Criticism: Literary Inquiry and transmediation / remediation

1. Prof. Q Criticism: Literary Inquiry and transmediation / remediation

2. What we have covered so far… • Procedural Rhetoric • Thematic Criticism • Feminist criticism Today… • Panopticon • State Apparatus • Behavior and interaction • Transmediation and Remediation

3. Panopticon • A type of institutional building designed by English philosopher and social theorist Jeremy Bentham in the late 18th century. • “A new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.“ (Semple 1993, p. 152.) • As the watchmen cannot be seen, they need not be on duty at all times, effectively leaving the watching to the watched. • According to Bentham's design, the prisoners would also be used as menial labor.

4. Can you think of anything that resembles the panopticon construct?

5. Panopticon as Metaphor • Michel Foucault – Panopticon as modern "disciplinary" societies and their pervasive inclination to observe and normalize. • “One can speak of the formation of a disciplinary society in this movement that stretches from the enclosed disciplines, a sort of social 'quarantine', to an indefinitely generalizable mechanism of 'panopticism'.” (Foucault 1995, pp. 195-210) • Visibility as Power

6. What About Criticism? • Does your text represent a society in which panoptic models are present? • How does your text represent those societies? • What does your text say about panoptic ideologies?

7. Heritage of War • Peace Maintenance Brigade • Admonisher • All-Seeing Eye • “Once nations see the power we have, they will stop fighting with each other” - Haschen

8. Ideological State Apparatus • Society makes the individual in its own image. • Today, individuals are self-conscious, responsible agent whose actions can be explained by his or her beliefs and thoughts. • This is acquired within the structure of established social practices.

9. Repressive State Apparatus

10. … We also see that in Heritage of War… • Eventually, groups that disagree with the philosophy of the Peace Maintenance Brigade are hunted down and imprisoned or destroyed.

11. Short Discussion • Can you think of any text that represents the above-mentioned concepts? Explain.

12. Behavior and Interaction

13. Behavior and Interaction • Id - the set of uncoordinated instinctual trends (desires). • “It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality.” • Superego - plays the critical and moralizing role. • “The superego reflects the internalization of cultural rules, solely taught by parents applying their guidance and influence.” • Ego - the organized, realistic part that mediates between the desires of the id and the super-ego.

14. What does this have to do with games? Choice. • Do I kill this girl and harvest the soul of this girl to increase my power, or do I restore to her childhood innocence?

15. In Fallout 3 • Do I kidnap a child and have her killed to discover a vaccine that will cure the population, or do I kill the revolution leader to protect the child?

20. Your choice will depend on…

22. The Approach • Navigate through the text • Take notice of your choices • Analyze them using theories of behavior

23. Transmediation and Remediation

24. Transmediation • “… stories that unfold across multiple media platforms, with each medium making distinct contributions to our understanding of the world, a more integrated approach to franchise development than models based on urtexts and ancillary products.” - Jenkins

25. Levels of Transmedia • Transmedia 1.0: “Pushed Media” • Transmedia 2.0: “Extended Media” • Transmedia 3.0: “Adapted Media” • Transmedia 4.0: “Experiences in Media”

26. The Matrix – Transmedia Storytelling

27. But the problem was… • The Matrix grossed 7.34 times its budget. • The Matrix Reloaded grossed 4.94 times its budget. • The Matrix Revolutions grossed 3.41 times its budget. • Why? Due to an ambitious narrative construction that demanded too much from the casual viewer and didn’t offer enough of a reward to dedicated fans.

28. “Transmediating” Visuals and Style: Remediation • Sin City

29. Remediation • The representation of one medium in another. • It can be linear or cyclical, it can go on indefinitely. • It is a defining characteristic of digital media because digital media is constantly remediating its predecessors (television, radio, print journalism, etc.)

30. Scott Pilgrim • Instead of relying on narrative transmediation, it relied on visual remediation.

31. Scott Pilgrim: Graphical Remediation

32. Transmediation vs. Remediation in Scott Pilgrim • By avoiding transmedia storytelling and instead relying on stylistic transmediation, it manages to appeal to fans of the franchise without turning away the casual viewer.

33. Remediating Film and Games • The two media continually borrow from each other, creating an aesthetic interdependency. • Films remediate game aesthetics. • Games incorporate film conventions.

35. Transmedia Aesthetic

36. The Approach • Similar to Genre Transmedia Analyses • Comparative reading of two remediated texts. • Look for concepts, ideas, or aesthetics that make the transition from one form of media to another. • Think about how each iteration of the text best uses the specific media in which it was published. • Don’t focus on fidelity of the adaptation.

37. Questions ?

38. The Activity