Transmedia Archaeology

Storytelling in the Borderlines of Science Fiction, Comics and Pulp Magazines

C. Scolari, P. Bertetti, M. Freeman

• Editorial: Palgrave Pivot
• Año: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781137434371
• Categoría: Sciences sociales
• Categoría: Étude des média

In this book, the authors examine manifestations of transmedia storytelling in different historical periods and countries, spanning the UK, the US and Argentina. It takes us into the worlds of Conan the Barbarian, Superman and El Eternauta, introduces us to the archaeology of transmedia, and reinstates the fact that it's not a new phenomenon.

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Conan the Barbarian : Transmedia Adventures of a Pulp Hero

Paolo Bertetti

Abstract: This chapter aims to explore the transmedia fictional world of Conan the Barbarian from a character-centred approach. The first part of the chapter focuses on the original Conan stories published in 1930s pulp magazines and shows how some storytelling mechanisms, such as word-building or user-generated contents, usually related to contemporary transmedia storytelling, were already active in the pulp era. In the second part, we concentrate on literary and transmedia expansions of the character from the 1950s to the 1990s (with a brief look at the franchise reboot of the 2000s), analysing the consistencies and variations of Conan’s identity across various media, variations and divergences that did not compromise the recognisability of the character by receivers or, to a lesser extent, their acceptance by fans.

Keywords: Conan the Barbarian; heroic fantasy; narrative expansions; pulps; transmedia characters; transmedia storytelling

Scolari, Carlos A., Paolo Bertetti, and Matthew Freeman. Transmedia Archaeology: Storytelling in the Borderlines of Science Fiction, Comics and Pulp Magazines. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. DOI: 10.1057/9781137434371.0006.

1.1Transmedia characters

In this chapter we have adopted a character-centred approach to the study of transmedia storytelling in line with the work of the scholars Philippe Hamon (1977) and Vincent Jouve (1992). Similar to them, instead of considering the fictional character an entity inscribed in the text itself, we see it as a semio-pragmatic effect produced by texts, the result of an interaction between text and receiver (reader or viewer), similar to other ‘text effects’ such as the ‘reality-effect’ (Barthes, 1968) or the ‘world-effect’ (Odin, 2000). The character is based on a reconstruction of the fictional world of the text on the part of the receiver, where the text provides information, hints, clues, signals that allow the receiver to identify an ‘effet personnage’ (‘character-effect’), the illusion of a unitary human figure, logically necessary for the development of the story (Hamon, 1977). The result is a sort of mental image, partly shared culturally and socially, rather than an idiosyncratic and private one. From a ‘socio-semiotic’ point of view, the characters are ‘cultural figures’ (Courtés, 1986), namely recognised entities circulating in the cultural universe. They are detectable in texts as well as in the memory and competence of the receiver, similar by their nature to folkloric motifs.

A character can be the overall result not only of a single text, but also of a diverse series of texts, producing a semiotic object ‘that finds its own being or “making sense” in a wider socio-cultural dimension, including transtextual and transmedia changes and intersemiotic translations’ (Marrone, 2003, 25–26). This forming of a character from texts and between different texts is similar to Levi-Strauss’ idea of myth, which is never completely enclosed in a single text. It is the case of legendary heroes (such as those of the old German legends) or the modern serial and transmedia characters, ranging from familiar classics such as Tarzan and Zorro to Harry Potter or, in our case, Conan the Barbarian. From this perspective, then a ‘transmedia character’ is a fictional hero whose adventures are told across different media forms, each one giving more detail about the life of the character.¹

In my opinion, the concept of a transmedia character is not simply one notion among others related to transmedia storytelling. I see it rather as the platform for a genuinely different logic of construction of transmedia, which merges with the logic of transmedia storytelling, as intended by Jenkins (2006a). It centres on the idea of a shared, fictional (or diegetic) world. For Jenkins, world-building is a key concern of transmedia storytelling; every text of a franchise extends storytelling by exploring different aspects of the shared world and showing different courses of action, such as by focusing on events that were only sketched in the primary (‘mothership’) text.

