Transmedia Storytelling and the Apocalypse

Transmedia Storytelling and the Apocalypse

Stephen Joyce

Transmedia Storytelling and the Apocalypse

Stephen Joyce Aarhus University Aarhus C, Denmark

ISBN 978-3-319-93951-3    ISBN 978-3-319-93952-0 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93952-0 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950237 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Johan Swanepoel / Alamy Stock Photo Cover Design: Tjaša Krivec This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

To my grandmother, who started calling me “professor” at age ten; looks like the nickname stuck

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my colleagues at Aarhus University for their invaluable feedback on rough drafts of the book, especially Susan Yi Sencindiver, Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen, and Matthias Stephan, as well as the Cultural Transformations research group for organising writing retreats with plenty of cake. Thanks also go to my students in the BA project course “American Apocalypse: Visions of Armageddon in Modern American Culture,” the MA course “Old, New, and Transmedia Fictions of Disaster: Modern Media and the Apocalypse,” and the BA elective “Media Convergence.” They were unfailingly knowledgeable, patient, and articulate in explaining what was wrong with my concepts, how the way people engage with media has changed, what social media is, the most revolutionary changes in major narrative media, and why I should get rid of my old Nokia and for the love of God get a smartphone. I hope they also learned something. Thanks finally to Lina Aboujieb and Ellie Freedman at Palgrave Macmillan for their encouragement, professionalism, and tactful reminders that those deadlines I had blithely agreed to a few months back were arriving on Friday. I would still be doodling in the margins of a half-­ written Chap. 4 if it weren’t for their support. Elements of certain chapters in this book have appeared in different articles and are here reprinted with kind permission: Parts of Chap. 5 previously appeared in: Joyce, Stephen. 2016. The Last Non-Judgment: Postmodern Apocalypse in Battlestar Galactica. In The Last Midnight: Essays on Apocalyptic vii

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

­ arratives in Millennial Media, eds. Amanda Firestone, Leisa A. Clark, N and Mary F.  Pharr, 60–68. Jefferson: McFarland. By permission of McFarland & Company, INC., Box 611, Jefferson NC 28640. Parts of Chap. 6 previously appeared in: Joyce, Stephen. 2015. The Rapture at the World’s End: Non-optional Choice and Libertarianism in New Media. Synthesis 6: n. pag. Parts of Chap. 7 previously appeared in: Joyce, Stephen. 2016. The Double Death of Humanity in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Transatlantica 2: n. pag.

Contents

Part I Portal   1 1 Doomsday Dreaming   3 2 The End of the Media as We Know It  15 3 The Appeal of the Apocalypse  37

Part II Post-apocalypse  55 4 The Endings of I Am Legend  57 5 Battlestar Galactica’s Post-9/11 Apocalypse  77 6 Worldbuilding and World Destroying in BioShock and  The Last of Us  99

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7 Convergence Publishing and Prestige Niches 121 8 Antichrist Obama and the Doomsday Preppers 143

Part III Paradigms 163 9 The Many Deaths of The Terminator 165 10 The Many Lives of The Walking Dead 185 11 Epilogue: After the End 207 Index 213

PART I

Portal

CHAPTER 1

Doomsday Dreaming

On screen the stark images. The sun pale in the dusty sky. The streets overgrown with grass. A lone survivor peering up at the infinite rows of blank windows, fragments of our world at her feet. A perfectly functioning and useless television. A game controller tossed to one side. A faded comic book asking us to believe in Captain America. “Bedrock, this. The cold and the silence. The ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void. Carried forth and scattered and carried forth again. Everything uncoupled from its shoring. Unsupported in the ashen air. Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief” (McCarthy 2006, 12). These the words our time chooses for entertainment. If cultural historians of the future were to look back at the early twenty-­ first century, they would observe that we were unusually obsessed with the end of civilisation as a form of amusement. Films lure us with spectacular images of global destruction, television series broadcast gritty post-­ apocalyptic dramas, and video games offer devastated cityscapes and wastelands to explore. Even the venerable novel has embraced the mania for post-apocalyptic destruction, while across every platform the zombie shuffles triumphantly. The ubiquity of these images may blind us to their fundamental strangeness: we don’t decorate our homes with images of the house burning down and our loved ones dying, so why do we relish entertainment that shows our cities in ruins and humanity nearly extinct? The post-apocalyptic is also a relatively new genre. While the apocalyptic is at least as old as the Book of Revelation, the post-apocalyptic is a © The Author(s) 2018 S. Joyce, Transmedia Storytelling and the Apocalypse, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93952-0_1

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distinctively modern fear. The idea that someone might survive the end of civilisation really only enters the English language with Mary Shelley’s The Last Man in 1826. You are probably wondering why you never heard that Mary Shelley didn’t just invent Frankenstein but also the post-apocalyptic genre. Truthfully, the book is hard to read and was critically panned in its own time. Yet here we first find those staples of post-apocalyptic fiction, the deadly plague that brings global panic with the “streets of Ispahan, of Pekin, and of Delhi … strewed with pestilence-struck corpses” (vol. II, ch. IV) and the marauding gangs of the post-apocalyptic wasteland as desperate American pirates attack the British Isles (vol. II, ch. IX). As civilisation breaks down, we are treated to now familiar scenes of survivors amidst the ruins of plenty. It is a sign of just how new the post-apocalyptic genre is that it feels odd to read such passages in Shelley’s early nineteenth-century diction and syntax: As the rules of order and pressure of laws were lost, some began with hesitation and wonder to transgress the accustomed uses of society. Palaces were deserted, and the poor man dared at length, unreproved, intrude into the splendid apartments, whose very furniture and decorations were an unknown world to him … when the boundaries of private possession were thrown down, the products of human labour at present existing were more, far more, than the thinned generation could possibly consume. To some among the poor this was matter of exultation. We were all equal now. (vol. III, ch. I)

The novel ends as the title suggests, with one lone survivor, an Ishmael to the world’s Pequod, left to narrate the tale of destruction. However, it didn’t spawn any significant successors as audiences were lukewarm about a narrative in which the world ends. The post-apocalyptic only began to gain a mass audience after World War II, when fears of nuclear war permeated popular consciousness. Books such as Earth Abides (1950) by George Stewart or Walter Miller’s A Canticle for Leibowitz (1960) grappled with the aftermath of apocalyptic events. Films such as Planet of the Apes (Franklin Schaffner 1968) or Dr. Strangelove (Stanley Kubrick 1964) took seriously (or perhaps not so seriously) the possibility of nuclear war. The shadow of the bomb helped drive the post-apocalyptic genre, but surprisingly, when the Cold War ended, the number of post-apocalyptic films, novels, TV series, comics, and video games significantly increased. In cultural studies, this rise in post-apocalyptic media is almost always linked with social anxieties: climate change and eco-apocalypse (Wright

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2015; Traub 2016), nuclear war (Brians 1984; Hendershot 1999), pandemics (Gomel 2000), descent into political dystopias (Knickerbocker 2010; Murphy 2013), a crisis in masculinity (Sugg 2015; Kelly 2016), rampant capitalism (Christopher 2015; Schleusener 2017), and that’s without even getting into zombies, which are often “seen as stand-ins for racial and ethnic Others” (Balaji 2013, 10) or, indeed, any of the above problems. As Andrew Williams argues, “the zombie has become a flexible cultural signifier with a seemingly limitless range of significance” (2016, 51), making it the perfect tool for the apocalypse. It can stand in for whatever you fear or hate the most. What is common to virtually all scholarship on the post-apocalyptic is the assumption that it reflects some kind of contemporary fear. Yet what bothers me about this reading is that it implies we are possibly the most cowardly generation ever to walk the earth. Previous generations faced down plagues, genocide, imperial conquest, world wars, famine, and fascism without embracing the post-apocalyptic genre or the modern zombie. Instead, somehow, they gave us the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the music of Mozart, the Romantic landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich, Modernism, Catch 22, the cinema. Our ancestors confronted severe threats to civilisation with none of our resources; why are we the ones who return repeatedly, obsessively, to visions of global annihilation? Every era has its own troubles. Suffering certainly isn’t unique to our time, but the fascination of the post-apocalyptic is. What is it, then, that fuels our dreams of doomsday? * * * Instead of psychoanalysing modernity or offering jeremiads against contemporary culture, this book is going to make a completely different kind of argument. In truth, I am not temperamentally suited to the role of doom prophet, crying out in the wasteland that our civilisation has sown the seeds of its destruction and we are on the verge of reaping the bitter harvest of capitalism/patriarchy/imperialism/racism/eco-devastation/artificial intelligence/genetic engineering/[insert your particular evil here]. I am wary of how cultural critics seem to be susceptible to the Morpheus complex, the belief that you are one of the select few who can see the Matrix that entraps the masses. It is, perhaps, a dream of many cultural critics to live the scene in The Matrix (The Wachowskis 1999) in which Morpheus strides through the urban throng while explaining the truth to a bewildered Neo:

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The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy, but when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters, the very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged and many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system that they will fight to protect it.

The belief that one is opening people’s eyes to the truth and calling them to action is a powerful drug. If I could balance Morpheus’ frameless sunglasses on my nose, I might be tempted to try it myself. My thesis in this book is more prosaic but perhaps more consequential. The primary reason our media have started mass-producing post-­ apocalyptic works is because something has changed in the mass media. This transformation has created a demand for a new type of product. The post-apocalyptic genre has risen in prominence because it is ideally suited to be such a product. The rest of the book tries to unpack that short paragraph. Two questions immediately arise: what is this transformation in the mass media and why is the post-apocalyptic perfectly suited to it? The obvious answer to the first question is the rise of the internet, but that doesn’t do justice to the complexity of the transformation that has been wrought. It is useful to think of a media eco-system, a complex network of relationships between industrial agents, technological platforms, government regulation, and audiences that is in a continual process of adjustment and rebalancing. Small changes can have unforeseen ripple effects, but the mass adoption of the internet is like the arrival of a big new beast that has profoundly affected the entire eco-system. However, it should be stressed that the internet has not, as yet, produced a significant indigenous narrative form. Its importance for media genres, therefore, is the effect it has had on narrative media. Financial models have been upended, creative possibilities expanded, and audience expectations transformed, but these have happened unevenly on different platforms. Therefore, this book devotes chapters to the four most significant narrative media—film, t­elevision, video games, and the novel—to see the forces pushing each one towards producing post-apocalyptic fictions. Perhaps the most significant change is the desire to share storyworlds across media. In Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins used The Matrix as

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a case study to define a new tendency for narratives to be spread across multiple platforms, a process he termed transmedia storytelling: Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes its own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story. (2007)

For example, the success of the first Matrix film launched a transmedia franchise, with a series of animated shorts collected in The Animatrix, video games that filled in key narrative gaps, and a series of comics exploring the world of The Matrix that accompanied the release of the second and third films. Transmedia storytelling also requires new audience habits, with fans working together to build knowledge of the narrative universe. “To fully experience any fictional world, consumers must assume the role of hunters and gatherers, chasing down bits of the story across media channels, comparing notes with each other via online discussion groups, and collaborating to ensure that everyone who invests time and effort will come away with a richer entertainment experience” (Jenkins 2008, 21). Since Jenkins’ influential study, numerous books and articles have been published on transmedia storytelling as it becomes ever more prominent in our mediascape. Yet no one has wondered about the connection between The Matrix as transmedia narrative and The Matrix as part of the post-apocalyptic genre. Perhaps this is because transmedia is a storytelling technique, a method of dispersing narrative information across platforms that can theoretically work in any genre. However, fragmented narratives often frustrate the demand for closure. A common complaint about modern film franchises is that many movies now feel like trailers for future films rather than complete works in themselves. Each text is also a paratext, pointing the way to other entries in the franchise. Transmedia thus favours infinitely suspended fictions, narratives that can forever be denied a conclusion. Given long-standing conventions regarding narrative closure in traditional media, not every genre is immediately suitable for such tales. Because of this, transmedia has developed most fully in genres such as science fiction or fantasy that are concerned with worldbuilding. As Jenkins explains, “More and more, storytelling has become the art of world building, as artists create compelling environments that cannot be fully explored or exhausted within a single work or even a single medium”

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(2008, 114). Matt Hills refers to this as the hyperdiegesis, “the creation of a vast and detailed narrative space, only a fraction of which is ever directly seen or encountered within the text, but which nevertheless appears to operate according to principles of internal logic and extension” (2002, 137). Mark J.P. Wolf notes that transmedia storytelling is highly effective at worldbuilding because “transmediality implies a kind of independence for its object; the more media windows we experience a world through, the less reliant that world is on the peculiarities of any one medium for its existence” (2013, 247). Hence, the multi-platform successes of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and the Marvel Universe are partly because our current mediascape enables the worldbuilding that is central to these franchises. Yet the post-apocalyptic has an inherent advantage over science fiction and fantasy in terms of franchised worldbuilding. Wolf argues that imaginary worlds depend on invention, completeness, and consistency. The latter two are always a problem in extended imaginary universes. “Completeness … refers to the degree to which the world contains explanations and details covering all the various aspects of its characters’ experiences, as well as background details which together suggest a feasible, practical world” (2013, 38), while “consistency is the degree to which world details are plausible, feasible, and without contradiction” (43). Fans of imaginary worlds scrutinise details for consistency and completeness and are quick to decry any violation of the world rules or contradictions in its history. The post-apocalyptic genre, however, usually has a simple worldbuilding formula: our world + a specific apocalyptic event. Thus, a film like The Matrix could achieve miraculous levels of tight exposition because our world provides the vast bulk of the completeness and consistency required, with an additional layer of future history on top. This also makes life easier for creators in other platforms. Anyone who wants to work on a transmedia expansion of Lord of the Rings or Star Wars needs to absorb a huge amount of world information to avoid angering fans with basic errors in completeness and consistency. An apocalyptic event, however, just requires taking our world and adding zombies or a new ice age or hostile robots bent on our destruction. One does not have to learn all the world lore of The Walking Dead to create a story in The Walking Dead universe. Of all the worldbuilding genres, the post-apocalyptic is the easiest for different creative teams on different platforms to participate in without violating the integrity of the narrative universe.

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The post-apocalyptic also has the advantage of being, by nature, an infinitely suspended narrative. In other genres, it can be a challenge to keep the protagonist’s goal endlessly out of reach; someday the Rebels must defeat the Empire, and Harry must defeat Voldemort, but in the post-apocalyptic the goal of restoring civilisation can never fully be accomplished. No matter what progress the characters make, the world will never be what it was. There is no logical, inevitable conclusion to a post-­ apocalyptic narrative. It ends whenever creators or audiences decide they have had enough. A third aspect of the genre that it makes it ideally suited for transmedia storytelling is how it activates audiences as hunter-gatherers of information. One of the genre’s archetypal scenes is the moment when the protagonist enters a deserted city without any explanation as to what has happened. Both Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002) and The Walking Dead rely on a character who has been in a coma and thus is as bewildered as the audience is. (The comedy show Community’s parody of the genre in “Modern Warfare” (2010) takes place after the main character takes a one-hour nap in his car and wakes up to discover the campus a ruined mess.) As viewers of a post-apocalyptic drama, we often spend our time scanning the frame for clues about this uncanny environment. The post-­ apocalyptic is thus perfectly adapted to forensic fandom because a major question is always “what happened to our world to turn it into this?” This technique of embedding narrative information in the mise-en-scene has been particularly important for video games, which must strike a balance between narrative and gameplay, with the player’s agency competing with authorial control. You may be wondering how I am defining the post-apocalyptic genre. As with any genre, it is difficult to provide a list of qualifying criteria without inviting problematic exceptions. For example, the TV series The Leftovers begins with 2% of the world’s population simply vanishing, a traumatic and mysterious event that draws on evangelical teachings of the Rapture, but does the series belong to the post-apocalyptic genre if civilisation doesn’t actually end? The plethora of post-apocalyptic worlds almost guarantees that any definition will engender dispute. Nevertheless, I should briefly explain the features that have guided my selections. First, the vast majority of post-apocalyptic narratives involve worlds that are different (if usually derived) from our own. They typically involve stories of survival by individuals or small groups, often in extreme conditions.

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Hence, they bear a strong family resemblance to the Robinsonade or castaway narrative, in which independence and survivalist expertise are balanced against the travails of social isolation and precarious micro-societies that experiment with different forms of order. These micro-societies offer audiences a chance to see the social contract rewritten from scratch, often becoming utopias or dystopias. Technology features as both threat and saviour, often being the source of the apocalypse (e.g. AI, nuclear war) even as characters repeatedly scavenge for or construct tools that help them survive. My working definition of the genre is thus: The post-­ apocalyptic is a portal fantasy in which the apocalyptic event functions as a portal to an alternate world defined by the central narrative tensions of independence-dependence, progress-regression, utopia-dystopia, and the dominant motif of ambivalence about technology. I expand on these aspects in Chap. 4, but of greater importance is how certain narrative features have risen to the fore because they are better suited to transmedia storytelling. For example, the good versus evil binaries of The Matrix and I Am Legend have gradually yielded to the moral complexity of Battlestar Galactica and The Walking Dead. This is partly for cultural reasons but also because the TV series were designed to be infinitely suspended narratives and moral complexity creates a greater range of potential narratives than a binary scheme. The post-apocalyptic genre isn’t simply suited to transmedia storytelling; it has adapted to fit this new form hand-in-glove, while the form of transmedia storytelling has been significantly influenced by the successful examples of post-­apocalyptic franchises such as The Matrix and The Walking Dead. We may call this process genre-medium coevolution, the co-development of a genre and new narrative platform through a symbiotic relationship that promotes both. The film critic André Bazin once wrote, “The Western is the only genre whose origins are almost identical with those of the cinema itself” (2005, 142) and speculated that the Western possessed “a secret that somehow identifies it with the essence of cinema” (143). Perhaps we may describe the Western as a new genre that was not only ideal for a medium that emphasises action and movement but whose open spaces helped inspire such techniques as crosscutting, showcased by D.W. Griffith in the ride to the rescue that concludes the silent classics The Lonedale Operator (1911) and The Battle at Elderbush Gulch (1913). The connection between the post-apocalyptic genre and transmedia storytelling is of a similar type: a new medium (or use of multimedia) for telling stories develops in tandem with a new, relatively flexible genre that adapts to the platform’s distinctive qualities.

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This approach does not eliminate the cultural angle. The rise of apocalyptic imagery is affected by the influence of evangelical Christianity on American culture, especially when George W. Bush became president. As we shall see, shows such as Battlestar Galactica developed a vision of the post-apocalyptic that was partly a counterpoint to the apocalyptic rhetoric Bush used to describe 9/11 and the War on Terror. Understanding the traditional appeal of apocalyptic rhetoric is important to understanding how the post-apocalyptic developed as a genre. Nevertheless, cultural products do not spring directly from the collective dreams of a people. Mass media products are part of a complex industrial process that filters the narratives creators try to tell to audiences. Understanding this process is at least as important as comprehending cultural trends. The challenge in this book, therefore, is to keep a balance between understanding transformations in the media eco-system, the co-­ development of a particular set of genre conventions, influences on the broader culture such as 9/11, and the rise of a new participatory culture among audiences. Braiding these strands into a coherent overall narrative means this book will not follow the standard academic structure of an introductory theoretical overview followed by a number of case studies. Instead, the argument will unfold throughout the book to mirror the complex process of genre-medium coevolution, especially as it intertwines with cultural pressures external to the media eco-system. The first part of the book, “Portal,” lays out the nature of the problem. Chapter 2, “The End of the Media as We Know It,” looks at the major structural changes in technology, regulation, and media economics that have transformed our mediascape. The puzzle, however, is why these changes have coincided with an explosion of apocalyptic images in mass entertainment. Chapter 3, “The Appeal of the Apocalypse,” considers apocalyptic culture in the USA, the influence of evangelical Christianity, and the source of apocalyptic rhetoric’s appeal, whether in religion, environmentalism, or political critique. However, this cultural perspective wraps the riddle in an enigma as the ancient and enduring appeal of apocalyptic narratives does not bear any significant relation to the characteristics of post-apocalyptic entertainment. The “Portal” section thus functions as the gateway to thinking about the curious rise of the post-apocalyptic genre across media by both explaining the grounds from which it emerged and the inability of those pre-conditions to explain its current popularity. The second section of the book, “Post-apocalyptic,” illustrates the process of genre-medium coevolution by showing how the genre developed across multiple platforms to emphasise those aspects best suited to

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transmedia storytelling: infinitely suspended narratives, moral complexity, worldbuilding, forensic fandom, and participatory audience cultures. The five chapters look at how convergence culture is affecting film, television, video games, print, and fandom respectively. The sequence does not reflect the importance of each medium to our mediascape or a chronology of the genre; instead, the case studies in each chapter provide a particular genre-­medium balance that allows the book to show the complex evolution of the post-apocalyptic in shifting production environments and cultural contexts. Chapter 4, “The Endings of I Am Legend,” uses the two radically different endings of the 2007 film to discuss the differences between the traditional apocalyptic narrative, explained in Chap. 3, and the emerging post-apocalyptic. I Am Legend is also instructive because it sits astride the paradigm shift between self-contained narratives in a single medium and transmedia storytelling, in that it almost launched a major transmedia franchise but then chose an ending that foreclosed any such opportunity. Chapter 5, “Battlestar Galactica’s Post-9/11 Apocalypse,” looks at the rise of seriality in contemporary TV dramas, as well as how the post-­apocalyptic began to reshape itself as a cultural response to the apocalyptic rhetoric the Bush administration used to frame 9/11. In contrast to film’s hesitation about open endings, television has embraced infinitely suspended narratives and brought seriality into the mainstream of popular entertainment. Chapter 6, “Worldbuilding and World Destroying in BioShock and The Last of Us,” examines the influence video games are exerting on our mediascape in terms of both industrial power and aesthetics. Video games are the medium that deals most directly with interactive audiences and games’ preference for intricate storyworlds to explore rather than linear plots has strongly influenced transmedia aesthetics. Chapter 7, “Convergence Publishing and Prestige Niches,” looks at how convergence culture is transforming print and why these changes have encouraged post-apocalyptic fiction. The final chapter (Chap. 8) in this section, “Antichrist Obama and the Doomsday Preppers,” looks at the differences between audiences for apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic narratives and argues that the differences between the genres manifest themselves in the different experiences they offer. Although the media studied in this s­ ection have been affected differently by structural changes in our mediascape, the net result of these changes has been to make the post-apocalyptic a highly attractive genre for creators in all major narrative media, while the experiences the genre provides have tapped into current trends in popular culture.

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The final section, “Paradigms,” provides an integrated analysis of two transmedia franchises, The Terminator and The Walking Dead. In Chapter 9, transmedia concepts developed in the first two sections are applied to explain why The Terminator has consistently failed to establish itself as a transmedia franchise, while Chapter 10 examines The Walking Dead as a paradigm of transmedia storytelling that seems to enjoy critical and commercial success on more platforms than almost any other franchise. The book concludes with an epilogue that discusses the transmedia concepts that have been developed during the study. With this overall scheme for the book in mind, it is time to begin our exploration of the complex reasons why our culture dreams obsessively of doomsday.

References 28 Days Later. 2002. Directed by Danny Boyle. Burbank: 20th Century Fox. Balaji, Murali. 2013. Thinking Dead: Our Obsession with the Undead and Its Implications. In Thinking Dead: What the Zombie Apocalypse Means, ed. Murali Balaji, 7–15. Lanham: Lexington Books. Bazin, Andre. 2005. What Is Cinema? Vol. 2. Berkeley: University of California Press. Brians, Paul. 1984. Nuclear War in Science Fiction, 1945–59. Science Fiction Studies 11 (3): 253–263. Christopher, David. 2015. The Capitalist and Cultural Work of Apocalypse and Dystopia Films. CineAction 95: 56–65, January. Community. 2010. Modern Warfare. Season 1, Episode 23. Directed by Justin Lin. Written by Emily Cutler. NBC, 6 May. Dr. Strangelove. 1964. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. Burbank: Columbia Pictures. Gomel, Elana. 2000. The Plague of Utopias: Pestilence and the Apocalyptic Body. Twentieth Century Literature 46 (4): 405–433. Hendershot, Cyndy. 1999. From Trauma to Paranoia: Nuclear Weapons, Science Fiction, and History. Mosaic 32 (4): 73–90. Hills, Matt. 2002. Fan Cultures. London: Routledge. Jenkins, Henry. 2007. Transmedia Storytelling 101, March 21. henryjenkins.org. Accessed 20 May 2018. ———. 2008. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. Fredericksburg: New York University Press. Kelly, Casey Ryan. 2016. The Man-Pocalypse: Doomsday Preppers and the Rituals of Apocalyptic Manhood. Text and Performance Quarterly 36 (2–3): 95–114. Knickerbocker, Dale. 2010. Apocalypse, Utopia, and Dystopia: Old Paradigms Meet a New Millennium. Extrapolation 51 (3): 345–357. McCarthy, Cormac. 2006. The Road. New York: Knopf. Miller, Walter. 1960. A Canticle for Leibowitz. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

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Murphy, Amy. 2013. Nothing like New: Our Post-Apocalyptic Imagination as Utopian Impulse. Journal of Architectural Education 67 (2): 234–242. Planet of the Apes. 1968. Directed by Franklin Schaffner. Burbank: 20th Century Fox. Schleusener, Simon. 2017. The Dialectics of Mobility: Capitalism and Apocalypse in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. European Journal of American Studies [Online] Online Since 18 December 2017, Connection on 27 July 2018. http://journals.openedition.org/ejas/12296; https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.12296. Shelley, Mary. 1826. The Last Man. London: Henry Colburn. Stewart, George. 1950. Earth Abides. London: Gollancz. Sugg, Katherine. 2015. The Walking Dead: Late Liberalism and Masculine Subjection in Apocalypse Fictions. Journal of American Studies 49 (4): 793–811. The Matrix. 1999. Directed by The Wachowskis. Burbank: Warner Bros. Traub, Courtney. 2016. Ecocatastrophic Nightmares: Romantic Sublime Legacies in Contemporary American Experimental Fiction. The Arizona Quarterly 72 (2): 29–60. Williams, Andrew P. 2016. Apocalyptic Absurdity: Dale Horvath, Raisonneur of The Walking Dead. Midwest Quarterly 58 (1): 51–68. Wolf, Mark J.P. 2013. Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation. New York: Routledge. Wright, Laura. 2015. Vegans, Zombies, and Eco-Apocalypse: McCarthy’s The Road and Atwood’s Year of the Flood. ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 22 (3): 507–524.

