Lost: Transmedia Storytelling
Lost functions as an example of transmedia storytelling in that the producers create an all-encompassing narrative, large and compelling enough to continually expand beyond the confines of its initial medium – television. Transmedia stories mushroom across numerous media platforms, ever expanding, and each manifestation contributes something deeper and richer to the entire narrative. For instance, a world might appear initially in graphic novel form, then expand to film, television series, comic books, or even an amusement park attraction. Designed to be self-contained entities that stand on their own merit, successful transmedia properties do not require each other to make sense of the overall narrative (Jenkins 96).
Transmedia properties such as Lost are essentially interactive narratives that establish a relationship with viewers and fans. In this regard, the Lost narrative phenomenon bears more similarity to a video game, in that its viewers engage with or “play” the narrative over multiple platforms and outside the slated time for broadcast. Each season of Lost functions as a level of a byzantine game. Viewers progress through seasons in the same manner that they would progress through a game’s levels. Each season introduces a new level of complexity, replete with a completely new set of hazards and conflicts. (Abbott 22)
Transmedia revolutionizes the traditional static relationship between viewer and television, wherein the viewer watches a screen for an hour, then returns to his or her life. Transmedia properties swallow the viewer; their endlessly blossoming narratives live in all the media that the viewer accesses in his or her life, at all times.
Lost fans engaged with the story anywhere and everywhere. Brooker’s description of a Lost fan’s delight when he discovers a business card imprinted with the recurring sequence of numbers featured in the first two seasons of Lost at a local gallery demonstrates the power of the Lost phenomenon. Even though the next episode was six days away, the fan spent that entire space of time online, decoding the ciphers with a virtual community of fellow Lost aficionados he had never laid eyes on. In this example of transmedia’s sway, the fictional world of Lost infiltrated all strata of its fans’ everyday lives, both on and off the computer, a characteristic of all successful and self-sustaining transmedia properties. (Brooker 51)
Transmedia storytelling in television developed as a result of the increasing challenges faced by creators of serialized television – especially network television – to find and hold audiences with the advent of Internet society. Author Ivan Askwith described Lost as a “serial narrative being developed in a period of transition” (173). Television producers had to gain entry into the online world of gaming, message boards, forums, and chat communities if they had any chance of economically sustaining themselves and their products, not to mention the fact, astutely observed by Askwith, that the producers of Lost had to “design a narrative to cater to multiple modes of consumption” (176). Transmedia was the solution to an economic problem as well as a narrative one.
Lost uses the opportunities presented by transmedia storytelling primarily as a means to promote the show. The producers effectively developed a seamless blending of fiction, reality, and marketing. However, transmedia offers an additional bonus to savvy producers: a snowball effect when it comes to audiences. As Jenkins notes, a “…good transmedia franchise works to attract multiple constituencies by pitching the content somewhat differently in the different media” (96). This means not only that audiences accrue over the course of the series; they can also discover the series through any number of media portals. Transmedia alleviates some of the pressure on the medium of television itself to be all things for all viewers. The strength of the Lost narrative collects participants from where they are, as opposed to drawing them to a single outlet: the television screen.
Examples of transmedia storytelling demonstrated in the series itself include the ingenious mythology of the Hanso Foundation, and the producers’ decision to engage the big baddie with audiences as its own entity, not necessarily affiliated with broadcasts. Brooker points to the “…online memos from Hugh MacIntyre, the fictional head of the Hanso Foundation,…an appearance from…MacIntyre on the real life talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live…[and] messages hidden in the source code of the Hanso Foundation site” (55). Another example – the love triangle initiated in the pilot episode, between survivors of Oceanic Flight 815 Jack, Kate, and Sawyer – later found its way online via “…the fan community in fanfiction and a number of ‘Brokeback Island’ fan videos, alongside numerous other romantic and sexual pairings, and was finally articulated in the season three finale ‘Through the Looking Glass’ (3.21)” (Abbott 18). Transmedia storytelling furnished the producers of Lost with a means to constantly extend the narrative, re-engage audiences, and keep the show forefront in the collective consciousness of essentially anyone who consumed any form of media whatsoever – fans, non-fans, and soon-to-be fans. (812 words)
Police Dramas: Different Approaches to Justice
The tension between convention and invention shapes CSI and The Wire as two different versions of the police series in each show’s narrative treatment of justice. Procedurals such as the CSI franchise maintain a narrative format that supports a belief that justice always wins out; this becomes the convention of the storytelling, as well as the worldview of the show. In the CSI franchise hierarchy, cops trump criminals. Right and wrong, clearly defined, always stays afloat, thanks to the dedicated heroics of Horatio Caine and Mac Taylor. While sometimes CSI traverses the dark side, as in when a corrupt sheriff murdered Warrick Brown in Season Nine1, for the most part, science delivers justice.