This world-centred logic is typical of the more recent transmedia productions, to which – not surprisingly – Jenkins (2006a) only refers. I believe conversely that transmedia is not simply a phenomenon that has emerged in recent years on account of technological convergence but rather one that can be traced back almost to the origins of the modern cultural industry between the end of the 1800s and 1900s. We could say that older forms of transmedia franchises were constructed on character sharing rather than on the logics of a particular world. In this regard Scott (2009) introduces the notion of the character-oriented franchise, tracing the origins of transmedia productions as far back as the age of silent movies, identifying economic and promotional strategies common to contemporary media franchises. Even Jenkins (2009), harking back to the topic, seems to suggest a similar idea:

We might well distinguish Felix [the Cat] as a character who is extracted from any specific narrative context (given each of his cartoons is self-contained and episodic) as opposed to a modern transmedia figure who carries with him or her the timeline and the world depicted on the ‘mother ship,’ the primary work which anchors the franchise. As I move through this argument, I will connect transmedia to earlier historical practices, trying to identify similarities and differences along the way.

Actually, fictional worlds (transmedia or otherwise) and fictional characters are not consistent. With the exception of some special cases, such as Robinson Crusoe, fictional worlds are generally inhabited by a multitude of characters (are ‘multipersonal’; see Dolezel, 1998), and the different stories that are told in these shared universes may focus on any one of them. Conversely, one particular character may appear in different narrative worlds. In fact, this character may appear in totally different narrative settings according to the story being told. But, even though the different incarnations of one character share a common setting, it does not necessarily follow that they share a common fictional world. From a semiotic perspective, a fictional possible world is not only a possible state of things, or a set of objects and individuals provided with properties, but also a set of action predicates that define a given course of events (Eco, 1979, 131). It is therefore possible to say that transmedia storytelling does not simply comprise of a shared world, but also of an acted shared world (Bertetti, 2014).

If the fictional world also includes transformations acted within it, then the concept of narrative coherence becomes a central topic (Jenkins, 2006a). In fact, on the basis of counterfactual logic (Eco, 1979), every different course of action inevitably engenders a different possible world. This is exactly what occurs in many character-oriented franchises, where the character’s nature and the storylines contrast with predecessors as they are rewritten and move from one medium to another. Conan the Barbarian, as we will see, is an exemplary case of study.

1.2Barbarian genesis

Conan the Barbarian is definitely a popular figure in mass culture, as evidenced by the variety of media productions featuring him: movies, online RPG, comic books, novels, television series, and so on. For many his most famous incarnation is still the muscular warrior played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the film directed by John Milius more than 30 years ago; for others it is the savage barbarian in Frank Frazetta’s illustrations, an out-and-out icon for generations of Heavy Metal fans.

Actually the Conan story goes back much further, making him one of mass culture’s most popular and long-lasting creations. His origins are rooted in the rich humus of pre-war pulp magazines. He made his first appearance in ‘The Phoenix on the Sword’ which was included in a December 1932 issue of Weird Tales, one of the most legendary magazines of the pulp era. Specialising in fantasy and horror fiction, Weird Tales was well known for having published many of H.P. Lovecraft’s tales.

Conan’s creator was Robert E. Howard, a prolific Texan pulp fiction writer. Born in 1906, he devoted his short life (he died by his own hand on June 11, 1936) to writing for many different genres: oriental adventures, noir, western, sport fiction (mainly about the boxing world, which he knew well from his success as an amateur boxer), historical fiction and even romantic fiction. But he was most famous for his fantasy writing.²

During the last part of his life, Howard published 16 Conan tales and the novel The Hour of the Dragon. A further four complete stories were found among his papers after his death. These were published posthumously in the 1950s and 1960s. Three unfinished stories were also discovered, one of which is set in Conan’s world, where he plays only a minor role. Howard also sketched the plot for a fourth story as well as writing a pseudo-historical essay, ‘The Hyborian Age’, in which the author outlines the history and geography of Conan’s imaginary world. This was also published posthumously.³