CHAPTER 2

The End of the Media as We Know It

What is fascinating about early writings on the internet is both how quickly its central properties were identified and how unwarranted the utopian optimism turned out to be. Nicholas Negroponte argued in Being Digital that “the monolithic empires of mass media are dissolving into an array of cottage industries” (1995, 57). Clay Shirky announced the death of the media consumer: “The Internet destroys the noisy advertiser/silent consumer relationship that the mass media relies upon … in the age of the Internet, no one is a passive consumer anymore because everyone is a media outlet” (2000). Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis heralded the arrival of “We Media” and participatory journalism: “the act of a citizen, or group of citizens, playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analysing, and disseminating news and information. The intent of this participation is to provide independent, reliable, accurate, wide-­ ranging and relevant information that a democracy requires” (2003, 9). Yes, the internet was going to take down media corporations and consumer capitalism and create real democracy. It was easier to believe this before the 2016 presidential election revealed the extent to which democratic publics, heavily influenced by media giants like Fox, can choose to live in their own partisan information bubbles. Yet all the writers above quickly perceived that the key change was the greater participatory power of audiences. Shirky was correct to note that “mass media’s role has been to package consumers and sell their attention to advertisers, in bulk” and that empowered audiences would destabilise © The Author(s) 2018 S. Joyce, Transmedia Storytelling and the Apocalypse, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93952-0_2

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the mass media’s financial structure. Bowman and Willis accurately described how traditional journalism was being challenged by “networked communities that value conversation, collaboration, and egalitarianism over profitability” (2003, 12). As Henry Jenkins notes, “consumer participation has emerged as the central conceptual problem: traditional gatekeepers seek to hold onto their control of cultural content, and other groups … want to give consumers the skills they need to construct their own culture” (2008, 204). Yet predictions about where this might lead tended to be utopian. One of the implications of thinking about media as an eco-system is recognising that actions in one niche have complex effects on the overall system. New technology enabled more active audiences; this, in turn, destabilised the financial basis of the mass media; but this did not mean that media corporations would throw their hands up and say, “Well, it was good while it lasted” and abandon their empires to the scrapheap of history. Actions in an eco-system spark complex chains of reactions until a new equilibrium is found. One way of thinking about the mediascape is in terms of four interacting spheres: technology, economics, law, and culture. The mass media are dependent on technology for production, broadcast, and reception. The arrival of a new technology, such as the personal computer, can initiate a major shift in what is technically possible. Such technologies also need to be mass-produced, which means creating a demand and an acceptable cost for satisfying it. Generally, desire to access cultural products creates the demand and producers determine a source of funding, such as advertising or subscriptions, to finance the medium. However, new media also create various legal issues. Producers usually want to safeguard copyright on their products, while governments and some sectors of the public want inappropriate material controlled. The final aspect is both the most important and the hardest to define: culture. This embraces both how users respond to the new medium and how creator expectations evolve once they realise the capacities available to them. These expectations are dynamic and hard to predict. A striking feature about early theorising on the internet is the absence of any mention of cats. Instead, theorists seemed obsessed with the internet’s implications for democracy and art, when most people just wanted to share amusing cat videos. It turns out that television, with its procession of dramas, sitcoms, and reality shows, has been denying people what they really want for decades. The interplay of these four factors plays a critical role in determining the topology of our mediascape. Each one is in constant evolution and

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impinging on all of the others. One of the key purposes of media theory from this perspective is to distinguish periods of relative equilibrium, in which the mass media create a relatively consistent range of products, and periods of relative flux, in which the overall system is evolving in unpredictable ways. These are not binary states. Periods of equilibrium are always drifting at the edges, while periods of flux may have clusters of stability amidst the broader uncertainty. Nor do periods of equilibrium require all four factors to work in harmony; eco-systems may be dynamically balanced between forces that are competing viciously with each other or facing internal crises. The challenge with media studies is attempting to perceive how all four factors are interacting at any given time. Media theorising is often impeded by a default assumption arising from the Marxist tradition that the economic sphere is paramount and any media system with an economic foundation in capitalism is by definition a social evil. Henry Jenkins has criticised some of the effects of this tradition: “Too often, work in critical and cultural studies sees a narrow conception of critique as the only goal of theory-making and often seeks to protect its independence from commercial interests at the cost of making meaningful interventions in public debates” (2014a, 289). Typically, theories drawing on Marxist critiques of hegemony emphasise the power of cultural producers over audiences, whereas Jenkins emphasises the power audiences have to interpret and rework the material broadcast by mass media. My sympathies here lie with Jenkins, who emphasises the clash between culture and economics and sees the law, particularly copyright control of fan art and fan fiction, as a crucial battleground in the current mediascape. While scholars in the Marxist tradition have done invaluable work illuminating how mass media shapes society, their theorising also has to be seen in the light of the lingering intellectual anxiety about why the long-­ anticipated proletarian revolution has not happened. Every radical political movement needs to explain why the majority has not embraced its programme and the obvious target is media bias. Ironically, and perhaps alarmingly, this leads many influential media thinkers to sound like far-­ right conspiracy theorists. As an example, the following quote from Adorno and Horkheimer’s famous essay “The Culture Industry” requires only one additional word to become a fascist conspiracy theory. I have inserted the word in parentheses below:

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The technical antithesis between few production centres and widely dispersed reception necessitates organization and planning by those in control. The standardized forms, it is claimed, were originally derived from the needs of the consumers: that is why they are accepted with so little resistance. In reality, a cycle of manipulation and retroactive need is unifying the system ever more tightly. What is not mentioned is that the basis on which technology is gaining power over society is the power of those [Jews] whose economic position in society is strongest. (2002, 95)

Adorno and Horkheimer’s account of the corporate mass media is oft-­ cited and the far right would agree with virtually all of it. The mass media does serve an economic elite. They would just ask that we go one step further and identify those whose “economic hold over society is greatest.” My point here isn’t to try and discredit the Marxist tradition, but we do need to liberate ourselves from some of its default assumptions about economics and cultural power. A lot of media theorising assumes that Big Media is a social evil and once “the people” are empowered then “the elites” will no longer be able to manipulate society for personal gain. These assumptions are largely responsible for causing theorists to misread the directions in which the internet would lead society. An example of this is the important study by Benkler et al. of right-wing social media use during the 2016 election. While liberals tended to share news items from mainstream centre-left sources such as The New  York Times, CNN, or The Washington Post, conservatives did not share articles from mainstream centre-right counterparts such as The Wall Street Journal or Fox News. Instead, their primary source of articles to share on social media was Breitbart. As the authors conclude, “a right-wing media network anchored around Breitbart developed as a distinct and insulated media system, using social media as a backbone to transmit a hyper-­ partisan perspective to the world” (2017). Conservative audiences have thus gone furthest in breaking the power of Big Media, but an empowered public may also feel free to express the worst aspects of white grievance politics and ethno-nationalism. The lesson may be that one should not romanticise “the people” nor automatically attack gatekeepers if you don’t know what is behind the gate. As Henry Jenkins observes, “far too much media reform rhetoric rests on melodramatic discourse about victimization and vulnerability, seduction and manipulation, ‘propaganda machines’ and ‘weapons of mass deception’” (2008, 247).

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This study acknowledges the complexity of the media eco-system by acknowledging the difficulty in knowing what effect any change will have on the overall mediascape. Media economics are important, but they do not govern the system. Corporations may restrict unprofitable forms of expression, but they also enable other forms. Rather than reflexively criticise Big Media, this chapter seeks to understand how structural changes in technology, media economics, government regulation, and audience habits have contributed to a profound shift in how we make and consume media. Combined, they have greatly enhanced the appeal of transmedia franchises for producers and consumers alike. The rise of transmedia, in turn, has been critical to the mass appeal of the post-apocalyptic genre.

Convergence Culture If you spend a lot of time writing, then like me you may have toyed with the idea of buying a typewriter because it has one advantage over a computer: you can’t do anything with a typewriter except type. Whereas, right now, I am also having one live chat, listening to music on YouTube, checking my emails, and attempting to write this paragraph. Then there is always the distraction of checking news sites, playing an online game, or watching some late-night comedy clips. Thus a whole morning goes by, with barely a paragraph to show for it. There is a persistent category error in referring to computers as a medium when, as Espen Aarseth explains, “the computer is … a flexible material technology that will accommodate many different media” (2004, 46). Today we often use the computer as the material substrate by which we experience all media: newspapers, music, films, novels, comics, television, video games, and more. This is why the computer has become such an integral part of our culture so quickly, with smartphones turning many of us into de facto cyborgs. At the same time, older media have not ceased to exist. We still have print newspapers, CDs and DVDs, television sets, gaming consoles, and good old-fashioned books. This should not be seen as a transition phase from a physical to a wholly digital culture. For example, in the run-up to Christmas 2016, the Entertainment Retailers Association in Britain announced that vinyl sales (£2.4 million) had surpassed downloads (£2.1 million) for the first time ever, announcing the return of a seemingly obsolete technology in  the age of music streaming (Ellis-Petersen  2016). Our mediascape is defined  by this interaction of new and old media, which Henry Jenkins

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describes  as  convergence culture: “by convergence, I mean the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behaviour of media audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they want” (2008, 2). It is a catchall term for distinct but related phenomena. Hay and Couldry note, “There are at least four ways that the expression ‘convergence’ has been deployed and its meaning solidified – as a description of new synergy (a ‘horizontal’ realignment) among media companies and industries, as the multiplication of ‘platforms’ for news and information, as a technological hybridity that has folded the uses of separate media into one another, and as a new media aesthetic involving the mixing of documentary and non-documentary forms” (2011, 473). Technological hybridity is something we all experience daily through our laptops and smartphones, but the other factors deserve some elucidation. Even though the internet has multiplied platforms for news and information, this process was occurring within each medium before the internet arrived. The truth is that the idea of a “mass medium,” which is so ingrained in our discourse, is now something of a misnomer. Ever since the emergence of film and radio in the early twentieth century, we have imagined a mass of silent people consuming the same electronic message. We have worried about the power the wielders of this message may hold, from Orson Welles’ The War of the Worlds broadcast to the music videos of Marilyn Manson. But there was always the basic assumption of a mass audience, when the audience for each medium has splintered and fragmented. Radio’s history is instructive. In the 1920s and 1930s, the most popular shows really could claim to speak to the nation. Amos ‘n’ Andy attracted 40 million listeners (one-third of the US population at that time), causing much of the nation to stop between 7:00 and 7:15 p.m. Radio’s status as a mass medium was ended by the arrival of television, with the president of NBC radio predicting in 1949 that “within three years, the broadcast of sound or ear radio will be wiped out” (Sterling and Kittross 2002, 285). However, radio adapted by focusing on things television didn’t do, such as music or local news. More specialised stations found smaller but stable audiences bound by music genre or location. This specialisation is increasingly true of television. Cable and satellite TV allowed a proliferation of channels and today even the most popular channels and shows command a declining share of the total audience. In the year 2000, when the first season of Survivor gripped the USA, its Nielsen ratings (17.4) wouldn’t even have breached the top 30 in 1970,

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when it would have been trounced by such … legends as Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In (22.4) or The Jim Nabors Hour (19.5). This trend was apparent even before streaming services emerged to challenge broadcast television. Television may be a dominant medium, but where would you go on television now to be heard by the mass audience? Even the nightly news programmes of major networks have seen a significant drop in audience share and no news anchor today can claim the authority of someone like Walter Kronkite. Their public is simply too small. One effect of this trend is the transformation of Fox News into a right-wing media organisation, which is an effective business strategy because if you can no longer attract the mass audience then it makes sense to corner a particular demographic. The transition from radio to television has perhaps given the false impression that the demise of one mass medium heralds the rise of another. From this naïve perspective, the internet will displace television the way television displaced radio. However, two related but distinct considerations demonstrate why this analogy won’t hold. Let us define the first as audience splintering: the more media there are, the more the mass audience will splinter into uneven chunks between them. Hence, one challenge the internet poses for other media is simply that it has splintered off another large chunk of the mass audience. The second consideration is audience fragmentation: the ratio at which a medium’s audience is divided between the different channels that medium offers. When television seized the mass audience, radio’s audience fragmented into thousands of different pieces, each of which could support smaller niche stations. As television’s audience began to fragment through channel proliferation, the internet seemed poised to take its place as the new mass medium. Unlike radio or television, though, the internet was born fragmented. It has the potential to be a mass medium, but with so many billions of websites featuring trillions of articles and videos and cats, it is almost impossible to attract the audiences that radio or television commanded at their peak. One consequence of splintering and fragmentation is that it is now clear how audiences are drawn to content rather than particular media. The strategy for negotiating this, whether one is a lone blogger or a media conglomerate, is to spread content across multiple platforms and piece together an audience from the different fragments. Let us imagine a lone blogger first. Any blogging guide will tell you it is important not just to write original content but to expand your social media presence. Serious bloggers need a Facebook page, accounts on Twitter and Instagram, a

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YouTube channel, and, importantly, they should tailor the content so each platform can build an audience on its own terms and funnel these separate audiences back to the main hub, the blog. The mass audience is not out there waiting to be tapped; instead, niche audiences have to be built and aggregated. Thus, one meaning of convergence culture is how content builds bridges between different platforms just as those platforms have themselves become less distinct due to changes in the material technology through which we experience them. The problem is that this requires having creative capacity across multiple platforms. For our lone blogger, this means learning how to use new apps appropriately; for media industries, it has meant an unprecedented wave of mergers and takeovers that have consolidated many different media companies under one umbrella, creating mega-conglomerates that dominate the global media marketplace. How this happened requires some understanding of government regulation.

From 7-7-7 to Deregulation As an exercise, I often ask my students to select a mega-conglomerate to see what it owns. These lists are never complete but that is not as important as watching the students’ disbelief at realising the extent of Disney or Time Warner’s holdings: “Wait, Disney owns ESPN?” “Time Warner owns the Cartoon Network and DC Comics?” “Hang on: Does Rupert Murdoch own both 21st Century Fox and News Corp? Does that mean he owns The Wall Street Journal and HarperCollins publishers and The Times in England, on top of the Fox network?” It is only when they compile these lists that they begin to understand the extent to which these companies are interconnected. One question that immediately follows is who thought it was a good idea to allow Rupert Murdoch, or any single person, to amass so much media power. “He makes Citizen Kane look like a small-town newspaper publisher,” one of my students commented. They often assume this is a legacy of the old days, when people didn’t understand the power of mass media. The actual history of media regulation shows, instead, that political regulation of the mass media has witnessed a sea change since the 1980s. When radio was invented, there were no regulations governing broadcasting. Anyone could broadcast on any frequency. This, naturally, led to total chaos on the airwaves, while the absence of stability frustrated audi-

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ences, who could never be sure when and on what frequency they could hear their favourite shows. The birth of radio is an object lesson in why markets do not magically produce the best outcome by themselves; there needs to be some force that establishes the parameters within which the market can operate. Finally, the Radio Act of 1927 and the broader Communications Act of 1934 brought order to the American market on the assumption that radio waves were “a limited and precious resource and therefore would be subject to government rules and regulations” (Sadler 2005, 101). No one had the right to own radio waves; instead, broadcasters had to apply for a license to use certain frequencies from the newly established Federal Communications Commission (FCC). A similar debate is occurring today over net neutrality, the principle that the internet is a public resource and thus internet service providers should not be allowed to discriminate between premium and regular traffic. The trustee model endorsed by the Communications Act of 1934 allowed the FCC to limit corporate power over broadcasting. To this end, it established the Duopoly Rule in 1940, preventing any person or company from owning more than one AM, FM, or TV station in any one market (except in special circumstances). In 1941, the FCC’s Report on Chain Broadcasting challenged the power of the two biggest networks, NBC and CBS, which together “accounted for more than one-half the total business of the entire industry.” In a summary of the holdings of the Radio Corporation of America (then the parent company of NBC), the commission wrote: In short, RCA occupies a premier position in fields which are profoundly determinative of our way of life. Its diverse activities give it a peculiarly advantageous position in competition with enterprises less widely based. Its policies are determined by a management subject to little restraint other than self-imposed. Whether this ramified and powerful enterprise with its consistent tendency to grow and to expand into new fields at the expense of smaller independent concerns is desirable, is not to be decided here. We have thought it proper, however, to call the attention of Congress and the public to the broader problems raised by this concentration of power in the hands of a single group. (1941)

One shudders to think how modern Republicans would respond to a government report using such language today, yet it shows the extent to which regulating private monopolies for the public good occupied policymakers during the New Deal.

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In 1953, as media stations proliferated, the FCC established the 7-7-7 rule, which stated that no party could own more than 7 AM stations, 7 FM stations, and 7 TV stations nationwide. Moreover, no single owner could reach more than 25% of the national audience in each medium. These rules limited the power of major networks and encouraged a diversity of voices in regional markets. In the wake of the Great Depression, American political institutions were keenly aware of how monopolistic corporations could imperil the public good and most FCC regulation was aimed at preventing the three largest networks from becoming wholly dominant. The mega-conglomerates we know today could never have come into existence under the 7-7-7 rule. So what happened? The short answer is that a new ideology emerged that pushed to “deregulate” industry. Deregulation, however, does not mean reduced regulation but changing the rules to favour some players over others. The FCC from its inception sought to restrain the power of big media corporations. After 1980, the ethos of government changed to favour big players at the expense of the small. In 1985, the 7-7-7 rule was changed to 12-12-12, although the 25% rule still applied. In 1992 this was changed to 18-18-12 and then two years later to 20-20-12. These moves generated little public controversy, so in 1996 the government introduced sweeping changes with a new Communications Act. A single company could now own an unlimited number of radio stations. The Duopoly Rule was dropped and cross-­ ownership rules greatly relaxed. The FCC was given the freedom to change the 25% rule, which it raised to 35%. However, in 2002, Fox Television argued that this was an arbitrary restriction and the courts agreed. Congress then passed a law creating a 39% national audience cap. Given that Donald Trump won the 2016 election with 46% of votes cast, and Fox News was by far the single most important news source for Trump voters (Gottfried et al. 2017), it is unclear how the public benefits from allowing one corporation such influence over popular discourse. Changes in American law are the most consequential for our media environment because the USA holds the crown jewels of the global media entertainment system – the six major Hollywood studios (Universal, 20th Century Fox, Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount, and Columbia). No other national cinema can compete with Hollywood. Moreover, these majors form a key part of the world’s largest media conglomerates (Comcast, 21st Century Fox, Disney, Time Warner, Viacom, and Sony respectively), all of whom have capacity across all media. Of the big four

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American TV networks, NBC is owned by Comcast, Fox is owned by Fox (obviously), Disney owns ABC, and the CBS Corporation is part of the Redstone family’s National Amusements, which also includes Viacom. Sony, Comcast, and Time Warner own the world’s three biggest record companies, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group respectively. Comcast is one of America’s leading internet service providers, Sony owns the PlayStation, Disney owns Marvel Comics and the world’s most famous amusement parks, while Time Warner even owns MAD Magazine. This is only a fraction of their full holdings. If media conglomerates now create franchises that span platforms, then that is partly because changes in regulation allowed such mega-conglomerates to emerge. These changes in the regulatory framework also indicate some roots of the populist surge in US politics. Take radio as an example. Under the 1994 rules, no party could own more than 40 radio stations nationally; by 2003, Clear Channel Communications “owned more than 1,250 radio stations nationwide or approximately about one out of every nine stations in the country” (Sadler 2005, 108). One argument for allowing networks to buy out local stations was that they could keep local stations afloat and save jobs. However, Clear Channel automated many stations and by 2002 the radio industry employed fewer people than it had in 1982. Try to picture it from the viewpoint of a struggling radio producer in the small-town mid-West. In the 1970s, radio had been a part of American culture for decades, had established a solid niche in music and local news, and looked set to be a fixture for at least the duration of your working life. Then in the 1990s, Clear Channel buys the station and a robot replaces you. There is no work at the next town over because a robot is also running their radio station. Talking heads on TV say your unemployment is a “structural condition” created by a mismatch of skills to available opportunities. There may still be some jobs in the big cities, but there are more unemployed people in your industry than ever competing for them and so the pay and benefits are decreasing as supply exceeds demand. You see that the owners of Clear Channel are rich beyond your wildest dreams so you know there is money in radio, but it is all going to those at the top. You suspect you were screwed, but you are not sure how. But one day someone will come who will articulate the anger you feel against a system that was rigged against you and when he does you hope he burns the whole rotten edifice to the ground.

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Franchising and Transmedia Given the current level of horizontal integration in media industries, it is no surprise that conglomerates have started thinking in terms of franchising. In contrast to the idea of synergy, which demands a high level of coordination across different products, franchising emphasises flexible partnership with different creators sharing the same intellectual property (IP). Unified control is difficult to impose and financing a range of products exposes even media giants to large risks, given the costs of making a blockbuster film, TV series, or console video game. According to Derek Johnson: In the shift toward post-Fordism, where corporations favoured flexible, temporary labour arrangements that reduced operating costs and limited long-term corporate risk, cultural production need not be fully consolidated under a single corporate umbrella. Instead, conglomerates frequently joined with independent partners to develop and extend intellectual properties across those multiple delivery channels. In this context, control of intellectual property resources became increasingly central to corporate strategy, both in their potential to be protected as proprietary and their potential to be widely shared and flexibly multiplied on a production level. (2013, 5)

Conglomerates do not operate like monolithic empires but as dispersed networks with many temporary workers whose disparate efforts are given coherence by their shared use of particular IP. As IP resources become central to business strategy, acquiring proven IP has become critical to success. The differences between synergy and franchising can be seen in how Time Warner developed Tim Burton’s Batman (1989) and Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy in the 2000s. Eileen Meehan has shown how Burton’s film was the engine for a train of products, with the then-­ extravagant $30 million budget constructing “the basic infrastructure necessary for manufacturing a line of films, albums, sheet music, comics, and novelisations” (1991, 54). What is noteworthy is that the comic book, novelisation, and video game were all straightforward adaptations of the film, thus using the movie as an advertisement for various Bat-media and related merchandise. However, perhaps the most successful offshoot of the Burton films was the critically acclaimed Batman: The Animated Series, which ran from 1992 to 1995 and expanded rather than replicated the film universe. Its success pointed towards more flexible models of ­franchise

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development. After Christopher Nolan’s reboot Batman Begins in 2005, Warner Bros. Digital initiated plans to produce a new series of Batman games. However, unlike in 1989, these games were not adaptations of the new film. As lead narrative designer Paul Crocker said, “We’ve been really lucky in the way that DC has let us work: it’s the core DC license, it’s nothing to do with the movies” (2009). The game designers could take advantage of the new hype around Batman but develop their own creation in a way that suited the medium. Franchising thus allows producers in different media greater creative independence, even as they leverage the power of famous intellectual properties. As Johnson puts it, “The products and content offered by media franchising, therefore, might be considered less in terms of unified brands and singular corporate interests, but instead as contested grounds of collaborative creativity where networked stakeholders have negotiated the ongoing generation, exchange, and use of shared cultural resources” (2013, 7). These are the structural origins of our current wave of transmedia storytelling: while new technology blurred the boundaries between media, and audiences splintered and fragmented across platforms, changes in regulation allowed the formation of vast conglomerates keen to exploit valuable intellectual properties across media. However, it is important to stress Johnson’s argument that franchising is not simply a product of conglomeration: “media infrastructures themselves changed as a result of the institutional embrace of franchising. Rather than having produced the media franchise as a simple effect, synergy, horizontal integration, and IP monopolies have been shaped and reshaped by franchising” (69). The conglomerates that have most successfully developed franchising are establishing dominance in key markets. According to film data website The Numbers, between 1995 and 2017 Warner Bros. and Disney began to secure dominant positions in the domestic film industry, with both making a little over 15% of the total market share for distributors compared to around 10–12% for the other Hollywood majors (“Market Share” 2018). From 2012 to 2017, Warner Bros. and Disney always occupied two of the top three slots for film distributors. Their success can largely be attributed to their most successful franchises, such as Star Wars or Harry Potter or Batman or the Marvel and DC Universes, which offer virtually guaranteed hits each year. While the other four studios can break into the top three with hits like Universal’s Jurassic World (2015) or Fox’s X-Men series, these franchises don’t provide the same reliable success that Warner Bros. and Disney’s top franchises do. The

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growing gap was dramatically underlined by the announcement in December 2017 that Disney would buy the bulk of 21st Century Fox’s entertainment assets for $52.4 billion. Increasingly, it seems the Big Six studios may become the Mega Two, and those two owe their success to their mastery of franchising valuable intellectual properties. Let us lay aside here what mega-conglomerates mean for democracy. What is certain is that we like what they sell. Their transmedia franchises can claim hundreds of millions of fans worldwide. Yet transmedia storytelling also represents a new challenge for creators. Traditionally, we expect a narrative to be contained within the confines of a volume or the two hours we spend in a cinema. Transmedia storytelling serves up something different. We know each entry is a fragment of a greater and as yet unfinished whole, a jigsaw piece in a puzzle still being designed. This is different from a novel published serially or a television series, because in transmedia storytelling each platform has its own team of creators. The film director does not also design the video game, illustrate the comic books, or write the prequel novel. The narrative in transmedia storytelling is thus being extended both spatially (to new storyworld locations) and temporally (with prequels, sequels, and coquels to existing works) by multiple creative teams in different media. The solution to this problem has typically been to focus less on linear plots and more on building storyworlds that can sustain multiple narratives. Marie-Laure Ryan argues that transmedia storytelling should actually be called transmedia worldbuilding: “It satisfies the encyclopaedist’s passion for acquiring more and more knowledge about a world, or the collector’s passion for acquiring more and more souvenirs, but not the detective’s passion for reconstructing a story out of disseminated facts” (2015, 4). One persuasive reason why fantasy and science fiction are such popular genres for transmedia storytelling is that they focus heavily on worldbuilding. Moreover, as Colin Harvey explains, “Fantasy fiction is better able to cope with the contradictions that arise when transmedial expansion occurs” (2015, 94). Unfortunate plot holes between different parts of the franchise can be resolved using alternate universes or time travel or magically resurrecting the dead, resources that realist narratives cannot rely on. The disgust Dallas generated when it brought Bobby Ewing back to life by explaining that one whole season was simply a dream sequence illustrates the problems realist narratives have reversing plot choices.

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However, while the nature of transmedia storytelling explains salient features of the modern mediascape, Jenkins’ definition indicates some tensions inherent in the concept: A transmedia story unfolds across multiple media platforms, with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole. In the ideal form of transmedia storytelling, each medium does what it does best – so that a story might be introduced in a film, expanded through television, novels, and comics; its world might be explored through game play or experienced as amusement park attraction. Each franchise entry needs to be self-­ contained so you don’t need to have seen the film to enjoy the game, and vice versa. Any given product is a point of entry into the franchise as a whole. Reading across the media sustains a depth of experience that motivates more consumption. Redundancy burns up fan interest and causes franchises to fail. (2008, 95–96)

There are a number of important points to be made here. If each entry is self-contained, can it also be valuable to the franchise as a whole? Spreading integral story information across platforms will excite some fans but may annoy many more. As Jason Mittell explains in relation to television dramas, “The constraints of the television industry and norms of television consumption insist that transmedia extensions from a serial franchise must reward those who partake in them but cannot punish those who do not” (2015, 262). A major creative challenge in transmedia storytelling is therefore how to reward fans for following the franchise across platforms while not punishing casual viewers by referencing narrative information from different media. We accept a novel in a fantasy series such as Game of Thrones referring to previous novels or an episode in the TV show referring to a previous episode; but if an episode of Game of Thrones relied on information that was only present in the books, then fans of the show would naturally become frustrated. Yet without the promise of integral story information, what is to motivate fans to experience transmedia extensions? Let us call this issue the transmedia narrative integrity dilemma or (because that’s a mouthful) the trans-integrity dilemma. At one pole, we have a franchise in which all integral story information is contained within the core medium, with the transmedia extensions merely offering extra shading. At the other pole, we have a fully fledged transmedia experience with no core medium as integral story information is spread across ­multiple

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platforms and the only way to follow the story is to experience all the extensions. In practice, the first renders the transmedia extensions superfluous and the second demands too much time and attention for a mass audience to embrace. Therefore, creators strive for a point somewhere between these two poles. At least some important information must be revealed in the extensions, but this cannot be enough to alienate fans who simply want to experience the core medium’s narrative. Hence, the information should be both significant and secondary, which is a paradox that leads to the trans-integrity dilemma. Transmedia storytelling also raises questions about how anyone could organise such a process. Being a director or TV showrunner is hard enough without also coordinating novels, comics, video games, websites, and so on, simultaneously. Not all transmedia extensions are equal. The most expensive and profitable elements will take precedence. As Mittell explains, “In the high stakes industry of commercial television, the financial realities demand that the core medium of any franchise be identified and privileged, typically emphasizing the more traditional television form over newer modes of textuality. Thus in understanding transmedia television, we can identify the originating television series as the core text with transmedia extensions serving as paratexts” (2015, 255). Michael Clarke finds limited coordination because paratext creators have little contact with the creative core. “Ultimately, the picture that emerges of transmedia work will be an uneven one with sharp divides separating the creative core from a series of supervisors and freelancers, hired on a per-project basis to assemble a large share of transmedia’s extra work in comic books as well as the other media” (2012, 30). The freelancers are expected to follow some basic guidelines: don’t contradict the main series, but also don’t replicate the show. Transmedia extensions thus often focus on side characters and their backstories because freelancers cannot interfere with the main plot; “In each case, these transmedia creatives respond to minimized contact with a standardized output that avoids blatant experimentation or innovation specifically because of their unique organizational pressures” (2012, 109). This industrial structure hinders transmedia extensions from providing integral story information. The imperative not to interfere with the franchise’s core medium is reinforced by the importance of IP rights. A vital issue for IP holders (imagine, e.g. J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter) is that those tasked with expanding it onto new platforms do not fundamentally transform or damage what she has worked hard to develop. Hence, transmedia

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extensions are often strongly hedged by legal restrictions. Colin Harvey has developed useful categories for transmedia franchises based on the extent of the IP holder’s involvement. “Directed transmedia storytelling refers to the instances of transmedial narrative expansion where the holder of the IP rights exercises strict control over the transmedia artefact in question” (2015, 187). In this form of transmedia storytelling, the franchise’s creative core is heavily involved in all extensions. However, the most common form of transmedia storytelling is probably “devolved transmedia storytelling … a slightly more distant relationship between IP holder and, generally, a third party tasked with developing, producing and distributing the material in question” (188). This is the situation described by Clarke with a sharp division between the creative core and freelancers. Given the legal threat over infringement of IP rights, especially when dealing with conglomerates who can afford top legal counsel, one can understand why freelancers producing devolved transmedia extensions play safe and avoid anything that might harm the franchise’s integrity. However, a third category complicates everything: “Detached transmedia storytelling … which exists beyond (but is nonetheless determined by) the legally proscribed arrangements governing directed and devolved transmedia storytelling” (188). This represents all unauthorised extensions of a transmedia franchise. Let us return to our Harry Potter example. One of the guidelines for expanding the series is the absence of explicit sex, but go online and search for images of Harry Potter/Draco Malfoy and you will rapidly find a lot of material that is unlikely to find the approval of J.K. Rowling or Warner Bros. The growth of fan communities online has led to an explosion of fan fiction and fan art. Fanfiction.net has over 750,000 Harry Potter fan stories, and that is only one fan fiction site. Are these fan works part of the franchise? In detached transmedia storytelling, no force binds the different creators together, leading to a storyworld that may expand in multiple, contradictory directions simultaneously. Such a narrative universe offers tremendous freedom to creators at the expense of narrative integrity. The existence of fan-driven detached transmedia storytelling highlights the power of fan communities in relation to franchises. All media depend on finding audiences, but transmedia storytelling depends on audiences working together to build understanding of complex storyworlds through fan wikis, blogs, forums, and social media, while offering opportunities for greater immersion through fan conventions, cosplay, and other fan activities. Michael Clarke points out the crucial role that fan wikis and forums

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also play in transmedia creation, particularly for freelancers in ancillary media: “Because textual information is meted out on a need-to-know basis, ‘fannish’ knowledge fills in the gaps and allows for the production of meaningful ancillary products” (2012, 39). Writers of tie-in novels and comics often use fan sites when researching details as somebody, somewhere, can tell you the planet Jar Jar Binks comes from so you don’t have to watch The Phantom Menace again. This demonstrates the increasing contact, feedback, and even co-creation between audiences and producers. This can lead to conflict, but in transmedia storytelling, high levels of audience engagement are essential.

