality, research tells us that VR is also capable of having a lasting emotional impact on how we see, feel and even remember. Much of the early thinking around VR concerned the medium’s relationship to forging empathy, with VR famously dubbed an ‘empathy machine’. This phrase was used widely circa 2015–2016 in amongst industry circles to describe the impact that VR could have on its audiences. Popularised by VR maker Chris Milk in his much-cited TED talk (2015), the concept had some strong proof of working—the 360-degree film Clouds Over Sidra was screened to world leaders in 2015s Davos Forum, raising $3.8bn in aid for Syrian refugees. The film was later screened to members of the public on the street by UNICEF, doubling public donations. There was huge hype, leading to countless imitators and critical associations between VR and empathy. More recently, however, the ‘empathy machine’ concept has been criticised or at least nuanced to take into account the broader array of emotional transformations that VR is seemingly capable of initiating. For instance, research conducted by Limina Immersive—one of the UK’s leading consultancies in immersive audiences—points towards a different way of framing the medium’s power. After screening VR to thousands of audience members and discussing it with them afterwards, Limina found that VR has the potential to be a ‘mood machine’ (Allen 2020). VR may not truly offer you the feeling of living in a refugee camp, but it can, Limina found, be crafted to elicit powerful emotions and even a mood change. In fact, of all the VR that Limina curated and exhibited between 2017 and 2019, it was found that the most successful shows were ones geared towards a particular mood. Limina’s best-selling show, World of Cirque du Soleil, was geared towards a buzzing sense of awe, whilst their second most popular show, Ocean Body and Mind, was all about achieving a mindful feeling of calm. Similarly, StoryFutures found that these two shows elicited some of the strongest indicators of ‘emotional convergence’: for World of Cirque du Soleil, nine

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out of ten people felt ‘impressed’, and for Ocean, Body and Mind, half of its audience felt ‘reflective’ (Allen and Tucker 2018). Limina’s Euella Jackson summed up the mood machine capability perfectly right after her first shift at the Limina VR Theatre in Bristol in 2017: ‘This audience is buying feelings, not stories’ (ibid.). There is a broad base of research that reaches the same, or at least similar, conclusions with regards to VR’s ability to affect or enhance someone’s mood (see Jung et al. 2016). VR also has a proven capacity to trigger the rare emotion of awe (Quesnel and Riecke 2018). If we know, then, that VR can change an audience’s mood so dramatically—even being capable of eliciting profound emotions of empathy and awe—then it remains to be seen what impact this medium has on communicating the horrors of war. At the same time, the communication of genre becomes especially interesting in the context of VR given this medium’s manipulation of audience role. As digital and physical spaces converge in VR and involve audiences as embodied participants, VR creators may require more agency of their audiences. But the nature of ‘doing’ as opposed to observing that defines a given VR experience brings with it additional questions concerning the process through which genre activation occurs. For instance, how does a shift towards an increase in agency (or simply an interactive audience role) alter constructions of genre? Agency is a term often used without definition and assumptions are made about when or if people have or experience agency. According to Astrid Breel, ‘the basic definition (in a philosophical sense of agency is having the ability to make decisions and act in a way that might impact on or change the situation’ (2020). Agency is inherently linked to our embodied experience of action as well as to our perception of ourselves in relation to others and our context. Agency can be very important in VR experiences, as audiences may be able to contribute to the experience by adding to or even changing something within the experience, or simply by looking around. How, then, does this embodied ability to change something narratively work in relation to genre—does it simply give audiences the power to evoke genre themselves, or might it function to give audiences an almost God-like power to rethink genre as they see fit? In VR, audiences are bringing with them their own reality or sense of self, and so the extent to which audiences are required or expected to be an active, interactive agent within a given VR experience surely has an impact on the degree to which genre is shaped and reshaped.

Documenting War But let’s backtrack for a moment. How can we make sense of the conceptual relationship between the practice of transmedia storytelling and generic depictions of historic war? Most broadly, the relationship between transmediality and history is a fruitful one to explore. Roberta Pearson once pointed to the Bible as one possible example of an historical form of transmedia storytelling: Pearson observed how the narrative architecture of Jesus Christ has been passed down across many centuries through a complex combination of the written

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word, drama, religious paintings, stained-glass windows, symbolic icons, and so forth (2009). Conceptually, the art of transmedia storytelling also has a great deal in common with the multi-perspectival narratives of a historical event. In a fictional example of the former, for instance, the story may well switch from one character’s point of view to another’s, as the audience moves from one medium to another. See, for example, Wide Sargasso Sea, a novel written by Jean Rhys in 1966. Wide Sargasso Sea is a prequel to Charlotte Brontë’s famous 1847 novel Jane Eyre. Rhys’ novel followed the life of Antoinette Cosway, the first wife of Mr. Rochester in the Brontë novel, who was a secondary character in Jane Eyre that was turned into the hero of her own story. By switching between the perspectives of different characters across additional stories, the larger story of Jane Eyre was thus extended. As Jenkins (2009) puts it, this kind of transmedia storytelling is precisely about subjectivity—that is, ‘exploring the central narrative through new eyes, such as secondary characters or third parties. This changing of perspective often leads fans to more greatly consider who is speaking and who they are speaking for.’ And much like a fictional transmedia story, history, quite similarly, is never a single-­ perspective narrative; it cannot be easily synthesised into one single chronicle. Rather, the tales of history are entirely made up of a ‘collection of historians exchanging different, often conflicting analyses … students of history would be better served descending into the bog of conflict and learning the many “histories” that compose any given subject’ (Conway 2015). In effect, both the consuming of transmedia stories and the learning of history operate on the basis that people will gain a richer and fuller understanding of that given story/ historical event if they consume as much material relating to it as possible, across any number of platforms: ‘To fully experience any fictional storyworld, consumers must assume the role of hunters and gatherers, chasing down bits of the story across media channels … to come away with a richer experience’ (Jenkins 2006: 21). Historiography, too, is about rejecting the idea of a single, standardised perspective and embracing the idea that hunting down multiple perspectives on history will provide the fullest understanding. Going further, in past work we ourselves have previously theorised how transmedia storytelling can be used to deal with history—that is, to not just narrativise history across media but to create more reflective, interactive ways of experiencing and remembering history (Freeman 2019). In coining the term ‘transmedia historiography’, Freeman proposed that the coordinated use of multiple platforms—each integrated in ways that encourage audience appropriation—has the power to transform how people make sense of a historical moment, encouraging more active ways of learning about the complex, multi-­ perspectival facets that make up a given history, including its politics, cultures and memories (2019). An example was Freeman’s work on Desarmados, a transmedia education project based in Colombia that used maps, websites, social media, physical workbooks and an app to teach the political complexities and nuances of the Colombian Armed Conflict to children in schools. The result was indeed a more multi-perspectival documentation of the various

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voices that make up the conflict, as well as a profound sense of reconciliation emerging as a result. Let’s consider, then, how this power to transform how people make sense of a historical moment plays out in the case of the war genre, specifically the bombing of Hiroshima. In this section we will analyse the website for the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (https://www.hpmmuseum. jp/?lang=eng). The physical museum is located in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in central Hiroshima, and which is dedicated to documenting the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in World War II.  The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum was established in August 1955 with the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Hall. We have chosen this site to focus our analysis because it remains the most popular of Hiroshima’s destinations for school field-trips from all over Japan and for international visitors: 53 million people visited the museum from its opening in 1955 through 2005, averaging over one million visitors per year. The aim of our analysis is to broadly identify the key strategies for evoking and activating the historical stories of war in a website format. The website opens with the following text, presented as a pop-up on the home page: A single atomic bomb indiscriminately killed tens of thousands of people, profoundly disrupting and altering the lives of the survivors. Through belongings left by the victims, A-bombed artifacts, testimonials of A-bomb survivors and related materials, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum conveys to the world the horrors and the inhumane nature of nuclear weapons and spreads the message of “No More Hiroshimas.”

Immediately, this text evokes and activates themes and conventions of the war genre, most strikingly through a thematic emphasis on the balance between the horrors and humilities of war. Shawn Coyne (2021) claims that ‘the underlying question in every war story is: How do we secure our group’s survival while maintaining our humanity in the process?’ Elsewhere across the website, the theme of humanity is central: on a page titled ‘Learn’, users can browse a range of testimonies and lectures, each from very different perspectives and times, documented as either videos or audio recordings. For example, in one video testimony by Keiko Ogura (born 1937, age 82 at the time of the testimony), Ogura recites her experience of being just eight years old when she was exposed to the atomic bomb near her house. The testimony activates familiar ideas associated with the telling of war stories, including the sense of overwhelming odds and the ‘point of no return moment’, which Coyne describes as the point in the story when ‘the combatants begin to accept the inevitability of death’ (2021). Notably, this degree of agency over the process of learning about the bombing of Hiroshima—the fact that the user is able to choose whose testimony they engage with, and thus whose perspective on the story is heard—is important. Each of the testimonies comes from very different people, scattered across pages and media types. Discussing the strength of transmedia storytelling,

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Donna Hancox argues that ‘its multifaceted use of multiple platforms affords arguably the best possible mode of storytelling—a mode that is capable of enhancing characterization, emotional and experiential engagement’ (2018: 166). In this case, enhancing the characterisation of the real-life Hiroshima protagonists stems from the ability to produce and upload your own testimonies, accompanied by further videos, diaries, letters or photos. As such, users have a first-hand account of the testimonies of the people who may have otherwise been silenced or forgotten about, of those who feel excluded and defeated. By allowing anyone to respond to and post their own memories in dialogue with those of others, a narrativised thread of testimony is thereby created—a collective memory, if you will, based on a chain of personal memories, each providing feedback, discussion, questions and debate. It acts as a network of historical stories about the bombing of Hiroshima, together creating a history of not just the actual events, but of the memories, lives, motives and consequences that make up the story. If anything, the use of an interactive website to document these events works to better evoke these events as a war story in the mind of users, since—just like with Dunkirk—the story of the bombing of Hiroshima lies in its collectivity: it is the actions and reactions of countless lives—scattered across a website—that all unite to form the story. At the same time, however, this kind of web-based documentation is indeed about subjectivity, that is, exploring the central narrative through new eyes. What happens, then, when a technology like VR comes into play, forming an altogether more embodied experience where the themes, codes and conventions of the war genre are perceived all at once, as a panoramic experience?