Howard is often considered to be the father of heroic fantasy (or sword and sorcery), a kind of fantasy adventure fiction. These stories are often set in exotic or imaginary medieval-like kingdoms (Howard preferred to write about the former) where the magic prevails. Sword and sorcery stories usually focus on a sword-wielding hero who faces supernatural perils. Unlike literary works of high fantasy, such as J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings or C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia that bring together chivalric adventures, fairytale traditions and myth, chivalric and fairytale elements play a less important role in heroic fantasy. Here the emphasis is on action and adventure, and sources of inspiration are less likely to be the Arthurian legends or Nordic and Celtic mythologies. Inspiration for the new genre can be found in the work of popular romance writers like H. Ridder Haggard and Talbot Mundy, who experimented with an exciting blend of history and adventure, exoticism and magic. Lord Dunsany’s fantasy tales, published at the beginning of the last century, and A. Merrit’s The Ship of Ishtar (1924) were also key influences. Planetary romances such as the Martian Novels by the earlier cited Edgar Rice Burroughs (whose first, Under the Moons of Mars, came out in 1912) were also important in helping to define the distinctive traits of the sub-genre. If we overlook their weak rationalisation and setting on an alien planet, their narrative situations and figurative imagery have a lot in common with those of the incoming sword and sorcery writing.

Howard’s The Shadow Kingdom (1929) is conventionally regarded as being the first heroic fantasy story – at least in America (Tompkins, 2006). Its heroic main character is King Kull of Valusia. Although similar to Conan in many ways, Kull did not achieve the level of popularity that was awaiting Conan. Both are barbarian mercenaries who become rulers of a great civilised nation in a mythical proto-historic world in the aftermath of a military coup d’état. The Phoenix on the Sword was actually a rewrite of the unsold King Kull story, By This Axe I Rule. In it Howard changed the main character, the setting and a few scenes, turning the focus onto action and supernatural elements (Louinet, 2003). Nevertheless, the two characters have a lot in common, but while Kull is a thoughtful and troubled character, Conan fills his tales with dynamic adventure. From a semiotic point of view this genesis is interesting, as it shows that the identity of a character, at least in popular literature, depends only up to a certain point on his doing (i.e. his deeds). The same story can be told with either Conan or Kull in the leading role, and the construction of the character is in many ways the result of transforming and recombining properties and attributes of a figurative kind. As if to say that, regardless of Vladimir Propp (1958), the distinction between constants (functions) and variables (attributes of dramatis personae) was clearly present in the productive practice of popular writers.

As with Kull, Conan is an outstanding and distinctive character, at least compared to most of the fictional characters from the pulp era (as well as some of his later transpositions). Despite his savagery and roughness, his absolute trust in strength and the sword, Conan is not a wicked person. Of course, he steals and kills, but he does so according to a personal, barbaric code of honour. He is loyal to his friends and respects the valour and nobility of the enemy; he is neither deceptive nor sneaky. Unlike a lot of adventure fiction, the Conan stories written by Howard are not based on the classic Manichaeism between good and evil: the Conan tales are essentially about a different kind of contrast. The theme explored is that of the barbarian who comes into contact (or rather clashes) with a more ancient and refined civilisation, and it rests ‘on the opposition between the innocent man (and yet not integrated into his world: the Barbarian, the pariah) and a society that appears corrupt and incomprehensible to him’ (Lippi, 1989, 6).

Besides the style of the stories and the nature of their main character, what really differentiates the Conan and Kull series is their setting. Although both characters inhabit imaginary kingdoms, the Conan stories occur in a much larger, richer and more fascinating fictional world during the mythical Hyborian Age. This is a sort of imaginary proto-history that Howard placed 12,000 years in the past, ‘between the years when the ocean swallowed Atlantis and the gleaming cities, and the years of the rise of the Sons of Aryas’, as told in the Nemedian Chronicles, the pseudobiblion quoted in the opening of The Phoenix on the Sword.⁴

The Hyborian Age is actually a patchwork of many different ages and regions, a sort of giant Disneyland where a myriad of possible scenarios for adventure stories coexist. Its fabulous kingdoms and their names conjure up very different eras and civilisations: Stygia, for example, is a fantastic and fictional version of ancient Egypt; Shem corresponds to biblical Palestine; Vendhya is the mysterious India of oriental adventure stories; Brythunia resembles Early Medieval Britain; Turan roughly corresponds to the Ottoman Empire (in fact it was founded b...