Creative Futures Transmedia storytelling represents an exciting potential art form, even if it “has always been a blue-sky concept, the idealised intersection between the hopes of production personnel to gain more respect for their creative contributions, of networks to intensify viewer engagement, and of fans for more ‘complex’ forms of storytelling” (Jenkins 2014b, 244). Of course, as Matthew Freeman has shown, The Wizard of Oz, Tarzan, and Superman all functioned as transmedia properties long before convergence culture (2017). Current research on transmedia storytelling also focuses on storyworld disjunctions as different media adapt to draw in audiences. Fast and Örnebring remind us, “brand-building ambitions often trump world-­ building considerations, with the effect that the imaginary worlds of franchises are rarely as coherent and consistent as they may wish to appear” (2015, 649). Yet there is no denying that the new century brought a changing vision for how to develop narratives across platforms. In 2007, the director-general of the BBC, Mark Thompson, declared: One of the fundamental lessons we learned from “Creative Future” was the value you can grow, the audience you can build, when you think about projects not just in terms of single linear broadcast windows but across different platforms and media. It will be much harder to justify very high budgets for content that only gets a single outing on a linear channel. But that’s no longer the right way to think about content commissioning.

In 2010, the Producer’s Guild of America created the new category of transmedia producer, “the person(s) responsible for a significant portion

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of a project’s long-term planning, development, production, and/or maintenance of narrative continuity across multiple platforms, and creation of original storylines for new platforms” (Producers). On a darker note, the 2008 Writer’s Guild Association strike in Hollywood took issue with transmedia extensions, declaring: Promotional use does not make it free. Many of these new materials are being justified by the companies by their value in promoting a series. But, unlike the on-air promotion or ad copy of the past, these new forms also cross over the line into content. They are entertainment. This means they must be paid for as WGA-covered writing, including residuals for reuse. (qtd. in Mann 2014, 120)

You know something new and important is happening when people start fighting over the profits. In the twenty-first century, transmedia storytelling has certainly arrived in the consciousness of media producers and audiences alike. And what did we do with it? We used it to imagine our civilisation getting wiped out.

References Aarseth, Espen. 2004. Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Problem of Simulation. In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, ed. N. Wardrup Fruin and P. Harrigan, 45–55. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Adorno, Theodor, and Max Horkheimer. 2002. The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception. In Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments, ed. Gunzlin Schmid Noerr, trans. Edmund Jephcott, 94–136. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Benkler, Yochai, et al. 2017. Study: Breitbart-Led Right-Wing Media Eco-System Altered Broader Media Agenda. Columbia Journalism Review, March 3. https://www.cjr.org/analysis/breitbart-media-trump-harvard-study.php Bowman, Shane, and Chris Willis. 2003. We Media: How Audiences Are Shaping the Future of News and Information. hypergene.net. Accessed 8 June 2018. Clarke, Michael J.  2012. Transmedia Television: New Trends in Network Serial Production. New York: Bloomsbury. Crocker, Paul. 2009. Interview: Paul Crocker of Rocksteady on Batman: Arkham Asylum. Interview by Kevin Kelly. Engadget.com, May 29. Accessed 14 June 2018. Ellis-Petersen, Hannah. 2016. Tables Turned as Vinyl Sales Overtake Digital Sales for First Time in UK. The Guardian, December 6.

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Fast, Karin, and Henrik Örnebring. 2015. Transmedia World-Building: The Shadow (1931-Present) and Transformers (1984-Present). International Journal of Cultural Studies 20 (6): 636–652. Federal Communications Commission. 1941. Report on Chain Broadcasting. http://earlyradiohistory.us/1941cb06.htm#06parta. Accessed 13 May 2018. Freeman, Matthew. 2017. Historicising Transmedia Storytelling: Early Twentieth-­ Century Transmedia Story Worlds. London: Routledge. Gottfried, Jeffrey, Michael Barthel, and Amy Mitchell. 2017. Trump, Clinton Voters Divided in Their Main Source for Election News. Pew Research, January 18. http://www.journalism.org/2017/01/18/trump-clinton-voters-dividedintheir-main-source-for-election-news/ Harvey, Colin. 2015. Fantastic Transmedia: Narrative, Play, and Memory Across Science Fiction and Fantasy Story Worlds. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Hay, James, and Nick Couldry. 2011. Rethinking Convergence/Culture: An Introduction. Cultural Studies 25 (4–5): 473–486. Jenkins, Henry. 2008. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. Fredericksburg: New York University Press. ———. 2014a. Rethinking ‘Rethinking Convergence/Culture’. Cultural Studies 28 (2): 267–297. ———. 2014b. The Reign of the ‘Mothership’: Transmedia’s Past, Present, and Possible Futures. In Wired TV: Laboring Over an Interactive Future, ed. Denise Mann, 244–268. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Johnson, Derek. 2013. Media Franchising: Creative License and Collaboration in the Culture Industries. New York: New York University Press. Mann, Denise. 2014. The Labour Behind the Lost ARG: WGA’s Tentative Foothold in the Digital Age. In Wired TV: Laboring Over an Interactive Future, ed. Denise Mann, 118–139. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Market Share for Each Distributor, 1995–2018. 2018. The Numbers. https:// www.the-numbers.com/market/distributors. Accessed 29 May 2018. Meehan, Eileen. 1991. ‘Holy Commodity Fetish, Batman!’: The Political Economy of a Commercial Intertext. In The Many Lives of the Batman: Critical Approaches to a Superhero and His Media, ed. Roberta E. Pearson and William Uricchio, 47–65. London: Routledge. Mittell, Jason. 2015. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York University Press. Negroponte, Nicholas. 1995. Being Digital. London: Hodder & Stoughton. Producers Guild of America. Credit Guidelines for New Media. producersguild. org. http://www.producersguild.org/?page=coc_nm. Accessed 3 June 2018. Ryan, Marie-Laure. 2015. Transmedia Storytelling: Industry Buzzword or New Narrative Experience? Story Worlds 7 (2): 1–19. Sadler, Roger L. 2005. Electronic Media Law. London: Sage.

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Shirky, Clay. 2000. RIP the Consumer, 1900–1999. shirky.com. Accessed 13 Mar 2018. Sterling, Christopher H., and Jam Michael Kittross. 2002. Stay Tuned: A History of American Broadcasting. 3rd ed. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum. Thompson, Mark. 2007. Keynote Speech Given to Media Summit 2007  – The Future of Creative Content Conference – London. BBC, January 18. http:// www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/speeches/stories/thompson_summit.shtml. Accessed 28 Mar 2018.

CHAPTER 3

The Appeal of the Apocalypse

“Welcome to The Coming Apocalypse!” intones the announcer with the cheerily plastic voice of an infomercial offering a great deal on home gym equipment. A blaze of flame resolves into the glittering words “The Coming Apocalypse.” Urgent orchestral music surges and then fades as we are introduced to Pastor Paul Begley, who will be our guide to understanding why the world is ending. Our host sits at a simple desk with an open copy of the Bible, a notepad, and a cup of tea; the set-up is disturbingly similar to my own, except without the half-empty wine bottle for late evening inspiration. With his neat goatee and glasses, Begley could be any number of my colleagues as he performs a close reading of the Bible, except we don’t have over 135,000 subscribers to our YouTube channels. If there were as much interest in literary history as there is in the apocalypse, we would all be superstars. It is all too easy to ridicule doom prophets, chiefly because they are always wrong. In this episode of the YouTube series The Coming Apocalypse, Pastor Begley is excitedly explaining the Blood Moon prophecy, which was propagated by Pastor Mark Blitz and Pastor John Hagee (Begley 2016). Both preachers wrote widely read books about the rare tetrad of blood moons occurring through 2014 and 2015, which they argued were a clear sign of the apocalypse (Blitz 2014; Hagee 2013). According to Hagee, “The heavens are God’s billboard. He’s been sending signals to Earth, and we haven’t been picking them up … to get four blood moons you need something absolutely extraordinary in astrological terms” (qtd. in Austin 2015). However, the pastors then broke the golden rule of ­ successful doom © The Author(s) 2018 S. Joyce, Transmedia Storytelling and the Apocalypse, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93952-0_3

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­ rophecy: never specify the date. Once they declared the end would come p in the early hours of September 28, 2015, they had unwittingly entered the world of science by making a falsifiable prediction. To the horror of people everywhere, September 28 turned out to be a Monday morning like any other. The alarm clocks still went off and we all had to haul ourselves out of bed to go to work. This must have been especially galling for those who had confidently expected to be killed in their sleep. Where’s an apocalyptic event when you need one? The Blood Moon prophecy isn’t even remotely the largest apocalyptic scare of the past half century, nor are all apocalyptic narratives religious; think of the panic around Y2K or the publicity given to the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012. Discussions of climate change often tend to be shrouded in apocalyptic rhetoric, while political discourse from both left and right during the 2016 presidential election cast the USA as a nation declining towards an apocalyptic crisis, culminating in Donald Trump’s “American Carnage” inauguration speech. That’s not even getting into the number of online videos and books that proclaim Barack Obama is, literally, the Antichrist. Today, the apocalypse is everywhere all the time. The last chapter looked at some of the structural changes in media technology, law, and economics that have led to convergence culture and the growing prominence of transmedia storytelling. This is the vehicle for the rise of the post-apocalyptic genre, but the fourth factor – culture – is the driver. American culture is saturated in the rhetoric of Ragnarök and perhaps the best place to understand its appeal is with the genuine doom prophets rather than with entertainment spectacles. Before we can understand the post-apocalyptic, we need to understand the fascination of the much more ancient and enduring apocalyptic genre. One look at the pastors on YouTube is enough to know that the prophet’s charisma is not a factor. They don’t even have the mesmerising intensity of fanaticism; some of them may as well be accountants explaining section three, sub-paragraph seven of the tax code. Their motives for predicting the end of days are difficult to ascertain. It may well be genuine belief, but there is at least one good practical reason to paint lurid visions of the blood-drowned world – cash. The golden letters of “The Coming Apocalypse” title and Hagee’s reference to the sky as “God’s billboard” both crassly indicate that the end of the world is a fantastic business opportunity. Hagee’s Four Blood Moons went through 16 printings and sold more than 750,000 copies before being made into a documentary (Menzie 2015). Even that is nothing compared to the success in the 1970s of Hal

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Lindsey’s The Late Great Planet Earth, which sold 15 million copies and was declared by the New York Times the “No. 1 non-fiction bestseller of the decade” (Johnson and Grim 2011, 366). Producers of apocalyptic images, whether as prophecy or entertainment, can rely on a captive audience ready to hand over hard-earned money to imagine our world ripped asunder. Why do we revel in images of our civilisation turning to ash?

Sociological and Psychological Approaches A sociological approach to this problem would stress that the power of apocalyptic narratives lies not with the prophet but with the audience. Whose life is so abject that even the total destruction of the planet is preferable? Let us begin with an obvious point: apocalyptic narratives are most passionately embraced by those who feel they have little or nothing to lose. The Book of Revelation was written by a Jewish prophet, John of Patmos, at the height of the Roman Empire, when the only way to imagine Rome falling was for the world itself to fall. The Jews rebelled against Rome in the year 66 AD, and as Elaine Pagels tells us, “in the year 70, sixty thousand Roman troops stormed into Jerusalem and killed thousands of people. They said that the blood was as high as the horses’ bridles” (2011). It is among such oppressed peoples as the Jews under Roman rule that apocalyptic narratives often flourish. The end of the world is a comfort to those who know little but suffering, especially when it promises to visit revenge on your almost omnipotent enemies. Yet that presents a modern-day puzzle, for in the West belief in the apocalypse is most widespread and fervently held by white American evangelicals, a dominant group in the world’s most powerful country. What sense does it make for the prosperous and powerful to believe in the coming of Armageddon? From a global perspective, white middle-class Americans living in a suburb of Phoenix, with their aircon and BBQ grill and broadband Internet connection, not to mention hot and cold potable water, stable electricity supply, and social security benefits, are doing much better than child soldiers in the Congo. But anyone who was ever told to eat their vegetables because children were starving in Ethiopia will know that global perspectives don’t make convincing arguments. We judge our circumstances against those in our immediate vicinity; we try to keep up with the Jones’, not the Kipketers in Kenya or the Changs in China. From a local perspective, things are not well with white America. Pew Research, a respected

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non-partisan organisation surveying political and social trends and attitudes in the USA, has found that 66% of those who lean Republican believe life has gotten worse for people like them compared to 50 years ago, with only 19% believing it has gotten better (2016). This feeling of discontent is rooted in some hard facts about the economy. According to the Centre for Budget and Policy Priorities: Beginning in the 1970s, economic growth slowed and the income gap widened. Income growth for households in the middle and lower parts of the distribution slowed sharply, while incomes at the top continued to grow strongly. The concentration of income at the very top of the distribution rose to levels last seen more than 80 years ago. (Stone et al. 2015)

Whereas during the long post-war boom it was relatively easy for the average white middle-class American to make a good living with just a high-­ school diploma, today the ground is shrinking beneath the middle classes. According to Pew Research, the percentage of adults in the middle classes has fallen from 61% in 1971 to just 50% today, with most of the difference falling into the lower classes (2015). Moreover, this decline is worse than it looks for the share of aggregate income has also declined precipitously, with more income going to those at the top. The growing (and accurate) sense that the economy unfairly favours the rich is widespread in the USA and contributing to populist movements on right and left. However, there are even more troubling facts. The suicide rate for white middle-aged Americans jumped by a shocking 40% in the decade from 1999 to 2010 (Archer 2013). The rates were also somewhat higher in the South and West, and among those without college degrees. According to Anne Case and Angus Deaton, “Increasing mortality in middle-­aged whites was matched by increasing morbidity. When seen side by side with the mortality increase, declines in self-reported health and mental health, increased reports of pain, and greater difficulties with daily living show increasing distress among whites in midlife after the late 1990s” (2015). While the factors contributing to these problems are many, including substance abuse, financial problems, and social isolation, the extraordinary spike in suicides indicates many of the problems now facing white America, particularly in those regions and among those demographics most strongly influenced by evangelical Christianity. These frustrations are exacerbated by a sense of grievance against intellectuals who dismiss both the problems of working-class white Americans

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and those with strongly religious beliefs. They suspect that many members of the liberal intelligentsia view their traditions and convictions with disdain, an attitude that may be seen in Elaine Pagels’ Edge Masterclass on the Book of Revelation. Speaking to a roomful of professors, Pagels phrases her questions in ways that might drive any devout Christian to anger, for example, “Why is religion still alive? Why are people still engaged in old folk tales and mythological stories – even those without rational and ethical foundations?” (2011). In the subsequent discussion, Steven Pinker notes that evangelicals offer a contradictory blend of medieval and secular humanist thought: “On one hand they’ve got admirably, a kind of post-­ enlightenment ecumenical tolerant humanism, torturing people is bad. On the other hand, they claim to hold beliefs that logically imply that torturing heretics would be an excellent thing” (2011). There is no question which beliefs Pinker thinks are best. Admittedly, any scientist confronted by arguments for creationism or a blind refusal to accept data on climate change is likely to bristle at dogmatic, anti-rational arguments. Nevertheless, most evangelicals are aware of the liberal intelligentsia’s disdain for their beliefs, which is one reason being against political correctness is such a good thing for many right-wing Americans. They see an elite that scorns them and this fuels a sense of victimhood. When Barack Obama said of such voters, “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations” (qtd. in Pilkington 2008), they saw him as the literal embodiment of an elitist disdain for their values and way of life. This culture war exacerbates the genuine problems facing evangelicals and provides another ingredient in the rise of apocalyptic discourse. John M. Court offers a summary of these sociological explanations: The social factors relating to the emergence of an insecure group on the margins of society and the historical reasons of a time of crisis can be supplemented by psychological explanations. Sectarian movements can have a desperate and paranoid nature: there is a leader (who is sure that he is right, offers present religious experiences and promises future bliss); an enemy (society, the Establishment, anyone who does not subscribe to the doctrine as promulgated) who can be labelled as the Antichrist; and a group of followers who (because of circumstances or their own psychology) are so disadvantaged or insecure as to need to be attached to such a leader. (2008, 7)

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Hence, one explanation for the rise of apocalypticism in the USA is that a numerous and influential group, strongly influenced by evangelical beliefs in the literal word of the Bible, feels it is being pushed into a position where anything is preferable to the status quo. You could argue that the status quo for them is better than for most of the planet and even for others in their own country, but objective facts are almost always trumped by subjective perceptions. And yet there is something condescending about such sociological and psychological analyses. “Of course those people are taken in by apocalyptic narratives. They are poor, ill-educated, religious rather than secular, emotional instead of rational. A superior mind would see straight through such a sham, but I can see how an inferior mind, in bad circumstances, would be drawn to this twaddle.” There is an implied lack of respect both for the people involved and for the power of apocalyptic rhetoric. Yet highly educated liberal intellectuals are as susceptible to such rhetoric as high-school dropouts in Alabama, no matter how much they like to think they are not. Two secular examples will suffice: environmentalism and Marxism. The apocalyptic cast of environmental discourse has been recognised for decades. As Jonathan Moo puts it, “the use of apocalyptic narratives to induce fear and wake people up to what is perceived as dangerous present reality or potential future catastrophe has a long pedigree in the environmental movement, dating back at least as far as ‘A Fable for Tomorrow’ in Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring” (2015, 939). Warnings of impending disaster may motivate people to change their behaviour and the issue of climate change is often framed in an apocalyptic manner. Here is an example from The New York Times: Evidence is fast accumulating that, within our children’s lifetimes, severe droughts, storms, and heat waves caused by climate change could rip apart societies from one side of the planet to the other. Climate stress may well represent a challenge to international security just as dangerous – and more intractable – than the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the cold war or the proliferation of nuclear weapons among rogue states today. (Homer-Dixon 2007)

Anyone who reads articles about climate science is familiar with such apocalyptic rhetoric, with scientists reading the signs of melting Arctic ice sheets and increased carbon emissions as harbingers of doomsday. Mike

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Hulme, in his 2009 study of disagreements about climate change, argues that “Presaging Apocalypse” is one of the four basic structuring myths through which climate change is narrated to the public. Pascal Bruckner argues, “The ecology of disaster is primarily a disaster for ecology; it employs such outrageous rhetoric that it discourages the best of wills” (2013, 184). Yet much of the public discourse around climate change represents a kind of secular apocalypse, in which the end is nigh unless we reform our sinful carbon footprints. It is interesting to note that this argument is least effective with American evangelicals, who are surely familiar with such rhetoric, and most effective among secular liberals who scorn the idea of the Rapture. Perhaps a more interesting case of apocalyptic rhetoric comes from Marxism. As many scholars have pointed out, dialectical materialism is effectively an apocalyptic drama. The seer knows that capitalism must fall and interprets the signs of its decay and predicts (but, importantly, without specifying the date) its imminent collapse, the purging of its evil from the world, and the emergence of a better but rather vaguely defined society. For the poet W.H.  Auden, “the keynote of Marxism is surely that history has moved and is moving in a certain direction despite the efforts of individuals or classes to stop or deflect it. … Marxism teaches that historical development is asymptotic to perfection” (2002, 453). Such beliefs, which divide history into specific epochs and predict a coming Omega Point when a final epoch shall come into being, are characteristic of apocalyptic rhetoric. In The Mystical Sources of German Romantic Philosophy, Ernst Benz argues that: This fundamental eschatological characteristic appears again very clearly in Marx’s dialectical materialism, with the difference that here the “Golden Age,” or the “Reign of a Thousand Years” are replaced by Communistic society, and the role of the redemptor is transferred from Christ to the Proletariat. (1983, 27)

The argument that Marxism is a secular religion that borrows its mythological structure from Judaeo-Christianity has been made many times. Bertrand Russell makes the same point about Marxist thought in A History of Western Philosophy (1945); Leszek Kolakowski explicates it in his seminal Main Currents of Marxism (1981). Ernest L. Tuveson remarks of the prophesied revolution that “only a descendant of the apocalyptic prophets could see the proletariat, or any other group of people, as perpetually innocent and

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untouched by selfishness and greed; and, even more r­emarkable, believe that, if this class gains power, it will certainly remain forever pure and undefiled” (1984, 334). Many Marxists, of course, strongly oppose this representation of their philosophy. The entry for “eschatology” in the encyclopaedia at the Marxists Internet Archive states: Some anti-communists describe Marxism as an “eschatology” in that the present time is interpreted in relation to the ultimate destiny of the working class to take power, socialise ownership of the means of production and institute a socialist society. … While such a criticism can legitimately be made against vulgar interpretations of Marx’s ideas, Marxism is fundamentally a critique of existing conditions, not an attempt to force the world to conform to some predetermined ideal, far less a fatalistic theory of the inevitability of socialism. (“Eschatology”)

Ronald Boer likewise complains, “Marxism is a secularized Jewish or Christian messianism – how often do we hear that claim?” and catalogues the ways it has been used to attack Marxist beliefs before performing a close reading of selected passages of Marx and Engels to argue that this claim isn’t true (2010). Yet as the quote from Auden indicates, historical prediction permeates Marxist discourse. What is the popular term “late capitalism” if not a prediction that capitalism has reached its final decadent phase, a view that can only be held if one believes one can see the path of the future? It is also easy to see why many Marxists oppose this understanding of their beliefs. Once a rhetorical connection is made between dialectical materialism and the Book of Revelation, Marxists can be classified as a religious cult rather than as scientists of history and society. However, one could go even further and supplement a rhetorical analysis of Marxism with a sociological and psychological one. We have already seen how apocalyptic cults attract marginalised groups who feel insecure or threatened and long to be lifted to what they feel is their rightful place. From this perspective, we might observe that Marxism appeals most, not so much to the working classes, but to intellectuals who are not part of the Establishment. They hold no power and live modestly, yet feel themselves to be intellectually superior to those who rule or reap a greater share of the financial harvest. Here we have the classic marginalised group, paranoid about the workings of an enemy known as Capitalism, who like the Antichrist can be spotted behind all the world’s misfortunes. They have a

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leader and a book that promises the current order will be destroyed and in the new order the marginalised shall receive their just rewards and the wicked bourgeoisie will be punished. Most importantly, funding for the humanities and social science departments where most Marxist intellectuals work will not be reduced anymore. Tenure will be granted to all. Oh Rapture! For those who feel this is a caricature of the complexity of Marxism and the diverse groups to which Marxism appeals – now you know how evangelicals feel when they see their deepest beliefs reduced to socio-­economics and stupidity.

Rhetorical Approaches Sociological and psychological explanations tend to sound more convincing when they are about other people. When they are about us, we characterise them as reductive, for in the realm of thought and belief they are reductive. The power of apocalyptic rhetoric cannot be reduced to the socio-economic status of marginalised groups. Something about the rhetorical structure itself creates an appeal that works across classes, ideologies, ethnicities, and age groups. As the foremost scholar of apocalyptic rhetoric, Stephen D.  O’Leary, argues: “The mechanistic theories of the apocalypse’s appeal based in economic circumstance that prevail in much current scholarship fail to account for this wide variety of class and education in apocalyptic audiences” (1998, 9). If we are to understand why it is so widespread, we must understand the narrative’s intrinsic merits. Let us return to our pastor with the Bible open before him and a cup of tea by his side. As Hal Lindsey did in the 1970s, Begley reads the words of scripture and draws analogies with real-world events. In many ways, this approach parallels some forms of literary criticism  – Begley performs a close reading of the text and then attempts to draw wider conclusions about the state of the world. But what is absent from the evangelical model of scriptural exegesis is any doubt about the relationship between word and world, between representation and reality. Where literary theorists struggle with how texts are produced and mediated through institutions and interpreted through prevailing discourses, none of these issues seem to surface in Biblical prophecy. The status of the Bible distinguishes evangelicals from other Christian sects. As Kathleen C.  Boone states, “Only fundamentalists make a point of characterising themselves as Bible believers. To believe the Bible is to take it literally, to regard every word of it as

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inerrant and fully divine” (1989, 5). There is no reason to doubt the ­connection between the Bible and the world – the Bible is the true reality to which the world must conform. We are here confronting a different paradigm of thought to that which dominates modern scientific culture. For us, the decisive break is the image of Galileo testing Aristotle’s assertion that heavier objects fall faster by throwing weights off the leaning tower of Pisa. This is the birth of the scientific method, which emphasises experimentation and verification. It is a pragmatic method of discovering truth, or more accurately of continually pushing the probability that a given hypothesis is true towards 1. In our scientific world, we are always aware that new evidence may arise that forces us to reconsider our hypotheses. Newton’s laws of physics were perfectly adequate for our everyday terrestrial questions, but once we started exploring the speed of light and subatomic particles, then the old laws were brought into question and new paradigms had to be formed. These paradigms may give way to other ones in the future as we learn more. This is, of course, all familiar to us. What is not so familiar is the idea that Truth exists inside the pages of one particular book. One can only imagine the response at a physics conference if someone announced that the solution to unifying relativity with quantum physics lay in the Bible and scientists should stop wasting time with the Large Hadron Collider and instead study the words of the Lord. Never would so many feet shuffle so uncomfortably in such unison. The only way the situation could get any more awkward would be if Richard Dawkins showed up to persecute the heretic. Yet the desire to know the Truth, definitively and forever, is central to the appeal of the apocalypse. For evangelical believers in the Rapture, “Truth is absolute, objective, and found in, indeed, identical with the Bible” (Boone 1989, 12). Holding to such a belief completely transforms our relationship with time. If it is the Truth, then like the divine it is eternal and immanent throughout space and time. Every moment must have its Biblical counterpart. Like Plato’s perfect circles, the Bible is the pristine archetype of which real life is but a shadowy form. The challenge is to relate our imperfect lives to the infallible text, hence the emphasis on close reading, the carefully chosen quotes and their interpretation, and the focus on precise wording and its implications. This was the approach that Galileo fought when he ceased looking in ancient texts for confirmation of his theories and instead built instruments so he could investigate for himself. I would call the evangelical form of scriptural exegesis “medieval” if the