Embodying War The aforementioned question is precisely what we will explore in this section of this chapter. To do so, we will analyse The Day the World Changed, a 16-minute VR documentary memorial for Hiroshima, where audiences experience the stories of survivors set within the Genbaku Dome. The documentary featured at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2018 and was created by Gabo Arora and Saschka Unseld in partnership with the Nobel Peace Prize Winners ICAN. It was produced by Jennifer Tiexera, Tom Lofthouse and Fifer Garbesi. Akin to the storytelling approach taken by the website for the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, The Day the World Changed brings to audiences the harrowing impressions of the victims and survivors of atomic bombings and nuclear arms testing through first-hand testimonies. Going beyond this approach, though, the use of VR affords the inclusion of 3D scanning, data visualisations and photogrammetry techniques to present a more multi-sensory presentation. Such innovative techniques have implications for the activation of genre, particularly in how they work in relation to the technology’s relation to liminality, agency and empathy. For one thing, the VR documentary leverages the use of social VR technology to build a multiplayer experience for participants, free to explore the environment as a group, whilst listening to the survivors’

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stories. The multiplayer technology enables a shared experience, which, for an emotionally delicate historical homage such as this, has interesting implications for how empathy is created within the generic context of a war story. Consider how the experience begins, as well as how the story unfolds in virtual reality. When you first put on the VR headset to experience The Day the World Changed, you appear amidst darkness, and there is one blackish, greyish, smoke-y ball in the centre of the room. You can see ghostly outlines of the other participants in the room. As soon as all the participants are set up, the experience begins and the visuals bring you on a journey around the world. You are in space and viewing the world from above, as a black smoke travels across the globe and it spins. A voice narration explains the history of atomic bombs, and as you follow this black smoke, you soon realise that you are the bomb. You start dropping down to a specific spot on Earth very, very quickly, before suddenly everything goes black. You find yourself in the ruins of a building affected by the bomb. There are rocks on the ground, and you can see your fellow participants standing around a centrepiece. Three objects appear, and as you get closer to one of them, you can hear the story behind that object. You can turn it and move it to see all angles of it. One of the objects is a lunch box. A woman’s voice tells you that this is her son’s lunchbox that he accidentally left at home on the day of the bombing. Then, a rotating sphere appears above the centrepiece and all the objects disappear. It broadcasts news about atomic bombs, as a black and white projection is presented onto the walls of the room. Soon, the sphere turns into a rotating globe, and you can see all the areas where atomic bombs have affected the world. A black smoke snakes around these areas, hitting one point after another. As you can see from our summary of the opening of The Day the World Changed, this experience takes full advantage of many aspects of VR as a medium. The documentary uses visual, aural, gestural and haptic elements to enhance the impact of the storytelling. Crucially, the user is not simply a spectator in this work: they can interact with the space, as well as see other participants in the viewing. Accordion to Dolan and Parets’ useful categorisation of the different kinds of audience agency available within VR experiences (2016), the role of the user within The Day the World Changed is arguably that of a ‘passive participant’, which is when ‘the viewer is visible to (and noticed by) other actors in the world; the viewer may be spoken to or directly addressed by other actors. The overall experience however remains passive; the viewer has no ability to affect change within the story.’ (As part of their VR research, Limina Immersive found this category to be the most popular amongst audiences). Importantly, being a passive participant inside the immersive recreation of this story raises interesting questions in relation to the shaping (and reshaping) of genre. The idea that VR represents a paradigm shift from storytelling to ‘story-living’ has been well-discussed (see Fromm 2018; Golding 2018). Any form of media is likely to show us the world, or a representation of a world, but can it always show us as part of that world, shaped by our interactions with others? There is merit in understanding VR not in cinematic or even strictly

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visual terms, but as something more spatial and architectural, which lends itself to questions of intersubjective relationships—even if these relationships are between yourself and your avatar. With a VR experience such as The Day the World Changed, sometimes this means that audiences can share a personal and intimate moment of reflection together. For example, as fictional as the space seems, the existence of other people in the space of this particular VR documentary helps to ground the experience in real life—real experience. For the most part, the participants are expected to look all around the world that has been created for them and take it all in, to reflect and ponder. In other words, the technology encourages users to bring part of themselves into the storytelling (or story-living), potentially including their own preconceived values about honour, dishonour, conflict, survival, sacrifice, and so on. Such potential for liminal audience embodiment within the confines of being a passive participant does change the parameters of the war genre, however. It is notable that The Day the World Changed does not adopt the first-­ person route, like in a classic video game, despite the ability to see and interact with other users. Rather, the VR experience puts the user both in a position of agency (you are the bomb) and in a position of passivity (you cannot stop the bomb). At one moment, the audience finds themselves in the centre of almost endless nothingness with hundreds of giant missiles pointed directly at you—at once, you are made to feel like a single human being and, essentially, a God. Indeed, the audience is given a truly panoramic perspective: we see everything from the minutia (e.g. individual artefacts and snippets of a victim’s voice) to the infinite (namely, a bird’s eye view over the entire planet Earth, including all of the physical cities and towns hit by an atomic bomb, ever). And more to the point, we see, hear and feel all of this knowledge pretty much all at once. Which is to argue that, in VR, the linearity of the war story is obliterated: no more building towards the big battle or learning of each side’s motivations and perspectives on the conflict or even discovering the aftermath of the war years later. In VR, the war genre becomes a far more panoramic affair, one where past, present and future are happening all at once, liminally. That’s also to suggest that The Day the World Changed puts the audience in a position of almost complete powerlessness and despair over the bombing of Hiroshima. In VR, despite the potential of the medium to increase agency, this agency is used to create a feeling of powerlessness: we see and learn almost everything there is to know about the bombing, including its context, where and how it happened, and to who, but the damage has already been done, even if it has not yet been depicted in the experience itself. In other words, a degree of humanity—or at least a certain approach to depicting humanity, one that is so important to the war genre—is forever transformed by VR: in war stories, Coyne (2021) argues, audiences ‘see the victory as only meaningful when honour is maintained’ by the characters. A classic example would be when a soldier sacrifices himself for the survival of his fellow comrades at the end of a battle. But in the case of The Day the World Changed, such an intimate sacrifice can no longer be the central focus of the storytelling: VR may be able to change one’s

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mood dramatically—capable of eliciting profound emotions like empathy and awe—but in the context of the horrors of war, 360-degree immersion becomes a means of trapping audiences inside the multi-perspectival tapestry of war. As one audience member reflected about the VR experience, captured as part of a user evaluation event at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival, ‘Wow, now I understand why VR is so important: I have never before had a real comprehension of the sheer scale of the destruction. This is terrifying.’ And as another audience member declared, again at the same 2018 event: ‘It is so unimaginable; the level of destruction that this caused. Even when watching videos which attempt to recreate the scale of the explosion, I am never able to comprehend such a catastrophe, until now.’ In VR war stories, then, audiences become agents of knowledge, capable of understanding—and feeling—the nuances of war like never before, from all possible angles.

Conclusion It seems paradoxical to claim that VR makes audiences feel less human, given the medium’s proven potential to heighten profound emotions like empathy and awe. So we will not make such a claim here. What we do claim, however, is that VR’s forming of passive observants—building 360-degree environments whereby audiences hover through the world, creating a strange, out-of-body experience—is capable of granting audiences an almost God-like power to redefine genre as they see fit. In the case of The Day the World Changed, VR’s uncanny liminality and often otherworldly ability to reveal new layers of reality has been shown to create a far more panoramic recreation of the war genre, with users watching over the events and catastrophes of war as if they were their own distant memories, powerless to intervene. At the same time, let’s not underestimate VR’s transformative potential as a medium. The 360-degree immersion of The Day the World Changed also becomes a means of inciting strong (re)action and activism against the horrors of war, powerfully demonstrating the unending omnipresence of war in a way that furthers the mission of the anti-war sub-genre. And it is the concept of audience embodiment that is so crucial to this understanding. As Newton and Soukup (2016) suggest, ‘as we stumble our way into this new, mysterious medium … we need to better understand the audience’s experience in VR— not just their experience of the technology, but the way that they understand story and their role within it.’ Doing so means thinking about the transmediality of VR as a spatial or even architectural phenomenon, analysing in what ways the ability to immerse yourself in a fully virtual setting across media shifts the thematic agendas at the heart of a given genre. ‘Perhaps unsurprisingly’, as Matt Hills (2018: 213) writes, ‘given that transmedia extensions occur within a proliferating, ubiquitous screen culture, the issue of transmedia’s locatedness in space and place has generally been under-explored.’ There are exceptions: Alternate Reality Games (ARG) have merited analysis of extra-diegetic spatiality and how this is utilised

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within the ARG’s real-world gameplay (see, for example, Boothe 2018). Theme parks, too, have been considered in terms of their spatial and haptic function as transmedia sites (Williams 2020). But it is apparent that few scholars have considered VR from a transmedia perspective, a notable omission given that a whole category of content on Oculus’ home screen is predicated on users being able to ‘step into your favourite shows and movies through the power of VR’ (Oculus n.d.). We hope that this chapter has gone some way to remedying this omission, with more to come. In fact, the next chapter further explores creative technology by considering the impact of AI-generated deepfake app technology on new manifestations of genre, developing this chapter’s focus on audience embodiment.

