Lost in a Transmedia Storytelling Franchise: Rethinking Transmedia Engagement
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Lost in a Transmedia Storytelling Franchise: Rethinking Transmedia Engagement By Michael Graves Submitted to the graduate degree program in Film and Media Studies and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. ________________________________ Chairperson Dr. Tamara Falicov ________________________________ Dr. Nancy Baym ________________________________ Dr. Chuck Berg ________________________________ Dr. John Tibbetts ________________________________ Dr. Catherine Preston Date Defended: December 1, 2011 The Dissertation Committee for Michael Graves certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Lost in a Transmedia Storytelling Franchise: Rethinking Transmedia Engagement ________________________________ Chairperson Dr. Tamara Falicov Date approved: December 13, 2011 ii Abstract In the age of media convergence, transmedia storytelling – the distribution of story elements across multiple media platforms in the service of crafting an overarching narrative – is increasingly prevalent. This dissertation examines transmedia engagement through a focus on Lost’s transmedia storytelling franchise and a confluence of technological, industrial, and cultural shifts, including the advent of podcast technologies, the rise of alternate reality game storytelling, and increasing producer-audience communication. Taken together, these transformations create new terrain on which normative understandings of producer-text-audience relationships are continually challenged, reconfigured, and even reinforced. This dissertation views these relationships through the concept of “viewsing” (Harries, 2002) – a hybrid form of engagement encouraged by transmedia storytelling franchises in which the qualities of “viewing” and “computer use” merge. Although viewsing provides an important conceptual framework, previous scholarship stops short of applying to concept to the producer-audience and audience-audience relationships. Using a thematic analysis methodology, this study examines the fan cultures surrounding two podcasts dedicated to Lost – The Official Lost Podcast and The Transmission – and expands the concept of viewsing to include text-audience interactivity, producer-audience participatory storytelling, and audience-audience collaboration and antagonism. It concludes that transmedia storytelling franchises encourage viewsing – interactive, participatory, and communicative multi-platform engagement. iii Acknowledgments I received an incredible outpouring of support throughout my doctoral studies. First, my sincere gratitude goes to my advisor, Dr. Tamara Falicov, for granting me the opportunity to work with her. It was a privilege to draw on her intellectual guidance, and I am immensely thankful for her advice and encouragement. In addition, I thank my committee members – Dr. Nancy Baym, Dr. Chuck Berg, Dr. Catherine Preston, and Dr. John Tibbetts – for their input and enthusiasm. It was also my great pleasure and good fortune to work with the insightful and adept dissertation-writing tutors Dr. Rebecca Barrett-Fox, Dr. Ron Wilson, and Dr. Elizabeth Yeager. I was also fortunate to have wonderful friends and colleagues who provided me with encouragement during the writing process. I am grateful for the emotional support and intellectual assistance of Jared Cartier, Dr. Bruce Frey, Dr. Bonnie Johnson, Henderson Jones, Dr. Novotny Lawrence, Vinny Scevola, Greg Schaeffer, Mike Turner, Dr. Mark von Schlemmer, Corey Williger, Mary Beth Woodson, and many others. This project would not have been possible without the love and support of my family. I thank my brother J.D. Graves, my mother Elizabeth Graves, and my grandmother Florence Graves for their unyielding belief in me. The unspoken support of my companion animal, Ripley, was also a significant factor as our long walks together provided much-needed stress relief. I owe a special debt of gratitude to my wife, Dr. JaeYoon Park, for putting up with me as I completed my dissertation. She was a tireless advocate, motivator, and partner. Simply put, this dissertation would not exist without her love and understanding. Finally, I thank my father, James L. Graves, for being my greatest teacher. I dedicate this work to him. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER 1 1 Introduction 1 Methodology 15 Literature Review 38 Chapter Breakdown 70 CHAPTER 2 – “BREAKING INTO THE REAL WORLD”: THE TRANSMEDIA TEXT-AUDIENCE RELATIONSHIP 73 Promotional Texts 84 Interactive, Immersive Media 94 The Contradictory Logics of Transmedia Storytelling 107 Conclusion 120 CHAPTER 3 – VIEWSING ENGAGEMENT STRATEGIES: THE TRANSMEDIA PRODUCER-AUDIENCE RELATIONSHIP 124 Podcasts as an Engagement Strategy 136 Online Video as an Engagement Strategy 150 Viewsing and the Struggle for Lost’s Transmedia Canon 159 Conclusion 175 CHAPTER 4 – SHIPPERS, MYTHOLOGISTS, AND VIEWSERS, OH MY!: THE TRANSMEDIA AUDIENCE-AUDIENCE RELATIONSHIP 179 External Struggle: The Mainstream/Viewser Divide 190 Internal Struggle: The Shipper/Mythologist Divide 198 The Collective Intelligence of Lost’s Mythologists 210 Shipping the Oceanic Six 220 Conclusion 229 DISSERTATION SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION 234 The End 235 v Lost’s Lessons & The Future of Transmedia Storytelling 253 Dissertation Conclusion 257 BIBLIOGRAPHY 264 vi Chapter 1 Introduction “We wanted to tell stories in a nontraditional way, and there were certain stories that Damon [Lindelof] and I were interested in telling that don’t exactly fit into the television show.”1 - Carlton Cuse, executive producer, Lost “When we were creating the Lost-verse… we really started to expand it out and build the world…. People will swallow a tremendous amount of story, if you feed it to them the right way.”2 - Damon Lindelof, executive producer, Lost “Now I think this is kind of hard for people who just watch the show on the television because this is outside of that world.”3 - Ryan Ozawa, co-host, The Transmission Lost Podcast The combination of above comments from Lost’s executive producers highlights the vast scope of Lost’s transmedia storytelling franchise – one employing an array of texts scattered across numerous media platforms in order to advance an overarching narrative. In addition, Ryan Ozawa, a Lost fan and co-host of the popular Lost podcast The Transmission, illuminates the complexity inherent in comprehending a story not confined to a single media platform. Taken together, these responses point to both the unique narrative potentials as well as the qualities of engagement fostered by the emergence of a transmedia approach to storytelling. As Cuse and Lindelof highlight, transmedia storytelling franchises tell stories in a “nontraditional way,” encouraging 1 Lia Miller, “To Counter the Doldrums During Summer Reruns, ‘Lost’ Fans Can Get Lost in a Game Online,” New York Times, April 24, 2006, accessed July 20, 2011, http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C00E3DF123FF937A15757C0A9609C 8B63. 2 Ryan Ozawa and Jen Ozawa, “Comic-Con Report – Visionaries Panel,” podcast audio, Lost Podcast: The Transmission, July 26, 2008, accessed July 29, 2008. 3 Ryan Ozawa and Jen Ozawa, “The Shape of Things to Come,” podcast audio, Lost Podcast: The Transmission, April 26, 2008, accessed April 29, 2008. 1 viewers to “swallow a tremendous amount a story.” Lindelof links the scope of such a storytelling approach with the notion of world-building. Transmedia franchises create an immersive and interactive world differing significantly from that created by a single text, as is evident by Lindelof’s use of “-verse” (or universe) to describe Lost’s expansive qualities. Ozawa’s comment points to the difficulty of fully comprehending a transmedia world constituted by an amalgam of texts “outside” of a television series. By dispersing character and story information across multiple platforms in the service of creating a single narrative text, transmedia franchises promote producer-audience communication and foster collaboration (and even antagonism) among audiences as they struggle to master these worlds. Fostered by transmedia storytelling, theoretical speculations on the spectator shift beyond notions of the passive and the active models. A new model is needed to theorize the relationship between producers, transmedia texts, and the audience. In short, the creation of elaborate transmedia storyworlds profoundly affects audience engagement by encouraging “viewsing” – a type of interactive, participatory, and communicative multi-platform media use. Premiering in 2004, the ABC television series Lost focused on a group of plane crash survivors stranded on a mysterious island. Over the series’ six-year run, Lost’s producers innovatively expanded Lost’s narrative through the use of alternate reality games, mobisodes, online videos, a novel, a video game, and jigsaw puzzles.4 In addition to creating opportunities for further economic gains, this interconnected web of texts 4 Although jigsaw puzzles are not traditionally regarded as narrative texts, the completed Lost: Mystery of the Island puzzles revealed glow-in-the-dark text on the back, providing diegetic information. The glow-in-the dark text was an alphanumeric cipher corresponding to novels referenced in the television series. However, the puzzle boxes did not contain images of the completed puzzles or keys to the ciphers. Such tactics are indicative of the audience interactivity and collaboration encouraged by Lost’s producers. 2 allowed for the articulation of a sprawling, boundary-blurring