Transmedia Storytelling Written By Scolari And Jenkins

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

I really like the underlying principle of this way to tell a story, because if a plot is presented through different languages and media not only the plot can be extended, it may also appeal to a much larger audience. For instance, when I think back to my childhood Mickey Mouse was one of my favorite cartoons. And since, I was only allowed to watch it every Saturday morning I started to read the comics as well. In contrast, my little brother enjoyed watching the cartoon too, but instead of reading the comics he played some kind of online Mickey Mouse game. So maybe if there only had been the comics and no cartoon or online games my brother would not have been interested in the whole Mickey Mouse story at all.

Scolari notes that equal texts can result in different implicit consumers. I liked it that he chose Shrek as an example for that, because when I read it I got another perspective of the movie. I considered Shrek more as a film for kids because of all the fairytales that are mentioned and some how parodied, but I did not think that there were so many intertextual and cultural references in it that can rather be detected by adults. The reason for that is that children and adults watch the movie from different perspectives and with a different pre-knowledge. Scolari calls that strategy behind multilayer text.

Of course, transmedia storytelling was only able to establish in our society, because we now have the necessary technical devices. Nowadays kids could probably not �survive� without their TV or X-Box. Unfortunately, books are losing more and more of its importance to us.

In my opinion, it is a pity that books are being neglected, because when we read a story we make up our own characters and landscapes. In contrast, if we watch a movie or play a video game we somehow lose the possibility for own imagination. For instance, I guess everyone of us associates Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie, right?

When I started reading �Fun Home� I began to think of a good definition of what family actually means. In this comic, the Bechdel-clan does not quite fulfill the criteria of an average family. Father gay, mother depressive and the daughter is a lesbian who suffered from an obsessive-compulsive disorder when she was a kid.

In addition to that, the relationships between the family members are also somehow confusing and unusual. Firstly, the marriage between Alison�s mother and her father is really odd. The reason for that is apparently, that her dad was constantly having love affaires with other men. This brings me to the point, which was the least understandable for me when reading the comic: why didn�t her mother leave him much earlier?

How much strength and self-command does a human being have to have to endure such a life? For me personally there are two options: the first is that she just loved him unconditionally, which I definitely doubt, and the second one is that she simply did not have any other choice. I mean, she knew when he invited �friends� or when he went away for a few days, what was really going on, but she did not make a fuss about it at all. That is just so absurd to me, because if your partner cheats on you, and it does not matter whether it is a man or a women, it is nearly impossible to live with him/her in the same house. So when I kept on reading I only waited for the moment when her mother tells Alison at the end of the book, that she could not stand such a life anymore and that she had to escape from it eventually.

The most important relationship in the book is of course the unlikely but close connection between Alison and her dad. In the beginning of the story I did not expect that the relationship between those two would develop so much. My first thoughts were, that her father was neglecting his kids, but in my opinion, it turns out that he is a loving dad, who actively participates in his children�s lives. Despite his behavior towards her mother, he really cared a lot about his kids, at least from my perspective and he did spend a lot of time with them, especially with Alison.

Not only the love to books, apparently also their homosexuality connects them, even though Alison is not aware of her dad�s secret. Maybe also his reaction on Alison�s coming out, which was in my opinion quite positive, strengthened their bond.

In the whole story there were lot of reactions on certain things I could not really understand or were absolutely illogical to me. Such as Alison�s mother dealing with her husbands homosexuality like that, or the weird behavior of Alison when she gets her first period. However, what I love about this book is, that to understand every little move of the family members is not important at all. It is written in such a real and honest way, that your own feelings are of second rank. When you read it, you do not doubt a thing that is mentioned in the comic, you just believe it. I really felt that, this is a true story, told with pictures and words.

Another interesting thing in the comic is the huge amount of English literature, which is mentioned from time to time again. From that, I got the impression that the Bechdels are a quite intelligent and extremely widely read family, especially Alison and her father. But also the other family members are pretty talented. For instance, Alison�s mother seems to be an amazing actress and a pianist as well. I loved the picture on page 134, where you can see the their house and in every room there is a family member doing something creative. I think, the sentence in the picture perfectly describes the atmosphere in the house:

�Our home was like an artists� colony. We ate together, but otherwise were absorbed in our separate pursuits. And in this Isolation, our creativity took on an aspect of compulsion.�

Their incredible creativity and also their intelligence might also be a reason why they seem so queer. And I am using the word queer consciously, because the word is used quite often in the book and is a good adjective to describe the Bechdels.

Another reason for their queerness, besides the homosexuality, is of course that they live in a funeral home. The fact that the kids played in between coffins and dead bodies is undoubtably weird.