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word were not so laden with negative connotations. It may be pre-­modern, but it offers an emotional solace our scientific method cannot – an absolutely definite answer to all questions, if only we could learn to read it properly. The classical apocalypse attracts believers through the certainty provided by knowing how the human story ends, which illuminates the importance of endings for how we understand narratives. We currently have an art form that singularly demonstrates this – serial TV drama. When a long-running serial finally ends, most fans hope the final episode provides a fitting resolution. Breaking Bad is generally agreed to have nailed it; How I Met Your Mother is a now-classic example of how to ruin almost a decade’s worth of television in the last five minutes. The days before the final episode of Mad Men revealed trepidation among fans, who feared an unsuitable, mechanical ending such as Don’s suicide. Why does the final episode of a long-running show have so much importance? Shouldn’t the general quality of each episode make up for any disappointment with the final five minutes? Yet the response of How I Met Your Mother fans to the show’s ending demonstrates that this isn’t true, for the ending rewrote the entire pattern of the narrative. We thought we were seeing one story, but once we understood the destination we realised it was a completely different story all along. Let us call the uncertainty that exists before the ending is revealed a narrative quantum state. Until we see the end of Mad Men, Don is both dead and alive at the same time – we don’t know if he will commit suicide or return to his job until we open Schrödinger’s box and see the final episode. This uncertainty encourages audiences to speculate, both in their own heads and in conversation with other fans, about what might happen. We search the narrative for clues and hints and try to construct patterns that allow us to predict an uncertain future. But the moment we experience the ending, all those possibilities shut down and we are left with one single outcome. The red herrings and false theories are exposed and the dominant pattern is finally revealed. Sometimes a surprise twist, like the ending of Fight Club or The Sixth Sense, forces a submerged pattern to the surface and erases what we thought was happening because the ending transforms a narrative from its quantum state into a fixed, linear, known quantity. It is this insight that helps explain the intrinsic appeal of the apocalypse. For there is one narrative we are all a part of, whether we like it or not – history. As I write this, Donald Trump has just been made the President of

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the USA.  Will this be the beginning of an American brand of fascism, when a disillusioned public elects a putative strongman? Or will Trumpism be decisively rejected by the American public, which then commits itself to a multicultural democratic future? The dominant pattern cannot be known until we see the outcome; before then, history is always in a quantum state in which multiple outcomes are possible. What apocalyptic narratives offer is what Frank Kermode calls “the sense of an ending” (1968). They provide an endpoint to history. The quantum state is resolved and the true pattern is revealed. Uncertainty is replaced by conviction; ignorance is transformed into definite knowledge. The noise is tuned out and we are left only with the clear, ringing signal. In classical apocalyptic narratives, “we project ourselves … past the End, so as to see the structure whole” (Kermode 1968, 8) and apocalypticism’s appeal is that what seems like chaos “has a discernible structure and meaning in relation to its End, and that this End is the product not of chance, but of divine plan” (McGinn 1979, 36). The word “apocalypse” does not refer to the end of time but to the revelation that comes once history has ceased and assumed a fixed shape. It is this revelation, the aleitheia, which provides part of the consolation of the apocalypse. The world may have ended, but at least we now understand it. In this, apocalypse bears a family resemblance to autobiography and the connection can best be seen by thinking about the influential autobiography of a key apocalyptic thinker: St. Augustine and his Confessions. In the first part of the Confessions, Augustine looks back at his early life and laments his many misdeeds as a boy and a young man before he truly embraced Christianity. As William C. Spengemann explains: The mode is grounded ultimately in the conviction that the retrospective narrator can see his life from a point outside it, that his view is not subject to the limiting conditions of the life he is recounting. While the past self, the protagonist, can see each event in his life only in its ever-changing relation to a past which is being continually reshaped by the addition of new experience in the present, and to future expectations which experience is continually revising, the narrator can see each past event in its fixed relation to a past which has presumably achieved its final form. Because the narrator does not stand within the temporal span of action he is reporting, because he does not stand in time at all, his perspective is not altered by new experiences. He contemplates each past event from the same unmoving point, the point of immutable truth. (1980, 6–7)

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Autobiography takes the random events of life and imposes a pattern on them. Particular moments are invested with decisive importance because we have created a narrative that explains how we got from there to here and, thus, what we should do in the present to continue that pattern. Autobiography is to the individual what apocalypse is to society. In both forms, we project ourselves beyond an endpoint so that we can look back from our God-like perspective and discern the pattern hidden in the chaos. The connection, as James T.  Palmer reminds us, is that “both ‘eschatology’ and ‘apocalypse’ were and remain expressly interested in how people get from their lived lives to the final evaluation of their efforts” (2014, 50). Both autobiography and apocalypse do more than determine the overall pattern that governs our lives and societies, however. They also create definite roles and identities for us to play in the future. For James Olney, an autobiography is “a monument of the self as it is becoming, a metaphor of the self at the summary moment of composition” (1972, 35). This metaphor of self is a tool with which to plunge forward into the stream of experience. In the same way, apocalyptic narratives create a drama in which believers are assigned definite roles. We are not the audience watching history but the actors on stage. If you are an evangelical believer in the Rapture, then not only do you know the day is coming but it is also your duty to ensure the prophesied events come to pass. Other people may call you a crank – you know that your actions are on the side of history, because you know how history ends. The roles in this drama are clearly divided between good and evil. The believer invariably has their identity as one of the elect confirmed; their enemies are revealed to be irreparably evil and will suffer the consequences on Judgment Day. There is no grey zone. There is still time to repent and join the side of right, but the line between good and evil has clearly been drawn. For Stephen D.  O’Leary, this is one of the apocalypse’s central topoi, that “apocalyptic discourse functions as a symbolic theodicy, a mythical and rhetorical solution to the cosmic problem of evil” (1993, 407). For oppressed groups, Judgment Day offers a definitive moment when evil shall be purged and the righteous rewarded. This has two practical consequences. One is the continual attempt to pin the tail on the Antichrist. The other is to “calculate the sum total of human and cosmic evil in the present age, as ‘proof’ that things have never been worse and, therefore, that the promised End is just around the corner” (O’Leary 1993, 408). This is a strategy used by evangelicals and political radicals alike, both of

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whom heighten their rhetoric through jeremiads denouncing the current state of the world as the worst it has ever been (which, sadly, indicates how little history people read) and therefore the current situation must be on the verge of collapse. Once evil is defined and destroyed, then comes the utopia. The apocalypse does not mean the end for all; it means the end of Evil and the final glorious triumph of Good. Yet it is important to understand that there are two versions of this tale: the premillennial and postmillennial. The distinction is when the Millennium is supposed to occur and if humans can influence it. For premillennial thinkers, evil must reach its peak on earth before Jesus returns, judges the wicked, and initiates the 1000 years of the Kingdom of Heaven. For postmillennial thinkers, Jesus will return after 1000 years of peace and harmony have been established on earth, like a parent who is finally satisfied the kids can look after the house responsibly in his absence. The first interpretation is more consistent with the Book of Revelation, but John was clearly speaking symbolically of the Roman Empire; once the Romans adopted Christianity, a new interpretation was needed and it was St. Augustine who chiefly supplied it, offering as he does in his autobiography a narrative in which people can change before it is too late. Using Kenneth Burke’s dramatistic theory, O’Leary calls these two frames tragic and comic. In the comic postmillennial frame, the apocalypse will occur if we don’t change our ways in time. Moreover, the Millennium happens before the return of Jesus, so believers are morally obliged to create a thousand years of harmony first. One can see the positive benefits of this narrative. It often features in environmentalist rhetoric, for example, in the argument that disaster will happen unless we learn to live in harmony with nature. Historically, postmillennialism was a powerful force in nineteenth-century USA, when millions of Americans believed it was their duty to create the kingdom of God on earth, which helped fuel the anti-­ slavery movement: For a majority of Northern abolitionists, the drive to rid the country of the sin of slavery was less inspired by compassion for an oppressed race than it was by awareness that, for America to be the true site of the new millennium, it must purge itself of its sins in preparation of Christ’s coming. (Janssen and Whitelock 2009, 16)

One of the major changes between nineteenth- and twentieth-century religious culture in the USA has been the shift from a comic to a tragic reading of the apocalypse. In the tragic frame, nothing humans do will

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affect the predetermined events. First, the world will get increasingly violent and corrupt, then the dramatic events of the Last Judgment will occur, followed by the Kingdom of Heaven. The worse the world gets, the happier believers become for it demonstrates that the end is nigh. This is more reminiscent of Marxism than environmentalism; many Marxists become energised during a major economic slump because the massed ranks of unemployed people seem to be harbingers of the end. Working to save the system would be both futile and a betrayal. Capitalism must wreak its maximum damage before the revolution can destroy it. The tragic frame is more powerful with those who feel less agency; those who feel in control of their lives tend to be drawn to the comic frame. Four key elements therefore explain the intrinsic appeal of the apocalyptic narrative: out of the quantum state of history it conjures a clear pattern and order; it provides a definite role for all the players in the drama; it clearly separates good and evil; and it promises to purge the wicked and bring about a utopian society. This is the basic model of the argument, over which words like Rapture, climate change, and capitalism can be draped like different cuts of cloth.

Towards the Post-apocalyptic The preceding discussion illustrates how and why apocalyptic discourse became a fundamental rhetorical form among different groups and at different levels in our public sphere. The familiarity of apocalyptic imagery has certainly played a role in driving the popularity of post-apocalyptic entertainment. However, if you are a fan of such post-apocalyptic franchises as Battlestar Galactica or The Walking Dead, you’re probably thinking that the four key elements listed above don’t bear much relation to the post-apocalyptic genre. Post-apocalyptic tales are often morally ambiguous, dystopian, and told in formats that favour infinitely suspended narratives. Although the apocalyptic and the post-apocalyptic are often lumped together, and they share certain common imagery, they have grown quite distinct from each other. It is thus difficult to argue that the rise of the post-apocalyptic genre is a direct reflection of the growing visibility of evangelical Christianity in mainstream American culture or the rhetoric of crisis surrounding issues such as nuclear proliferation, pandemics, climate change, or capitalism. Apocalyptic rhetoric may provide an easily accessible bank of images in the public imagination, but it does not match the form of post-apocalyptic entertainment.

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The first section of the book has shown the seedbeds of the modern post-apocalyptic: the transformation of our mediascape and the growth and appeal of apocalyptic rhetoric in our public discourse. Yet the features of the post-apocalyptic cannot simply be derived by adding these two factors together. The next section of the book will argue that what has happened is genre-medium coevolution, an uneven process by which shifting demands across platforms and cultural responses to apocalyptic discourses have cross-fertilised each other to enable the rise of a genre that is ideally adapted to transmedia storytelling and contemporary fan practices. The next chapter will use the case of I Am Legend to both define the core tensions of the post-apocalyptic and explain why media franchising and transmedia storytelling are better served by open-ended, morally ambiguous narratives. Chapter 5 will look at Battlestar Galactica as both a cultural response to 9/11 and a prime example of how contemporary television dramas have brought seriality to the forefront of our mediascape. Chapter 6 will examine the aesthetic and industrial influence of video games and the reasons why the post-apocalyptic genre is so popular within the medium, while Chap. 7 will show how convergence culture is affecting print media and encouraging post-apocalyptic fiction. Finally, Chap. 8 will look at doomsday prepper cultures in order to illuminate the differences between apocalyptic believers and the practices of fans of the post-­ apocalyptic. If the “Portal” section has been concerned with framing the question of why the post-apocalyptic emerged from a media revolution and a genre that seems in fundamental ways to be its opposite, the next section is dedicated to offering answers.

References Archer, Dale. 2013. White, Middle-Aged Suicide in America Skyrockets. Psychology Today, May 6. Auden, W.H. 2002. The Complete Works of W.H.  Auden. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Austin, John. 2015. Rare ‘Blood Moon’ Overnight ‘Will Bring Huge Earth-­ Destroying Earthquakes.’ The Express, September 27. Begley, Paul. 2016. The Coming Apocalypse Blood Moon Prophecy. YouTube, January 3. Benz, Ernst. 1983. The Mystical Sources of German Rationalist Philosophy. Pittsburgh: Wipf and Stock. Blitz, Mark. 2014. Blood Moons: Decoding the Imminent Heavenly Signs. Washington, DC: WND Books.

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Boer, Ronald. 2010. Marxism and Eschatology Reconsidered. Mediations 25 (1): 39–60. Boone, Kathleen C. 1989. The Bible Tells Them so: The Discourse of Protestant Fundamentalism. New York: State University of New York Press. Bruckner, Pascal. 2013. The Fanaticism of the Apocalypse: Save the Earth, Punish Human Beings. Trans. Steven Rendall. Cambridge: Polity. Case, Anne, and Angus Deaton. 2015. Rising Morbidity and Mortality in Midlife Among White Non-Hispanic Americans in the 21st Century. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 112 (49): December 8. Court, John M. 2008. Approaching the Apocalypse: A Short History of Christian Millenarianism. London: I.B. Tauris. Eschatology. Marxists Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/glossary/ terms/e/s.htm. Accessed 8 Apr 2018. Hagee, John. 2013. Four Blood Moons: Something Is About to Change. Franklin: Worthy Books. Homer-Dixon, T. 2007. Terror in the Weather Forecast. The New  York Times, April 24. Hulme, Mike. 2009. Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Janssen, David, and Edward Whitelock. 2009. Apocalypse Jukebox: The End of the World in American Popular Music. New York: Soft Skull. Johnson, Todd M., and Brian Grim. 2011. International Religious Demography: An Overview of Sources and Methodology. In The Oxford Handbook of the Economics of Religion, ed. Rachel M.  McCleary, 365–382. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kermode, Frank. 1968. The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. London: Oxford University Press. Kolakowski, Leszek. 1981. Main Currents of Marxism: Its Origins, Growth, and Dissolution. Trans. P.S. Falla. Oxford: Clarendon Press. McGinn, Bernard. 1979. Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages. New York: Columbia University Press. Menzie, Nicola. 2015. Four Blood Moons Book by Pastor John Hagee Gets Big-­ Screen Treatment. Christian Post, February 4. Moo, Jonathan. 2015. Climate Change and the Apocalyptic Imagination: Science, Faith, and Ecological Responsibility. Zygon 50 (4): 937–948. O’Leary, Stephen D. 1993. A Dramatistic Theory of Apocalyptic Rhetoric. Quarterly Journal of Speech 79: 385–426. ———. 1998. Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Olney, James. 1972. Metaphors of Self: The Meaning of Autobiography. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

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Pagels, Elaine. 2011. The Book of Revelation: Prophecy and Politics Edge Masterclass. Edge.org, July 17. Palmer, James T. 2014. The Apocalypse in the Early Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pew Research. 2015. The American Middle Class Is Losing Ground. Pew Research Center, December 9. ———. 2016. Campaign Exposes Fissures Over Issues, Values and How Life Has Changed in the US. Pew Research Center, March 31. Pilkington, Ed. 2008. Obama Angers Midwest Voters with Guns and Religion Remark. The Guardian, April 14. Pinker, Steven. 2011. Q&A: The Book of Revelation: Prophecy and Politics Edge Masterclass. Edge.org, July 17. Russell, Bertrand. 1945. A History of Western Philosophy. New York: Simon and Schuster. Spengemann, William C. 1980. The Forms of Autobiography: Episodes in the History of a Literary Genre. New Haven: Yale University Press. Stone, Chad, et al. 2015. A Guide to Statistics on Historical Trends in Income Inequality. Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, October 26. Tuveson, Ernest L. 1984. The Millennarian Structure of the Communist Manifesto. In The Apocalypse in English Renaissance Thought and Literature: Patterns, Antecedents, and Repercussions, ed. Joseph Anthony Wittreich and C.A. Patrides, 323–341. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

PART II

Post-apocalypse

CHAPTER 4

The Endings of I Am Legend

I Am Legend (Francis Lawrence 2007) is perhaps most interesting for what it almost was. The film adapts Richard Matheson’s classic novel in which a plague wipes out the human race, leaving a lone man, Robert Neville, to battle a race of mutated humans. Warner Bros., which owns the rights, was determined to make a new film version but, as Vanessa Juarez reported in 2006, “Over the last decade, at least five different director-­ producer-­writer-star combos have been attached to the project, making Legend one of the most delayed films in history.” Most intriguing of all were reports that, by 1997, Warner Bros. had settled on Arnold Schwarzenegger to star as Robert Neville, with Ridley Scott directing. After some opening scenes as the virus sweeps the world, John Logan’s script features no dialogue for an entire hour. A silent Arnold Schwarzenegger film directed by Ridley Scott in a deserted L.A. can only be regarded as a monumental loss to cult cinema; it didn’t happen, but Big Arnie was this close to realising on screen his inner vision that he is the last real man in Los Angeles. Sadly, studio executives wondered if audiences would appreciate a drama played out solely through Arnold Schwarzenegger’s expressions and behaved like a sensible business corporation. By 2002, Schwarzenegger had become the producer, Will Smith had become first choice for Robert Neville, and Michael Bay was scheduled to direct (Fleming 2002). Then the British film 28 Days Later came out with a similar theme and Bay’s team decided they had been scooped and dropped out of the project. If the © The Author(s) 2018 S. Joyce, Transmedia Storytelling and the Apocalypse, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93952-0_4

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Scott/Schwarzenegger version is one of cinema’s lost cult classics, then the Michael Bay version is the unmade parody, in which half of L.A. gets blown up before Megan Fox arrives to help Will Smith repopulate the earth. Paradigm shifts are messy and I Am Legend’s extended time in development hell is partly what makes it interesting from the perspective of both transmedia and the post-apocalyptic genre. Between the initial conception and the eventual cinematic release, not only had the post-apocalyptic experienced landmark films such as The Matrix Trilogy (1999–2003) and Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (2002), as well as the acclaimed television series Battlestar Galactica (2003–2009), but there was also a dawning recognition of transmedia storytelling as fundamental to media franchising. I Am Legend could have benefited from these developments, and it almost did, and yet at the last moment it chose to stick with both the traditional paradigm of film adaptation and the classical apocalyptic tale. This section begins with I Am Legend because the significant differences between its cinema release and alternate DVD endings allow us to delineate some key features of the post-apocalyptic genre, as opposed to the apocalyptic seen in Chap. 3, as well as see a failed transmedia franchise before moving on to more successful ones. It is ironic that one of Hollywood’s most successful post-apocalyptic films is most noteworthy for its tantalising failures, but such are the consequences when a film sits astride a paradigm shift in the production and consumption of media narratives. Nothing illustrates the current strength of post-apocalyptic culture better than Warner Bros. persistence in trying to remake I Am Legend, despite repeated failures to launch. As eventual director Francis Lawrence put it, “Something’s always really excited me about … what that’s like psychologically—to have experienced that much loss, to be without people or any kind of social interaction for that long” (2007). Four men in particular were key to the release version: producer and scriptwriter Akiva Goldsman, director Francis Lawrence, actor Will Smith, and Smith’s producing partner James Lassiter. These four met for marathon discussion sessions and according to Lawrence, “we each come at it from a different angle … so you get a melding of different ways. When they meet, it’s kind of perfect.” Goldsman had the idea of moving the location to New York, where images of desolate emptiness would be most striking. Few actors can talk to themselves on screen for an hour in an engaging manner, but Smith pulls it off with great ease. After watching The Piano on mute so as not to wake his newborn son, Lawrence became enthused with the possibility of shooting

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much of the film in silence. Unable to coax the right performance from the actors playing the Darkseekers, he also made the expensive decision to have them rendered by CGI; yet many scenes of a desolate New York were actually filmed that way, causing significant disruption in the city for weeks. According to Smith, “People were not happy. That’s the most middle fingers I’ve ever gotten in my career” (Lee 2007). There were thus many possible I Am Legends and the one we have, like almost all mass media entertainment, is as much a product of chance and compromise as artistic vision. This may be one reason why the mass media can embrace transmedia storytelling despite such difficulties as the trans-­ integrity dilemma; media professionals are used to the collaboration and conflict of numerous forces on the finished product. However, I Am Legend is an example of how the studio, in an age of transmedia franchises, may have to reconsider the weight it gives test audience reviews as only the studio can see how it wants the franchise to develop. After spending $150 million making the film, the studio showed it to test audiences, who hated the ending. Therefore, the filmmakers produced a different ending that was more in line with what test audiences wanted, only to find that the mass audience generally would have preferred the original ending. Such is the problem with trying to please all the people all the time. However, the different endings are not just minor changes. They rewrite the entire narrative. The cinema release version fits straight into the classic apocalyptic narrative: Robert Neville realises there is a divine plan and that his role in it is to discover a cure, defeat the evil Darkseekers, and create a better world through his own Christ-like sacrifice. The alternate ending, the original ending to the film, is more aligned with the modern post-apocalyptic: Neville realises that the Darkseekers are intelligent, social creatures whom he kills in the fatal experiments he conducts to produce a cure; the boundaries between good and evil blur and the film ends in an uneasy truce with no better future on the horizon. By choosing one ending over the other, the film not only shows how the post-­apocalypse differs from the apocalyptic genre but also why the post-apocalyptic is such a genre of choice for transmedia storytelling.

Key Themes in the Post-apocalyptic The more we understand the apocalyptic genre, the more of a puzzle the post-apocalyptic becomes. It does not offer the consolations of apocalyptic thought. There is no aleitheia, nor any clear sense of identity and

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­ urpose for survivors, nor confirmation that good will triumph over evil. p Any fan of The Walking Dead or Mad Max or Children of Men will recognise that these categories barely make sense in relation to the post-apocalyptic, which seems to have a fundamentally different structure to its near-namesake. Rick Altman’s semantic/syntactic approach to genre offers a useful way to distinguish the apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic. Drawing on linguistics, Altman suggests that genres can be understood as having semantic units that are combined into distinctive syntactic patterns: “The semantic approach thus stresses the genre’s building blocks, while the syntactic view privileges the structures into which they are arranged” (2012, 10). The semantic units of, for example, the Western are elements such as horses, saloons, guns, cowboy hats, and so on. In archetypal Westerns, these are combined into particular patterns of meaning: bringing civilisation to the wilderness, the competing pressures between community and individual, and the paradox of basing law and order on violence. This is why some sci-fi series were dubbed “space Westerns”; they lacked any of the semantic elements of the Western, but the syntactic patterns were almost identical—a hardy group of pilgrims ventures into the final frontier and confronts various dangers while attempting to establish universal American values. In Altman’s view, genres thrive because they weld a durable syntax from their semantic elements, which gives producers a blueprint to follow (or deviate from) and cues audiences to particular expectations. The semantic/syntactic approach allows us to articulate why many confuse the apocalyptic and the post-apocalyptic. Both are labelled in terms of a shared semantic element—a civilisation-destroying event—but this element exists in two different syntactical relations. In the apocalyptic, the destruction of the world comes at the end, thus causing a clear pattern to emerge out of confusion and promising the final victory of good over evil. In the post-apocalyptic, Armageddon is just the beginning and this creates an entirely different narrative syntax. There is no automatic resolution of the narrative quantum state. The world cannot be saved but nor has it come to a definitive end, not as long as one person still exists whose story needs to be told. Despite the popular view that the post-apocalyptic represents modern fears, I believe the heart of the post-apocalyptic lies elsewhere. The proximate causes for the world’s destruction in post-apocalyptic narratives should not be seen as reflections of our proliferating anxieties but as fictional portals to another world. Farah Mendelsohn describes the portal

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fantasy as “quite simply a fantastic world entered through a portal … [that] lead us gradually to the point where the protagonist knows his or her world enough to change it and to enter into that world’s destiny” (2002, 173). The most famous portals are probably the wardrobe in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia series and Platform 9 and 3/4s in Harry Potter. In I Am Legend, the portal is a news report about an English scientist who claims to have cured cancer. In Hollywood cinema, scientists or people with posh British accents are bad about 50% of the time, but when you put the two together then you know that British scientist is going to destroy the world, barring the intervention of an American blue-collar hero. The moment Dr Krippin announces she has cured cancer, the screen cuts with a sudden thump to a deserted New York, three years later, confirming that English scientists are up to no good. The post-apocalyptic regularly features such opening sequences, whether the eruption of the zombie outbreak in Dawn of the Dead (Zack Snyder 2004) or the unwitting release of rage-infected apes at the beginning of 28 Days Later. Such scenes should be seen as portals from our world to an alternate world rather than expressions of contemporary fears about what British medical researchers are getting up to in their laboratories. Although academic discussions of the post-apocalyptic tend to focus on the nature of the portal, what matters more is the nature of the world to which it leads. Because the genre is so diverse, it is impossible to specify criteria that fit every type of post-apocalyptic world. Yet, as indicated briefly in Chap. 1, there are recurring themes and motifs. One advantage of looking at I Am Legend as the first case study is that major Hollywood films are reluctant to take risks and thus are often repositories of established conventions. By the time I Am Legend was finally released, it was able to synthesise previous advances in the genre and thus comes close to being an archetype. The film highlights a number of the genre’s central conflicts and motifs: the tension between independence and dependence; a related tension between progress and regression; a pull in the direction of either utopia or dystopia; and ambivalence about technology. Perhaps the most important tension in the post-apocalyptic is that between independence and dependence. The narrator in John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids explains the sense of freedom unleashed by the world’s end: And, curiously, what I found that I did feel—with a consciousness that it was against what I ought to be feeling—was release. … All the old problems, the

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stale ones, both personal and general, had been solved by one mighty slash. Heaven alone knew as yet what others might arise—and it looked as though there would be plenty of them—but they would be new. I was emerging as my own master, and no longer a cog. It might well be a world full of horrors and dangers that I should have to face, but I could take my own steps to deal with it—I would no longer be shoved hither and thither by forces and interests that I neither understood nor cared about. (1974, 60)

This passage points to a key reason why the post-apocalyptic first emerged alongside industrial civilisation. A defining aspect of modernity is that we are completely dependent on millions of strangers for the necessities of urban life. Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations noted this aspect of modern life back in 1776: If we examine, I say, all these things, and consider what a variety of labour is employed about each of them, we shall be sensible that without the assistance and co-operation of many thousands, the very meanest person in a civilized country could not be provided, even according to what we very falsely imagine, the easy and simple manner in which he is commonly accommodated. (1904, 1.11)

Complete interdependence is a condition of modernity; we are all cogs in some greater whole because none of us even comes close to self-­sufficiency. In the post-apocalyptic, however, there is a tremendous sense of freedom, as depicted in I Am Legend when Robert Neville tears through the empty streets of Manhattan in a Ford Mustang with no traffic lights or gridlock to check his joyride. The film glories in Neville’s self-sufficient masculinity: he is a warrior-scientist, possessed of both combat skills and scientific knowledge, a man in excellent physical shape who spends his days growing crops, hunting, and performing laboratory experiments, while he is also skilled with weapons and has the expertise to turn his house into a sophisticated fortress. Neville’s existence in a deserted New York is a rebuke to the audience; unlike the rest of us, he doesn’t need society in order to survive. However, this self-sufficiency is inextricable from the theme of dependence. Neville struggles with psychological problems stemming from extreme isolation. He has set up a DVD store with mannequins that he talks to while he browses, a scene Smith plays with excellent comic timing, but while we recognise the mannequins as a coping mechanism, Neville’s extreme isolation threatens to erode his sanity. This becomes clear in the

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third act when he is joined by a woman and a young boy, Anna and Ethan, who eye Neville warily while he recites extended scenes from Shrek verbatim. In the post-apocalyptic, while independence is associated with physical survival, even the strongest individuals depend on a community to cope mentally with their predicament. In The Day of the Triffids, the narrator likewise notes, “for the first time I began to feel the horror that real loneliness holds for a species that is by nature gregarious. I felt naked, exposed to all the fears that prowled” (152). As horror expert Mathias Clasen points out regarding Matheson’s novel, “For members of a social species such as ours, the horror of isolation is very real and very rational” (2010, 320). Hence, the genre is full of attempts by survivors to create fortresses or camps where they can be together, although these refuges are often also places of danger and entrapment for the virile protagonist. The genre thus slides along a continuum between celebrating self-sufficiency and the need to establish a stable community, between independence and dependence. From this perspective, the post-apocalyptic genre’s nearest relation isn’t the apocalyptic but the Robinsonade, narratives of castaways on desert islands. Ulrich Broich explains that science fiction Robinsonades substitute another planet or isolated space station for the desert island or “in a genuine development of the genre conventions … through a global catastrophe that only a handful of people have survived” (1976, 145; my translation). It is no coincidence that Will Smith said, “we took a big hint from Tom Hanks in Cast Away” (Jensen 2007). No other genre so closely explores the tension between independence and isolation. As Jeannine Blackwell argues: Castaways are the ultimate independent subjects: they are absolutely alone, without tools, ready to dominate nature or die. At the same time, by the very lack of personal choice, they are unable to express passions or desires effectively and thus they are also the ultimate objects, literally cast about by the winds of fate, forced to live an empty life until someone else—a ship, a native, God—acts. (1985, 10)

Although the castaway narrative predates the post-apocalyptic, both share a similar concern with how someone from our increasingly complex society would cope if suddenly thrust into the wilderness. The genre’s first core tension leads logically to the second: progress-­ regression. The post-apocalyptic, by abruptly destroying civilisation, calls

