Often, the remediation of films comes from the entertainment industries’ need to repurpose certain content in a more profitable way (for themselves) or with the idea that it will improve the viewing experience (Bolter et al. 68). When remediation of a particular movie comes about, it is done to create something new but not to erase the original because the industry is aware of the original and wishes to build upon those ideas (Bolter et al. 68). I can think of a few instances where films were redone to change how we perceive the media; however, they failed. For example, one of my favorite television shows ever since I was a kid has been Avatar the Last Airbender, and in 2010, they tried to transform the show into a film. I can only assume this was to adhere to an older audience as the movie was more serious than the show, which had a lot of comedy. However, it flopped (it has a 5% on rotten tomatoes) as the essence of the television show was completely lost (in addition to them whitewashing the main cast). I can infer that lack of success is expected for some of these remediation projects because your intended audience might not perceive your media as you want them to, especially if you change aspects of the original form and make them worse, in the audience’s opinion. As a fan of the original series, the movie felt different from the same Avatar I knew, thus straying too far in a different direction and becoming a new project that lost sight of its predecessor.
Nonetheless, some remediations/adaptations have been so successful that they are passed through various countries, translated, and then adapted by filmmakers to become the face of an entire brand. One specific example of this that came to mind while reading was the folk tales by the Grimm brothers. These stories are familiar works to us and display media remediation as they underwent various changes throughout the years before they came to us on the screen from Walt Disney. Simon Bronner explains that these alterations can be traced back to the nineteenth century when the Grimm brothers wrote the stories, which were then translated by English author Edgar Taylor (Bronner 194). Bronner explains that Taylor found the remediation of the stories necessary when he translated them in England as he included illustrations to appeal to a younger audience and altered some of the texts to leave out gruesome or unsightly details (Bronner 195-197). Additionally, gruesome details were also left out in the American remediation of these texts, while colorful images were added to grab children’s attention and increase production (Bronner 199). These simple remediations caused production to increase, and a new wave of consumers appeared. However, in 1937, Walt Disney created his success by remediating an already beloved text and adding modern features to tell the story that appealed to various audiences. The movie Snow White was created using animation, making Grimm’s stories that were passed down through different countries and versions into a film.
Additionally, when it comes to Bolter/Grusin’s framework of immediacy/hypermediacy, it becomes clear that immediacy was created through the animated versions of these stories as Bronner states that Walt Disney allowed these tales to be created with the idea of a folktale without reference to the folk (Bronner 207). Disney was able to take the folk stories that everyone held tangibly in their hands and read on paper and allowed them to be viewed on a television or movie screen in a more immersive environment. This immersion emphasizes the idea of transparent immediacy because instead of holding a book and the technology being apparent, the consumer is closer to being fully immersed into Snow White’s world rather than the technology being at the forefront of the consuming experience. However, as we have learned, all media has limitations, and while Disney’s animations can be viewed as much closer to immediacy, hypermediacy also can be identified because viewers are not entirely unaware of the medium that brings them the newly animated story. Instead of being aware of the book they are reading, the audience becomes aware of the clunky television or staticky movie screen that carries this text to them.
Through analyzing the evolution of Grimm’s stories, the intentions behind remediating the stories into a film come from Walt Disney’s vision of the future of technology and how adapting these stories into movies would be more enveloping for the senses and improve the way consumers viewed these tales. Folktales can only be seen on paper or verbally understood. However, Walt Disney saw the appeal of making these stories come to life. When media is altered throughout history, it sets a precedent for future media to grow and adapt, whether within a particular brand like Disney or a group of technologies like VR headsets, as stated by Bolter in Chapter 1 of Remediation. If media remediation did not exist, we would still be reading the original Grimm’s stories, or possibly not at all, as they would not have been translated and altered. While Grimm’s stories are just one example of how media is remediated for the better, there are plenty of examples that show how the world around us is always changing and the experiences that we had with technology even five years ago don’t fully match up with the experiences we have today. I am not sure how long 4DX movies have been around, but I recently saw The Meg 2 in 4DX and proceeded to be whipped around the theater in my chair, blown in the neck with air while water sprayed us from the ceiling. This immersive experience was not in our everyday movie theater in the early 2000s, but now you can go to a Regal and see it whenever you want. This is just another example of how films continue to strive for full immersion and how our technologies will continue to surpass our expectations.