But now getting back to the definition of the family, I think what describes the Bechdel family best is: They are a queer bunch of people with the same DNA, who can not really live with each other nor live without each other. So I guess, every family is somehow queer in certain ways, and since nobody can choose their relatives, the own family is often quite annoying and nerve-racking. However, if only one member would be absent the world of every other member would be shattered.

Queerness? To be entirely honest I had to look up the term, because I did not know what it exactly meant. Queer people are humans with a different sexual orientation from what we consider as normal. Unfortunately queer not only means different, which is in my opinion a rather neutral term. To a greater degree, it has a much more negative overtone. For most people it means odd or strange, for some even disgusting.

I guess that is something I will never fully understand, because for me it is absolutely fine if people have different views, opinions or sexual orientations. I mean, nobody would ever complain about that some people do not eat meat, but even though we are in a rather modern society, people are still making a fuss about homosexuals. I have been thinking about that fact and I guess people are just afraid of the �other�. The other means the different and unknown, which helps to define the self. My question is now, how can people say that they are normal and homosexuals are strange other?

I think the main reason for that goes back to the education of children. I also believe, that kids of conservative parents get more likely a negative attitude to homosexuals than children from liberal and pretty open families. Another important fact is, of course, religion. On the one hand, the Catholic Church is apparently against homosexuality, but on the other hand the bible tells us to treat every human being equally. Isn�t that a paradoxon? I find it quite pathetic, if extremely religious people are fighting against homosexual marriages, from my point of view they got the essence of Christianity quite wrong.

I also think that the National Socialism has something to do with the fact why most people are afraid of minorities, which share certain sentiments. In these times, not only humans who had other believes were simply exterminated, also the people who helped them and were on their sides had to be afraid of being killed. Today it is still a little bit like that. If you are friends with gay people, you might be as well be labeled as homosexual. Since that in our society homosexuality is still something negative, people who haven�t found their selves yet, might not be able to deal with that kind of social pressure.

In my opinion, people who cannot deal with homosexuality should finally reach the 21st century. All those narrow-minded humans make me quite angry and their attitudes are absolutely not comprehensible for me. I still hope that someday these people recognize that every human is equal and none of them is better or worse.

Reading �From Hell� was definitely the most time consuming book I read so far. Not only the length of it, also to follow the actual plot was sometimes quite challenging for me.

The main reason for that was that I did not always know whether something happened in the past, present or in the future. Thus, I had to read some panels several times which was sometimes quite frustrating.

However, while reading the comic my interest in the whole �Jack the Ripper affaire� increasingly grew. The series of murders that Jack the Ripper committed, caused a series of conspiracy theories and some kind of myth, I think. Since the identity of Jack the Ripper had never been exposed, the myth is even more thrilling. The fact that this horror story is based on true events and that they are not entirely solved arises the tremendous interest in it, at least that is the reason why this story is so fascinating to me.

In addition, I also think that some people kind of marvel the �intelligent� Jack the Ripper. First, because he did those barbarously crimes and never got caught and secondly, because he was not forced to take any responsibility for his felonies. I assume, that we all sometimes want to do things, which we are inhibited to put into practice just because we know that we get punished for them.

In my opinion is From Hell a very dark and creepy graphic novel, which fits perfectly to the myth of Jack the Ripper. Even if you just hear the name �Jack the Ripper� a shiver runs down your spine. All in all I find, the comic was rather complex, sometimes also confusing, but I think Moore captured the darkness and the suspicions, which are automatically arise when you think of Jack the Ripper, very well.

In contrast to the other graphic novels we read so far in this course, Watchman was a piece I did not enjoyed reading very much. Since it is praised by a lot of critics I expected an epic story, but after finishing it I was quite disappointed. However, the background of the story, the cold war, was pretty fascinating. I think the integration of this topic in the story worked out very well.

The first reason why it was not so appealing to me, I expected a typical superhero story, which would have been the first one in my life I would have ever read so I was somehow looking forward to it. Instead of that it was just a story about retired wanna-be heroes. There was only one character, which had super powers, namely Dr. Manhattan. It was a bit confusing to me, because all the other �superheroes� were human except for him. He kind of had died before but reappeared with superpowers after an accident. For me it is still not entirely clear, what his actual superpower really was.

Even though the comic did not catch my interest as much as the others did so far, I liked the unexpected turns in it. For instance, when came out that Silk Specter was the daughter of the Comedian, who died in the beginning of the plot I was quite surprised. I did not expect that, because the Comedian even though he was a part of the superhero clan, he seemed more like a villain to me. He tried to rape the mother of Silk Specter in the past and was extremely cruel when he tried to change the world for a �better�. The irony behind was that even though he tried to rape her but was stopped before he could, some years later he conceived a child with the same women, but she did it freely. He definitely did not fit the superhero image at all. Also Rorschach was known for his brutality and cruelty when he was fighting for �justice�. As opposed to the Comedian, Rorschach seemed to think he really did a good thing and was doing everything to achieve something.