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into question the liberal faith in a melioristic world. Where the end comes through technology (nuclear weapons, AI, genetic engineering, climate change, etc.), progress and science become paths to our own destruction. Where the end comes through means humans are powerless to prevent (meteor strikes, natural disasters, etc.), “progress” comes to be seen as hopelessly aggrandised in a universe that is vastly beyond our powers of comprehension or control. Yet the sense of freedom that accompanies the post-apocalyptic points at a further scepticism of progress, the questioning of whether the material benefits of industrial society have genuinely made us happier, more fulfilled beings. The post-apocalyptic is thus the branch of science fiction that most clearly divorces technological progress from social progress. Hence, the progress-regression tension has to be plotted in terms of technological and social coordinates, which are often in productive conflict. In many ways, the genre suggests that regression is progress in that we may need to backtrack to an earlier point in human development in order to take a different, better path. The third major recurring element in post-apocalyptic narratives is the impulse towards utopia-dystopia. While progress-regression functions as a commentary on our civilisation, the utopia-dystopia continuum is an exploration of the alternatives, with many post-apocalyptic tales featuring dystopian futures in particular, as in The Hunger Games or The Matrix or Mad Max. Ulrich Broich defines the science fiction Robinsonade as a series of thought experiments about human societies: A person or group of people are ejected from the complexity of their home society and this typical genre situation creates insight into the existence, performance, and social behaviour of humanity—similar to how a chemist in a laboratory experiment isolates an element from a compound. (1976, 159; my translation)

Post-apocalyptic series often feature different communities with their own strengths and weaknesses. However, there is a definite pull towards the utopian-dystopian ends of the spectrum. In Stephen King’s The Stand, for example, the post-apocalyptic USA becomes divided into two communities, one good and the other evil, through the supernatural power of two contrasting dreams (1987). It is possible to read this as a secular version of the apocalyptic genre’s concern with heaven and hell and the strict division of humanity into the saved and the damned. However, whereas the apocalyptic develops clear binary divisions, the post-apocalyptic ­investigates what

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might happen to society under given conditions rather than laying out a blueprint for a better world. This exploration of alternative communities is energised by a formal aspect of the post-apocalyptic that aligns it with the imperatives of transmedia storytelling: activating audiences as hunter-gatherers of information as we scan the screen for information about these fictional worlds. In the fantasy genre, there is often a newcomer to the fantasy world whose need to have things explained allows the author to establish the storyworld’s history and culture. Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later uses this principle when its protagonist wakes from a coma to discover that London is deserted and like the viewer he must try to piece together what happened. In I Am Legend, however, Robert Neville has lived through the catastrophe, so the viewer must piece the backstory together from clues in the mise-en-scene. When Neville speeds through a deserted New  York, we notice abandoned tanks at roadblocks. At some point the military was mobilised but proved ineffective—what was the threat? Later, Neville swings the fridge door open in his kitchen and on it is a picture of Neville in uniform on the cover of Time magazine with the caption “Saviour?”— who was he before the fall? But the door swings shut and the tantalising glimpse into his past life disappears. Such moments suffuse the film, as when Neville raids an apartment for supplies and passes an old newspaper warning about some new breed of rabid dog that attacks after sunset. As viewers of a post-­apocalyptic drama, we often spend our time scanning the frame for details about this uncanny environment, with our active quest for information mirroring the protagonists’ self-sufficient independence— like them, we can expect nothing to be freely handed to us. The postapocalyptic is thus ideally adapted to forensic fandom because one of the major questions is always “what happened to our world to turn it into this?” The most significant motif in these recurring tensions is an ambivalence about technology, which is both a threat and salvation, the sword and the shield simultaneously. In I Am Legend, this theme emerges from the start when we see Dr Krippin’s news interview about her cancer cure: “Take something designed by nature and reprogram it to make it work for the body rather than against it … in this case the measles virus, which has been engineered at a genetic level to be helpful rather than harmful.” The genre’s ambivalence about technology is partly the fear that we are playing God with forces we don’t understand. In The Matrix, for example, Morpheus explains amid the ruins of the earth that “at some point in the

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early twenty-first century, all of mankind was united in celebration, we marvelled at our own magnificence as we gave birth to AI” (1999). Hubris is a prominent theme when we are the cause of the apocalypse. This theme has complex roots and is deeply embedded in the Western tradition, from Oedipus to Faust. However, the suspicion of scientific or intellectual hubris is peculiarly strong in the USA.  No other Western nation continues to deny climate change so vigorously or has such lingering suspicions of evolution. In Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, the historian Richard Hofstadter traced this deep scepticism to four American traditions: evangelicalism, primitivism, a business culture, and democratic egalitarianism (1963, 47–51). Perhaps it is no surprise, then, that in I Am Legend the elitist British scientist destroys the world by playing God and the American hero saves the day through his practical survival skills and industrious character. Suspicion of science is not restricted to evangelicals or survivalists, however. Modern science has progressed a long way from Thomas Huxley’s declaration that “science is nothing but trained and organised common sense.” Much scientific knowledge is now difficult for non-specialists to understand. When science passes beyond the grasp of ordinary experience, it becomes for the public more a matter of authority than evidence. Scandals and disasters shake the public’s faith that scientists are in control of their material. What is much of the climate change debate but a jeremiad against where humanity’s technological hubris has led it? Yet we need other products of science to fix it: solar energy, wind turbines, and emissions filters. It is in this context that we should see the relationship between hubris and technology in post-apocalyptic fiction. Technology may have caused our problems but our only solution is more technology. In I Am Legend, genetic engineering may have caused the plague that wiped out the world’s population, but the only solution is yet more medical experimentation by Robert Neville in the hope of producing a vaccine. The more power technology gives us over nature, the more we worry about technology’s power over us, because we are also a part of nature. Hence, in post-apocalyptic narratives we are often at war with genocidal AIs and killer robots, completely machine beings who no longer have any use for the natural world that created them. A crucial indicator of the genre’s ambivalence about technology is how dependent characters are on the mass media. Information about the impending or unfolding disaster is usually conveyed via TV news, radio broadcasts, newspapers, or the internet. Once disaster is complete,

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­ owever, all these sources of information shut down, leaving survivors h futilely tuning radios or surfing TV channels full of static. Like other technologies, the mass media are a double-edged sword; they bring news of the disaster but also, possibly, word of other survivors. It is through a TV news broadcast that we learn of Krippin’s “cure” for cancer, but it is also through his radio broadcasts that Anna and Ethan find Robert Neville. Communications technologies are instruments of fear and hope simultaneously. Moreover, they are concrete representations of the abstraction of modern knowledge from direct experience. Many of us know more about media celebrities than we do about our next-door neighbours. When the apocalypse comes, this connection with distant places and people is severed, forcing us to live in the immediate present, which must come as a shock to the smartphone generation. Previous scholarship on the post-apocalyptic overemphasises the fantasy portal when the proliferation of portal devices indicates that they are increasingly just techniques for allowing audiences to pass from our world into the alternate worlds of the post-apocalyptic. These worlds are diverse but may be considered in terms of their recurring concerns with independence-­ dependence, progress-regression, utopia-dystopia, and ambivalence about technology. What increasingly distinguishes the genre from the apocalyptic, however, is that whereas the apocalyptic provides a linear structure with a fixed endpoint and a binary division between good and evil, the post-apocalyptic is a more open form that is comfortable with moral ambiguity. The two endings of I Am Legend each indulge one of these forms, which crystallises their differences.

Apocalyptic and Post-apocalyptic Endings In the third act, there is a dramatic moment when the film wavers between an apocalyptic belief in divine order and the existentialist crisis brought on by the collapse of all that made life meaningful. Anna, a true Christian believer, interprets the plague as part of an apocalyptic pattern that is rising to a climax, while Neville offers a bleak, existentialist counterpoint: Anna: I got here just in time to save your life. That’s a coincidence? Robert: Just stop it. Stop it. Stop. Anna: He must have sent me here for a reason. Neville, the world is quieter now. You just have to listen. If we listen, we can hear God’s plan.

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Robert: God’s plan? Anna: Yes. Robert: All right. Let me tell you about your God’s plan. There were 6 billion people on Earth when the infection hit. KV had a 90% kill rate. That’s 5.4 billion people dead. Crashed and bled out. Dead. Less than 1% immunity. That left 12 million healthy people like you, me and Ethan. The other 588 million turned into your Darkseekers. And then they got hungry. And they killed and fed on everybody. Everybody! Every single person that you or I have ever known is dead! Dead! There is no God. There is no God. Ironically, it is only when he finally meets other survivors that Neville realises the horror of his situation. Before this, he kept himself going with the belief that “I’m not going to let this happen. I can still fix this.” Once he meets other survivors, he finally confronts the possibility that the end of the world means the end of any sense of meaning or purpose. In an interview, Will Smith linked this theme to the biblical story of Job: “You take a man, take everything from him, and can he find a reason to continue? Can he find the hope or desire to excel and advance in life? Or does the death of everything around him create imminent death for himself?” (Lee 2007). In the Book of Job, the real question is how such suffering can be consonant with a meaningful and just order. Job complains: “Know that God hath overthrown me, and hath compassed me with his net. Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard; I cry aloud, but there is no judgment.” If the apocalypse promises a Last Judgment when the evil will be punished and the good rewarded, then the situation of Job is the agony of feeling that this is not true, that God is capricious and the universe indifferent. It is around this question of the existence of a divinely ordained order that the two endings diverge. When the Darkseekers attack, Neville, Anna, and Ethan are trapped in the basement lab, while the Darkseekers’ leader smashes himself repeatedly against the weakening glass. Remarkably, there are only about four minutes left in the film at this point and yet the two endings lead to two completely different films. The release version follows an apocalyptic model. For a moment, the cracks in the glass form the shape of a butterfly, a recurring motif in the film, and Neville realises that there is a divine plan after all. He takes a vial of the test subject’s blood, hands it to Anna and says, “I think this is why

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you’re here. … I’m listening.” At the last moment, his faith is restored and, once Anna and Ethan are safe, he charges at the Darkseekers with a grenade, sacrificing himself so that they can take the cure to the survivor colony. The near-extinction of the human race leads to a revelation—God does exist and he has a plan for us. The torment that Neville endures is the premillennial point at which the forces of evil reach their peak, but they are defeated by Neville’s Christ-like sacrifice. The film ends with Anna and Ethan reaching the new utopia, a small New England town (a literal city on a hill) shown from an aerial perspective, visually reinforcing the idea that we can now see events from a God-like viewpoint. In a voiceover, Anna says: In 2009, a deadly virus burned through our civilisation pushing humankind to the edge of extinction. Dr. Robert Neville dedicated his life to the discovery of a cure and the restoration of humanity. On September 9, 2012, at approximately 8:49 pm, he discovered that cure. And at 8:52, he gave his life to defend it. We are his legacy. This is his legend.

The dates evoke the idea that Anna’s voice comes from further in the future than we see here, that she is recounting how a new and better civilisation emerged. As with the apocalyptic, history has a definite direction and purpose—to build a better world in the spirit of Robert Neville. The good have triumphed and the evil (Darkseekers, British scientists) have been purged from the Earth. This ending was considered more appealing for cinema audiences because it provided a clear narrative resolution. However, the ending doesn’t answer all questions because it wasn’t the intended ending. If Darkseekers are mindless zombies, then how did they reverse engineer Neville’s traps to use against him? In the release version, Neville never questions how the trap was laid, despite having declared of the Darkseekers that “social de-evolution appears complete. Typical human behaviour is now entirely absent.” The religious ending also didn’t play well with many—it wasn’t even a deus ex machina, it was just a deus. Reviews of the film generally praised the early sections but criticised the third act because patterns existed that the ending could not satisfy. The alternate ending resolves these problems in a completely different way. In the climactic scene, instead of the cracks in the glass forming a butterfly, the leader of the Darkseekers smears the image of a butterfly on the glass with his hands. Neville remembers that the female test subject has a butterfly tattoo and realises they are here to save her. Against the r­ eligious

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Anna’s objections, he opens the door and wheels the female Darkseeker out. He is not attacked while he gets a syringe and revives her, at which point the leader of the Darkseekers picks her up in his arms and bellows at Neville. On the wall are images of all his test subjects and Neville looks guiltily at the ground. The Darkseekers leave, while Neville sits in silence, staring remorsefully at photos of all the Darkseeker test subjects he has killed. The next morning, Neville, Anna, and Ethan leave the city, headed for nowhere in particular. Instead of a clear resolution, the alternate ending leaves the world with an uncertain future. If Darkseekers are conscious, social creatures rather than zombies, then “curing” them would amount to killing them. What now for the world? Can humans and Darkseekers share it or will they wage war against each other? Roles and purposes vanish as the boundary between good and evil blurs. In the alternate ending, as in Matheson’s novel, Neville realises that the mutated humans have their own society now and that, to them, he is the monster. Though he lives, in many ways the alternate ending is worse for Neville. In the release ending, he dies with his purpose fulfilled; in the alternate ending, he leaves New  York because he no longer has a purpose. Instead of being a saviour, has he been committing acts of evil all along? Where can he go now that he is infinitely free and directionless? In this ending, history ends but no revelation emerges. Identities and roles become fluid and unstable. Good and evil blur together, so we cannot tell who the true monster is. This was the original ending, but the filmmakers baulked at the negative test audience response. Trapped in the old paradigm of cinema, they may have wanted to give their audience a sense of finality. That this was a mistake in terms of the new transmedia storytelling paradigm can be understood by looking at the ancillary media and the frustrated attempt to write a sequel.

Lost Transmedia Legend Hollywood doesn’t forget a film that earns $585 million. After the success of I Am Legend, there was immediate talk of a sequel. There was one problem, however: Robert Neville was dead and it’s hard to make a sequel to a film about the last man on Earth when you kill that man at the end of the first film. In an interview, Akiva Goldsman discussed some of the ideas for a follow-up: “we wrote a prequel [and] a sequel … that started with Neville again—and you realised that he was cloned. We’ve tried every

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which way … it will never happen but we really enjoyed trying to make it happen” (2014). The idea of a cloned Neville would have destroyed the meaning of his sacrifice in the first film, however, and the project never got off the ground. Efforts to write a prequel likewise failed. According to Mike Fleming, “The studio made a previous attempt to prequelise Legend, hiring Arash Amel to write a script that would have brought Smith’s Robert Neville scientist character back, right before the calamitous events that left him alone on the planet. They just couldn’t figure it out and scrapped the attempt” (2014). The problems stem from the decision to give the audience a closed narrative rather than the alternate ending, which created more possibilities for expansion. An essential aspect of transmedia storytelling is using ancillary media to expand on suggestions in the narrative core. I Am Legend took some interesting steps in this direction without ever embracing the transmedia paradigm. It thus shows a juncture when elements of two models combine to produce something that, though unsatisfactory, was pregnant for the future. Of all the entertainment media, cinema has been the least affected by the arrival of the internet. In large part, this is because it already faced its own economic catastrophe with the arrival of television, with ticket sales plummeting in the 1950s and 1960s. The solution was to offer something television could not—spectacular big screen effects in the plush multiplexes that sprang up in the 1980s to transform the typical viewer experience. Even among our proliferating range of media entertainment options, cinema is still considered a quality evening’s entertainment. The annual Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) reports reveal that overall box office returns have been steadily rising. Domestic box office figures for North America were $9.2 billion in 2006 and $11.4 billion in 2016, while global box office returns were $25.5 billion in 2006 and $38.6 billion in 2016 (MPAA 2010, 2016). Unlike other industries, which are suffering from audience splintering and fragmentation, cinema has retained and even grown its overall audience. The biggest audience change in recent years has been cinema’s rise in popularity in Asia. Between 2012 and 2016, box office returns in the Asia-Pacific region rose by 44% to $14.9 billion, making it the single most profitable region (MPAA 2016). This has forced Hollywood studios to think about how to appeal to Asian audiences even with American-centred stories. However, box office returns only account for about one-fifth to one-­ third of a film’s overall revenue. While new technologies like television and

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video were initially threats to film revenues, the media eco-system ­rebalanced to find economic structures that benefited all sides. Films now have several staggered distribution windows: the initial cinema release, the DVD release, a launch on premier cable channels, and finally their arrival on broadcast TV channels, this last typically about two years after the cinema release. What has changed in our on-demand convergence culture is that the value of each subsequent window is threatening to erode. In 2010, Disney announced that Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland would be available on DVD a mere 12 weeks after its cinema premiere, angering cinema operators (Wallop 2010). This was part of a wider trend. As Nelson Granados explains, the average DVD release window has shrunk from 200 days in 1998 to a little over 100 today (2015). No one wants to wait 200 days to watch a movie anymore. Big players in streaming and downloading, such as Amazon and iTunes, have also been pushing for earlier release dates. According to Granados, “In early 2012, movies were available for digital download about 9 months after theater release on average, but movies released last summer [2014] were available for download 3–4 months after theater release, roughly at the same time as DVDs” (2015). In order to prevent erosion of the profitable DVD market, filmmakers have had to not just shorten the release window but also generate additional content to enhance the DVD’s value. The economic imperative for additional content and the DVD’s technological capacities have subtly contributed to the rise of the transmedia paradigm. Video was primarily a replication technology, but the DVD’s greater capacities have turned it into an expansion technology. Anyone who buys a DVD and finds only the film will be sorely disappointed. We expect to see deleted scenes, making-of documentaries, interviews, and more. Jonathan Gray, in his influential work on media paratexts, has argued, “While paratexts can at times be seen as annoyances, as ‘mere’ advertising, and/or as only so much hype, they are often as complex and intricate, and as generative of meanings and engagement, as are the films and television shows that they orbit and establish” (2009, 22). DVD paratexts offer new ways of appreciating the core text, whether through production information, interpretive commentary, or storyworld expansions. Pavel Skopal notes that whereas television has used the internet for such augmentations, “Hollywood uses the DVD format instead of the internet” (2007, 187). The DVD market is too significant a revenue source to be abandoned to the digital age. I Am Legend earned $145 million in domestic

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DVD sales alone, which virtually paid for the film’s $150 million budget. The importance of the DVD financially, coupled with its technical ­advantages over video, has encouraged filmmakers to plan in pre-production the DVD’s special features. This planning encourages story expansions and transmedia worldbuilding alongside the film. These expansions, in turn, prop up the DVD’s value as a secondary release window. The alternate ending would thus have significantly enhanced the DVD’s appeal for fans. However, Warner Bros. also took steps to make the film and DVD appeal more to overseas audiences. Alongside the film’s release, Time Warner’s DC Comics subsidiary produced a graphic novel telling five different stories set in the I Am Legend universe. These short stories were released on the DVD with music and voiceovers accompanying the graphics. Comics are a relatively cheap way to expand any film universe, but I Am Legend: Awakening also expands the story beyond North America (2008). Neither the film nor the source novel explains how the plague affected other countries. The stories in I Am Legend: Awakening indicate an aspect of transmedia storytelling that has much potential for growth—the capacity to localise stories broadcast globally in the mass media. Let us call this transmedia localisation. Matt Hills has shown how the BBC used tie-ins to create global settings for its Torchwood series because “although TV budgets wouldn’t stretch to international filming, the series could be given a greater scope and scale on radio/audio” (2012, 418). Core texts grounded in a specific locale may use transmedia extensions to expand the storyworld to other locations in order to appeal to different segments of the (inter) national audience. I Am Legend’s transmedia localisations build on the premise of a global pandemic with a range of localised stories. Three of the five stories take place outside North America. “Sacrificing the Few for the Many” takes place in Central America, where a medical camp for plague victims is destroyed by a military unit that kills doctors and patients alike. The incident clearly draws on Latin America’s history of military dictatorships. “Death as a Gift” is a more elegiac story, featuring a lone woman in Hong Kong writing a note. She then wanders through the ruined city and jumps from a bridge. The note is finally shown to say, “My name is Jinghua Xu. I am immune. Beside the infected, I am the only survivor in Hong Kong.” The note is written in Chinese rather than English, thus potentially allowing Chinese speakers to feel a greater connection with the I Am Legend universe. The most disturbing story is “Shelter,” which is set in India. A young woman goes out into the plague-­

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ridden streets against her father’s orders to see her boyfriend. She becomes infected and is barred from her family’s shelter. When she and her ­boyfriend turn into Darkseekers, they break into the shelter and consume her family. Again, some classic Bollywood themes (star-crossed lovers, a girl’s rebellion against a patriarchal father) are mixed with the world of I Am Legend to localise the story for global audiences. Yet the studio never capitalised on the potential of ancillary media. The studio coordinated with the creators of the online game Second Life to turn downtown Manhattan into a post-apocalyptic world where players could be either humans or Darkseekers, thus encouraging them to explore the storyworld, but there was no real narrative expansion. Through Warner Bros. Interactive, the studio could have developed its own tie-in game, yet it chose not to do so despite the success of survival horror as a gaming genre. The Second Life experience and the comics were advertisements for the film rather than a means of developing the franchise. In hindsight, it is obvious that the alternate ending, with its uneasy truce between humans and Darkseekers, could have fuelled any number of expansions on different platforms. As parts of the Time Warner conglomerate, Warner Bros. and HBO could have collaborated to produce a high-­ quality drama series about Robert Neville in a post-apocalyptic America. A series of films could have expanded the story to different cities—Chicago, Los Angeles, Mexico City—where the same issues face survivors with different attempts to solve them. Fans of survival horror games would surely have embraced the chance to explore the world of I Am Legend. The animated comics were the only medium to show their potential, but they opened the door for transmedia localisation without the franchise taking advantage. Who was the last woman in Moscow, the last man in Tehran? These possibilities would all have been opened up by the alternate ending’s post-apocalyptic non-closure, blurring of the boundaries between good and evil, and dissolution of clear roles and identities. Instead, the studio chose the apocalyptic ending because it fit better with the old paradigm: give the film audience narrative closure and reassure them that the good guys won. In doing so, they also killed the franchise’s potential, but they weren’t thinking in terms of a franchise. In 2007, the idea of transmedia storytelling was in the air but had not been widely embraced. If it had been, I Am Legend could have pre-empted The Walking Dead to become the premier vision of post-apocalyptic America in popular culture. Such are the consequences of sticking to an old paradigm when your competitors are about to embrace the new.

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Skopal, Pavel. 2007. The Adventure Continues on DVD: Franchise Movies as Home Video. Convergence 13 (2): 185–198. Smith, Adam. 1904. In An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, ed. Edwin Cannan, 5th ed. London: Methuen. The Matrix. 1999. Directed by The Wachowskis. Burbank: Warner Bros. Wallop, Harry. 2010. DVDs of Films to be Sold Three Months After Release. The Telegraph, February 19. Wyndham, John. 1974. The Day of the Triffids. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

CHAPTER 5

Battlestar Galactica’s Post-9/11 Apocalypse

In the previous chapter, we saw how I Am Legend sits at the cusp of a paradigm shift between telling a complete story in one medium and building a transmedia franchise. Simultaneously, it embraced many post-­apocalyptic themes but ultimately refused the genre’s emerging emphasis on moral ambiguity and open-ended narratives in favour of the apocalyptic’s closed, linear structure and binary moral scheme. These decisions are connected. A crucial reason the post-apocalyptic has begun to diverge so significantly from the apocalyptic is that it can take advantage of the emerging transmedia platform. Hence, while moral ambiguity does not have to be a feature of the post-apocalyptic, it is significant that the genre has moved away from the binary good versus evil narratives of The Matrix and I Am Legend and towards the greater moral complexity of The Walking Dead and the revived Planet of the Apes series. Binary narratives lead to an Omega point, a final battle between good and evil; complex narratives have no easy resolution and thus can always be developed further. The shift towards the morally complex in the post-apocalyptic is partly the desire of transmedia franchises to avoid narrative closure, a prime example of genre-medium coevolution. However, there is also a cultural impetus behind the genre’s recent direction. I have written elsewhere about the problems of seeing 9/11 as an epoch-making event (Joyce 2016), but when thinking about the prevalence of the apocalypse in twenty-first-century media, one must examine the impact of 9/11 and its aftermath. A disastrous event, though, does © The Author(s) 2018 S. Joyce, Transmedia Storytelling and the Apocalypse, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93952-0_5

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not create by itself an apocalyptic discourse. Voltaire felt the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755 proved that a loving God could not exist, for if he did why would he have allowed such an atrocity? It takes a different cast of mind to interpret disaster as evidence of a divine plan. Such a perspective was propagated by the man in the bully pulpit, George W. Bush, and the apocalyptic rhetoric he employed to frame 9/11 and the War on Terror led to the development of morally complex post-apocalyptic dramas as an implicit (and sometimes explicit) form of criticism. No franchise illustrates these dual impulses more clearly than the landmark sci-fi drama Battlestar Galactica (BSG). The series is a reimagining of the short-lived 1970s show of the same name. The story takes place in a civilisation much like our own, except spread out over 12 planets named after our star signs and with the capacity for space travel. The civilisation once had a robot workforce, the Cylons, who became conscious and rebelled, leading to a war that ended with the Cylons disappearing into deep space for 40 years. In the pilot, the Cylons return and launch a surprise attack that wipes out humanity, save for approximately 50,000 survivors on random spaceships clustered around the battlestar Galactica, led by Commander Adama. Seeing his shell-shocked crew and the terrified civilians, Adama announces that he will lead them to the mythical long-­ lost 13th colony, Earth, in order to give them hope. The show thus takes place between apocalypses, beginning with the destruction of civilisation and potentially ending with the extinction of humanity as the rag-tag convoy of survivors attempts to survive Cylon attacks and the challenges of deep space. The difference between the original series and the post-9/11 remake is noteworthy. The original, with its brightly lit 1970s sets and upbeat camaraderie, was a kind of Wagon Train in space, a group of hardy settlers in the new frontier fighting off attacks and the natural elements. The remake, on the other hand, focuses much more on the darkness within. The fleet, riven by different factions, suspicion of Cylon infiltrators, and personal conflicts, is constantly in danger of tearing itself apart. For the purposes of this study, the significance of BSG is manifold. A major recent development in our mediascape has been the emergence of long-form television dramas; BSG is both an exemplar of the form and an oft-cited influence on the development of transmedia television. At the same time, it was one of the USA’s most significant cultural responses to 9/11 and a profound influence on the post-apocalyptic genre. In order to deal with this complexity, we will first look at how convergence culture has reshaped television and then how the Bush administration framed 9/11 as

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an apocalyptic discourse; these industrial and cultural preconditions form the ground for BSG’s landmark innovations in both the post-apocalyptic genre and transmedia television.

Convergence Television The primary conceptual obstacle for the producers of I Am Legend was that they thought in terms of closure rather than seriality. One of the most important advances towards transmedia as a paradigm is that seriality has become a widely embraced norm. Certain platforms, such as comics, have long been accustomed to serial narratives; others, such as novels or films, generally offer narrative closure unless the work is conspicuously advertised as part of a series. What has brought seriality to the forefront of the modern mediascape are the changes wrought primarily in one medium: television. Put simply, we live in the golden age of television drama. In the words of leading television scholar Jason Mittell, “television’s storytelling possibilities and practices have undergone drastic shifts specific to the medium” (2015, 2). This leads to a question that is simple to state but difficult to answer: why are our TV dramas now so good? If we look at other art forms, we see no clear advance in quality over the past 30 years. Yet when it comes to TV drama, nothing in the past compares with Mad Men or The Wire or Game of Thrones. Far from being the idiot box, television has become the medium of choice for those wishing to make complex, mature dramas. Does our generation simply have a finer sense of audio-visual aesthetics? This might be a convincing argument if we weren’t also the generation that made Independence Day: Resurgence. I never thought anything could be sillier than the original, but I have unexpectedly discovered myself to be an optimist. That is why, when a medium suddenly erupts with creativity, we need to ask what happened and how it can be supported. When it is not just an individual work but a whole range of works, then something structural must have changed that unleashed energies previously kept in check. In order to understand why TV dramas have improved, we must examine why it makes economic sense to make great TV now. In the beginning, American television shows were sponsored by businesses, as in Kraft Television Theatre. It is hard to imagine Kraft sponsoring something like The Walking Dead: “because nothing says wholesome American cheese

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like seeing a zombie’s head get crushed by a shovel!” After the quiz show scandals of the 1950s, the big networks changed from sponsored programming to advertising-supported programming. This gave networks control over content with the most popular programmes charging the most for advertising time. Advertising led to a format that created difficulties for long-form storytelling. Because networks need the largest audience possible to charge the highest advertising rates, shows have to appeal across many demographics. So new viewers can join any week, or so regular viewers won’t feel behind if they miss some weeks, the basic unit of network drama is the episode. There may be an overarching plot line, but essentially each episode is self-contained. At its best, this produced many fine episodic dramas, such as The Fugitive, but the format’s weaknesses may be seen by looking at another post-apocalyptic TV drama, Jericho (2006–8). For the fall of 2006, CBS decided to produce a new post-apocalyptic drama. Set in the small town of Jericho, the pilot introduces the main characters before the show’s defining event: on the horizon, suddenly, there is a large and unmistakable mushroom cloud. The television, radio, and phones go dead. As with BSG, the 9/11 parallels are clear. Catastrophe has struck and now the question is how to survive in its aftermath. Yet the show’s attempt to fit a post-apocalyptic storyline into a Wednesday evening network drama slot caused it almost insoluble problems. In an effort to attract a broad audience, the show mixes romantic comedy, soap opera, and teen drama with the post-apocalyptic. Executive producer Jon Turteltaub reassured prospective viewers that even though the show obliterates every major American city in the pilot, “the show is not all doom and gloom” (Shales 2006). There is the romantic comedy subplot involving the elegant Washington government official forced to live with a handsome farmer. To help end each episode on an upbeat note, there are awkward invocations of community, such as when the inability to keep meat frozen due to lack of electricity leads the town to have a giant barbeque, accompanied by soft rock music and a montage exuding small-­ town virtues. The most glaringly incompatible storyline is the teen drama. She is the most popular girl in school; he is the sullen outcast. After both their absent families are wiped out in the attack, she throws a party for all the popular kids. As a grocery delivery boy, his job is to deliver snacks and soda pop (because rationing obviously hasn’t started yet) and be made fun of by her cool friends, despite her discomfort. This was the point when I longed for Will Smith’s character from I Am Legend to show up and explain, “Everyone that you or I have ever known, is dead! DEAD!”

