A Further Discussion of Convergence Culture By Henry Jenkins
A Tale of Transmedia Story Telling
As we continue our discussion of Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide by Henry Jenkins, we turn our attention to the phenomenon of transmedia story telling – depicting a theme or story line over multiple media platforms. To illustrate this technique, Jenkins addresses The Matrix – a movie that aptly crosses over multiple media formats and depicts convergence in one of its truest forms. Jenkins states that “the Matrix is a transmedia story that unfolds across multiple media platforms, each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution in the whole.” He further asserts that transmedia storytelling permits the “best of the best” with each media form capturing storytelling that yields the most rewarding experience for the audience. “In the ideal form of transmedia storytelling, each medium does what it does best – so that a story might be introduced in film, expanded through television, novels and comics; its world might be explored through game play or experienced as a movie.” As consumers, we seek transmedia storytelling in our lives as it simplifies our pop culture experience and simultaneously gives us a uniform story that we can grasp, appreciate and share with our friends and colleagues. We talk about these “transmedia” stories around the water cooler and they permeate our lives. The question we must ask ourselves is, “Does transmedia storytelling enrich our viewing experience or regurgitate the same story over and over again?”
While we may appreciate the benefits of transmedia story telling, it should not be overlooked -- or forgotten -- that this phenomenon is the outgrowth of the horizontally-integrated entertainment industry. As Jenkins states, “A good transmedia franchise works to attract multiple constituencies by pitching the content somewhat differently in the different media.” Nevertheless, it is a slight variation on the same theme. So, we must ask, “Are we getting the vanilla version of everything to maximize the profits of media giants?”
Even Jenkins agrees: “We do not have very good aesthetic criteria for evaluating works that play themselves out across multiple media.” Jenkins cites the fact that to date there are too few transmedia stories to measure. Perhaps that is true, but perhaps it is the story of things to come. As consumes, we mus ask ourselves if we will tolerate transmedia story telling as the re-hashing of a familiar story over and over again to various forms of monotony.
You mention the medium of "game play" as useful for exploring-- I think many franchises could benefit from this function of video games to, for example, flesh out specific plots or characters in a feature film that could not be addressed in the limited timeframe of the cinema context. The problem as you note, occurs when transmedia storytelling is utilized primarily to increase profits-- when profit becomes the primary motivating factor a designer is forced to drastically limit the scope of their project. What could have been a unique, rich experience that builds on an existing story becomes "vanilla"-- boring, generic content (there are plenty of examples of this in the genre of Super Hero Movies, with games being rushed to release so that they will hit the market while the movie is being hyped) Is it even possible for storytelling to take precedent over profit margins in design? Hmmm...
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