The end of the story was the best of the whole story. It took an essential turn, when it came out that Ozymandias, also a former member of the superhero squad, was one of the bad guys, because he bombed the city not the soviets. I also liked that he actually DID it and was not stopped by the good ones shortly before that. What I am trying to say is that it is good if not all stories have a happy ending, which was here definitely not the case.

All in all, I think it is a mix of reality (the human superheroes, no happy ending) and fiction (Dr. Manhattan), which was not such a good combination for my taste. But as mentioned before there were also some sequences I enjoyed reading.

Superhero � what does that actually mean? Super definitely means something extraordinary and hero stands for a brave person who helps you if you are in trouble.

For me, the real superheroes do not live in comics. I think if you pronounce the word superhero, most people may think of Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman. They all have superpower, can fly and wear a nice suit or as Wertham call them uniforms. These kind of superheroes, which I clearly consider as fiction, are pretty important for some people, because they consider them as a role model or something they can count on if they are in trouble.

Anyway, I think there are REAL superheroes, which we should draw our attention to. When I am speaking of �real� superheroes, I mean firefighters, doctors and �real� people who help to solve �real� problems, which we have plenty of. That is why I think, the way how Wertham questions this whole superhero concept is a good approach. He sees Superman as a fascist, which I did not fully understand in the beginning, but the more I think about it the more obvious it gets to me. As mentioned before, Superman may be a role model for quite a few people, which makes them to be like him or gives them hope that he solves all the problems for them. To me it seems like a medium to brainwash people. What I really found hilarious was the state that batman was in a homosexual relationship with Robin. Since I have seen some Batman movies I am not really in the same opinion. I think this is far-fetched, but definitely a pretty funny way to look at the story.

All in all, I think that all these superheroes give people hope that there might be someone outside who helps them in sticky situations and gives them the feeling that they are not alone with their problems.

I just finished the first part of the comic and I feel like writing something about it. It is so sweeping and at the same time terrible to read. I already encountered quite a lot of texts about the National Socialism, but when reading the comic, it is so much more personal than anything I�ve ever read. I get the feeling, that Wladek directly tells me his story. I instantly had a connection to him.

Firstly, he is talking about the life before the war. He was very happy with Anja and his son. But then, all of a sudden everything began to change. Even though, they did not realize from the beginning what was going on, they more and more became aware of the horror. One after another of their family members were exterminated, until only Wladek and Anja were left. They also lost their loved son, Richieu. The family actually was part of the upper class, and now they had to sleep in, cellars contaminated with rats, to hide from the Nazis.

In my opinion, Spiegelman portrayed the increasing fear of them exceptionally good. The process is most apparent, when Anja starts to freak out when they wanted to go to Hungary. She is full of grueling anxiety and I think, you can really feel that. As it turned out, her fear was justified. They got caught and were brought to Auschwitz.

However, what really shocked me was what huge, huge impact the pictures have in the comic. Specifically the picture of Richieu, that is in the dedication of the second part. It literally broke my hard, because all of a sudden I imaged this boy in a gas chamber and in a concentration camp and confronted with other acts of cruelties of that time. This photograph of the little boy keeps flaring up in my mind.

I have to say the comic really moves me and gets me thinking about the cruelty of the humanity. I cannot understand why all that DID happen. I mean, I know of course that all of this was reality, but it never seemed so personally and close to me. I am very excited to go on reading this masterpiece.

Before we started to deal with the holocaust in this course I recently was not thinking so much about that complex of themes. It made me think of it a lot. The question, why it came so far, that so many innocent people had to die, flashed through my mind all the time. What just is not understandable to me is the fact that one strong person can convince so many other people to help him to randomly kill thousands of human beings, just because they do not fit a certain pattern.

The main reason, why these people did participate in such cruel and repulsive actions is that they were just worried about themselves and their families. If you imagine, that you would be in such a situation, what would you do? Save your loved ones or fight for justice? Me personally, I would definitely do the first thing. Of course, it is important to do the right thing and to stand up for grievances, but if the good of my family, friends or myself would be threatened, I would not hesitate a second to maintain it.

This is how I can identify with the holocaust. I could never slip into the shoes of the people who start such sickening cruelty.

I think literature about the holocaust is so popular, because it is not only moving, but it is also based on true happenings. There real people who really experienced these cruelty. So I think it is much easier to identify with it, because if you have randomly picked figures in a book, who undergo certain happenings, you can not built up a relation to them so easily.

All in all I think, that is such a deep scar of the of the humanity, that there is still a lot to look back on an reappraise, that there will be a great many of literature about it in the future.