References Allen, Catherine. 2020. Beyond the Early Adopter: Broadening the Appeal for Virtual Reality. Policy & Evidence Centre, September. https://www.pec.ac.uk/policy-­ briefings/beyond-­the-­early-­adopter-­widening-­the-­appeal-­for-­virtual-­reality. Allen, Catherine, and Dan Tucker. 2018. Immersive Content Formats for Future Audiences. Digital Catapult, June. https://www.immerseuk.org/wp-­content/. Boothe, Paul. 2018. Audience and Fan Studies: Technological Communities and Their Influences on Narrative Ecosystems. In Reading Contemporary Serial Television Universes: A Narrative Ecosystem Framework, ed. Paola Brembilla and Ilaria A. De Pascalis, 57–73. London: Routledge. Breel, Astrid. 2020. Agentive Behaviour, Creative Agency and the Experience of Agency: Towards a Contextual Framework of Agency in Participatory Performance. Paper presented at Audience, Experience, Desire: Interactivity and participation in Contemporary Performance & the Cultural Industries, 29–30 January, University of Exeter. Conway, Mark. 2015. The Problem with History Classes. The Atlantic. Accessed July 2, 2021. www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/03/ the-­problemwith-­history-­classes/387823/. Coyne, Shawn. 2021. War Genre: Honour and Dishonour in Pr War, Anti-War, and Kinship Stories. Story Grid. https://storygrid.com/war-­genre/. Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. 2018. Culture is Digital. March. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/culture-­is-­digital. Dolan, Devon, and Michael Parets. 2016. Redefining the Axiom of Story: The VR and 360 Video Complex. Tech Crunch, January 14. https://techcrunch.com/2016/01/14/ redefining-­the-­axiom-­of-­story-­the-­vr-­and-­360-­video-­complex/. Freeman, Matthew. 2019. Transmedia Historiography as Educational Practice: Narrativising Colombian Cultural Memory. International Journal of Creative Media Research 1. Fromm, Jeff. 2018. Why Storyliving Brands Win With Gen Z. Forbes, June 14. https:// www.forbes.com/sites/jefffromm/2018/06/14/why-­s tor yliving-­b rands­win-­with-­gen-­z/?sh=3119cbf87d72. Golding, Sarah. 2018. Welcome to the Golden Age of Mankind: The Age of Story-­ living. Campaign Live, November 12. https://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/ welcome-­new-­age-­mankind-­age-­story-­living/1498693.

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Hancox, Donna. 2018. Transmedia Writing: Storyworlds and Participation at the Intersection of Practice and Theory. In The Routledge Companion to Transmedia Studies, ed. Matthew Freeman and Renira Rampazzo Gambarato, 165–172. London: Routledge. Hillis, Ken. 2014. Virtual Reality. In The Johns Hopkins Guide to Digital Media, ed. Marie-Laure Ryan, Lori Emerson, and Benjamin J. Robertson, 510–514. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Hills, Matt. 2018. From Transmedia Storytelling to Transmedia Experience: Star Wars Celebration as Crossover/Hierarchical Space. In Star Wars and the History of Transmedia Storytelling, ed. Sean M.  Guynes and Dan Hassler-Forest, 213–224. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press. Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. ———. 2009. The Revenge of the Origami Unicorn: Seven Principles of Transmedia Storytelling. Confessions of an Aca-Fan: The Official Weblog of Henry Jenkins. December 12. Accessed June 20, 2022. http://henryjenkins.org/2009/12/the_ revenge_of_the_origami_uni.html. Jung, T., M.C. Tom Dieck, H. Lee, and N. Chung. 2016. Effects of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality on Visitor Experiences in Museum. In Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism, ed. A. Inversini and R. Schegg, 621–635. New York: Springer International Publishing. Milk, Chris. 2015. How Virtual Reality Can Create the Ultimate Empathy Machine. TED, March. https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_milk_how_virtual_reality_can_ create_the_ultimate_empathy_machine?language=en. Newton, Katy, and Karin Soukup. 2016. The Storyteller’s Guide to the Virtual Reality Audience. Judith Edin Choi. https://judethodenchoi.com/2021/05/03/ the-­storytellers-­guide-­to-­the-­virtual-­reality-­audience/. Oculus. n.d. https://www.oculus.com/experiences/entertainment/. Pearson, Roberta. 2009. Transmedia Storytelling in Historical and Theoretical Perspectives. Paper presented at The Ends of Television conference, University of Amsterdam, June 29–July 1. Pullinger, Kate. 2019. Framing Immersion. South West Creative Technology Network. https://www.swctn.org.uk/immersion/. Quesnel, D., and B.E. Riecke. 2018. Are You Awed Yet? How Virtual Reality Gives Us Awe and Goose Bumps. Frontiers in Psychology 9: 2158. Speakman, Duncan. 2020. No Vantage Point. Immerse, May 1. https://immerse. news/no-­vantage-­pointb6a4da415584. Williams, Rebecca. 2020. Theme Park Fandom: Spatial Transmedia, Materiality & Participatory Cultures. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.

CHAPTER 9

Transmedia Science Fiction: Deepfake Technology, Genre Fictioning and Reminiscence

Introduction ‘Fantasy, reality, dreams, memories. It’s all the same. Just noise.’ So declares the character of Batou in the 2017 film Ghost in the Shell, itself an adaptation of the acclaimed Japanese science fiction manga series of the same name. For those unfamiliar with the source material, Ghost in the Shell is set in the near future, where humans are now augmented with cybernetic improvements such as vision, strength and intelligence. Augmentation developer Hanka Robotics establishes a secret project to develop an artificial body, or ‘shell’, that can integrate a human brain rather than an artificial intelligence (AI). In his review of the 2017 film, critic Mark Kermode (2017) noted that ‘there’s been a lot of talk about how one of the things that the story is about is taking a consciousness and putting it inside an artificial, super hyped-up body, and to some extent that is what this version is doing with the original’. Of course, the same analogy can be made about the relationship between this science fiction film and much of the emerging creative technologies now being used to support entertainment franchises transmedially. For example, accompanying the cinematic release of the Ghost in the Shell film in 2017 was a popular VR experience: this was precisely about placing the real consciousness of the individual audience member inside a fully artificial environment. However, let’s not forget that science fiction has been able to achieve much the same thing for a very long time. Our reason for discussing Ghost in the Shell here is because it hints at a number of the central themes and ideas that will be important to this chapter. For one thing, the film exemplifies how science fiction as a genre is able to paint a tapestry of blended worlds (human consciousness and synthetic body, memory and fantasy, present and future), where characters—in bridging or amalgamating these worlds—become the cyphers for stories about the world of tomorrow. Sometimes these sci-fi characters, like Ghost in the Shell’s Batou, are participants in the making of this world of tomorrow; sometimes they are mere © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 M. Freeman, A. N. Smith, Transmedia/Genre, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15583-3_9

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observers. Whatever the case, science fiction puts the audience—and often the characters—in a position of powerlessness and despair at the state of the future world (or is it the present-day world?). What happens, though, when it is the audience that becomes the active participant in the science fiction story? How might this alteration transform the central idea of the genre? This chapter will analyse how the affordances of AI-driven deepfake technology can augment and reimagine the science fiction genre. In particular, and in ways that build directly on Chap. 6’s consideration of VR, we are again interested in this chapter in the impact of audience embodiment on the transmediality of genre. But given that AI and science fiction share such a close, almost intertwined relationship—the former has surely spring from the imagination of the latter—in what ways does the twenty-first-century actualisation of AI transform (or even enhance) the function of the science fiction genre? And indeed how do the thematic interests at the heart of this genre (re)shape AI as a form of twenty-first-century transmediality? Specifically, through the lens of the 2021 Lisa Joy-directed film Reminiscence (2021) and its accompanying mobile and web app that utilised deepfake technology to help market the film, we consider what it means for the science fiction genre—a form of fiction that, as Vivian Sobchack (1980: 64) once wrote, ‘looks to the stars, to parallel worlds’—to be evoked and reconfigured transmedially as an online digitised experience using deepfake technology. Throughout this chapter we first consider how the science fiction genre—as exemplified by Reminiscence—relates to the characteristics of AI (most broadly) and deepfake technology (most specifically)—namely its power to provide artificially enabled forms of fictioning, a creative practice that leads to the performing of new performative worlds, often through acts of writing, performance and imagining. We map these characteristics of fictioning to ideas of AI embedded with a deepfake web app that featured as part of the Reminiscence marketing, exploring what the use of deepfake technology means to our understanding of science fiction. We argue that deepfake—and AI more generally—has ultimately obliterated the divide between ‘science’ and ‘fiction’, fully amalgamating the tension at the heart of the genre.

Conceptualising Deepfake Technology Let’s not ignore the obvious: deepfakes—defined as a form of synthetic media in which a person in an existing image or video is replaced with someone else’s likeness—itself feel like science fiction made real. The word is a portmanteau of ‘deep learning’ and ‘fakes’, which together roughly encapsulate what the technology is (Delfino 2019). As part of this book’s overarching aim to understand how genre opens up distinctive strategies in today’s media convergence age, questioning how emerging transmedial sites change workings and understandings of genre, there is perhaps no better example of such emerging transmedial sites than the strange new world of artificial intelligence (AI) and deepfake technology.

