The Extratextuals

A very delayed follow-up post, this time with the DVD text for Season 1. Thanks to Jason Mittell for linking to this wonderful collection of pirated DVD covers, which made me realize it’s time to post this. My favorite is the third paragraph!

Since the US ABC television broadcast after the alias of the most popular elements of the latest series. ABC’s Chi Juzi in Hawaii filming the whole story ups and downs, actors performing most vividly, had become a prime-time TV ratings were the highest one.

Story from a professional perspective doctor Jack started on a major airliner crashed in the Pacific islands, a total of 48 passengers lucky survivors. At first, people fortunate survivors, looking forward to the arrival of rescue forces, they gradually found that the island.

New Year’s more creative experts cracked the increased fan! Sina major breakthrough in treatment of liver disease Tourism Jobs Nashi.

Cengjinglaiguo and they seem to like the people, their distress signals had been the release of the 16, but it seems that no one found their presence ……

Face with this barren island populated, how can they survive? Without a good medical equipment, Jack can only use the most rudimentary way people will be dying one by one save. In the struggle for survival in the …

And that’s it. So, if you still want answers about the island, even after watching the whole series, clearly it’s something about liver disease and tourism.

bonus materials, front covers DVDs, Lost, piracy

I haven’t had time to the play my PS3 at all lately, but back at the beginning of the summer I was playing Metal Gear Solid 4. This game has absurdly long cut sequences (the end of the game has a series totaling about 45 minutes alone), and most of them are extremely tedious. You know how everyone thought the whole “midichlorians” thing in Star Wars Eps. 1-3 was stupid? Well, imagine a two hour lecture on them broken into fifteen minute chunks, with occasional intrusions regarding a character with bad diarrhea (I’m serious), and this is what you have. So I did what any self-respecting gamer would do – I hit the X key, skipped them, and went back to the game.

It’s the oddity of videogame cut sequences – they’re trying to create a narrative around what is often otherwise simply a list of “go here,” “kill this guy,” or “stay alive” missions. Yet they need to be entirely skippable – unskippable cut sequences are the devil, and the kiss of death for many a bad game. Some gamers just wanna hack, slash, swing, parkour, shoot, and/or chat their way through the different levels.

We should also be honest that many cut sequences are simply bad. Videogame producers often hire their cast and writers on the cheap, leading to facile premises acted out by hack, fourth-rate “talent.” They’ve also been bad at trying to videogame-ize genres, and set pieces within genres, that seem to require the semblance of real humans. For instance, I just can’t take seriously a pixilated couple smoochying, for instance, nor is sexual tension between avatars anything other than sad and silly. Cut sequences are often fond of melodrama, but can’t deliver it.

Anyways, as a result, the cut sequences, though seemingly part of the narrative, and part of the “primary text,” actually take on the same function as bonus materials on a DVD of a film or television show. The latter exist, but don’t need to exist, and they can add layers of meaning, but needn’t. And so too with the former. In short, they’re extratextuals.

Why does this matter? Well, amidst all the excited discussion of convergent, transmedia storytelling, the focus has usually been on examining ways in which a narrative and/or text can “overflow” from one platform to another. The interest, in other words, has been on expansion. But perhaps what cut sequences remind us of is a fact just as important to understanding transmedia – namely that many elements of the “primary text” (and of secondary texts or transmedia extensions too) simply don’t matter, and won’t even be considered part of the text. This will change from audience member to audience member – some gamers, for instance, may be heavily invested in the cut sequences (I know I am for the GTA games) – but the point is that transmedia analysis might tell us more about what’s important in a text, and what’s irrelevant. Our focus could be on reduction as well, therefore.

bonus materials, videogames cut sequences

The lists for best films, TV shows, and music of the decade have already begun, but what about paratexts? What have been the best extratextuals of the 00s?

In no particular order, here are 14 of my top 20. I’m banking on having forgotten some biggies, so I’m hoping my readers will jolt my memory, and I’ll fill in the remaining 6 based on those. After the fold …

Read more…

ARGs, bonus materials, lists, trailers

Apologies for the lengthy absence — I’ve been moving, so the blog had to take the back seat for a while. And, for now, just a quick stub, as a way of embedding an amusing clip about franchising, adaptation, and extratextuals related to The Watchmen. Tip of the hat to Chuck Tryon for pointing to it.

bonus materials, sequels, viral videos adaptations, DVDs, Watchmen