Media Translations of Fantasy Worlds
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A World of Difference: Media Translations of Fantasy Worlds Rachel Louise Mizsei Ward Doctor of Philosophy University of East Anglia School of Film, Television and Media Studies May 2013 This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with the author and that use of any information derived there-from must be in accordance with current UK Copyright Law. In addition, any quotation or extract must include full attribution. Rachel Mizsei Ward University of East Anglia Abstract The modern consumer has access to a massively complex entertainment world. Many of the products available reveal a visible movement of popular fantasy worlds between different media. This transmedia process creates a strong link between film, merchandising and games; with all of these mediums borrowing from each other. This borrowing takes various forms, from licensed adaptations to unofficial copying of ideas, settings and characters as well as exploiting the different aesthetics and techniques of different media. Much of the scholarship on transmedia concentrates on storytelling, where a single overarching narrative unfolds over several different media. This thesis will move away from storytelling to consider how culture producers borrow the aesthetics, narratives and fantasy worlds from other sources, including computer games. This borrowing happens because it enables them to use transmedia functionality to gain market share from an already established audience who have a vested interested in, and enthusiasm for, an established world. Most of this borrowing happens around specific genres – especially fantasy, science fiction and horror. These genres are particularly wide-ranging and emphasise the possibilities of worldbuilding, making then good sources for multi-media franchises. This thesis will examine examples from these genres to examine what elements are translated to a new medium, and what is discarded. This examination will help explain how and why different media and settings work in the way that they do. 2 Rachel Mizsei Ward University of East Anglia Table of Contents Abstract ..........................................................................................................................................2 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................4 Chapter 1: Fantasy Worldbuilding and Adaption in the time before the Internet ..................... 44 Chapter 2: Failure, oblivion and monstrous success: The Western and role-playing games from Boot Hill to Deadlands ................................................................................................................ 67 Chapter 3: Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its official and unofficial games: Worldbuilding, control and the creative possibilities of play .............................................................................. 97 Chapter 4: Doomed from the beginning? First-person-shooters, subjective cameras and intertextuality in the critical reception of the film adaptation of Doom (2005)....................... 116 Chapter 5: Copyright, Association and Gothic sensibilities: Underworld and the World of Darkness .................................................................................................................................... 143 Chapter 6: Plushies, Carl Cthulhu and Chibithulu: The Transformation of Cthulhu from Horrific Body to Cute Body .................................................................................................................... 171 Conclusion: From transmedia narrative to transmedia worldbuilding .................................... 200 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 211 3 Rachel Mizsei Ward University of East Anglia Introduction The modern consumer has access to what is a massively complex entertainment world. Many of the products available reveal a visible movement of popular fantasy worlds between different media. This movement between media is often referred to as transmedia. The transmedia process creates a strong link between film, merchandising and games (including various computer and console games, board- games and tabletop role-playing games) with examples all of these mediums borrowing from each other. This borrowing takes various forms, from licensed adaptations to unofficial copying of ideas, settings and characters as well as exploiting the different aesthetics and techniques of different media. In the last ten years this has become particularly significant with the growing consumption and success of computer games and the subsequent increase in film makers borrowing from computer games. Most of this borrowing happens around specific genres – especially fantasy, science fiction and horror. As Parody argues; ‘the genres of science fiction and fantasy, fictions of worlds other than our own, overwhelmingly dominate franchise production’ (Parody 2011: 5). Jenkins further explains the reason for the predominance of these genres: When game designers draw story elements from existing film or literary genres, they are most apt to tap those genres – fantasy, adventure, science fiction, horror, war – which are most invested in world-making and spatial storytelling. Games, in turn, may more fully realize the spatiality of these stories, giving a much more immersive and compelling representation of their narrative worlds. (Jenkins 2004: 122) These genres are the ones that are most invested in worldbuilding, which gives a greater potential for new narratives. One of the most active areas of worldbuilding, and one with the longest history of active adaption of other existing literary properties 4 Rachel Mizsei Ward University of East Anglia is the tabletop role-playing game. We will use this form of entertainment to demonstrate how worldbuilding and adaption works in the practical sense of delivering the ability to create new narratives. The central point about worldbuilding is that a single created world can support many narratives and characters whilst a single story is limited to just one world. Transmedia narratives are a single story using more than one form of media to communicate the whole story, but they are not necessarily worldbuilding exercises. Existing worlds are modelled in roleplaying games using sets of rules and this toolset helps the players to create further characters and new narratives in the already existing world; we will demonstrate that in the case of tabletop roleplaying games this creative process is a deliberate intention from the start among the developers and players. This process of adaption and worldbuilding was unique to tabletop roleplaying games and is today only rarely available in computer games; there are no comparable tools provided by the developers for other fan-activities. Tabletop roleplaying games may provide support for licensed products, but they may equally offer unregulated ones which are close to the original idea but which do not incur license fees. New worlds are also created in role-playing games and these can in turn become valuable intellectual properties in their own right and be developed into other transmedia products. This movement between films, merchandising, and tabletop games is the driver of the argument of this thesis and behind the choice of examples we have used. The argument presented in this thesis is that film makers borrow the aesthetics, narratives and fantasy worlds from other sources, including computer games. They do this because it enables the filmmaker to use transmedia functionality to gain market share 5 Rachel Mizsei Ward University of East Anglia from an already established audience who have a vested interested in, and enthusiasm for, an established world. The in-between space The genres and fantasy worlds that are most commonly used to make films are frequently well established with clear conventions, narratives and characters that provide attractive resources to filmmakers. Each medium works differently depending on the level of social interaction and technology required so when the essential elements of fantasy worlds are transferred to a new medium the fantasy world needs to be translated to take advantage of the specificities of the new medium. This process may also require changes to the fantasy world’s conventions to create a commercially successful product which is attractive to consumers in the new medium. In addition each medium may have its own conventions that must be taken into account during the creative process. This means that there is a balance that has to be struck in the transmedia creative process between the existing conventions of the fantasy world and the conventions of the media that it is being translated into. Therefore there is a clear process of change and adaptation that happens as the properties that use fantasy worlds are converted. We can see that during this process of change and adaption elements are changed, some aspects are lost and new things are added. These changes often incorporate modifications and amendments to formerly key elements such as characterisation, narrative and genre. Geraghty argues that ‘just as adaptations draw attention to the gap between the source and the new version they offer, so the gap between an adaption and other examples of its genre also draws attention to the processes of transformation