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AI is changing the way we live. It is becoming increasingly important to the creative industries but also to manufacturing, retail, financial services and healthcare, to name just a few sectors. AI could be seen as the ‘quiet’ revolution—working in the background to assist in creative processes, gradually transforming agriculture through robotics or reimagining how we search the internet. AI is thus closely linked to innovations in mobile media. Yet, there has been little attempt to theorise the use of mobile-based AI interfaces like deepfakes in relation to existing understandings of transmediality, even as digital technologies and mobile devices continue to bring media interfaces into the workings of our daily lives. The technological affordances of mobile devices that have increasingly democratised media, largely by integrating tools and functions that allow the average user to capture and edit their own photos and record their own videos, in turn facilitated user-generated content, bridging mobile media with Web 2.0. The rise of social platforms such as Instagram and TikTok amidst users’ desire to ‘communicate and share’ is one of the main factors behind the surge in mobile phones now supporting internet access (Gauntlett 2011). The continuous changes in the uses of mobile media have played a major part in the ‘contemporary adoption, absorption, and retention of new technologies’ (Cunningham and Potts 2009: 137), but they have also been key to the increasingly intertwined link between technology and daily life. Mobile media is fundamental to the presentation of more ‘personal’ and thus more interactive media messages that is itself key to understanding transmediality in more real-­ world terms. As technology plays such a huge role in making new media attractive and beneficial to today’s online audiences, it also impacts the range of new digital technologies that have crossed over onto mobile media platforms, including the surge in popularity surrounding the use of deepfake technology in online advertising. Traditionally, the production and distribution of advertising material has relied on human effort and analogue tools. However, technological innovations have given the advertising industry digital and automatic tools that enable advertisers to automate many advertising processes and produce ‘synthetic ads’, or ads comprising content based on the artificial and automatic production and modification of data. The emerging practice of synthetic advertising, to date the most sophisticated form of ad manipulation, relies on various AI techniques, such as deepfakes, to automatically create content that depicts an unreal, albeit extraordinarily convincing, artificial version of reality. Recent research by Kietzmann et al. (2021: 473) observes how ‘deepfakes are exploding across mass and social media, and these outlets are feverously trying to manage the proliferation of content with potentially deceitful authenticity on their platforms’. To keen advertisers, in fact, early examples of synthetic ads signal a paradigm shift in advertising—that is, a fundamentally different way of creating highly compelling ads using AI tools. For example, deepfake technology was used for the first time in an election campaign to change a speech in English made by

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Manoj Tiwari—leader of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party—that criticised a political opponent to, at first, Hindi (the language of target voters), then 20 additional local dialects (Jee 2020). Synthetic advertising tools can also generate totally new content, creating individuals and objects that do not exist and have never existed. For example, generative adversarial networks can automatically generate synthetic models that are tailored to fit advertising goals in a totally hands-off, unsupervised process without the need to hire human models or other professionals (Wong 2019). The possibilities enabled by such AI-driven advertising tools raise a number of questions—namely what does the generation of truly convincing, true-to-­ life synthetic ads mean to the ways in which audiences now engage with and respond to media content? In politics, for example, Tashman (2021) argues that ‘deepfake videos have the potential to create devastating ramifications’ pointing that such videos ‘could feature public officials taking bribes, displaying racism, or engaging in adultery … saying or doing things that they did not’ (1393). Back in the world of advertising, Campbell et al. (2022) consolidates the insights from various and often previously unlinked literature on AI to propose a conceptual framework for understanding the impact of ad manipulation on consumer engagement, including deepfakes. This framework maps how deepfakes can lead to perceptions of verisimilitude and creativity through the use of personal data that individualises ad content, which in turn, it is argued, can affect awareness of ad falsity and its persuasiveness (2022). How, though, do such themes of verisimilitude and creativity play out in the context of a deepfake ad for a science fiction film? This is the key question to be explored in this chapter. On the other hand, it is wrong to simply reinforce oft-recited discourses surrounding the seemingly negative perceptions of AI. For as Annette Kuhn (1999: 81) wrote, ‘AI often feels like it is something that is done to us, something strange and unfamiliar, something tinged with fear and apprehension.’ But AI is not the evil tool that it is so commonly depicted as being in any number of Hollywood science fiction films. What if ‘creativity’, as Patrick Crogan (2020: 17) insists, could ‘transform the pathways towards the future of AI’? One such example of a highly creative approach to thinking about the social possibilities of AI is the practice of fictioning, a term coined by David Burrows and Simon O’Sullivan in 2019. In their book Fictioning: The Myth-Functions of Contemporary Art and Philosophy, Burrows and O’Sullivan define and map instances of the practice they term ‘fictioning’, a term that, very simply put, aims to denote ‘invention in the realm of life’ (2019: 2), often through creative acts such as writing, performing and imagining. As the two authors explain: By using the term fiction as a verb we refer to the writing, imaging, performing or other material instantiation of worlds or social bodies that mark out trajectories different to those engendered by the dominant organisations of life currently in existence. Or, to put this another way, we are interested in exploring those fictions that involve potential realities to come. (2019: 2)

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The link between fictioning and AI is that both describe new possibilities for imagining and manifesting alternate realities, blending real and virtual, science and fiction, often through highly individualised means and forms of personal expression. Later in this chapter we will explore how AI technology and user-­ led fictioning come together to rethink the science fiction genre as something truly specific to the current moment of multiplatform media.

Living Science Fiction It has long been assumed that science fiction is formed not by the past but by the future—such is its thematic interest in posing ideas, implications and alternatives for the current state of play (Daswick 2019). Reminiscence, however, might be seen to challenge that notion. This section will conduct a brief textual analysis of Reminiscence, which we use to identify the key strategies used by the film to evoke the science fiction genre. These characteristics of what science fiction is will ultimately be returned to later in this chapter when we map these characteristics to practices of AI embedded with the film’s accompanying deepfake web app. Released into cinemas on August 20, 2021, Reminiscence is a big-budget science fiction blockbuster film that can be said to grapple with a central question: what if you could live in science fiction? It is a film that explores complex questions of memory, nostalgia, as well as the seeming attraction and danger of reliving old memories and obsessing over the past. Set in the near future, when climate change has caused the seas to rise and flood the stress of Miami, the film stars Hugh Jackman as Nick Bannister, who—working alongside his friend Watts (Thandiwe Newton)—operates a business that allows people to relive memories. Clients walk in off the street, requesting to spend some time reliving a moment of their past that comforts them, whether that be their wedding day, the moment their sports team won the league, or simply a special moment with a friend. The film’s opening credits immediately work to activate the genre of science fiction through the alien-like beams of light that form to make the film’s title, Reminiscence, which itself is evocative of futuristic science. And as Isaac Asimov (1975) once wrote, ‘science fiction can be defined as that branch of literature which deals with the reaction of human beings to changes in science’. This initial form of genre activation is reinforced moments later via imagery of a city that is half underwater, which codes the film as futuristic while at the same time dealing with the relationship between the past, the present and the future. For the plot of the film centres on nostalgia having become a means of escaping daily climate concerns, as extreme daytime temperatures have forced the population to live at night. ‘When the waters rose and war broke out, there wasn’t a lot to look forward to,’ explains Nick. ‘So people began looking back.’ Going further, the ability for Barrister to generate truly convincing, true-to-­ life synthetic recreations of someone’s memories forms a lucrative commercial proposition based on the appeal of nostalgia. As Nick explains in voice over:

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‘Nothing is more addictive than the past. Who wouldn’t want to be reunited with a loved one? Or relive the most meaningful moments of their life?’ And make no mistake: Reminiscence is a film that is deeply inspired by, and indebted to, the thematic workings of the science fiction genre. According to Darko Suvin (1972), science fiction can be defined as ‘a literary genre whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author’s empirical environment’. In a similar vein, albeit this time jumping all the way forward to 2019, Adam Rogers of Wired magazine summarises the genre of science fiction as ‘a tool for building thought-experiment machines’. The thought-experiment at the heart of Reminiscence—its central imaginative framework alternative, if you will—is to ask its audience: if you could relive the most perfect, precious memories from your past, would you ever wish to return back from these memories? And let’s be clear: the technology at the centre of the Reminiscence narrative—the ‘tank’ that allows people to revisit their past memories—is AI, depicted as a changer alongside a computer that is capable of manipulating and refabricating personal memories through advanced technology, changing the way its characters live out their lives, for better or for worse. The fact that it is an advanced technology underpinning this practice is one of the key ways through which science fiction become activated on a textual level: for as Kingsley Amis (1975) once claimed, ‘science fiction is that class of prose narrative treating of a situation that could not arise in the world we know, but which is hypothesized on the basis of some innovation in science or technology, or pseudo-science or pseudo-technology, whether human or extraterrestrial in origin.’ In this case, Barrister’s technology is indeed this innovation in science, granting the film a vehicle to hypothesise a world we do not yet know. Of course, the film’s innovations in science and technology have happened, at least to an extent, as the accompanying deepfake web tool demonstrates, and will be explored shortly. But back to the film: another way that Reminiscence activates its status as science fiction is through its attempts to consider the moral and philosophical implications of its central ‘what if?’ thought-­ experiment. By the film’s end, Nick Barrister opts to live out the rest of his life in his memory machine, reliving his time with Mae, the mysterious client one walked into his office one day only to disappear soon after, but not before Nick had fallen in love with her. With the film ending on Nick opting to live in a fantasy where he and Mae had reunited and forever happy, thematically, the film’s concluding message seems almost identical to that of Tashman (2021: 1393), whose earlier-cited research had claimed that ‘deepfake videos have the potential to create devastating ramifications’ in terms of our everyday perceptions and awareness. And like all great science fiction, Reminiscence is a film that is commenting on and critiquing present-day issues related to our reliance on emerging digital technologies, namely—in this case—our apparent desire to live so much of our lives via these technologies.