Morally ambiguous police dramas such as The Wire, on the other hand, more often depict justice as messy, arbitrary, erratically applied – even accidental, in some cases – and easily derailed, either by corrupt interests, or just plain incompetence. Season four of The Wire develops a plotline about a cop – Thomas “Herc” Hauk (Domenick Lombardozzi) – that loses a police video camera and tries to conceal it, destroying several lives in the attempt. (Tyree 32). In the world of The Wire, cops and criminals are the same – flawed, and human.
The specific conditions that shaped storytelling practices in television’s police genre over the past decade include 9/11 and the ensuing War on Terror, and the advent of high quality documentary police shows – specially, The First 48 – which premiered in 2004. These particular conditions affect the balance between convention and invention represented in CSI and The Wire in how each show rejects, or embraces, these conditions, given that both now represent permanent fixtures of reality. Procedurals such as CSI give lip service to the War on Terror, for example, but rarely engage the War on Terror critically, or as a story line. The Wire, by contrast, incorporates the War on Terror into its narrative, and shines a critical light on it. The Wire analyzes the shift of police resources from the War on Drugs to the War on Terror and points to the gaping holes in both battles; it details the fallout at home when attention and resources get diverted to fight foreign wars. If America can’t save Baltimore, The Wire asks, how can it hope to save Baghdad? (Tyree 32-33)
Similarly, the CSI franchise banks on its style and high-gloss production values.
There is no place in the CSI world for gritty realism or ugly cops. Sheehan and Sweeney point out the stylized nature of a typical CSI episode, the “glamourised quasi-science pursued by investigators who look like fashion models in designer clothes and hairdos in crime labs that look like nightclubs”. (2-3) CSI type procedural police dramas simplify science to accommodate a slick narrative that depicts cop-scientists as infallible. (Sheehan and Sweeney 2-3)
The Wire, again opposite, welcomes the grittiness of police documentary series like The First 48. The Wire’s cast, similar to the real life police officers of The First 48, has blemishes – some are fat, some look tired – the bullpen and officer’s cubicles depicted on The Wire resemble the grubby, work-a-day precincts we visit during an episode of The First 48.
The case studies of CSI and The Wire tell us that Law & Order, as represented by the police, resembles The Wire more so that CSI. Even though Law & Order’s production values and acting styles bear more kinship with those of CSI, how Law & Order views and treats the idea of justice differs radically. Law & Order, like The Wire, focuses its narrative largely on the complexity inherent to the acquisition of justice. Much of the narrative in both shows revels in the multiple variables affecting every crime they depict. In Hohenstein’s analysis, “Law & Order is replete with…legal, moral, and social dilemmas that accentuate the criminal justice system’s often conflicted goals and methods” (62). It is the nature of justice, in both shows, to be dense, convoluted, and often elusive.
CSI, on the other hand, sacrifices human complexity on the altar of the great god of science. The CSI model, focused as it is on forensic evidence, generally diminishes the function of police officers, lawyers, juries, and courtrooms in the criminal justice system, and keeps the procedural complexities off screen. For CSI, scientific evidence serves justice best. (Hohenstein 62)
In the shifting landscape of America today, if CSI audiences are any indication, a desire exists for things to be absolute and unequivocal. As Hohenstein details, a police drama such as CSI “…appeals directly to Americans’ apparent need for judicial certainty” (68). (765 words)
Works Cited
Abbott, Stacey. “How Lost Found Its Audience: The Making of a Cult Blockbuster.” Reading Lost: Perspectives on a Hit Television Show (Reading Contemporary Television). Ed. Roberta Pearson. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009. 159-180. Print.
Askwith, Ivan. “Do You Even Know Where This is Going?” Lost Viewers and Narrative Premeditation.” Reading Lost: Perspectives on a Hit Television Show (Reading Contemporary Television). Ed. Roberta Pearson. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009. 159-180. Print.
Brooker, Will. “Television Out of Time: Watching Cult Shows on Download.” Reading Lost: Perspectives on a Hit Television Show (Reading Contemporary Television). Ed. Roberta Pearson. London: I.B. Tauris, 2009. 51-72. Print.
Hohenstein, Kurt. “CSI and Law & Order: Dueling Representations of Science and Law in the Criminal Justice System.” The CSI Effect: Television, Crime, and Governance. Eds. Michele Byers and Val Marie Johnson. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2009. 61-74. Print.
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York UP, 2006. Print.
Tyree, J.M. “The Wire: The Complete Fourth Season.” Film Quarterly 61.3 (2008): 32-38. Print.
Sheehan, Helena and Sheamus Sweeney. “The Wire and The World: Narrative and Metanarrative.” Jump Cut 51 (2009): 1-21. Print.
Footnotes
- Episode one of season nine opens with the shooting death of CSI Warrick Brown at the hands of undersherriff McKean. Web.