Rise of the Paratext
March 19, 2014
The term “mixed media” takes on new meaning as the production of TV show and movie tie-ins dwarf their axial projects. The Chronicle Review note’s that now, “The Paratext’s the Thing.” Writer Thomas Doherty observed that, as he anticipated the final episodes of a certain show, advertisers encouraged viewers to log onto its website for “the two-screen experience.” For him, that was one screen too many. However, he sees his preference fading into the minority—audiences seem to appreciate the added content and, sometimes, this secondary material becomes more popular than the centerpiece.
Though the money- and decision-makers behind media products have a lot to gain from selling additional content, much of the complementary material actually comes from fans. The article explains:
“The paratext is the satellite debris orbiting and radiating out from the core text: what the post-telecast chatfest Talking Dead is to The Walking Dead, what Madonna-vs.-Lady Gaga mashups are to the original music videos, what Wolverine action figures are to the X-Men franchise—what all the buzzing swarms of trailers, teasers, bloopers, tweets, swag, webisodes, podcasts, chat rooms, fanzines, geek conventions, DVD extras, synergistic tie-ins, and branded merchandise, in all their infinite varieties, are to the mother ship. If the main text is the great white shark, the paratext is the pilot fish—and if the old-school film critic wanted to sink his teeth into a close textual analysis of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws (1975), the paratextual critic prefers to dissect the creation and marketing of Bruce, the mechanical shark at the Universal Studios tour.”
The term “paratext” was coined by French literary theorist Gérard Genette in 1987. He looked at additional material as a framework for the audience’s perception of the central work. In this way, it was an essential part of the work itself. In literature, this took the form of devices such as forewords, afterwords, and supplemental resources. I’m not sure action figures and blooper reels serve quite the same purpose. Doherty seems to agree, because he keeps coming back to the idea that the central project is and will ever be the main draw, no matter how much detritus surrounds it.
See the article for discussion of how paratext got from there (epigraphs and appendices) to here (webisodes and geek conventions). Will paratext content continue to expand, or will it reach some kind of equilibrium? Even geeks only have so many hours in a day.
Cynthia Murrell, March 19, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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