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Jericho’s failings indicate why the post-apocalyptic never flourished on network television: you cannot destroy the world and then try to keep the consequences family friendly. However, audience fragmentation has made niche programming a reality. Channels are more specialised with variety spread across channels rather than within one channel, or even within one show, which is then forced to blend a variety of genres like Jericho. This specialisation allowed BSG to ignore concerns about being too gloomy; in a world of niche audiences, you don’t need to satisfy the teen demographic and the young parents and the pensioners—you just need a dedicated core audience rather than the mass audience. What is the economic logic behind pursuing niche audiences? Network TV depends on the mass audience because it is financed by advertising; cable and streaming, on the other hand, are financed primarily by subscriptions. Cable providers offer a wide package of channels and each channel gets a percentage of each subscription. Even if subscribers don’t watch your channel, you still get their money. For minor cable channels, the key is therefore to have a signature show with an audience dedicated enough to protest if that channel is dropped from the cable package. The thinking behind this was explained with great clarity by Rob Sorcher, former executive vice president of programming and production for AMC, when explaining why the channel gambled on original programming: I’m working at this network, AMC, that has a collection of shit-ass movies. It’s like the lesser TCM, and I’m supposed to turn it into something. [What the channel needed was] a show for cable operator retention. You want something that can’t be replicated elsewhere—like a Sopranos—because if you have a signature show, then you won’t be dropped [by cable operators]. So your strategy becomes: Let’s go for quality. (Rose and O’Connell 2015)

I would like to propose that “shit-ass” immediately become a technical term in media studies. Cable helped transform the basic unit of television drama into the season rather than the episode. Constant reruns and now on-demand content mean viewers can easily catch up with their favourite shows. DVD box sets meant viewers could make up for missed episodes, which also allowed network to promote some serialised dramas such as Lost and 24. Yet cable and streaming have an edge on network because they have more freedom to create morally compromised central characters, such as Tony Soprano or Walter White, who are trapped in situations from which there is no real

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escape. Ronald D. Moore was explicit about creating a similarly irresolvable central situation in the BSG series bible: Simply put, we should always feel as though the Galactica and her rag-tag fleet are in a state of perpetual crisis. There is a constant threat to our people from within and without the fleet which will never be resolved during the course of the series. (2003, 30)

This kind of scenario suits dedicated fans, who can watch the show’s complexity build, whereas the most popular network dramas (NCIS, CSI, etc.) still tend to be episodic. Of course, because of mutual influence, the division is not distinct. Moore credits Hill Street Blues with the idea for a three-part mix of series-long story arcs, multi-episode arcs, and stand-­ alone episodes. However, he developed this idea to escape the influence of another network show, Star Trek: The Next Generation: “The three-tiered format avoids the pitfalls of Star Trek’s episodic structure (which forces the writers to endlessly come up with new and wacky ways to put the Enterprise in jeopardy each week) without turning our show into a true serial” (2003, 30). Network has the capacity to do serials, but it is not as favourable an environment as cable or streaming because of their different structural logics. Hence, one reason we have series like BSG or The Walking Dead is that long-form TV drama needs open-ended scenarios of ongoing crisis and the post-apocalyptic setting provides both an irresolvable situation for the series-long story arc with the possibility of easily creating multi-episode arcs and stand-alone episodes. Because cable and streaming rely on subscriptions, a new economic structure was developed in which signature shows create financial success. Therefore, the industrial logic was in place on television for the genre to flourish. There is one final point about how industrial shifts prepared the ground for post-apocalyptic dramas. When I first saw BSG, I was astonished by the production values. It wasn’t just the spectacular space battles; our introduction to the battlestar in the pilot is done through an impressive long take, with a single camera panning and tracking between different characters as they walk the corridors before finally showing the Combat Information Centre (CIC) which functions as the ship’s bridge. How on earth, I wondered, had the Syfy channel managed to afford this? This is where conglomeration plays a role as the channel became a part of Universal Studio Networks in the late 1990s. Through conglomeration,

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major TV networks and cable channels are connected to the six Hollywood majors and their technical expertise has helped make TV more cinematic. Conglomeration may concentrate media power, but it also creates opportunities for collaboration. If the Syfy channel was able to make a landmark TV series, this was only possible because it was part of a conglomerate with the resources to create a post-apocalyptic drama that didn’t embarrass itself with cheap effects.

Post-9/11 Apocalypse If the structural logic of convergence television created the conditions in which BSG was possible, then the cultural moment was equally responsible for encouraging it to embrace a form of the post-apocalyptic that emphasised ambiguity and complexity in a way that directly contrasted with the apocalyptic rhetoric employed by the Bush administration to frame the War on Terror. Perhaps the most devout president in decades, Bush was uniquely predisposed to read 9/11  in an apocalyptic framework. Like many evangelical Christians, Bush’s faith is rooted in a conversion experience and the “born-again” narrative shares some essential features with the apocalyptic. In The Varieties of Religious Experience, the great philosopher and psychologist William James states: to be converted, to be regenerated, to receive grace, to experience religion, to gain an assurance are so many phrases which denote the process, gradual or sudden, by which a self hitherto divided, and consciously wrong, inferior, and unhappy, becomes consciously right, superior, and happy, in consequence of its firmer hold on religious realities. (2009, 145)

As James notes, conversion tends to happen after a long period of internal strife, which resolves itself in a moment of insight. This is why stories of conversion are often alien to outsiders because what matters isn’t the moment itself but who you were leading up to the moment and why you were predisposed to accept a transformative revelation. Bush fits this classic pattern. In 1986, almost 40 years old, his personal and professional life was collapsing. He had always struggled to make a successful career in either the oil business or politics. In 1978, he lost the election for Texas’ 19th congressional district. Returning to the oil industry, he set up a number of companies that struggled until the dramatic fall

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in oil prices in 1986: “Oil prices went into a free fall, deals collapsed, banks failed, and men who had grown up together believing the sky was the limit suddenly lost their jobs and fortunes” (Leonard 2000). Bush’s alcohol problems reached a new level and put his marriage under serious strain. According to family friend Doug Wead, “He was going to lose his daughters if he lost his marriage, and he was going to lose his marriage if he didn’t stop drinking” (2004). There may have been other pressures, too, with his father George H.W.  Bush preparing to run for the presidency. Having a divorced son with a failed career would hardly have looked good for a conservative politician running on a pro-family, pro-business ticket. Here we have the divided self, the gap between what Bush needed or wanted to be and who he was. At the age of 40, it becomes hard to disguise one’s failures. This was when the conversion occurred. According to Wead, Bush woke up one morning and said, “Eureka, that’s it. I’ll take God. I’ll beat drinking. I’ll keep Laura and the girls: that simple. I will never take a drink again the rest of my life. Done” (2004). If the apocalypse predicts a final transformation of the world and the purging of evil, then so does the conversion narrative. In his study of fundamentalist psychology, Charles Strozier argues, “the broken narrative is the defining characteristic, spiritually and emotionally, for fundamentalists. The past is bad and worthless, even tainted with death. One yearns for transformation. The individual believer struggles with personal sin, a struggle expressed collectively as a cosmic battle between the forces of good and evil” (1994, 54). For born-again Christians, the apocalyptic narrative is their personal story writ large across the cosmos. We all interpret the world in terms of our experiences; if our experience is that a single moment can transform the world from a place of anxiety and pain into something pure and good, why not read world events in the same manner? Bush’s speeches indicate that this was how he saw 9/11 and he coded his addresses to the nation with religious rhetoric that evangelicals would spot immediately. On September 14, 2001, Bush was already casting the attacks in terms of moral theology as an apocalyptic moment that had clearly divided good and evil: “our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these attacks and rid the world of evil. … God’s signs are not always the ones we look for. We learn in tragedy that his purposes are not always our own” (60). In the manner of an evangelical pastor, Bush indicated that the terrorist attacks needed to be interpreted as signs from God about his divine plan for the chosen people. “This conversion of secular

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political speech into religious discourse invests otherwise merely human events with transcendent significance. By the end, America’s adversaries have been redefined as enemies of God and current events have been constituted as confirmation of scripture” (Lincoln 2003, 32). There is still the question of whether this was a calculated political strategy or a product of Bush’s own belief. Given the complexities of any political action, it seems impossible to disentangle the various desires of key actors. However, one aspect of the Bush administration’s approach deserves close attention and that is its insistence that there was no longer a middle ground: “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists” (2001, 69). No diplomat would advise delivering such an ultimatum. The speed at which Bush’s “with us or against us” stance squandered international goodwill is unprecedented and thus it seems likely that the Manichaean perspective of apocalyptic rhetoric persuaded Bush himself. The terrorist attacks were a sign that the final battle between good and evil had begun. At the Pentagon on October 11, 2001, Bush described the terrorists as pawns in a wider cosmic battle: “We cannot fully understand the designs and power of evil. It is enough to know that evil, like goodness, exists. And in the terrorists, evil has found a willing servant” (80). Within such a framework, there can be no neutrality. The appeal of the apocalypse is that it provides certainty about history’s direction, one’s role and purpose, and the promise that good will triumph. In many ways, this parallels the conversion narrative of born-again Christians: the past is wicked, the revelation purges evil, and all time after that is dedicated to God’s law. As his speeches after 9/11 indicate, Bush saw 9/11 as a revelatory moment: “in our grief and anger we have found our mission and our moment … freedom and fear are at war” (2001, 72). The great cosmic war between good and evil had begun and there was no doubt who had God’s favour in the coming struggle.

BSG and the Post-apocalyptic What is the connection between the apocalyptic discourse that saturated American public rhetoric after 9/11 and the post-apocalyptic dramas that have filled our pages and screens since then? In this crucial period, when convergence culture was reshaping television in favour of open-ended, morally complex series, the post-apocalyptic genre began to construct itself as the opposite of Bush’s apocalyptic rhetoric. The apocalyptic

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­ rogresses towards a fixed, definite end; the post-apocalyptic begins after p that end has happened. The apocalyptic offers a revelation into the meaning of history; the post-apocalyptic destroys past certainties and offers confusion and chaos. The apocalyptic draws a line between good and evil; the post-­apocalyptic blurs the boundary between right and wrong with morally ambiguous characters. The apocalyptic promises a better tomorrow once today’s tribulations have passed; the post-apocalyptic promises nothing, for civilisation cannot be rebuilt and anarchy is no improvement on what had existed. In a time when the Bush administration promoted messianic certainty, the post-apocalyptic became the genre that denied the premises on which that certainty was built. These tendencies in the post-apocalyptic make a better foundation for open-ended franchises and offer a fictional space in which the moral righteousness of apocalyptic rhetoric can be interrogated. BSG reaches a crescendo when it questions the moral basis of the survivors’ struggle. By the midpoint of season two, the desperate fleet is on the brink of civil war. Having unexpectedly reunited with the battlestar Pegasus, captained by the fearsome Admiral Cain, the survivors’ joy turns to dismay when they discover that Cain intends to impose martial law over the fractious civilian population. President Laura Roslin concludes that Cain poses a threat to the fleet and tasks Adama with the job of murdering his superior officer for the good of humanity. As the Galactica and the Pegasus prepare to fight, Adama turns to the one being aboard who can understand his sense of guilt and compulsion—his enemy, the Cylon Sharon Valerii, who in an earlier incarnation tried to assassinate Adama. In a moment that may stand as the defining statement of BSG’s first two seasons, Sharon repeats back to Adama his own words from the day of the apocalypse, but now with a coda that rings devastatingly true: “You said that humanity was a flawed creation and that people still kill one another for petty jealousy and greed. You said that humanity never asked itself why it deserved to survive. Maybe you don’t” (“Resurrection Ship, Part II” 2006). Right from the beginning, BSG was conceived as a meditation on how a civilisation like ours might respond to a surprise assault from an alien foe. In particular, the ongoing threat from Cylon sleeper agents within the fleet is a major source of dramatic tension. As showrunner Ronald D. Moore explained in the series bible, “How people react to this threat among them will be one of the primary storylines of the entire series— what will be their version of the Patriot Act? Where will liberty and

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security collide? How far will they be willing to go to ferret out the ‘traitors’ among them” (2003, 33)? The reference to the Patriot Act, the law that allowed increased surveillance and indefinite detention of terrorist suspects, is revealing. By 2003, the Bush administration’s response to 9/11 was creating disquiet but not yet mass opposition. By translating contemporary anxieties into a sci-fi setting, BSG was able to explore the complexities of the War on Terror while avoiding hysterical reactions. In the pilot, when Adama reflects on the original Cylon rebellion, he demonstrates a level of self-reflection on humanity’s complicity that would have been impossible in American public discourse at that time: “You cannot play God then wash your hands of the things that you’ve created. Sooner or later, the day comes when you can’t hide from the things that you’ve done anymore.” One can only imagine what might have happened if Bush had made this mea culpa about US involvement in the Middle East and Afghanistan after 9/11. As a sci-fi series, however, BSG could go further than any other show in the years immediately after 9/11 because it could always declare itself a fantasy with no connection to reality. Therefore, this post-­ apocalyptic sci-fi drama became a better vehicle for examining the American response to 9/11 than almost anything else on national television, including the news. As Brian Ott argues, “by dramatizing the moral dangers and pitfalls of unrestrained fear, BSG furnishes viewers with a vocabulary and thus with a set of symbolic resources for managing their social anxieties” (2008, 14). The first episode of the regular series, “33,” establishes the atmosphere of moral complexity. The fleet is being pursued by the Cylons. Each time they make a faster-than-light (FTL) jump, they gain a breathing space of 33 minutes, during which time they must prepare for the next jump and grab what little sleep they can. The crew, unkempt and bleary-eyed, is under increasing strain. One scene shows a hall of remembrance in which crewmembers post pictures of missing loved ones, much as people did in the wake of 9/11. However, the 9/11 parallels take a darker turn when one ship, the Olympic Carrier, is accidentally left behind. At first recriminations fly, but then 33 minutes pass and the Cylons also fail to appear. The suspicion grows that they were somehow tracking the Carrier. When the lost ship suddenly reappears, it refuses to answer hails and charges directly at the Galactica, creating a distinctly 9/11 moment. What would you do if a potentially hijacked passenger craft suddenly turned and headed directly for a military target?

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Ultimately, Roslin and Adama destroy the ship, but this is never presented as morally correct. Starbuck screams at Apollo not to shoot as he opens fire. Roslin carries the number of dead civilians on a scrap of paper to remind her of her mistakes. The fantasies promoted within the Bush administration of tough men making hard decisions out of an unshakeable sense of duty are replaced by doubt and an absence of easy solutions. In the pilot, for example, Roslin’s decision to abandon ships without FTL drives to the Cylons is tactically correct, but the moment itself is saturated with the perspectives of the victims, who beg over the radio not to be abandoned. This focus on the victims of Roslin and Adama’s choices undermines the moral rightness of their decisions, even if they may be strategically necessary. As Ott puts it, “rather than attempting to resolve this ambiguity, the show prompts reflection on the contexts that produce it, encouraging viewers to judge for themselves” (2008, 24). If BSG challenges the idea that the good guys can be wholly good, then it also undermines constructions of the enemy as wholly evil. At first, the show seems to encourage parallels between the Cylons and Islamic terrorists: “BSG initially maps an Islamic identity onto the unknown, religiously driven, robotic culture that carries out a seemingly unprovoked attack on the series’ knowable human population” (Marshall and Potter 2013, 62). However, at the end of the pilot, we learn that Sharon “Boomer” Valerii is actually a Cylon sleeper agent. Yet Boomer has no idea she is anything other than human and one of the plot lines of the first season is her slowly dawning recognition that she is not who she thinks she is. She begins to experience memory blackouts and strange impulses, while those close to her become increasingly suspicious. The complex positioning of Boomer as an unaware enemy who is slowly and horrifyingly realising her true nature makes the audience both sympathise with her and simultaneously worry for the fleet if she isn’t discovered. After the original Boomer is killed following her attempted assassination of Adama, the episode “Downloaded” in season two shows a resurrected Boomer living in isolation among the Cylons, overcome with guilt for the human friends she betrayed because she couldn’t control her programming. Meanwhile, a self-aware version of Sharon Valerii, code named “Athena,” becomes pregnant with the first human-Cylon child and offers to help the fleet if Adama and Roslin protect her baby. The reversals of sympathy become complete in season three, when the Cylons occupy New Caprica and the humans fight back with suicide bombings and improvised explosive devices, thus turning the Cylons into the American army in Iraq and the

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humans into insurgents. As Matthias Stephan writes, “This blurring of the lines of audience identification calls attention to the tactics of each side, as both sides exhibit nurturing and brutally violent behaviour, at times, and neither side can be easily identified as good or evil, right or wrong, for very long” (2012). This moral ambiguity is enhanced by the show’s striking visuals. Ordinarily we expect television to show the action from a stable vantage point. BSG was explicitly designed to break with these conventions. According to Ronald D. Moore, the “first thing that will leap out at viewers is the dynamic use of the documentary or cinema verité style. Through extensive use of hand-held cameras, practical lighting, and functional set design, the battlestar Galactica will feel on every level like a real place” (2003, 1). Yet the visual style is not simply documentary. The camera pans and zooms erratically, often cutting to imprecise close-ups that leave important details outside the frame. When Roslin must decide whether or not to abandon the ships without FTL drives, the camera tracks around the arguing group in a swift circle that is in no way documentary but instead removes any stable perspective from which to view the action. In BSG, not only are the characters perpetually disoriented but even the omniscient narrator often does not know where to look. This visual confusion destabilises our certainty as to what the truth is and where the moral high ground lies—if it exists at all. If apocalyptic narratives fix the role of every actor, then the post-­ apocalyptic creates uncertainty about everyone’s identity and purpose now that civilisation has been destroyed. In BSG, this issue runs throughout the series as characters wonder about the identity of the Cylons in the fleet. Several characters question their own identities, most notably Gaius Baltar (another dodgy scientist with a British accent), who secretly hopes he may be a Cylon. It was Baltar who originally gave the Cylons access to the human defence systems and thus allowed the surprise attack, but if he were really a Cylon then “I would stop being a traitor to one set of people and be a hero to another” (“The Passage” 2006). Either way he would have a narrative that defined his identity, but in this post-apocalyptic scenario, uncertainty destabilises Baltar’s sense of self. Whereas the apocalyptic defines who we are and what roles we must play, in the post-apocalyptic the absence of meaning destabilises not only narratives of history but also the identity of its agents, leaving us the twin demons of doubt and dread. These questions of identity and the inability to define good and evil would be explored in other landmarks of post-9/11 culture, such as

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Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (2008) or Steven Spielberg’s Munich (2006). However, BSG’s manipulation of apocalyptic tropes so that the series rejects point-for-point the appeal of apocalyptic narratives illustrates how defining characteristics of the contemporary post-­ apocalyptic—open-ended narratives, moral ambiguity, confusion of roles and identities—coalesced around undermining the framing of the War on Terror. Milford and Rowland, for example, describe BSG as a “situated ideological allegory” that is “neither monosemic nor fully polysemic … but is limited by the pretextual knowledge of the audience” (2012, 540), meaning the audience would read the show as commentary on current events. Thus, Rikk Mulligan views the character of Admiral Cain as “an extension of the American use of the military in the Middle East, presidential disregard for the autonomy of world governments, and the imposition of American cultural norms and liberal democracy in name only” (2008, 63). Brian Ott interprets the Cylon occupation of New Caprica as “an unmistakable metaphor for the US occupation of Iraq” (2008, 22). The show used its post-apocalyptic setting to challenge the apocalyptic strain in Bush’s rhetoric and in doing so helped define central characteristics of the post-apocalyptic genre. Not all post-apocalyptic narratives shared this political focus, but in BSG the genre found a powerful and innovative show that helped clarify the ideas the genre could explore.

Battlestar Galactica and Transmedia BSG has already been the subject of numerous scholarly articles discussing its production, content, and reception, including the edited volume Cylons in America (Potter and Marshall 2008) or Science Fiction Film and Television’s special issue on Battlestar Galactica (2012). It is impossible to do justice to the full range of discussions the series has provoked, so I will focus here on two issues that have broader relevance for transmedia. The first has to do with how serial transmedia narratives bridge the gap between seasons and platforms; the second has to do with the concept of authorship in a vast multimedia enterprise. Serial narratives face the problem of audiences bleeding away between narrative instalments. Transmedia opens the possibility of spanning these gaps by offering new narrative information that builds anticipation for the upcoming season. As Mittell explains, “for the industry, some transmedia extensions might provide an additional revenue stream but their primary function is to drive viewers back to the television series; for creators,

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t­ ransmedia storytelling must always support and strengthen the core television narrative experience” (2015, 295). BSG creatively experimented with webisodes to bridge season gaps. In the lead up to season three, it released ten webisodes called “The Resistance” that chronicled events during the occupation of New Caprica and gave depth to two minor characters, Duck and Jammer, who would have small but critical roles in the upcoming season. While those who watched the regular TV broadcast would not miss key story information, those who followed the webisodes would have greater insight into Duck’s reasons for carrying out a suicide bombing and the moral crises through which Jammer became a Cylon collaborator. During the mid-season break in season four, BSG produced another ten-­part web series called “The Face of the Enemy” offering new insight into the character of Felix Gaeta and foreshadowing his actions in the second half of the season. As per Mittell’s formula for transmedia extensions, viewers who watched the webisodes were rewarded without punishing those who did not. The significance of what BSG added to the TV landscape can be seen in how the webisodes helped precipitate the 2007–2008 Writer’s Guild of America strike. As Julie Levin Russo explains, the first set of webisodes in 2006 “provoked a pitched battle between SciFi/NBC executives and creative personnel, with executives designating the webisodes as promotional material not subject to additional wages, and creative workers contending that they were original content qualifying for union rates” (2009, 129). The fight over “The Resistance” would engulf the industry a year later as failure to compensate writers of transmedia extensions for original creative work was a factor leading to the strike. How successful were the webisodes in driving viewers to the TV series? Judged solely by Nielsen ratings, BSG’s efforts failed as ratings continually declined: “The series averaged 2.8 million viewers an episode during Season 1. During the most recent run of 10 episodes, the show averaged 2.2 million viewers, a slight dip overall but up from Seasons 2 and 3. The series lost some of that steam by the midseason finale, falling to just 1.8 million viewers” (“Galactica” 2008). Yet other evidence suggested the show was significantly more popular than ratings indicated. The final episode attracted 2.364 million viewers when broadcast, but once a full week of digital video recorder (DVR) viewers was factored in then the numbers jumped to 3.1 million (“Battlestar” 2009). This does not count those who waited for the DVD box set so they could binge-watch the whole season or those who down­ roducer Michael Angeli loaded it using file-sharing services. Co-executive p

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said the show was well aware that its fans were non-­traditional viewers: “I think we were one of the first ones. TiVo had just sort of taken off. This was four or five seasons ago, and because we were on Friday nights most people, most fans don’t watch it (on first run). They TiVo it and watch it a zillion times” (“Galactica” 2008). Many viewers were consuming the show in non-traditional ways and thus it is almost impossible to gauge the webisodes’ effect. We can reasonably assume, however, that the webisodes encouraged fans to consume the television show in new ways. Once you have streamed the webisodes that build up to a new season, why not just stream the whole season? Let us call these considerations transmedia bridging, by which I mean not just ways of bridging the gaps between instalments of a serialised core narrative but ways of bridging platforms for consumption of that narrative. BSG’s webisodes not only drew audiences back for a new season but also pushed those audiences onto other platforms where extra content could be consumed. They thus helped activate viewers into hunter-­ gatherers of information rather than passive consumers of one platform. In a world of on-demand content, making audiences wait too long for new story information can be a serious error. When BBC’s Sherlock, for example, was forced to take a three-year hiatus from 2014 to 2017 due to the difficulty in coordinating the schedules of its increasingly in-demand leads Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, the extended wait led to fan frustration, elevated expectations for season four, and inevitably a sense of disappointment when it finally arrived. Transmedia bridging, by pushing fans onto other platforms where they can experience new storyworld information, may be a vital strategy for the long-term success of serial narratives. A second issue BSG raises is the question of authorship in transmedia franchises. Whereas in film the director is considered the prime creator, serial television has seen the rise of the showrunner. Television may now be the only industry in which talented writers get both money and respect, but much as I would uncritically like to celebrate this, it is equally obvious that transmedia television is far too complex for one person to control. The focus on the showrunner is partly the audience’s desire to believe the narrative will have a satisfying resolution. As Mittell observes, “for ongoing storyworlds, many viewers want to imagine a creator with full knowledge and mastery guiding the outcomes, and in moments of doubt and confusion, they put their trust and faith in this higher power” (2015, 116). This suggests the need for an “author-function,” a belief in the

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e­ xistence of a controlling mind that can resolve the narrative quantum state in which serial drama is perpetually poised. Michael Clarke sees a parallel between the author-function and an implied controlling force in many transmedia texts: “the mastermind acts as both a surrogate for the implied author and his literal presence in the text influencing events and guiding character action from an ambiguous position between diegesis and the extra-text” (2013, 162). This analysis aligns with the continual reminder in BSG’s opening credits that the Cylons “have a plan,” which is never explained. From a fan studies perspective, Matt Hills emphasises how cult television elevates auteurs because this high culture reading strategy legitimises fans’ intense interest in the show (2002, 133). Many showrunners have built on fan interest to establish themselves as the definitive authors of a TV series, as BSG showrunner Ron Moore did. In his detailed examination of Moore’s podcasts for each episode, Derek Kompare argues, “he presents what is arguably the model cult television author persona: a creator who revels in recounting minutiae of television production and passionately offers storytelling and management philosophies” (2011, 107). Moore used these podcasts to claim sole authorship, even declaring in one podcast: “The show has a voice. And it’s my voice” (2006). Suzanne Scott has argued that this authorial control extends even into transmedia extensions, which become “an alternative to the consumption of fan narratives that do similar textual work, thereby making fan-produced texts that seek to engage with the BSG canon more difficult to produce and less likely to be consumed” (2008, 212). The question of ownership/authorship has often been framed in terms of showrunners versus fans and a struggle for control of meaning. However, a complicating figure is Richard Hatch, who starred in the original series as Apollo and in the remake as Tom Zarek. No one has ever claimed that Hatch is the author of BSG, yet many fans felt his creative blessing of the reboot would be essential to BSG’s success. Hatch published a series of eight BSG novels starting with Armageddon in 1997 and mortgaged his own home to fund a trailer to promote a potential reboot, Battlestar Galactica: The Second Coming, in 1999. When Ronald D. Moore came to the Galactica convention prior to the launch of BSG, he was booed by fans until, in Moore’s words, “Richard got up in the middle of it and much like Moses, said, ‘My people, silence’” (2005) and argued that they should allow Moore to explain his vision for the show. Hatch was eventually incorporated into the series as the populist rebel Tom Zarek,

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allowing fans to see their champion challenge Moore’s vision from inside the narrative universe. Even after BSG ended, fans continued to think of Richard Hatch as the “Colonial Father,” as an account for SciFi Pulse described him in 2015: “So it seems to me that it is high time that we all acknowledge Richard Hatch as both our official and unofficial leader of the Twelve Colonies and we may all take solace knowing that our dreams and love of all things Galactica are in very good hands so long as Richard’s vision, guidance and love is standing watch on Galactica’s bridge” (Bourdony). Now what are we to call such a figure? The language of authorship fails us because we cannot speak of authors or author-functions. Yet such figures are common in many franchises: Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator, for example, or Leonard Nimoy for Star Trek. Let us call figures like Richard Hatch a franchise guardian, someone who is adopted by fans as protector of what they love best about the franchise. Mark J.P. Wolf uses a somewhat analogous term, “torchbearer” (2013, 269), to describe those appointed to keep imaginary worlds in line with the creator’s wishes, but a franchise guardian is a more flexible role which can belong to the original creator, a key actor in a series, or even a prominent superfan. As Derek Johnson has shown in relation to BSG, claims to creativity and authorship are up for grabs in a franchised production, with “showrunners like Ronald D. Moore … afforded a creative and authorial privilege, despite the multiplicity of creative labour encompassed by the franchise and uncontained by this author figure” (49). However, franchise guardians do not have to be creators; instead, they are figures who sanction the canonical legitimacy of various entries, which is one reason reboots and spinoffs are so eager to engage members of the original cast. Franchise guardians are typically the original authors, but do not have to be. In many cases, the original author moves from primary creator to franchise guardian, as J.K.  Rowling has with Harry Potter, where her stamp of approval is essential for any new entry. Some franchise guardians can lose their positions over time; when George Lucas criticised Star Wars: The Force Awakens, fans mostly shrugged and went to see it anyway because Lucas was also responsible for the creation of Jar Jar Binks. Lucas is now more like an honorary franchise guardian, whose blessing is nice but not essential, whereas if J.K. Rowling were to denounce a new Harry Potter film then Warner Bros. would certainly feel the heat from fans. Thus, as franchises expand, we need to move away from concepts of authorship and start thinking in terms of franchise guardians, those figures who seem to guarantee the franchise’s integrity.