Works Cited
Bronner, Simon J. “The Americanization of the Brothers Grimm.” Following Tradition, University Press of Colorado, 1998, pp. 184–236. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt46nqtf.9.
Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation: Understanding New Media. MIT Press, 2000. (Chapters 1-3.)
Hi Cassandra,
I really appreciate how you map the capitalist side of remediation; in particular, the way that folktales have been sanitized and animated suggests that sensory appeal, which technology works to enhance, might require softening to keep the (or gain an) audience. The late poet Tony Hoagland says, in a poem (“Hard Rain”) about history sanitized through media, “there’s nothing/we can’t pluck the stinger from,//nothing we can’t turn into a soft drink flavor or a t-shirt,” and I’d be interested to learn where the reverse shows up in our culture; what sorts of media use technology to de-sanitize something, or at least preserve (or even adapt) its original impact for new audiences. I’m not talking about old-work-made-bloody (ie: Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey), but a piece of media, when interpreted through modern tech, that amplifies its original intent.
This is probably the right time for me to note what a perfect demonstration of Bolter’s & Grusin’s immediacy and hypermediacy your Meg 2 experience was! While I can only assume, the event seems to show the strange balance between 1) the film’s desire to erode the border between screen and audience and 2) the interactive, multisensory components that can’t help but draw attention to themselves.
On a final note, I do wonder how much technology can alter an older piece of media before remediation can no longer be traced. Even though folkloric archetypes are both deliberately and accidentally baked into our most popular narratives, is it possible for technology (in its pursuit of immediacy and hypermediacy) to distort the material enough that the window into the past is too fractured to see through?
Hey Cassandra,
I really enjoyed reading your post! Thank you so much for discussing remediation under this context. As an avid fan of Walt Disney World and all things pertinent to the franchise, I appreciated the references to historical evolution of their films. On my last trip, I had the privilege to embark on the keys to the kingdom tour which briefly mentioned something very similar. I agree that so many people are unaware of the early inspiration for these beloved movies. These adaptations have undeniably stolen the limelight.
Hi Cassandra!
I love how you connected remediation to film adaptations, as I feel the repurposing of those films is meant to deliver different messages to different groups. For example, you tied in how Disney films were remediated from old Grimm’s stories. Obviously, the gruesomeness of the originally had to be redone so it would appeal and be appropriate to younger audiences. The animations took scary stories and made them whimsical dreams for children and even adults.
Last semester, I took a translation class where one of our main focuses was film adaption, I happened to focus my final on the adaptations of Mulan. Originally, the story came from a ballad, which then became an animated film, and most recently a live action. What I found was that each version was told and shown completely differently in order to appeal to not only the audience, but the time period. The ballad was first made for those experiencing a war, connecting a tale of bravery, loyalty, and family to uplift spirits. Then, it became an animation with silly additions such as dragons. However, adjustments such as these made it more appealing to American audiences as it also used common words like “Mushu,” which was a popular Chinese dish in America. It did the opposite when shown to audiences in China, as they no longer felt a genuine connection. This was once again altered in the live action, making it more serious and using historical facts, in hopes to reach a wider audience range. The point being that delivery and persuasion all connect to remediation, especially in movies.
It is necessary to persuade audiences to view a film, through said remediations, which is dependent on its delivery. In this instance delivery entails color usage, animations, characters, actors, setting etc. All of which appeal to specific audience types and must be considered when promoting the film. Film promotions are targeted towards the audience. I have even seen examples of the same exact movie having different trailers, in different countries and certain actions and sounds appeal more to the audience and persuade them to view the film more than others. I find it fascinating how all of these concepts connect and are displayed even through the film industries, whether it be through adaptations or advertisements.
Also, side note, I recently saw Meg 2 as well and had even said I wish I saw it in 4D! I saw the film in 3D, which I feel is a type of hypermedia too as it somewhat immersed me into the film, while still being in my own world. As said in the first chapter of “Remediation,” not all immersive experiences are as compelling, and now looking back I am quite grateful I did not get whipped around or splashed with water in my movie theater as I would have freaked out a bit! Nonetheless, it is amazing to see how immersive movie experience have become and how far technology has developed.
