An increased interest in adaptation studies in the early 21st century has generated countless discussions about rethinking adaptations as well as the field of adaptation studies as a whole. The impression has often been voiced, for instance by Thomas Leitch in his essay for the inaugural issue of the journal Adaptation, that adaptation studies is “at a crossroads,” in which its methodology and material are in transition from the discipline’s humble novel-to-film-studies beginnings to a broader, if somewhat unclear, future. As part of a moment in the field's history, in which scholars repeatedly state ambitious research agendas, Linda Hutcheon has likewise described adaptation studies as moving “well beyond [its] familiar film/ performance focus” and on to readings that highlight the politics of our time, the “indigenization” of adaptations, and approaches that question notions of priority and anteriority in unprecedented ways.

There is, however, another major change – the elephant in the room of adaptation studies, so to speak: since adaptation, at least in its most common understanding, describes the transposition of a story or its elements from one medium to another, it is necessarily bound to questions of mediality and remediation. Therefore, one of the most important new developments in adaptation studies is constituted by the shift in the global mediascape in light of the rise of digital media since the 1980s and the spread of the internet since the 1990s. This transformation amounts to nothing less than a shift from a largely analog, localized, image- and text-based “Gutenberg Galaxy” to a more rapidly disseminating mixed analog-digital environment. It is a moment that forces us, once again, to re-examine notions of authorship, control, audiences, sources and adaptations, as well as interactions between medium and consumer, or between consumers and producers. This volume sets out to explore how these shifts relate to adaptation studies and what they mean for the field. It does so by examining new forms of adaptations and their cultural embeddedness both theoretically and analytically, with the help of a range of texts constituting some of the major new forms of adaptations and adaptation environments that have arisen in the wake of the rise of digital media.

Abstract

Applying broad notions of adaptation, this chapter seeks to bring “recombinant adaptation” – mashups and remixes on digital platforms – in dialogue with Gerard Genette's idea of the paratext as a text's “relations with the public.” It takes four steps towards investigating how literary publishing houses such as Quirk Books respond to recombinant adaptation. Firstly, it delineates the paratexts of mashup novels as performative zones of transaction. Secondly, it examines the question of how paratexts regulate the quasi-religious textuality of fandom participation. Thirdly, it looks at the role of paratextual canonization within this textuality. And finally, it argues that printed products within the field attempt to perform a nostalgic authorization and re-materialization of literature, highlighting the haptic and material qualities of the book. Adapting the term “polytext,” the chapter calls these multifarious paratextual transactions the “polyprocess.”

Key words: Paratext; mashup novel; recombinant adaptation; fandom; polytext/polyprocess; remix

Introduction

This essay seeks to bring the field of “recombinant adaptation” – mashups and remixes on digital platforms – in dialogue with the Genettian idea of the paratext. Genette held that paratexts shape a given text's “relations with the public.” More recently, Jonathan Gray has applied the notion of paratext to media franchises, highlighting the active role of paratexts in creating and continuing franchise texts. Dorothee Birke and Birte Christ have elaborated Genette's ideas for a situation of convergence culture and transmedia storytelling, examining how paratexts fulfill interpretive, commercial, or navigational functions in determining contemporary readers’ transmedia experience of narratives.

This chapter takes four steps towards investigating how literary publishing houses respond to the ubiquitous remixes and mashups to be found on lowthreshold digital platforms of participation. It will, first, delineate paratexts as zones of transaction, shifting research emphases from textual towards performative concerns and highlighting the way cultures negotiate textual distribution and circulation. Secondly, it will examine the question of how paratexts regulate the quasi-religious textuality of fandom participation; thirdly, the role of paratextual canonization will be a special focus within this textuality. Finally, the chapter argues that printed products within the field attempt to perform a nostalgic authorization and re-materialization of literature, highlighting the haptic and material qualities of “bookishness.”

Introduction

After the Fifty Shades of Grey book series had sold more than 125 million copies worldwide, fans eagerly awaited the release of the movie adaptation in February of 2015. Building on the books’ success, the opening weekend of the movie alone grossed $248 million. The production and pre-production of the film was accompanied by media reports and PR announcements of the ways the narrative and specifically the BDSM scenes in the book were adapted to the screen, as well as which actors were cast as the central characters Christian and Ana. Throughout this renewed interest in Fifty Shades of Grey, the history of layered adaptation that the text had transitioned through before it was turned into a movie receded into the background.

An earlier version of Fifty Shades of Grey, the Twilight fanfiction Master of the Universe, had been widely read by fans online before the text was stripped of its direct references to Twilight and became a commercial success in its own right. Master of the Universe is not the only prominent text that evolved from the realms of fanfiction writing; with Sylvain Reynard’s Gabriel's Inferno and the writing duo Christina Lauren's Beautiful Bastard at least three other authors of erotic Twilight fanfiction made the New York Times bestseller list. Beyond easily adaptable “all human” fanfiction from the Twilight fandom, fanfictions from other fandoms, including texts that revel in fantastic supernatural worlds, have successfully transitioned from the communal online and free writing context to the book market.

Adaptation as processual knowledge

Contrary to some public discourse, adaptation studies is far from thinking of adaptations as “poor” derivatives of original source texts. The so-called “fidelity discourse” has been successfully deconstructed or, as Kamilla Elliott and Simone Murray suggest, has never played as big a role in adaptation studies as scholars have repeatedly claimed. While the tendency to make value judgments based on how “truthful” an adaptation is to its original persists in fan communities, adaptation studies have long deconstructed unidirectional and hierarchical models of adaptation practices. Furthermore, the field of adaptation studies has opened up to a variety of media and multidirectional adaptation processes beyond the field of novel-to-film adaptations. The theoretical reconceptualization of adaptation studies has been spurred on, among other things, by an increasing cultural development towards what Henry Jenkins calls “convergence culture,” coinciding with a scholarly interest in the participatory nature of popular culture and of a supposedly democratic “grassroots” creativity. In the Information Age, adaptation is no longer regarded as the exception but represents instead the rule as to how media products and stories emerge, proliferate, and interact with each other. Cultural production is increasingly understood along the lines of self-organizing network dynamics instead of as linear and more or less stable (translation) processes with clear-cut creator-recipient dualisms.