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Reliving Science Fiction Beyond the representation strategies depicted in a film, however, this chapter is primarily concerned with understanding what happens when such textual evocations of genre become reconfigured transmedially outside of the frame of a movie. So, what happens to the themes and ideas of science fiction depicted within the filmic milieu of Reminiscence—namely the aforementioned codes and conventions of science, technology, thought-experiments and their moral implications—once they become reimagined and re-depicted as an online, fully user-embodied digital experience using deepfake technology? This section will explore precisely this question, analysing the unique deepfake web app that was produced to support the marketing of Reminiscence. In particular, we will conduct a technological and participatory analysis of this web app, picking up on earlier discussed themes of AI such as its relationship to creativity and creative practices, namely its links to fictioning. In 2021, Warner Bros. collaborated with synthetic media startup D-ID as part of its wider marketing for Reminiscence. A new website was built, www. bannerandassociates.com, which asks users to upload a photograph of themselves, allowing them to put themselves into the trailer of the film. D-ID’s AI then turns the user’s uploaded photograph into a moving deepfake video sequence, one that is integrated into a short video clip promoting the film. The concept behind the promo web app is that it creates an opportunity for the audience to feel like one of Nick Bannister’s in-movie clients, with the user looking into their own memories in order to solve a case. In other words, the use of the deepfake technology provides a means of actualising the science fiction premise of the film for the audience. But in genre terms, this technology has deeper implications, both in terms of what it offers thematically and practically. It also works to transform the central tenet of the genre. For instance, consider Philip K. Dick’s (1981) definition of what defines science fiction: I will define science fiction, first, by saying what SF is not. It cannot be defined as “a story (or novel or play) set in the future,” since there exists such a thing as space adventure, which is set in the future but is not SF: it is just that: adventures, fights and wars in the future in space involving super-advanced technology. Why, then, is it not science fiction? It would seem to be, and Doris Lessing (e.g.) supposes that it is. However, space adventure lacks the distinct new idea that is the essential ingredient. Also, there can be science fiction set in the present: the alternate world story or novel. So if we separate SF from the future and also from ultra-advanced technology, what then do we have that can be called SF? We have a fictitious world; that is the first step: it is a society that does not in fact exist, but is predicated on our known society; that is, our known society acts as a jumping-­ off point for it; the society advances out of our own in some way, perhaps orthogonally, as with the alternate world story or novel. It is our world dislocated by some kind of mental effort on the part of the author, our world transformed into that which it is not or not yet. This world must differ from the given in at least

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one way, and this one way must be sufficient to give rise to events that could not occur in our society—or in any known society present or past. There must be a coherent idea involved in this dislocation; that is, the dislocation must be a conceptual one, not merely a trivial or bizarre one—this is the essence of science fiction, the conceptual dislocation within the society so that as a result a new society is generated in the author’s mind, transferred to paper, and from paper it occurs as a convulsive shock in the reader’s mind, the shock of dysrecognition. He knows that it is not his actual world that he is reading about.

Importantly, however, and as we have hinted at already, the conceptual dislocation within the society at the heart of Reminiscence—its new idea that is the genre’s essential ingredient—is precisely that its science fiction trapping can happen, and to a large extent have happened. And we know that the film’s ‘new idea’ has happened already because its own AI-driven marketing campaign is predicated on showing off this fact. How, though, do AI’s innate links to verisimilitude and creativity, as per Campbell et al.’s earlier cited framework, mean to notions of the science fiction genre? And, most notably, how might the use of AI-driven deepfake technology directly afford a way for creators and storytelling everywhere to not just actualise the possibilities of science fiction in the twenty-first century, but in fact to obliterate the divide between ‘science’ and ‘fiction’ once and for all, transforming the genre entirely? Allow us to explain. The Twilight Zone creator Rod Sterling famously said that ‘science fiction is the improbable made possible’ (1962). The rise of immersive and creative technologies has increasingly been exploited by the creative opportunity as an opportunity to allow their audiences to step inside the fictional worlds of entertainment, or at least to build technologically augmented, multi-sensory environments that allow you to feel like you can. Of course, we explored one avenue of this trend in Chap. 6’s exploration of virtual reality, and AI-generated deepfake web apps—such as that one produced for Reminiscence—is an extension of this trend running across the film, performance and games sectors, and beyond. In marketing terms, then, the concept of inviting audiences to step inside the world of the fictional plays into fantasies of magical possibility: after all, it was science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke who famously stated that ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’ (1962). In this instance, AI-driven deepfake technology has become said technology, in so far as what it offers audiences is the pleasure of magic. And just like in Campbell et al.’s earlier cited research study, this correlation is linked to the use of personal data that individualises the advertisement (in this case, a personal photograph). Moreover, the pleasure of magic redefines the central tenet of science fiction. If we again turn to Arthur C. Clarke, it was he who once stipulated that in attempting to distinguish between the seemingly similar genres of science fiction and fantasy, he noted: ‘science fiction is something that could happen— but you usually wouldn’t want it to. Fantasy is something that couldn’t happen—though you often wish that it could’ (Clarke 2000: ix).  Clarke’s

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distinction between fantasy and science fiction is a simple but useful one, and it particularly highlights how the integration of deepfake technology is capable of redefining the latter. After all, the choice to integrate deepfake technology into a commercial piece of Hollywood marketing is predicated on the creative idea that stepping inside the world of fiction—being able to share the screen with a film star like Hugh Jackman—couldn’t happen, though many of us are likely to wish that it could. And now it can. In genre terms, then, one can argue that the technological role of this deepfake app is not to evoke science fiction, but to fulfil fantasy. Consider a wider example, again produced by D-ID.  Prior to being approached by Warner Bros. to produce the deepfake web tool to accompany Reminiscence, D-ID made headlines by launching its Deep Nostalgia service, a website developed for the company MyHeritage that allows users to animate old photographs of their deceased loved ones. The tool is predicated on the concept that users will want to see their loved one ‘come back to life’, if only for a brief second, by allowing a still photograph to be animated as a video. The tool allows users to choose from a variety of movements and expressions, such as smiles, a compassionate look and even kisses. Barely five weeks after Deep Nostalgia’s debut online, MyHeritage announced that more than 72 million photos had been animated using the Deep Nostalgia tool. Presumably, part of the reason that Warner Bros. elected to work with D-ID over any number of other AI or synthetic media companies is the fact that D-ID’s AI uniquely creates the illusion of life-like movement from just a single static image. By comparison, the company’s competitors often need various videos and photos to train their AI solutions to create deepfake videos. In effect, then, this technology, much like the genre is science fiction itself, is ‘speculative and responsive to the human spirit’ (Daswick 2019); ‘it doesn’t just pose ideas—it acts on them, granting alternatives concerning the human experience’ (ibid.). To go a bit further: one can also argue that the participatory role of the deepfake app is to enable the user to engage in practices of fictioning, highly creative ones at that, largely based on the allure of its verisimilitude. For example, first consider the way the deepfake web app was introduced on the official Reminiscence Twitter account: a video, narrated by star Hugh Jackman, speaks as if directly to the user: ‘Welcome back. I hope you enjoyed those memories of your past. But if you want to have the real thing, for it to be like it really was, you just have to come in.’ On the one hand, it is notable that the voiceover constructs the kind of thought-experiment that we know is common of the science fiction genre. But on the other hand, the emphasis on the real is evident (and emphasised) throughout the video. In fact, central to the ‘sell’ of this deepfake tool is that this technology, positioned in the context of the science fiction genre, is not that audiences can relive a deeply personal memory (as per the narrative of the film). Instead, the appeal in this case seems to be that audiences can transform said memory into something more along the lines of a fantasy or an outright fiction. In other words, the use of transmediality in this instance is about empowering audiences to transform the real into the realm of

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the fantastic, further obliterating the line between science (i.e. the real, the personal) and fiction (i.e. the fantasy, the entertainment). And it is indeed the creative practice of fictioning that is central to this construction, since this practice itself shares much in common with the central tenet of science fiction. Sean Redmond notes how science fiction ‘can be set essentially anywhere, in the past, present and future’ (2004: 2)—as a genre it imagines other, possible worlds that go through the looking-glass. The nature of expansive, outward-looking world-creation is arguably much more evident in the science fiction genre than in, say, crime or mystery stories, or even in fantastical horror stories. For as Barry Keith Grant (2007: 17) so eloquently puts it: The rapt upward gaze of faces bathed in light in Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) is emblematic of the expansive thrust of science fiction … Vision in … science fiction stories gazes up and out—from one man’s small steps in Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon (1865) to the giant step for mankind through the stargate in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Science fiction, in other words, is perfectly suited to the art of building fictional storyworlds across multiple media—it is now that in the case of the Reminiscence deepfake tool, the art of world-building takes place across the threshold of reality and fantasy, science and fiction. Consider how users responded to seeing their own image inserted into the fictional world of Reminiscence: based on the public comments shared across the official Facebook and Twitter accounts for the Reminiscence film, it is striking how many users made reference to The Matrix (1999), and thus by extension the concept of physically and psychologically entering a virtual environment. ‘I feel like I’ve entered the matrix,’ one user wrote on Facebook having tested the deepfake tool. ‘Your mind makes it real,’ another user wrote in response, directly referencing an iconic line of dialogue from The Matrix. Elsewhere, users commented on the tool’s ability to help them imagine an alternative reality for themselves, one which they further developed through their writings on social media. For example, one user declared: ‘Is it weird that I’m now totally imagining new lives for myself? For some reason I tried this and saw myself lost on vacation. Can’t remember that though.’ Another user posted, separately: ‘Finding this deepfake thing really unsettling. It’s me, but not me.’ Finally, another wrote: ‘Really liking what I see here … might even go and write some fanfic about what happened when Hugh Jackman solved the case of the missing me!’ What is clear to see from these comments, then, is that deepfake technology is capable of ‘fictioning’ the lives of audiences: still absolutely rooted in the codes and conventions of science and technology that have long been at the root of science fiction, a genre that ‘gazes up and out’, to recite Grant (2007: 17), the use of deepfake technology encourages people to imagine themselves as part of new, alternative lives and worlds, writing, performing and imagining fictionalised extensions of the now forever-blended fictional entertainments and realities unfolding before their eyes.