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The Failed Sense of an Ending Over four seasons, BSG demonstrated the value of what I Am Legend had rejected: an open-ended, morally ambiguous post-apocalyptic world as the basis for a franchise that expanded across novels, games, comics, and other media. As Paul Booth has shown, ambiguity as a defining storyworld ethos extends even into the licensed BSG08 board game, in which some players are Cylons secretly working against the group: “The game sows mistrust among players, as all actions in the game are observable, but the motivations of the players/characters are unknown. … This directly mirrors one of the main themes of the show, that Cylons might be hidden among the crew” (2015, 107–108). While only the core medium could reveal critical information such as the secret identities of the twelve Cylon models, the narrative universe was rich enough to sustain any number of expansions exploring different aspects of life in the fleet. However, whereas the first two seasons of BSG redefined the post-apocalyptic as the mirror image of the classical apocalyptic and created a devoted fan base, the final two seasons divided opinion. After the escape from New Caprica in season three, the show resolves the long-running tension regarding the religious prophecies as the discovery of the Eye of Jupiter removes any doubt that there is a divine plan. As the prophesied signs come true, sceptics become believers and much of the indeterminacy surrounding the survivors’ fate vanishes. For many fans, this was the show’s most disappointing creative decision. Sam Miller argues, “The problem is a simplistic god, an ultimate benevolent power who is guiding everyone to a happy ending” (2009), while Brad Templeton regards the show’s biggest failure as the revelation that “God did it” (2009). Robert Bland criticises how the divine plan removes agency, arguing “RDM [Moore] & Co. not only violated the tacit agreement between storyteller and fan, but they exploded the internal engine that had been propelling BSG forward since its inception: its characters” (2009). The show therefore shifted to a version of the classical apocalyptic in which there is a clear telos, an aleitheia into the mysterious workings of the universe, and a binary division of characters into good and evil, those who further the divine plan and those who obstruct God’s designs. Much of the show’s moral complexity is thus removed, while the master narrative stabilises the identities of all. Athena, the self-aware version of Sharon Valerii and mother of the human-Cylon hybrid child Hera, becomes a fleet officer, thus creating a fixed identity for herself once she defines her duty

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as protecting Hera to further God’s plan. Yet the ambiguity surrounding Boomer and Athena’s identities was essential to the first two seasons. Once God’s plan becomes clear, so too does Athena’s identity and the story becomes an affirmative account of self-realisation that actually diminishes the character’s dramatic potential. As the show headed for an ending, it pivoted to a classical form of apocalyptic narrative that undercut the post-apocalyptic ambiguity that had been the heart of the show’s dramatic conflict. BSG’s evolution thus ran counter to the popular political narratives of its time. When the Bush administration propounded certainty and righteousness after 9/11, the show dramatised its opposite, but as the nation became disillusioned by the murky realities of military occupation and torture, BSG moved towards a narrative that emphasised certainty and resolution. Although BSG often makes easily decoded comments on the War on Terror, we should be wary of interpreting these as direct reflections of social concerns. Rather, fiction often imagines the things we lack. In a time of messianic certainty, BSG embraced fear and confusion in a thrilling post-apocalyptic scenario; when the times mirrored the show, the series fell for the siren song of clarity and purpose, becoming its own Book of Revelation by dissipating the qualities it had revealed best.

References Battlestar Galactica. 2003–9. Syfy. Battlestar Galactica Finale Nielsen Ratings Surge with DVR Viewing. 2009. TV by the Numbers, April 7. Bland, Robert. 2009. In God We Rust: Final Thoughts on Battlestar Galactica. Tor.com, April 14. Booth, Paul. 2015. Game Play: Paratextuality in Contemporary Board Games. London: Bloomsbury. Bourdony, Tye. 2015. Richard Hatch: The Colonial Father of Us All and What Remains of Galacticon. SciFi Pulse, August 11. Bush, George W. 2001–2008. Selected Speeches of President George W.  Bush, whitehouse.archives.gov. Clarke, Michael. 2013. Transmedia Television: New Trends in Network Serial Production. London: Bloomsbury. Galactica Proves the Ratings System Is Dead. 2008. Today.com, August 26. Hills, Matt. 2002. Fan Cultures. London: Routledge. James, William. 2009. The Varieties of Religious Experience. ebooks@adelaide. Jericho. 2006–8. CBS.

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Joyce, Stephen. 2016. Foreshadows of the Fall: Questioning 9/11’s Impact on American Attitudes. In American Cinema in the Shadow of 9/11, ed. Terence McSweeney, 207–224. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Kompare, Derek. 2011. More ‘Moments of Television’: Online Cult Television Authorship. In Flow TV: Television in the Age of Media Convergence, ed. Michael Kackman et al., 95–113. London: Routledge. Leonard, Mary. 2000. George W. Bush: A Legacy Reclaimed. Boston Globe, January 23. Lincoln, Bruce. 2003. Holy Terrors: Thinking About Religion After September 11. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Marshall, C.W., and Tiffany Potter. 2013. Remapping Terrorism Stereotypes in Battlestar Galactica. In Muslims in American Popular Culture, ed. Anne R. Richards and Iraj Omidvar, 61–72. Westport: Praeger. Milford, Mike, and Robert C. Rowland. 2012. Situated Ideological Allegory and Battlestar Galactica. Western Journal of Communication 76 (5): 536–551. Miller, Sam J. 2009. Not in Our Stars: The Betrayals of the BSG Finale. Galactica Sitrep, April 16. Mittell, Jason. 2015. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York University Press. Moore, Ronald D. 2003. Battlestar Galactica Series Bible. http://leethomson. myzen.co.uk/Battlestar_Galactica/Battlestar_Galactica_Series_Bible.pdf. Accessed 10 June 2018. ———. 2005. An Interview with Ronald D.  Moore. Interview with Maureen Ryan. Chicago Tribune, January 19. ———. 2006. The Captain’s Hand. Narrated by Ronald D. Moore. Scifi. Mulligan, Rikk. 2008. The Cain Mutiny: Reflecting the Faces of Military Leadership in a Time of Fear. In Cylons in America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica, ed. Tiffany Potter and C.W. Marshall, 52–63. New York: Continuum. Ott, Brian. 2008. (Re)framing Fear: Equipment for Living in a Post-9/11 World. In Cylons in America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica, ed. Tiffany Potter and C.W. Marshall, 13–26. New York: Continuum. Potter, Tiffany, and C.W. Marshall, eds. 2008. Cylons in America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica. New York: Continuum. Resurrection Ship, Part II. 2006. Battlestar Galactica. Sci-Fi Channel, January 13. Rose, Lacey, and Michael O’Connell. 2015. The Uncensored, Epic, Never-Told Story Behind Mad Men. The Hollywood Reporter, March 11. Russo, Julie Levin. 2009. User-Penetrated Content: Fan Video in the Age of Convergence. Cinema Journal 48 (4): 125–130. Science Fiction Film and Television. 2012. Special Issue on Battlestar Galactica 5 (1). Scott, Suzanne. 2008. Authorised Resistance: Is Fan Production Frakked? In Cylons in America: Critical Studies in Battlestar Galactica, ed. Tiffany Potter and C.W. Marshall, 210–223. New York: Continuum.

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Shales, Tom. 2006. Kidnapped Holds Viewers to Ransom. The Washington Post, September 20. Stephan, Matthias. 2012. Battlestar Galactica: Not Your Father’s Sci-Fi. 16:9. 10, no. 46 (June): n. pag. Strozier, Charles. 1994. Apocalypse: On the Psychology of Fundamentalism in America. Boston: Beacon Press. Templeton, Brad. 2009. Battlestar’s ‘Daybreak’: The Worst Ending in the History of On-Screen Science Fiction. Brad Ideas, July 13. The Passage. 2006. Battlestar Galactica. Sci-Fi Channel, December 8. Wead, Doug. 2004. The Spirituality of George W. Bush. PBS Frontline, April 29. Wolf, Mark J.P. 2013. Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation. New York: Routledge.

CHAPTER 6

Worldbuilding and World Destroying in BioShock and The Last of Us

You are awoken at night by a phone ringing. It is your uncle, sounding panicked, looking for your father. Then the line goes dead. You get out of bed and go in search of your dad. His bedroom is empty, but the TV is playing. If you stay to watch, you see a live news report about infection control measures before an explosion causes the screen to go blank. If you look out the window, you see a fireball rising. In the bathroom, a newspaper describes some kind of outbreak. You go downstairs, calling for your father, your voice shaky. Sirens wail; if you look outside you can see police cars racing past. In the kitchen, another phone rings. Your dad’s phone shows multiple missed calls. “Where is he?” you worry aloud, increasingly aware that something is not right and you are all alone to deal with it. Thus begins the award-winning video game The Last of Us (Naughty Dog 2013). In the opening sequence, the player’s avatar is a 12-year-old girl called Sarah, who wakes up one night to find the apocalypse is upon her. Sarah certainly isn’t the only video game character to experience the world ending. Post-apocalyptic scenarios have been a favourite of video game designers and players almost since the beginning. The connection between the medium and the genre has drawn attention, although more so in popular culture than in academia. For Steven Poole, the “end of the world is simply an excuse to create a world filled with nothing but repetitive violence against monsters, without any annoying interruption by law enforcement or other social constraints” (2017). Michael Falero gives this argument a more positive spin: “Gamers continue to have an appetite for © The Author(s) 2018 S. Joyce, Transmedia Storytelling and the Apocalypse, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93952-0_6

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challenging games that place them in unforgiving environments. When done right, a post-apocalyptic video game gives them just that” (2015). Writing for IGN, Andrew Hayward argues, “the fact that there’s such a range of potential scenarios shows the incredible flexibility of the concept, and explains why developers have the chance to put their own spin on a post-apocalyptic world while working from established themes” (2013). Game designer Forrest Dowling offers a more practical perspective: Making a world about a crumbled society immediately removes one of the most challenging things to create, which is people. I think zombie games are common for similar reasons. You can have a world with people, but they’re all super dumb, can’t talk, and their AI behaviour is to run directly at an enemy and swing their arms. I suspect both these approaches have a lot more to do with practical problem-solving than any particular game developer zeitgeist about the end of the world. (Evans-Thirlwell 2015)

Interestingly, hardly anyone in the game community believes these games represent contemporary fears. Instead, the focus is on what opportunities the scenario provides for gameplay. The post-apocalyptic and the video game may be one of the best examples of genre-medium coevolution since the Western and cinema. While the genre’s popularity in film and television since the 1990s can be partly attributed to the need for franchisable concepts and infinitely suspended narratives, its popularity in video games involves something more fundamental—it provides a mode of storytelling that dovetails perfectly with the medium’s capacities. Perhaps “dovetails” is the wrong word as it implies a fortuitous synchronicity; the post-apocalyptic is a relatively new, malleable genre that provides a particular kind of creative freedom for game designers that narrative genres long established in other media cannot. The romantic comedy, for example, has certain structures and conventions that make it hard to turn into a video game genre but, like the Western for cinema, the post-apocalyptic provides a low-culture genre of recent vintage that game designers are free to develop in ways that suit their platform. What makes this especially significant for our current mediascape is that video games have gone from a peripheral medium to one that has the financial power and audience base to rival film and television. According to the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), computer and video game sales in the USA grew from $2.6 billion in 1996 to $36 billion in

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2017 (2006, 2018). For comparison, the North American box office in 2017 totalled $11.1 billion and the global box office was $40.6 billion (MPAA 2018, 3). Of course, films have more ways of making money than box-office receipts, but the numbers indicate that video games are now on a par, economically, with the other two major audio-visual media. While theorists contemplated the internet’s possibilities for new forms of narrative, the descendants of Pong and Space Wars were rapidly establishing themselves as the defining art form of the digital age. What impact has this had on the emergence of transmedia storytelling? First, from a franchising perspective, games offer a lucrative source of revenue, but the resources and time required to create excellent video games make them a difficult partner for film and television-based franchises, requiring flexible strategies for collaboration. Second, the difficulty of adapting narratives into games has increased creative focus on worldbuilding rather than adaptation in franchises with a game component. Third, the post-apocalyptic has led the way in showing how game designers can balance the competing demands of player agency and authorial control. This is not because the genre is inherently suited to video games but because the genre has co-evolved with video games and transmedia in a manner that allows it to exploit their potential, while their potential has evolved in order to exploit the resources this genre provides. To illustrate these points, this chapter will look at two landmark games, BioShock (2K Games 2007) and The Last of Us.

Of Motherships and Cores Jason Mittell distinguishes between “balanced transmedia, with no one medium or text serving a primary role over others, with the more commonplace model of unbalanced transmedia, with a clearly identifiable core text and a number of peripheral transmedia extensions that might be more or less integrated into the narrative whole” (2015, 294). In practice, the trans-integrity dilemma has been solved by having one core medium—the mothership—with all others being ancillary. As Henry Jenkins states, “The mothership must be perceived as self-contained, even if other media add new layers” (2014, 247). Given that film and television have been the most expensive media to produce and earn the greatest revenue, they tend to be mothership, with other media treated as ancillary. The growth of the video game industry has made it a natural partner in media franchises. Yet anyone who has ever played the Fight Club video

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game will tell you that it isn’t enough to have a famous brand name; you also need to succeed on the terms of your own medium. Video game adaptations of films have a terrible reputation. Marcus Schulzke asserts, “The record of adaptive failures, in both directions, seems to indicate that games are so vastly different from books and movies that successful adaptation may be impossible” (2013, 71). Trevor Elkington has examined reviews of film and television adaptations and concluded that such games “consistently score lower than the average across the reviews aggregated by Metacritic” (2009, 217), yet adaptations increasingly occupied a greater percentage of releases. “Video game developers and publishers are releasing more film and television adaptations at a faster rate, as a larger percentage of their release schedules, and these games are less and less popular with critics” (217). No one, it seems, listens to critics. However, these trends may be seen as a consequence of skyrocketing budgets and development schedules for AAA games. As games become more sophisticated, they require greater capital for development and marketing. Piggybacking on the marketing for a blockbuster film is an attractive solution for controlling costs, but this also ties video game producers to the film’s release schedule. According to Elkington, the average Hollywood film takes between 12 and 18  months to go from pre-­ production to completion, whereas the average AAA game takes approximately 2 years (2009, 225). The disjunction in schedules means video game producers have to either start making the game 6–12 months before the film is officially greenlighted or rush the game to completion in order to make the film’s release date. These production considerations make games fundamentally different from print or web media as franchise partners. According to Michael Clarke, “while IP holders are uniformly ambivalent toward their attachments to ancillary creatives, the context of licensed games is the only one observed where this two-sidedness is reciprocal” (2012, 92). Despite the advantages of franchising, game developers are often dissatisfied with licensed games and are reluctant to tie their fortunes to a film over which they have no control. What if the movie flops? Then it will discredit the IP and take the game down with it. Whereas Hollywood can easily dictate terms to freelance writers, they are less capable of doing so with video game producers. These concerns are the antithesis of synergy. Instead, they indicate a fear of IP contagion, such that a sufficiently weak mothership collapses the franchise, taking down every ancillary with it, no matter how expensively produced. Let us call this process franchise entropy, when instead of

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cross-­promotion and synergy a franchise suffers a cascade failure in which ­unsuccessful entries discredit the IP across other platforms. One of the forces driving the development of transmedia is that one of the traditional ancillary platforms—video games—is now powerful enough to demand protection from franchise entropy. This requires creative distance between the film or television series and the game, so that there is a certain buffer between them. This buffer involves moving away from direct adaptation and towards worldbuilding and transmedia storytelling. The other side of this coin is that films increasingly want to adapt video games in order to tap into their extensive fan bases, but game companies are reluctant to let Hollywood mangle their most valuable IP.  Whereas Hollywood’s well-established procedure with novels or plays is to buy the rights to the text and then butcher it, video game producers have greater financial power than any author or publishing house. Games are even more driven by sequels than Hollywood, so the last thing a developer needs is for an external partner to tank its most successful franchise with an inferior movie. For example, when Uwe Boll approached Blizzard about directing a World of Warcraft movie, the company told him, “We will not sell the movie rights, not to you … especially not to you. Because it’s such a big online game success, maybe a bad movie would destroy that ongoing income, what the company has with it” (Adler 2008). When Ubisoft entered into talks with Sony about producing a series of Assassin’s Creed films, it suspended negotiations in order to launch Ubisoft Motion Pictures (UMP). “Ubisoft sees adaptations as a way to turn its games into larger brands that will get the titles in front of more consumers while creating lucrative new revenue sources for the company” (Graser and Keslassy 2012), and so it set up UMP in order to retain greater creative control. When the film finally appeared in 2016, it did not adapt the story of any of the games, which created a protective distance between the film and Ubisoft’s flagship game series. This is just as well for Ubisoft, as the film performed badly at the box office and received poor reviews. While the mothership concept generally makes sense for franchises rooted in film or television, it needs to be refined in order to accommodate the impact of video games on our mediascape. Let us distinguish first between the narrative core and the industrial core of a transmedia franchise. The narrative core is the medium fans consider canonical. This is usually the original medium. No matter how much money Hollywood spends adapting Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter, fans consider the books to be the true canon and judge films by their faithfulness. On the other

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hand, publishing doesn’t have the resources to develop transmedia ­extensions, so franchises depend on an industrial core, a medium that can finance extensions across other media. When the narrative and industrial cores align, as in Star Wars, then other media function as ancillary. When they are not aligned, problems may emerge. Fans of the original may disagree vehemently with the big-budget adaptation. In the sixth season of Game of Thrones, the TV series surpassed what George R.R. Martin had published and thus the industrial core outran the narrative core, leading to what many fans considered serious problems for the season. The term “mothership” works fine when there is a unified narrative-industrial core, but when there isn’t we need to distinguish the influence of different parts of the franchise. Video games have now developed the financial capacity to act as the industrial core of a transmedia franchise rather than be ancillary to Hollywood productions. The Deus Ex series illustrates this trend. When the first game was published in 2000, it was hailed as one of the greatest games ever made, but this only led to one sequel in 2003. However, in 2009, Japanese game giant Square Enix acquired the IP and brought not only fresh capital but a new philosophy. As the CEO of Square Enix Europe explained, “we are aiming to form original ideas without being restricted by the notions of hardware or media, and to deliver these ideas via consoles, online gaming, mobile gaming, or DVD,” a process he termed “polymorphic storytelling” (Fahey 2004). The third game in the series, Deus Ex: Human Revolution (2011), was accompanied by a barrage of transmedia extensions: two novels (Deus Ex: Icarus Effect and Deus Ex: Fallen Angel), the mobile video game Deus Ex: The Fall, a six-part DC Comics series, and websites for the game’s fictional Sarif Industries. The video game industry has increasingly acquired the capacity to be the narrative-­industrial core of transmedia franchises. Today, video game companies are the primary IP holders for numerous franchises, such as Assassin’s Creed, Resident Evil, or Tomb Raider. While the games retain the authority of the narrative core, they are not exactly the industrial core as they do not finance Hollywood productions; at the same time, the film studios aren’t the industrial core either as their revenues are often less than their counterparts in the game industry. Increasingly, then, we have dual industrial core franchises, with video games and film/television retaining a large amount of autonomy over their own spheres. The Assassin’s Creed film, for example, took the basic concept and created a new story, just as games take the storyworld created

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by a film or TV series and create an original experience. Thus, one of the drives towards transmedia worldbuilding is that video games have emerged as an industrial force powerful enough to resist the dictates of Hollywood, while at the same time being lucrative enough to drive the desire to share IP across platforms. However, the economic impact of video games on convergence culture is only part of the story. Of greater significance may be that direct adaptations between narrative media and games are rarely successful. Consider the differences between Oedipus Rex and chess. The drama is fated to play out the same way every time, no matter how much we might wish for an alternate outcome, and this narrative predetermination parallels the play’s questions about Fate. Chess, on the other hand, is a set of rules regarding chess pieces inside an 8 × 8 game world. It is not a narrative but a set of formal constraints and procedures with players striving for victory within the given rules. Art may emerge from elegant play, but art is an emergent property of the system rather than an intrinsic element. Moreover, unlike the tragic fate of Oedipus, the outcome depends on the player’s decisions. This is what makes it a game. How is it possible to tell a story when participatory audiences control the main characters? This is a fundamental question for digital art forms.

Games and Narratives In 2005, film critic Roger Ebert sparked controversy by declaring that video games were structurally inferior to other media: “Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control.” While he acknowledged that video games could be entertaining, he believed “the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers” (2005). Gamers immediately sprang to the defence of their beloved medium, but Ebert received some unlikely support from legendary game designer Hideo Kojima, who emphasised games as a consumer product: “An actual car, like a videogame, is interactive, so it’s something used by people, so it’s like a car where you have to drive it. There are 100 people driving a car; they have 100 ways of driving it and using it … this car has to be able to be driven by all 100 of these people, so in that sense, it’s totally not art” (2006). The participatory

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element of games doesn’t affect narrative media, although they occasionally experiment with participation, while narrative is an optional extra for games, which don’t require it. However, games that are just games aren’t the focus here; fans who follow transmedia franchises across platforms generally want storyworld expansion and thus new narrative information about the characters and their environment. Felan Parker, in his analysis of the Ebert debate, notes, “The Ebert affair, and a whole constellation of related events and debates around 2005–2010, produced a crisis of legitimacy for games, which is still unfolding in a variety of contexts” (2018, 98). In game studies, this argument was played out in the ludology-narratology debate. I don’t intend to rake over the coals of this debate but instead see it as part of a vital juncture in the development of games. As improved technology allowed superior graphics and larger game worlds, so the aesthetic ambitions of the game community grew. Yet there were few if any games that could be used to answer Ebert’s challenge. In the early 2000s, the debate centred on whether such a game was possible or even desirable. In her seminal book Hamlet on the Holodeck, Janet Murray defined digital environments as “procedural, participatory, spatial, and encyclopaedic. The first two properties make up most of what we mean by the vaguely used word interactive; the remaining two properties help to make digital creations seem as explorable and extensive as the actual world, making up much of what we mean when we say that cyberspace is immersive” (1997, 71). The procedural property is related to digital authorship, which involves “writing the rules for the interactor’s involvement, that is, the conditions under which things will happen in response to the participant’s actions” (153). A game designer can create objects for the player to interact with and rules for interaction, but as with chess the emergent outcomes are difficult to script in advance. Digital environments are spatial because, whereas narratives emphasise the sequence in which information is revealed, games cede this control to the player and focus on designing interesting spaces for creative play. Finally, the end goal of such an art form would not be a satisfying narrative resolution but a sense that the player has exhausted the game world’s possibilities, as seen in the rise of gaming completionists who strive to win every in-game trophy, no matter how ridiculous. However, as a literary theorist, Murray was concerned with using this new form to tell stories: “the encyclopaedic capacity of the computer and the encyclopaedic expectation it arouses make it a compelling medium for

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narrative art” (84). Other theorists and practitioners felt the focus on ­narrative was an unnecessary constraint brought from old media. The new medium should be embraced on its own terms. Perhaps the best place to see this debate is in First Person, a landmark collection of essays by game theorists and designers from 2004. While other subjects are discussed, the “story-game” question is the central preoccupation. Most prominent among the ludologists were Espen Aarseth, Markku Eskelinen, Stuart Molthrop, and Gonzalo Frasca. Aarseth was concerned with establishing an academic field independent of established disciplines: “As long as vast numbers of journals and supervisors from traditional narrative studies continue to sanction dissertations and papers that take the narrativity of games for granted and confuse the story-game hybrids with games in general, good, critical scholarship on games will be outnumbered by incompetence” (2004, 54). For Stuart Molthrop, “we have reached a fork in the road. Beyond this point the traditional narrative interest leads one way, while a second track diverges. We do not yet have a very good name for this other path, though we can associate some concepts with it: play, simulation, and more generally, game” (2004, 58). Writing of games as simulations, Gonzalo Frasca contends, “Because of its static essence, narrative has been used by our culture to make statements. … On the other hand, simulation is dynamic and its essence is change: it produces different outcomes” (2004, 86). Markku Eskelinen is the most aggressive, arguing, “It should be self-evident that we can’t apply print narratology, hypertext theory, film or theatre and drama studies directly to computer games, but it isn’t. … Luckily, outside theory, people are usually excellent at distinguishing between narrative situations and gaming situations: if I throw a ball at you, I don’t expect you to drop it and wait until it starts telling stories” (2004, 36). All of them share the belief that games cannot be understood as narratives and thus focusing on plot and character is a distraction. However, hardly anyone in the collection advances solely narrative-­ based approaches to video games. As Gonzalo Frasca acknowledged in a talk subtitled “notes from a debate that never took place,” “This lack of narrativists really confuses me; it would seem as if they never existed” (2003). While the ludologists used narrative theorists as a useful strawman, the narrative-focused essays are more concerned with how story is used in games and how to strike a balance between narrative and gameplay. Celia Pearce argues that game developers should be seen as “context creators” (2004, 153) rather than authors and “the function of narrative in games is to engender compelling, interesting play” (144). For Ken Perlin,

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the major obstacle is character: “If, as a creator, you have a nonlinear, interactive narrative structure, but it is embodied in such a way that acting is essentially non-existent, then there is no way to create emotional buy-in for that character” (2004, 17). Henry Jenkins’ essay seems the most significant as it argues that “game designers don’t simply tell stories; they design worlds and sculpt spaces” (2004,  121) and thus “when game designers draw story elements from existing film or literary genres, they are most apt to tap those genres … which are most invested in world-­ making and spatial storytelling” (122). Drawing on Don Carson’s definition of environmental storytelling, Jenkins argues, “spatial stories can evoke pre-existing narrative associations; they can provide a staging ground where narrative events are enacted; they may embed narrative information within their mise-en-scene; or they provide resources for emergent narratives” (123). Games can thus get around the problem of not being able to control the time sequence of narrative information by embedding that information into the game space to be found (or not) by the player. Yet what haunts the debate is “our complete failure to produce a truly interactive storytelling product” (Crawford 2004, 45). In many ways, the debate feels now like hearing so many John the Baptists preaching in the desert. There was a definite feeling among the game community that the medium was close to a breakthrough of some kind in relation to the narrative-­game conundrum. In 2007, that game arrived: BioShock. Game reviewers raved immediately about its significance for the medium. According to IGN: This game is a beacon. It’s one of those monumental experiences you’ll never forget, and the benchmark against which games for years to come will, and indeed must, be measured. This isn’t merely an evolution of System Shock 2, but a wake-up call to the industry at large. Play this, and you’ll see why you should demand something more from publishers and developers, more than all those derivative sequels forced down our throats year after year with only minor tweaks in their formulas. It’s a shining example of how it’s possible to bring together all elements of game design and succeed to the wildest degree. (Onyett 2007)

Similarly, Eurogamer declared: BioShock doesn’t just meet your expectations, but completely redefines them forever in ways you never even expected. … BioShock isn’t simply the sign of gaming realising its true cinematic potential, but one where a game straddles

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so many entertainment art forms so expertly that it’s the best demonstration yet how flexible this medium can be. It’s no longer just another shooter wrapped up in a pretty game engine, but a story that exists and unfolds inside the most convincing and elaborate and artistic game world ever conceived. (Reed 2007)

As the reviews make clear, BioShock was hailed as one of those rare works that draws the best of what a medium has accomplished into a synthesis that paves the way for the next stage in development. Examining the canonisation of BioShock, Felan Parker has argued that BioShock’s status may not be due to “its inherent aesthetic value or enduring greatness but because of its place in the gaming canon as enduring popular ‘proof’ that important works of art can be achieved within the confines of the industry” (2017, 755). Indeed, on the 10-year anniversary of its release, New York Magazine published an article that declared: BioShock is still beloved and still critically acclaimed not just because it was beautiful and smart and fun to play, but because it did something people had been trying to do for years—it demonstrated, over the objections of cultural gatekeepers like Roger Ebert, that video games could provoke the same intellectual, emotional, and philosophical responses as movies or plays or novels. Put another way: People love BioShock because it was a great work of art—but also because it proved that a video game could be a great work of art. (Martineau 2017)

Yet what no commentator seemed to remark upon was the significance of this game coming from the post-apocalyptic genre. If transmedia franchises have to develop storytelling strategies that plan for varying levels of audience engagement, then games are the medium most concerned with telling coherent stories to an active audience. And, like transmedia, games have reshaped the post-apocalyptic genre into a form that allows players freedom while still enabling game designers to create storyworlds and tell compelling narratives. To understand how, we will take a closer look at BioShock and The Last of Us.