Uncle Sam, an old, poor man who has lost everything, gives a great overview of the American history. In the comic he is the personification of the United States of America and somehow an icon for the patriotism.

The review over the American history goes from the great many of killed native Americans to the civil war and the slavery of Afro-Americans. But it also portrays the modern situation, namely the omnipresent crime in the streets and the increasing poverty rate. The focus is though, on the remembering sequences or so called flashbacks of Uncle Sam, because the intention behind them is, to remind the people of what cruel and horrible things actually have happened in the past. It is so easy to forget the real tragedies that had happened in the past.

What I really loved about the comic was, that I found so many true morals and values that can be found in everyday life. For instance, when he meets Britannia, who supports him and shares the same destiny. That was when I thought, as long you have someone on your side, life is not as bad as it may seem. Then of course the most important moral, I think, was that the more you fight for your own freedom the more you might restrict someone else�s freedom.

All in all, I found the comic was quite compelling and extremely moving. There were quite a few facts of the American history, I was not aware of. The comic illustrates those events that had happened in the past in an adequate way. With the pictures I really felt being a part of some of those historically important happenings

Even though it is late, I would still comment on City of Glass. As I finished City of Glass, which I did in almost no time, I was a bit surprised in which direction the story went. I was not expecting so much content. What I really liked, was that it was so easy to get lost in the book. It was like I could not stop reading. Sometimes I was quite confused which person was referred to, because one person was described in many different ways. That person had even different names.

First there is Quinn, who is a writer that lives quite isolated in a flat in New York. This person soon gets lost, because Quinn becomes Paul Auster. I assume, that he is the most important and most present person in the story. He is the detective, who loses the relation to his real life because of the second identity. The process, that the man totally gets lost in his own "lies" was one of the things that fascinated me most. In the beginning, he was not sure, whether he wants to get involved in such a complex situation. But the more he was getting involved the less he could get out of the issue. The development he went though, during the two months waiting outside the Stillman's flat was extremely interesting and also shocking to me. He was so obsessed with somebody else�s lives that he neglected his basic needs like eating or sleeping.

All in all I think it is a very good story, even though I thought it was sometimes a bit too confusing and metafictional. But still, easy to read and quite compelling.

I want to refer to the text �Comics as Literature� by Hillary Chute, because this text really changed my point of view of comics. Since I did not have so much experience with comics in the past, I never considered comics as �real� literature, but the more I read of this article, the more my opinion began to change.

Firstly, the historical overview was quite interesting to me. It gave me a better understanding of how many people were already dealing and are still dealing with the huge field of comics. That was such and strong aspect to me, which I was completely underestimating. The complexity of that field and the different options you have to look at it was something absolutely new to me. I also thought that cartoons are just moving comics. But apparently to people who are familiar with the field of graphic narratives it is simply a mass production. If I now think about that a bit more precisely, I do agree with them. The first example that came to my mind were �The Simpsons�. I mean, I never really racked my brain about it, but I realized that they are invented from the �dream factory� Hollywood to make a lot of money.

As opposed to the article, when Chute started to outline that there are also a lot of nonfictional comics and introduced the example of �Maus�, she convinced me entirely that graphic narratives definitely count to literature. It is about the Word War II, which is in my opinion a very problematic but still an �omnipresent� topic. Since I have not read that graphic novel yet I can�t really say how the story is presented, but the idea to describe Jews as mice and the Germans as cats in this context, seem just perfectly appropriate. Also the use of the different kind of media, to represent the story was quite appealing to me and I am looking forward to read the graphic narrative myself.

I have to confess that I have not read that many comics so far. When I was younger I liked the "Asterix and Obelix" and the "Mickey Mouse" comics. The main reason why I enjoyed reading these comics was, that actually you did not have to read every speech bubble, it was no problem to follow the story if you just had a look at the pictures. Another aspect is that comics are eye-catchers to me. If you go to a library you are confronted with lots and lots of usual books that are sometimes not so interesting at the fist look. In contrast, the colorful and impressive covers of comics always arose my attention.

My latest experience with comics was, watching the Spiderman film series. Contrary to my expectations, I really loved seeing the films. I was a bit bigoted against �comic movies�, because I thought there would not be a �real� content. I was really surprised that I could not wait to see the second part of the series when I finished the first one. The story was far more complex, than I was expecting. What was fascinating me the most was that you can really get lost in the story, because you always want to know what comes next. That is why I spend a whole afternoon in front of the TV because I watched all parts of the series at once.

Even though I have not such great experience with comics as others might have, I am really looking forward to that course. I expect to get to know better understanding of the wide variety of literature. I never counted comics to �real literature�, but I think this course could change my opinion. Also, I am looking forward to the task to write my own comic. I think that is a great idea, because it gives students the chance to be creative at university for a change.