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Conclusion ‘You’re going on a journey. A journey through memory. Your destination? A place and time you’ve been before,’ so says Hugh Jackman’s Nick Barrister in Reminiscence. So, if this chapter has taken you on a journey through the genre of science fiction, probing you to consider what impact the introduction of platform-spanning, AI-generated deepfakes have had on the fabric of this genre, what, we ask, is your destination? Where have we ended up? Well, as alluded to in the introduction to this book, it is not by accident that what consideration there has been to genre in transmedia scholarship has focused in large part on science fiction or fantasy. This focus on the fantastic makes considerable sense: generically, science fiction is defined by its naturally infinite storyworlds that shift and vary. To recite Vivian Sobchack’s definition from the start of this chapter, science fiction ‘looks to the stars, to parallel worlds’ (1980: 64). However, what this chapter has demonstrated is that when conceived through the lens of AI (most broadly) and deepfake technology (most specifically), science fiction becomes that which is already here—it is no longer a thought-experiment. If the choice to integrate deepfake technology into a commercial piece of Hollywood marketing is in fact predicated on the appeal of stepping inside the world of fiction—in this case, being able to share the screen with Hugh Jackman—then, in genre terms, it is apparent how this use of AI technology works to rethink science fiction into a form of transmedia wish-fulfilment. Indeed, as we have argued, the technological role of this deepfake app is not to evoke science fiction at all, but instead to fulfil fantasy—to put on screen that which we desire the most. Or to put it another way, just as ‘deepfakes present both threats to and opportunities for advertisers’ (Kietzmann et  al. 2021: 485), this technology also poses both threats to and opportunities for the future of the science fiction genre. The use of deepfake technology as part of the wider marketing campaign for Reminiscence is arguably about blurring the line between science and fiction, between reality and fantasy, doing so by forming a creative site of technology-­augmented verisimilitude in which said technology creates real-life science fiction. Indeed, this AI-led use of deepfake technology creates a transmedia project that encourages audiences not to escape from reality by entering a fictional world, as one assumes to be the objective with any number of the big transmedia properties now populating Hollywood, but rather to manifest a fictional reality out of the ingredients of one’s own life. In that sense, it enables us to see ‘science’ and ‘fiction’ as utterly interchangeable, and it is transmedia storytelling—with its power to immerse users in interactive media practices and shared, connected experiences—that is fundamental to achieving those ontological goals. Apps, AI and other mobile technologies may be the holy grails of today’s interactive media, but reality, it seems, remains a truly interactive space through which to engage digitally.

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References Amis, Kingsley. 1975. New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction. London: Ayer & Co. Publisher. Asimov, Isaac. 1975. How Easy to See the Future! Natural History. Burrows, David, and Simon O’Sullivan. 2019. Fictioning: The Myth-Functions of Contemporary Art and Philosophy. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Campbell, Colin, Kirk Plangger, Sean Sands, and Jan Kietzmann. 2022. Preparing for an Era of Deepfakes and AI-Generated Ads: A Framework for Understanding Responses to Manipulated Advertising. Journal of Advertising 51 (1). Clarke, Arthur C. 2000. In The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke, ed. Patrick Nielsen Hayden. New York: Orb Books. Crogan, Patrick. 2020. Unboxing the Black Box: Reflections on Making with AI and Automation. A Collective Publication by the South West Creative Technology Network. https://www.swctn.org.uk/automation/. Cunningham, Stuart, and Jason Potts. 2009. New Economics for the New Media. In Mobile Technologies: From Telecommunications to Media, ed. Gerard Goggin and Larissa Hjorth, 131–142. New York and London: Routledge. Daswick, Tyler. 2019. The Rise of Skywalker Review: We’re Not Mad. We’re Just Disappointed. Yahoo Movies (December 18). https://www.yahoo.com/news/rise-­ skywalker-­review-­not-­mad-­155300245.html. Delfino, Rebecca A. 2019. Pornographic Deepfakes: The Case for Federal Criminalization of Revenge Porn’s Next Tragic Act. FLASH: The Fordham Law Archive of Scholarship and History 88 (5). Dick, Philip K. 1981. The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick. London: Carol Publishing. Gauntlett, David. 2011. Making Is Connecting: The Social Meaning of Creativity, from DIY and Knitting to YouTube and Web 2.0. Cambridge: Polity Press. Grant, Barry Keith. 2007. Film Genre: From Iconography to Ideology. London: Wallflower Press. Jee, C. 2020. An Indian Politician Is Using Deepfake Technology to Win New Voters. MIT Technology Review. Accessed 27 March 2020. https://www.technologyreview. com/f/615247/an-­indian-­politician-­is-­using-­deepfakes-­to-­try-­and-­win-­voters/. Kermode, Mark. 2017. Ghost in the Shell Reviewed by Mark Kermode. Kermode and Mayo’s Film Review. Accessed 20 June 2022. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=36Pw9J6qtzM. Kietzmann, Jan, Adam J. Mills, and Kirk Plangger. 2021. Deepfakes: Perspectives on the Future of “reality” of Advertising and Branding. International Journal of Advertising 40 (3): 473–485. Kuhn, Annette, ed. 1999. Alien Zone II: The Spaces of Science Fiction Cinema. London: Verso. Redmond, Sean, ed. 2004. Liquid Metal: The Science-Fiction Film Reader. London: Wallflower Press. Sobchack, Vivian. 1980. The Limits of Infinity: The American Science-Fiction Film 1950–75. New York: A.S. Barnes & Co. Inc. Sterling, Rod. 1962. The Fugitive. The Twilight Zone, March 9.

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Suvin, Dark. 1972. Definitions of SF. In Clute, John and Nicholls, Peter (eds.) (1993) Encyclopaedia of Science Fiction. London: Brown and Company. Tashman, Alexandra. 2021. Malicious Deepfakes: How California’s A.B. 730 Tries (and Fails) to Address the Internet’s Burgeoning Political Crisis. Loyola: Law Review 54. Wong, C. 2019. The Rise of AI supermodels. CDO Trends. Accessed 1 April 2020. https://www.cdotrends.com/story/14300/rise-­ai-­supermodels.

CHAPTER 10

Conclusion: Towards a Conceptual Framework of Transmedia Genre

Ultimately, this book has worked to rethink how genres are now constructed industrially, how they change structurally through a range of technologies and platforms, and how today’s participatory audiences make use of them. Bringing genre theory back to the forefront of the current transmedia trend, we have argued that the way in which transmedia stories are produced, narrated and marketed today—as well as how audiences participate with them—is contingent on largely new workings and practices of genre. This process of exploring these new genre practices has additionally reshaped our understanding of genre and its potential for media practitioners and users. Even more than this, and by emphasising the multiplicity of industrial, technological and participatory practices that make up today’s transmedia landscape, we have shown—across an analysis of eight popular genres—how very particular approaches to building transmedia stories can be mapped to very particular generic scenarios. In turn, we have demonstrated how the genre in which a given transmedia story or character is seen to operate informs the manner in which audiences engage and participate with it across multiple media platforms. Put simply, it is this book’s provocation that, by interrogating genre through the lens of transmediality, we can A) further our understanding of transmedia practices and B) substantially revise theoretical notions of genre in ways reflective of today’s media convergence landscape. Echoing the themes of connectedness and hybridity that have long characterised the fields of transmedia studies and genre studies respectively, this book has served to bring these two fields of study together for the first time. So what have we learnt by doing so? Firstly, and by continuing to interrogate the generic mutations (Turner 2015) that must inevitably arise when media is mutated into a sprawling transmedia experience, we have shown once again that genre is conditional on context: building on Mittell’s and Harper’s calls for a cultural

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specificity and a socio-historical approach to genre, respectively, not to mention Genette and Gray’s approach to factoring in paratextual genre activation, this book has shown that, as a story is told across multiple media, its genre is actually being realigned and re-created from platform to platform as an ongoing transmedial process. Identifying the ways through which media conglomerates, digital platforms, emerging technologies and online fandoms have the power to reshape meanings of genre from platform to platform, this book has furthered our understanding of how genres are formed, used and recalibrated at a time when the context for stories and characters extends across very different forms of media. Indeed, key to making sense of genre in today’s digital and multiplatform culture has been our triangulated analysis of three sites of generic construction: industry, through which transmedia genres are created and managed; platform, through which transmedia genres are communicated and mediated via culturally designed and operated technologies; and, audience, through which transmedia genres are co-created via user-generated and performative means. In short, while genre studies has long foregrounded the importance of discursive or cultural influences on the industrial and textual practices of genre, this book’s main contribution to this field of study is the factoring in of digital platforms and participatory practices on the continued mutation of genre. Industry, platform and audience determine genre, then—but how does transmediality interact with this process? What is key to reiterate is that across all three sites of generic construction—industry, platform and audience—genre is forever transformed, constantly albeit usually subtly evolving from platform to platform in line with the user experience that is itself being shaped and reshaped across and between the borders of multiple media cultures and technologies. We have seen this in relation to genres such as horror, which we argue is recalibrated in the digital environment into something that empowers audiences to respond to and participate with horror, rather than it being a site for simply scaring audiences. Or in the case of the science fiction genre, we found that emerging technologies such as AI have obliterated the divide between ‘science’ and ‘fiction’, amalgamating the tension at the heart of the genre. We have also seen how genres are, alongside being reconfigured as part of transmedia practices, also recontextualised across media as part of these processes. For example, we discovered how the comedy of BBC Three’s Pls Like is understood as potentially dependent on whether it is viewed on YouTube or BBC iPlayer. Furthermore, we also saw how the transmedia context of the Star Wars franchise, together with marketing paratexts, directed how The Mandalorian’s constructions of the Western should be comprehended; that is, these genre activations were to be seen as paradigmatic links strengthening associations between The Mandalorian and the franchise’s so-called Original Trilogy of films. Therefore, throughout the pages of this book, we have seen how, via transmedia practices, genres are constantly retooled and reframed. A corollary of these insights and discoveries involving a range of genres is that contrary to many ‘how-to’-style transmedia storytelling guides, there is no one clear formula for creating transmedia fictions. By which we mean, there is