Folktales and fairy tales are a great focus for talking about remediation! When you brought up Avatar: The Last Airbender, this triggered something in my brain because over the last two years I’ve become a Critical Role fan, and this launched many child projects beyond the Dungeons and Dragons game that is streamed on Twitch and YouTube. To date the most primetime project (literally on Amazon Prime, developed by Prime as an original animated series) is The Legend of Vox Machina, an anime series based on campaign 1 of the streamed tabletop game. Along the way, as the series was viewed and reviewed, the comparison of one of its main characters’ arcs was compared to Avatar: The Last Airbender and the character player, Marisha Ray, stated in interviews that the Avatar character was a partial inspiration for her character, the Air Ashari druid, Keyleth. The many, many layers of derivation and original twists and takes that go into a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, alone, are worth book-length unpacking as to their use of folklore, mythology, science fiction, and original storytelling (in this case, based on the prompting of a dungeon master and the rolls of dice). The cast of Critical Role is central to the development of the Prime series and they had to restructure the stories that they had created over the course of a year and a half of gameplay to fit a more cinematic situation. Now there are fans of LoVM who don’t know much at all about D&D or never watched the original campaign, and they view the series much like they are watching an adult Disney-esque cinematic experience.
When you spoke about immersion and hypermedia as it relates to folklore, I thought of how popular in-person themepark like events based on stories that have been turned into movies or television series, or other media like comic novels/anime, are and the kinds of work they do in remediating print and video media to live immersion with customers/fans. For example, Halloween coming up brings a slew of haunted attractions in Orlando and many other cities and locations. Some of these events are compelling and others are somewhat failures. People need to be convinced to often travel to the location, drop money to get in, abide by a set of rules and safety protocols, may be restricted in their own ability to record, and must be screened for potential health vulnerabilities. They can be nostalgic revisitations to popular stories and media, or they can be advertisements for new remediations (like The Exorcist: Believer house in Orlando). Have you been to any of these kinds of events and do you generally think they are more or less successful at immersion than the 3D or 4D film events? (Also what on earth is a 4D event on film? I haven’t the faintest idea!)
Hello Cassandra
I found your post this week to be really interesting. I liked that you gave an example when you said, “one of my favorite television shows ever since I was a kid has been Avatar the Last Airbender, and in 2010, they tried to transform the show into a film. I can only assume this was to adhere to an older audience as the movie was more serious than the show, which had a lot of comedy. However, it flopped (it has a 5% on rotten tomatoes) as the essence of the television show was completely lost.” It seems that so many television shows are being turned into movies, and while some are successful, I was glad to see you bring up an unsuccessful example. Moreover, it seems that a majority of films being released these days are from some piece of previously existing Intellectual Property (IP). Producers want to try to lower the possibility of their movie ‘bombing’ and they think that by using previously produced IP that they will have a built in audience, and therefore make a bigger profit. That, as you illustrated with your example is not always the case. Perhaps producers will think twice, and instead produce more original content, but I’m not holding my breath for that to happen!
I also thought it was great that you brought up folktales and fairy tales! I liked when you said, “One specific example of this that came to mind while reading was the folk tales by the Grimm brothers. These stories are familiar works to us and display media remediation as they underwent various changes throughout the years before they came to us on the screen from Walt Disney.” While Disney has used folk tales by the Grimm brothers, Disney is infamous for protecting its intellectual property, and Disney even played a major role in getting the government to extend copyright laws from 75 years to 95 years. I guess Disney is not as worried about being viewed as hypocrites as they are about protecting their bottom line.
Cassandra! As always, I enjoyed your blog this week! I found it extremely interesting how you spoke about remediation using folktales/fairytales. That is genius! I wouldn’t have thought of remediation this way without your blog post! This makes me think of The Little Mermaid and how controversial it has been since releasing the live action version of it. Might I say, I was never a HUGE fan of The Little Mermaid, but they took a part out of that movie that was so excited to see “live” and I’m upset! I found your post to be extremely engaging and educational. I also must add that I also used to watch Avatar the Last Airbender when I was younger and I never saw the film but good to know that maybe its not worth watching!