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no single way of choosing to extend stories and characters across multiple platforms, as the book’s combination of case studies clarifies. Rather, we have shown how the specific affordances, styles, codes, conventions, cues, formations and even audiences for a given genre inform how that genre is then constructed across media. But if practices of transmedia storytelling can be said to impact the workings of genre, then how does genre simultaneously change the principles of transmedia storytelling and other transmedia practices? There are various potential answers to this question, most of which revolve around one main point: that is, the fluidity that is always part of genre has become a significant asset for transmedia producers, primarily because a genre can be (re)configured to be whatever you need it to be in a given media circumstance. For example, in the superhero genre we showed how Marvel can, in one medium, situate a multiplatform hero in a political thriller while, simultaneously, contextualising that same hero within a space opera in another medium. Or in the case of the docudrama, we showed how this genre can take on the mantle of being ‘actuality’ on Twitter and, simultaneously, being ‘drama’ on Instagram, depending on producers’ wants and needs. Also think about how a producer’s understanding of genre might influence a transmedia experience, such as their choice to ‘talk up’ the culturally recognisable codes, conventions and language of a given genre in their promotional transmedia material, as we saw with the paratextual discourses surrounding The Mandalorian. Then there is the role of institutional audience-targeting objectives in all of this. For example, as we established, it was partly due to Marvel’s aims to appeal to the contrasting cultural preferences of audiences in different media that led the company to simultaneously contextualise heroes as one genre on screen and as a different genre in comic-book pages. After all, audiences’ relationships with genre can vary across media: for example, the war genre has different meanings in film (serious drama) than it does in video games (a fun sport). Furthermore, institutional aims and audience preferences around genre can greatly determine which platforms companies opt to use. For example, as our comedy case study showed, the pursuit of young-adult audiences has motivated the dissemination of BBC Three content onto YouTube. Bennett and Strange (2018) similarly demonstrate how audience-targeting aims determine which digital platforms are used to extend transmedia experiences. Their research highlights how children’s television production places the strongest emphasis on YouTube for its transmedia extensions, reflecting the platform’s increasing importance to younger audiences: 67 per cent of children’s-focussed production companies use the platform ‘Often’, compared with just 17 per cent of entertainment and 14 per cent of drama-oriented companies (Bennett and Strange 2018). And that’s before the impact of specific digital platforms and technologies have been taken into account, which, as we have argued, can work to activate genres in new and exciting ways across media, simply due to their media affordances and conventions. For example, think back to how the web-based format of a Kickstarter campaign uniquely activated the fantasy genre, or how the 360-degree immersion of a VR experience led to a far more panoramic recreation of the war genre, with audiences watching over the events and

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catastrophes of war as if they were their own distant memories. Finally, a key contribution of this book has been to better understand how, in a multiplatform environment, audiences can change genre through participatory practices, in some cases constructing or acting out genre themselves when posting on social media, for example. As we have seen, from the cases of Quiz to Star Wars, from Stranger Things to Eiyuden Chronicle, audiences can contribute to transmedia genre formation online, whether in accordance with institutional aims and practices or not. Genre may well have become a significant asset for transmedia producers— both industry and audiences alike—but what is truly distinctive and new about our book’s understanding of genre across media? Back in the introduction we promised to outline a new conceptual framework for understanding genre across media, so let’s turn to this objective now. But before we do so, it is important to reiterate, as we did in the introduction, that the pairings of this book’s chapters are not mutually exclusive: a comedy, for example, that is constructed on BBC Three and extended via YouTube is not necessarily the same kind of comedy that might be evoked via Netflix. Again, the genres examined in this book are likely to be determined differently depending on the technological-­industrial-participatory context. Be that as it may, what can we learn from the conceptions of transmedia genre explored throughout this book? To answer this question, and to conclude this book’s research, we outline here a two-part model devised to help crystallise our understanding of transmedia genre. The first part of the model is a conceptualisation of the cultural forces that determine how genre is constructed as part of transmedia practices. We acknowledge that transmedia content can be developed by all kinds of different companies and individuals for a myriad of different media platforms, for all types of different audience formation. Furthermore, we readily concede that we have only scratched the surface of this variability in transmedia cultures. Nevertheless, despite such heightened divergence within our contemporary mediascape, we can identify a triumvirate of general factors that transmedia genre construction is likely to be subject to, these factors being the three sites of genre formation on which we have focussed throughout this book. That is, the broad categories of • Industries, which refer to the cultural organisation and practices around the production, coordination and distribution of transmedia content. Those involved in this content creation and dissemination include highly professionalised media companies, such as public service broadcasters and global media conglomerates, but also, potentially, amateur and semi-­ professional media creators, such as YouTubers and social media influencers. • Platforms, which can refer to the particular technology set that mediates a given piece of transmedia content, whether that be a podcast app on a smartphone, streaming-video-on-demand platform running on a smart TV, or a virtual reality head-set and controller linked to a desktop PC. A

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platform will typically constrain and afford certain approaches to genre construction in distinct ways, as we have explored. For example, our virtual reality case study showed how this technology could enable unique media perspectives and experiences related to the war genre. However, we need to also keep in mind that a given platform is typically defined, not only by the range of possibilities for genre construction that it materially affords but also by the specific codes and conventions that have developed around that technology, and which influence genre formation. This is evident in our crowdfunding case study chapter. In said chapter, we showed how genre formation in relation to Eiyuden Chronicle not only was contingent on the common web-based textual affordances of the Kickstarter platform (text, image and video) but was also shaped by the cultural protocols of Kickstarter campaign pages. Indeed, when considering traditional legacy media, such as film and television, as platforms, we must keep in mind that each of these are, in the media convergence era, less defined by their material technologies, but rather by medium-specific combinations of cultural practices (see Smith 2018)—for example, television’s broadcast scheduling and film’s exhibition of films in theatres. • Audiences, which refer to individuals engaged in the consumption of transmedia content, as well as, potentially, the further construction of genre across media via participatory practices, as we have seen, occur in many of the case studies within this book. Each of these factors should be understood as potentially interacting with, and influencing, the other. Therefore, to be clear, this model is not a traditional top-down model of industrial determinism. Instead, flows of influence are potentially multi-directional. At a fundamental level, for example, media industries’ creation, promotion and dissemination of media entertainment influenced many of the instances of audience participation in genre construction cited in our chapters; yet, as a good deal of scholarship on media users and fandoms indicates, audiences have the potential to influence industries’ approaches to genre through participatory and co-creative means. Neither should the model be considered technologically deterministic. As per Raymond Williams (1974: 14, 124, 130), we understand that culture and society—and with specific regard to our model, industries and audiences—shape platform technologies’ design and uses. The second part of our model comprises the transmedia genre practices that we have identified throughout this book, and which the above outlined nexus of cultural forces and contexts within contemporary media has given rise to. We provide here a brief summary and discussion of this set of distinct practices. The first practices to discuss relate most commonly to the coordination of genre in relation to transmedia entertainment franchises. As we have shown, media conglomerates have developed complex industry practices and techniques regarding genre construction. These include forms of genre linking, whereby a genre’s codes and conventions are exploited to structure

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intertextual thematic associations across a given franchise to ensure genre continuity, as we saw with the activations of the Western in The Mandalorian and its paratexts. We conversely showed how, in the case of Marvel, differences between media can motivate genre divergence across a transmedia franchise. We furthermore demonstrated, via the Marvel study, how branding and promotional discourse techniques are deployed to manage and de-emphasise instances of genre divergence to maximise brand coherence. Such genre construction via discursive framing is not particularly new, albeit we would argue that the dominance of today’s transmedia production has led to practices of genre linking and the management of genre divergence becoming central to how conglomerates now reach wider audiences across an increasingly complex and fragmented mediascape. Therefore, while less visible and less discussed than transmedia storytelling, the practices of genre linking and genre divergence management have become an alternative means of transmedia franchise coordination and branding. Further transmedia genre practices that we include in our model relate to how digital platforms impact on genre formation today. In short, what digital media has done—enabling as it does for a networked spread of often on-­ demand content across multiple devices, screens and channels—is grant audiences more opportunities to respond to and participate with genre. We call this genre empowerment, referring to the ways in which the interactive affordances of digital media provide new opportunities for audiences to engage with genres, often proactively. But it goes further: across countless digital platforms, genre has now become an aesthetic, discursive and interactive engagement strategy that works to scaffold today’s digitised infrastructures, ultimately defining how audiences choose to customise their engagement with certain media. We call this genre democratisation, such as when the codes and conventions of a genre become heightened or lessened depending on what audiences choose to post online, across which digital platforms, and when. Given the way that specific digital platforms tend to have very defined demographic groups attached to them, we have shown in relation to the likes of YouTube, BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub and beyond how genre can be used to suit the cultural specificities of multiple platforms as part of a transmedia dissemination strategy. We call this genre distribution. And, by conceiving of genre as essentially an engagement strategy for today’s multiplatform audience, we can also better understand the unique commercial strategies born out of today’s digital platforms, such as using genre cues to maximise crowdfunding. We call this genre leveraging. As well as considering transmedia genre practices that have arisen in relation to connected online digital platforms, we have also considered approaches to genre construction that have arisen in relation to emerging technologies defined by distinct immersive and richly interactive affordances. For example, as we saw in the cases of The Day the World Changed and Reminiscence, such technologies have given audiences the power to engage in genre embodiment, themselves stepping inside the once material or at best discursive codes and conventions of genre in ways that develop new ways of seeing the stories of

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genres unfold. Furthermore, through emerging technologies such as VR and deepfake apps, audiences also have the power to now embark on digitally enabled forms of genre fictioning, leading in some cases to a genre being completely reinvented through performative and participatory acts of writing, performance and imagining. We can now reshape genres as we see fit. So, having outlined our model for understanding transmedia genre on the basis of this book’s research, where do we go from here? Back in the introduction we stated that our decision to analyse ‘top-level’ genres like horror, comedy and fantasy was not intended to elicit any kind of general explanation about the workings of transmedia genres everywhere. We stand by that declaration. This cannot be the final word on transmedia genre: we hope that this book inspires others to return once again to the field of genre studies and to build on our efforts to define the beginnings of a new model for understanding genre across media. There is so much more to do, be it analyses of non-Anglo American examples, a shift towards more localised, cross-cultural or national approaches to transmedia genre, or a closer consideration of questions of sub-­ genre and genre hybridity in the context of hybridised digital platforms. Genre theorist Richard Coe famously coined the phrase ‘the tyranny of genre’ to describe the way in which generic codes, conventions and structures can constrain creativity (1994: 188). However, if those codes, conventions and structures are now in greater flux, changing on account of the array of platforms, technologies and channels available on which to tell stories, then it is indeed time to rethink genre—not as a tyranny but as a multiplatform system of industrial, technological and participatory production and consumption practices.

References Bennett, James, and Strange, Niki. 2018. UK Television Production: Adapting to Social Media  – Report by James Bennett and Niki Strange. https://royalholloway.figshare.com/articles/journal_contribution/Adapting_to_Social_Media_Commerce_ Creativity_and_Competition_in_UK_Television_Production/5951977. Coe, Richard. 1994. Teaching Genre as a Process. In Learning and Teaching Genre, ed. Aviva Freedman and Peter Medway, 157–169. Portsmouth: Cook Publishers. Smith, Anthony N. 2018. Storytelling Industries: Narrative Production in the 21st Century. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Turner, Graeme. 2015. Genre, Hybridity and Mutation. In The Television Genre Book, ed. Glen Creeber, 3rd ed. London: BFI Publishing. Williams, Raymond. 1974. Television, Technology and Cultural Form. London: Fontana.

Index1

A Agency, 28, 36, 50, 69, 97, 140, 143, 145–148 Altman, Rick, 3, 5, 6, 9, 12, 73 Apps, 4, 14, 15, 96, 113, 134, 144, 150, 154, 157, 159–161, 163, 170, 173 Artificial intelligence (AI), 3, 4, 15, 153–161, 163, 168 Augmented reality (AR), 140, 141 The Avengers, 24, 39 B BBC BBC iPlayer, 14, 87, 105–108, 110, 111, 115, 168, 172 BBC Three, 15, 102, 105–116, 168–170 Before I Wake, 1 Booth, Paul, 11, 150 Branding, 9, 13, 22, 35, 38, 81, 172 C Captain America Captain America, 21, 29–36, 38, 40, 41

Captain America: The Winter Soldier, 21, 27 Clarke, Arthur C., 160 Clouds Over Sidra, 142 Comedy, 13, 15, 24, 34, 79, 90, 102, 105–116, 121, 168–170, 173 Convergence industrial convergence, 2, 4, 12, 22 media convergence, 2–4, 9, 16, 22, 79, 81, 115, 154, 167, 171 technological convergence, 2, 12, 86, 87, 102 Cornea, Christine, 6, 8, 16 Creeber, Glen, 4, 5, 9, 89n2, 90 Crowdfunding, 15, 116, 119–121, 124, 125, 127, 128, 130, 132–134, 171, 172 D Daredevil, 24, 26, 33, 34, 41 The Day the World Changed, 15, 139–150, 172 Deepfake technology, 12, 15, 153–163 Dick, Philip K., 159

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

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INDEX

Digital platforms, 2, 14, 15, 62, 67, 74, 80, 85–88, 95, 98, 101, 108, 116, 168, 169, 172, 173 Disney, 2, 14, 22–24, 22n1, 50, 52, 59n2 Disney+, 14, 37, 48, 53, 61 Docudrama, 15, 16, 82, 85–102, 89n2, 169 Documentary, 13, 58, 86n1, 89–92, 89n2, 94–102, 109, 110, 113, 115, 146–148 Drama, 4, 6, 9, 56, 71, 74, 85, 89–102, 89n2, 106, 110, 144, 169 Dungeons & Dragons, 122 Dunkirk, 139, 140, 146 E Eiyuden Chronicle, 15, 119–134, 170, 171 Emerging technologies, 3, 4, 14, 15, 134, 140, 168, 172, 173 Empathy, 54, 140, 142, 143, 146, 147, 149 Evans, Elizabeth, 68, 87, 88, 105, 106 F Facebook, 70, 106, 108, 134, 162 Fantasy, 4, 9, 13, 15, 21, 26, 119, 123–133, 153, 158, 160–163, 169, 173 Feuer, Jane, 73 Fictioning, 154, 156, 157, 159, 161, 162 Freeman, Matthew, 3, 10, 13, 23, 68, 74, 144 Friedman, Anne, 8 G Genette, Gerard, 7, 168 Genre democratisation, 85–102 distribution, 105–116, 172 divergence, 14, 21–42, 48, 61, 172 embodiment, 139–150, 172 empowerment, 14, 67–82, 172 fictioning, 14, 153–163, 173 hybridity, 173

leveraging, 119–134, 172 linking, 14, 47–62, 171, 172 studies, 5–9, 13, 14, 167, 168, 173 theory, 4, 5, 7, 9, 32n5, 167 Ghost in the Shell, 153 GIF, 39–41, 78–81 Grant, Barry Keith, 9, 10, 70, 81, 82, 162 Gray, Jonathan, 7, 52, 72, 120, 168 H Halo, 122 Halo: Infinite, 122 Harper, Sue, 7, 8, 167 Hastings, Reed, 72 Hills, Matt, 11, 39, 71, 78, 149 Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, 140, 145, 146 Horror, 9, 10, 13–15, 24–26, 34, 53, 67–82, 121, 143, 145, 149, 162, 168, 173 Hulk, 24, 33, 34 Humphreys, Sara, 122 I Immersive technology augmented reality (AR), 140 virtual reality (VR), 140, 141 Instagram, 98, 106, 108, 134, 155, 169 Intertextuality, 10, 55, 71, 72, 77, 81 ITV, 15, 85, 86, 88, 89, 91–101 ITV Hub, 14–16, 82, 85–102, 172 J Japanese role-playing game (JRPG), 15, 119, 122–133, 123n4 Jenkins, Henry, 2, 3, 10, 22, 23, 25, 26, 48, 79, 81, 97, 107, 144 Johnson, Catherine, 68, 86–88, 96, 98, 106, 107 K Kermode, Mark, 153 Kickstarter, 14, 15, 119–134, 169, 171 Kuhn, Annette, 156

 INDEX 

L Liminality, 140, 142, 146, 149 M The Mandalorian, 14, 47–62, 168, 169, 172 Marvel, 14, 21–42, 48, 61, 169, 172 The Avengers, 24, 39 Captain America, 21, 29–36, 38, 40, 41 Captain America: The Winter Soldier, 21, 27 Daredevil, 24, 26, 33, 34, 41 Hulk, 24, 33, 34 Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), 21, 23, 24, 28, 28n4, 29, 31, 33, 37–39 Spider-Man, 23–24, 26, 33, 39 The Matrix, 162 Media conglomerates, 2, 14, 22, 24, 41, 62, 168, 170, 171 Medium specificity, 12, 30, 31, 41 Mills, Brett, 9, 109 Mittell, Jason, 6, 7, 10, 39, 77, 167 Mobile media, 12, 155 Multiplatform, 9–13, 15, 68, 73, 74, 77, 81, 85–87, 89, 95, 97, 98, 100–102, 106, 115, 116, 157, 168–170, 172, 173 Murray, Janet, 4 N Neale, Steve, 6, 10, 112 Netflix, 1, 4, 5, 14–16, 24, 34, 41, 67–82, 170 Nolan, Christopher, 3, 139 Norrington, Alison, 1, 2 P Paratext, 7, 10, 11, 26, 35–41, 48, 51–53, 56–58, 68, 72, 77, 168, 172 Participation, 4, 71, 81, 120, 133, 134, 171 participatory culture, 2, 13, 22, 35–40, 56–61, 78, 79

177

Pearson, Roberta, 39, 143 Pls Like, 15, 105–116, 168 Podcasting, 3 Q Quiz, 15, 85–102, 170 R Reminiscence, 15, 153–163, 172 S Science fiction, 4, 7, 9, 13, 15, 21, 26, 29, 30, 71, 121, 122, 153–163, 168 Smith, Anthony, 12, 23, 24, 26, 30, 31, 33, 76, 120, 171 Snapchat, 106, 108 Sobchack, Vivian, 10, 81, 154, 163 Social media Facebook, 70, 106, 108, 134, 162 Instagram, 98, 106, 108, 134, 155, 169 Snapchat, 106, 108 TikTok, 106, 155 Twitter, 4, 58–60, 67, 70, 78–81, 88, 97–100, 106, 134, 161, 162, 169 Spider-Man, 23–24, 26, 33, 39 Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back, 49, 50 The Mandalorian, 14, 47–62, 168, 169, 172 A New Hope, 49, 50, 54, 55, 58, 59, 61 Return of the Jedi, 48–50 Stranger Things, 14, 67–82, 170 Beyond Stranger Things, 67, 69, 74–76, 78 Suikoden, 124 Superhero, 9, 14, 21–42, 48, 169 T The Thing, 72 TikTok, 106, 155

178 

INDEX

Transmediality branding, 35, 81, 172 distribution, 15, 68, 81, 88, 105–116, 170 practices, 7, 9, 11, 15, 16, 37–39, 61, 62, 88, 106, 115, 140, 143, 163, 167–172 storytelling, 9–11, 23, 47, 48, 61, 81, 143–145, 163, 168, 169, 172 The Twilight Zone, 160 Twitter, 4, 58–60, 67, 70, 78–81, 88, 97–100, 106, 134, 161, 162, 169 V Virtual reality (VR), 4, 11, 14, 15, 134, 139–150, 153, 154, 160, 169–171, 173

W War, 15, 25, 50, 122, 131, 139–150, 157, 159, 169–171 Western, 5, 7, 9, 14, 25, 42, 47–62, 121, 122n1, 168, 172 Who Wants to be a Millionaire?, 85, 89, 90, 96, 97, 101 Wood, Robin, 74, 76 Y YouTube, 14, 15, 37, 56, 57, 87, 102, 105, 106, 108–115, 108n3, 168–170, 172