Participating in the Post-apocalypse BioShock follows the misadventures of the protagonist Jack in the underwater city of Rapture, a monument to libertarian ideals in the spirit of Ayn Rand. Its creator, Andrew Ryan, has built his utopia, a city on the ocean

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floor free from the interference of church and state, where the free market is the only organising principle: I believe in no God, no invisible man in the sky. But there is something more powerful than each of us, a combination of our efforts, a Great Chain of industry that unites us. But it is only when we struggle in our own interest that the chain pulls society in the right direction. The chain is too powerful and too mysterious for any government to guide.

Yet the Rapture we experience is a crumbling city overrun by splicers (humans driven mad through genetic manipulation) after a battle between Andrew Ryan, the criminal Fontaine, and the rebel Atlas. Guided by Atlas, players explore the ruined city in pursuit of the tyrannical Ryan, only to discover that they are pawns in the ongoing battle between Ryan and Fontaine. What the game takes from the post-apocalyptic genre is multi-layered exposition with a character-driven arc and a worldbuilding arc. The character-­driven arc runs the player through a series of specific quests building to a climactic encounter with Andrew Ryan. However, outside this linear narrative is the hazier story of Rapture’s fall. As with I Am Legend, audiences are encouraged to scan the mise-en-scene for clues to how this city descended into nightmare. Henry Jenkins noted in his 2004 essay that “most embedded narratives, at present, take the form of detective or conspiracy stories, since these genres help to motivate the player’s active examination of clues and exploration of spaces and provide a rationale for our efforts to reconstruct the narrative of past events” (128). However, the post-apocalyptic has two advantages over detective or mystery stories in this regard. Detective stories lead to an endpoint where the solution must be revealed, whereas the post-apocalyptic can remain infinitely suspended, thus easily allowing for narrative expansions. Second, a detective story where one simply fails to discover a vital clue would be incredibly frustrating, whereas in the post-apocalyptic the story of what happened to turn our world into ruins is optional, compared with the character-driven arc, but also rewarding for those who want to learn more. BioShock relays the story of Rapture’s fall through discovered audio diaries, the city’s décor, and the telling use of period music. The significance of the art direction is underscored early in the game by the song “If I Didn’t Care,” a reference to the classic science-fiction film Blade Runner, which is noted for its superb use of décor and lighting to immerse viewers

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in a dystopian world. As the song plays, we may notice abandoned steamer trunks and signs on the floor reading “We’re not your property!,” “Let it end, Let us ascend!,” “Ryan doesn’t own us,” and “Rapture is DEAD.” The flickering lights emphasise the sense of malfunction, while a departure board signals that all departures have been cancelled. In ironic juxtaposition, we discover a model of the city in a glass case with the inscription: “Rapture, Nov. 5 1946. One man’s vision. Mankind’s salvation.” While some players may charge down the straight path of the main plot, the game signals that those who explore their surroundings and infer the backstory of Rapture from the scattered fragments will enjoy a more enriching experience. According to lead designer Ken Levine, players “can sort of discover little stories—sometimes they’re out of the way and sometimes you get a story that a lot of people may not have even seen or sometimes you’re able to put together some narrative clues just by looking around the world and exploring the world. I love that. There’s no other media can do that” (2007). BioShock thus incarnates the labyrinth form theorised by Janet Murray: “The potential of the labyrinth as a participatory narrative form would seem to be somewhere between the two, in stories that are goal driven enough to guide navigation but open-ended enough to allow free exploration” (1997, 135). The game tries to keep as much control in the player’s hands as possible. While the controlled sequence of levels allows narrative structure, each level is an open, complex design that allows exploratory freedom. Whereas other games insert cinematic cutscenes to develop their narratives, BioShock rarely uses this technique; even when characters engage us in dialogue, we can choose to explore while their voices continue in the background. This almost permanent control immerses players in the gameplay. Ken Levine stressed that, “games are not story. Games are gameplay. Games are interactive” (Gillen 2007), and that while the aesthetic and story evolved over time, the core design principles never changed. The developers thus had a clear idea of the gameplay experience before settling on a coherent narrative, but post-apocalyptic narrative activities are typical of game actions, such as searching spaces for usable resources or constructing and upgrading tools and weapons. The genre and medium combined in BioShock to show how games could tell meaningful stories while also allowing players to make meaningful choices. Although the labyrinth form can work with many genres, there is a conceptual reason why the post-apocalyptic functions particularly well as a labyrinth. Many game designers feel it is better to simulate “an enclosed

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environment in more detail rather than a larger environment with less fidelity” (Gillen 2007). Fantasy games such as Bethesda’s Elder Scrolls series have few default diegetic reasons to prevent a character from accessing a particular area, but designers in the post-apocalyptic can always collapse a few buildings or bridges to mark the outer boundaries of playable space. The Last of Us, for example, has the characters traverse a cityscape without ever allowing free access to the entire city for entirely plausible diegetic reasons. Metro: Last Light displays another possibility, that of cramming survivors into a confined subterranean space due to uninhabitable conditions on the surface (2013). The post-apocalyptic has innumerable ways of constraining the player’s freedom, whereas other genres often struggle to come up with plausible pretexts. These constraints on the player’s freedom don’t just apply to the game space. Felan Parker has argued that “gamers and critics alike tend to fetishise non-linearity and player choice as essential features of the best digital games” (2013, 163), but the most celebrated moment in BioShock comes when the player’s sense of agency is brought into shocking collision with the narrative. The only similar moment I am aware of is at the climax of The Last of Us, another post-apocalyptic game. Put simply, what makes these moments so remarkable is that instead of maximising the player’s agency, they unexpectedly take it away. Perhaps the reason the post-­ apocalyptic genre can produce such moments is that the genre dramatises characters trapped between morality and necessity. It repeatedly presents characters with choices they don’t want to make; what makes BioShock and The Last of Us so striking is that they don’t let us make them. Rapture’s fall begins with the discovery of ADAM, a genetic mutagen that enables people to alter their physical capacities at the expense of growing mental instability and addiction, turning Rapture’s citizens into the crazed splicers inhabiting the city. Early on, our guide Atlas tells us, “Plasmids changed everything. They destroyed our bodies, our minds. We couldn’t handle it. Best friends butchering one another, babies strangled in cribs. The whole city went to hell.” In the absence of government regulation, there is no way to prohibit the use of ADAM. An audio diary from Andrew Ryan informs us that: There has been tremendous pressure to regulate this plasmid business. There have been side effects: blindness, insanity, death. But what use is our ideology if it is not tested? The market does not respond like an infant, shrieking at the first sign of displeasure. The market is patient, and we must be too.

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Exploring radical libertarianism in a medium based on player agency creates a powerful conjunction between ideology and form. As players, we like the freedom to act in the game world, but Ryan repeatedly makes analogous claims about the desire to act without restriction, even though we can see the consequences in the ruins of Rapture. The game’s standout moment occurs when it brings these contradictory impulses to a head. As we progress through the city, we find clues to a deeper story. Ryan’s ex-girlfriend, Jasmine Jolene, leaves a diary that hints at a child: “That creepy Dr. Tenenbaum promised me it wasn’t gonna be a real pregnancy, they’d just take the egg out once Mr. Ryan and I had. … I needed the money so bad,” while the screaming we hear before entering her room suggests Ryan killed her for assisting Fontaine. At certain moments our avatar is haunted by pictures from his past, while Ryan repeatedly asks in radio messages, “Who are you?” It is only shortly before the showdown with Ryan that the truth emerges. The game sets expectations of a boss battle with ominous music, flashing red lights, and plenty of free items and vending machines. However, we then enter a room with pictures of Jasmine Jolene, Ryan, Fontaine, and Dr Suchong, along with a photo of our avatar, Jack, and the words “Would You Kindly?” scrawled in blood. On the table sit our avatar’s family photos along with tapes of Suchong using the phrase “Would you kindly?” as a trigger phrase to control a child that is being force-grown: “Baby is now a year old, weighs 58 pounds, and possesses gross musculature of a fit 19 year-old.” The alert player will already be aware of what Ryan soon reveals, that Jack is Ryan’s son, force-­ grown and sent to kill Ryan by Fontaine, who has been controlling us under the guise of Atlas by using the phrase “Would you kindly?” throughout the game. This knowledge changes the player’s calculations by taking away the agency that is central to the gameplay experience. Before this, we were prepared to kill Ryan because of the nightmare he created in Rapture; now that killing Ryan would be a pre-programmed act ordered by Fontaine, we instinctively reject control over our freedom to choose. But the game takes our options away by introducing one of its rare cutscenes. Ryan emerges from his office and controls our avatar using the phrase “Would you kindly?” Instead of a challenging fight, the player is reduced to a passive spectator. Ryan’s restated libertarian beliefs now resonate powerfully: “In the end, what separates a man from a slave? Money? Power? No. A man chooses, a slave obeys!” Although we have spent the whole game fighting Ryan’s philosophy, we are suddenly in sympathy with him. We

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wish to choose rather than be slaves of the game’s programming, but the cutscene takes away our freedom. The defenceless Ryan orders us to kill him, while our avatar obeys and the player watches helplessly, unable to influence the game’s critical event. Clint Hocking calls this a moment of “ludonarrative dissonance” that leverages “the game’s narrative structure against its ludic structure” (2007). The ludic rules tell us to gain power and progress, yet the narrative suddenly reveals that we have all along been powerless. In Hocking’s view, this disjunction between game and story “all but destroys the player’s ability to feel connected to either, forcing the player to either abandon the game in protest (which I almost did) or simply accept that the game cannot be enjoyed as both a game and a story” (2007). However, this ludonarrative dissonance is precisely why BioShock deserves critical attention and aesthetic praise. The moment’s shocking power comes from the collision between the thrust of the narrative and the nature of the medium. The narrative has taught us the dangers of radical libertarian philosophies, yet gaming is predicated on the player’s liberty to make decisions that influence events. BioShock slams the player’s desire for meaningful choice into the immovable object of Rapture’s libertarian dystopia, creating a paradox for the player, whose own desires for the game suddenly mirror Ryan’s desires for Rapture, causing us to question all that we have experienced. In bringing these questions together so that one reflects the other, BioShock created an aesthetic moment that could not be recreated in another medium. A film adaptation would be unable to convey the shock of our loss of control during Ryan’s death sequence as film audiences expect to have no control over events; only in an interactive medium does the unexpected switch to a cutscene carry significance. By synchronising this with the main narrative themes, BioShock created a genuinely new kind of artistic possibility. The game that builds most directly on this legacy is The Last of Us. Like BioShock, the designers wanted players to experience the world, which means embedding narrative information in the mise-en-scene that players may simply miss. In the opening scene described at the beginning of this chapter, players may fail to find the newspaper in the bathroom, or not pay attention to the TV report, or be looking the wrong way when the police cars race by. Whereas narrative media hope for alert viewers who catch every nuance, games can create the feeling that decisions matter by making it difficult for players to experience every facet of the game. There is no omniscient narrator. The player is either looking in the right direction when something happens or they are not, just like in real life.

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However, The Last of Us features more cutscenes and greater emphasis on a linear story than BioShock. One of Naughty Dog’s strengths as a game developer is the quality of writing and acting in its action-adventure games. The game director, Bruce Straley, and Naughty Dog’s creative director, Neil Druckmann, felt “most of the [post-apocalyptic] games out there at the time were kind of cartoonish B-movie takes on it. We wanted to ground it and make it more serious. We felt like the more intimate we made the story, the more intimate we made the combat, the more we could make players feel what it would be like to have to exist as a survivor” (2013). While the gameplay draws on the Drake’s Fortune series, inspirations for the narrative were drawn from other media, such as Cormac McCarthy’s The Road or David Benioff’s City of Thieves, both of which feature a central pair of characters bonding in difficult circumstances. The literary inspirations indicate the greater emphasis on storytelling, showing that video games are developing multiple approaches to the narrative-­ game issue. The Last of Us features two main characters, Joel and Ellie, who travel together across a post-apocalyptic America where a mutated cordyceps fungus has wrought devastation by turning people into zombie-like creatures. In the opening sequence, we see Joel’s daughter Sarah die in the initial outbreak. The rest of the game takes place 20 years later, when survivors live in special quarantine zones, government troops battle the rebel Fireflies, and the cordyceps infection reigns over vast wastelands. A reluctant Joel and his partner Tess are tasked with smuggling a teenage girl, Ellie, to a Firefly base. On the way, they discover that Ellie is the only human known to be immune to the cordyceps infection and thus possibly the key to developing a vaccine. When Tess dies, Joel and Ellie continue their journey, becoming more attached to each other as the game goes on, with Joel finding in her a surrogate daughter and Ellie coming of age and learning from Joel how to survive. Whereas games have often been criticised for poor characterisation, The Last of Us shows that games can possess many of the strengths of narrative media. An experienced player will probably see the game’s climactic dilemma approaching. When Joel finally brings Ellie to the Fireflies, he discovers that she will have to be sacrificed in order to develop the cure. This is a decision I was struggling with in advance, but the game doesn’t give the player that choice. Instead, there is only one way to play the ending. Joel decides that he has already lost one daughter and he isn’t going to lose Ellie and thus rampages through the Firefly base, killing anyone who gets in his way. Interestingly, players can discover audio diaries from the

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Fireflies’ leader in which she agonises over the choice, while Ellie seems willing to sacrifice herself if it will mean an end to the pandemic. Yet Joel never betrays any doubts. When he enters the operating theatre, the player is left with no option other than to kill the surgeon, pick up Ellie, and flee the building. The reason this is so effective is that the game shifts our expectations for the medium. To use Marcus Schulzke’s terms, games are defined by participatory interactivity: “they allow players to provide an input and control events and character,” while narrative media are defined by interpretive interactivity, which invites “audiences to interact with a text through critical thinking” (2013, 72). As players, we expect to have participatory interactivity, but Joel’s decision switches our mode of interaction to interpretive. This has prompted innumerable discussions of the ethics of Joel’s decision, showing that fans understood the loss of participatory interactivity as an invitation to think critically about the ending. With The Last of Us winning over 240 game of the year awards in 2013, the success of these artistic decisions is hard to dispute. Yet these shifts between participatory and interpretive interactivity are rare and the fact that the two most celebrated examples are from the post-apocalyptic genre is not a coincidence. The post-apocalyptic dramatises worlds in which characters have tough choices and limited options, where morality often has to be sacrificed to necessity. It is easier in such a narrative universe to take away a player’s decision-making power because the characters are often forced to make unpalatable decisions anyway. This does not mean other genres cannot achieve the same effects; it is just that, like the capacity to enclose game space for plausible diegetic reasons, the post-­apocalyptic offers an internal logic for these creative choices in a way that other genres do not.

Games and Transmedia One could argue that these AAA narrative-centred games are actually just a minor part of the gaming industry, that the emergence of smartphones has shifted the medium towards casual gaming. Many people just want something to pass the time on a bus or in a waiting room. As Jesper Juul argues, “A casual game is sufficiently flexible to be played with a hardcore time commitment, but a hardcore game is too inflexible to be played with a casual time commitment” (2010, 10). Plants v. Zombies may represent the future of gaming far better than The Last of Us. Given how rapidly gaming technology is changing, it is exceptionally difficult to forecast the

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medium’s future. Perhaps the rise of e-sports will lead to a preference for games that are competitive contests of skill. Maybe virtual reality will allow the creation of ever more immersive storyworlds. Perhaps “games” is simply too broad a category, like “television,” with too many different models and formats to make such a broad umbrella term conceptually useful. However, video games have had an immense impact on transmedia storytelling. In the first place, the financial power of the gaming industry has led to the emergence of dual industrial core franchises in which different platforms maintain a large amount of creative autonomy while sharing the same flexible IP. Second, narrative games are the art form most concerned with participatory interactivity and the strategies they have developed are applicable to successful transmedia franchises as a whole. Games build worlds with embedded, self-contained character stories for audiences to discover. Audiences are not punished for failing to discover these stories, but they encourage an encyclopaedic urge to exhaust the world’s possibilities. The desire to make sure nothing has been missed encourages fans to collaborate online to create walkthroughs, game guides, and wikis that help players accomplish game tasks and discover hidden secrets. As Mia Consalvo has shown, players can acquire “gaming capital” not only from playing games “but from the paratextual industries that support them … depending on a player’s social circle, that capital can be quite valuable in building a reputation” (2007, 184). These paratextual labours would all be pointless if games simply recapped the events of a film and so games are driven to expand storyworlds rather than adapt narratives. Yet we may also ask why the post-apocalyptic genre has been central to these developments. In part, as we have seen, the post-apocalyptic allows for worldbuilding with unparalleled levels of consistency and completion. But perhaps the two most acclaimed post-apocalyptic games—BioShock and The Last of Us—do something more besides. They allow the creation of worlds in which choice is severely constrained for diegetic reasons. Both games are famous for moments in which choice is taken away from the player and this is most effective in a genre whose storyworlds are defined by the clash between necessity and morality. There are many reasons why the post-apocalyptic is a major video game genre, but those games that come closest to art are the ones that make full use of the medium’s interactive potential by removing our agency at key moments. This is possible in other genres, but fantasy and science fiction trade in open-world adventures and invention; the post-apocalyptic is the genre associated with necessity and entrapment. In an interactive medium, perhaps the choices we don’t get to make are the ones most likely to make us think.

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References Aarseth, Espen. 2004. Genre Trouble: Narrativism and the Art of Simulation. In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, ed. Noah Wardrip-­ Fruin and Pat Harrigan, 45–55. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Adler, Shawn. 2008. Uwe Boll Won’t Ever Be Entering the World of Warcraft. MTV.com, April 18. BioShock. 2007. 2K Games. Directed by Ken Levine. Clarke, Michael J.  2012. Transmedia Television: New Trends in Network Serial Production. New York: Bloomsbury. Consalvo, Mia. 2007. Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Crawford, Chris. 2004. Response. In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan, 45–46. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Deus Ex: Human Revolution. 2011. Square Enix. Directed by Jean-Francois Dugas. Ebert, Roger. 2005. Why Did the Chicken Cross the Genders? rogerebert.com, November 27. Elkington, Trevor. 2009. Too Many Cooks: Media Convergence and Self-­ Defeating Adaptations. In The Video Game Theory Reader 2, ed. Bernard Perron and Mark J.P. Wolf, 214–235. London: Routledge. Entertainment Software Association. 2006. 2006 Sales Demographic and Usage Data: Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry. esa.com. Accessed 15 June 2018. ———. 2018. 2018: Sales Demographic and Usage Data: Essential Facts About the Computer and Video Game Industry. esa.com. Accessed 15 June 2018. Eskelinen, Markku. 2004. Towards Computer Game Studies. In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan, 36–44. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Evans-Thirlwell, Edwin. 2015. Why Do Video Games Love Killing the Planet? Vice.com, April 9. Fahey, Rob. 2004. Square Peg, European Hole. Eurogamer, July 16. Falero, Michael. 2015. A Brief History of Post-apocalyptic Video Games. Game Skinny, November 9. Frasca, Gonzalo. 2003. Ludologists Love Stories, Too: Notes from a Debate that Never Took Place. ludology.org. http://www.ludology.org/articles/Frasca_ LevelUp2003.pdf. Accessed 20 May 2018. ———. 2004. Videogames of the Oppressed: Critical Thinking, Education, Tolerance, and Other Trivial Issues. In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan, 85–94. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Gillen, Kieron. 2007. Exclusive: Ken Levine on the Making of BioShock. Rock Paper Shotgun, August 20. Graser, Marc, and Elsa Keslassy. 2012. Fassbender Game for Assassin’s Creed. Variety, July 9. Hayward, Andrew. 2013. Why We Love the Apocalypse. IGN, May 10. Hocking, Clint. 2007. Ludonarrative Dissonance in BioShock. Click Nothing, October 7. Jenkins, Henry. 2004. Game Design as Narrative Architecture. In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan, 118–130. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ———. 2014. The Reign of the ‘Mothership’: Transmedia’s Past, Present, and Possible Futures. In Wired TV: Laboring Over an Interactive Future, ed. Denise Mann, 244–268. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Juul, Jesper. 2010. A Casual Revolution: Reinventing Video Games and Their Players. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Kojima, Hideo. 2006. Games Aren’t Art, Says Kojima. Interview by Ellie Gibson. Eurogamer, January 24. Levine, Ken. 2007. Transcript: Interview with Ken Levine. Interview by Mike Musgrove. Washington Post, September 14. Martineau, Paris. 2017. 10 Years Ago Today, BioShock Proved that Video Games Could Be Art. New York Magazine, August 21. Metro: Last Light. 2013. 4A Games. Directed by Andrew Prokhorov. Mittell, Jason. 2015. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling. New York: New York University Press. Molthrop, Stuart. 2004. From Work to Play: Molecular Culture in the Time of Deadly Games. In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan, 56–69. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Motion Picture Association of America. 2018. 2017 THEME Report. mpaa.org. Accessed 15 June 2018. Murray, Janet. 1997. Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Onyett, Charles. 2007. BioShock Review. IGN, August 16. Parker, Felan. 2013. Millions of Voices: Star Wars, Digital Games, Fictional Worlds and Franchise Canon. In Game On, Hollywood!: Essays on the Intersection of Video Games and Cinema, ed. Gretchen Papazian and Joseph Michael Sommers, 156–168. Jefferson: McFarland. ———. 2017. Canonising BioShock: Cultural Value and the Prestige Game. Games and Culture 12 (7–8): 739–763. ———. 2018. Roger Ebert and the Games-as-Art Debate. Cinema Journal 57 (3): 77–100.

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Pearce, Celia. 2004. Towards a Game Theory of Game. In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan, 143–153. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Perlin, Ken. 2004. Can There Be a Form Between a Game and a Story? In First Person: New Media as Story, Performance, and Game, ed. Noah Wardrip-Fruin and Pat Harrigan, 12–18. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Poole, Steven. 2017. Why Video Games are Obsessed with the Apocalypse. BBC. com, August 15. Reed, Kristan. 2007. BioShock: Cue Rapturous Applause. Eurogamer, August 16. Schulzke, Marcus. 2013. Translation Between Forms of Interactivity: How to Build the Better Adaptation. In Game On, Hollywood!: Essays on the Intersection of Video Games and Cinema, ed. Gretchen Papazian and Joseph Michael Sommers, 70–83. Jefferson: McFarland. Straley, Bruce, and Neil Druckmann. 2013. What Inspired The Last of Us. Interview by Dean Takahashi. Venture Beat, August 6. The Last of Us. 2013. Naughty Dog. Directed by Bruce Straley and Neil Druckmann.

CHAPTER 7

Convergence Publishing and Prestige Niches

In Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, the protagonist Snowman rejects the idea of writing a journal because “even a castaway assumes a future reader, someone who’ll come along later and find his bones and his ledger, and learn his fate. Snowman can make no such assumptions: he’ll have no future reader, because the Crakers can’t read. Any reader he can possibly imagine is in the past” (2003, 40). The scene has a counterpart in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, when the man stands “in the charred ruins of a library where blackened books lay in pools of water. … He picked up one of the books and thumbed through the heavy bloated pages. … It surprised him. That the space which these things occupied was itself an expectation. He let the book fall and took a last look around” (2006, 199). Post-apocalyptic fiction often anticipates a world where books have no meaning because they take part in a conversation that has ceased. There will be no future readers or writers and thus the great treasure store of world knowledge, the heritage of civilisation, becomes effectively worthless. Perhaps every booklover has felt the creeping fear that this apocalypse is already imminent. Look around on a bus or train—how many people are reading a novel and how many are on their smartphones? In less than a decade, we have witnessed a dramatic shift in the media people enjoy in public spaces, leading many to wonder about the future of print. In his book Pessimism, Joshua Dienstag suggests a future that should strike terror in the bibliophile’s heart: © The Author(s) 2018 S. Joyce, Transmedia Storytelling and the Apocalypse, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93952-0_7

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We must accept the possibility that the habit of reading is a fad, long in duration, but now in its final stages—destined to be carried on in the future only by a few devotees. Horsemanship was, for over twenty centuries, an indispensable adult skill for the upper and middle classes in Europe and Asia, much more so than reading. And yet, within the space of a century, it has become merely an elite hobby. So may it be with reading. (2006, 202–203)

Amid all the excitement over digital media, what is happening to the medium that fuelled the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, the rise of democracy, and the spread of scientific knowledge, that gave us the works of Jonathan Swift and Jane Austen and W.B. Yeats? Is print going the way of the telegraph, a once-vital communication technology that has become obsolete? We have seen why the three big audio-visual media have embraced the post-apocalyptic, but the case of the novel is more curious. In The Post-­ Apocalyptic Novel in the Twenty-First Century, Heather Hicks ponders a new development, “the publication of a series of post-apocalyptic literary novels by well-known anglophone authors from America, England, and Canada since the beginning of the twenty-first century” (2016, 2). Acclaimed authors seem increasingly willing to write zombie novels, such as Colson Whitehead’s Zone One, or young adult post-apocalyptic fiction, such as Paolo Bacigalupi’s Ship Breaker series. The profusion of post-­ apocalyptic tales has led some scholars to declare the genre played out: “Dystopian science fiction seems like a ready-made tool with which to engage current social and environmental crises—but only because it so often recycles worn scenarios from the apocalypses of the past. At this point, postapocalyptic wastelands have themselves become too reassuringly familiar” (Heise 2015). Hicks, in contrast, sees the post-apocalyptic as a vital interrogation of modernity: “either survivors should move beyond salvaging mere scraps of modernity and rebuild dimensions of it in earnest or they should concede that modernity is beyond salvage and attempt to devise something that transcends its historical forms” (3). For James Berger, the apocalyptic helps modern society cope with historical traumas: “The most dystopic visions of science fiction can do no more than replicate the actual historical catastrophes of the twentieth century” (1999, xiii). The standard framework reads literature in terms of its engagement with broader concerns, for what else can be causing this trend?

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My argument is somewhat different. Aside from the direct influence of other media, the surge of post-apocalyptic novels is partly a result of transformations in publishing. One might think the novel would sail serenely through the digital age, secure in its centuries of undisturbed stability. However, the publishing industry is experiencing unprecedented turmoil as its business model crumbles, a change hastened by the Great Recession. This is producing a boom in genre fiction at the expense of literary fiction, which is helping to boost the post-apocalyptic novel as a popular form. This popularity, in turn, is partly responsible for attracting critically acclaimed writers such as Colson Whitehead and Emily St. John Mandel to the genre. This chapter first looks at the impact of media convergence on publishing, especially the decline in author incomes, the rise of digital self-publishing, and the growth of tie-in novels. I then look at Max Brooks’ World War Z as an example of how convergence culture is influencing the style and content of fiction. Finally, I explore post-apocalyptic literary fiction as a prestige niche that has a significant impact on our mediascape and the post-apocalyptic genre.

Convergence Publishing Publishing, which has had a relatively stable business model for decades, if not centuries, is now experiencing a profound crisis; this crisis has triggered a boom in genre fiction and thus the post-apocalyptic. The most drastic development is that author incomes have collapsed. According to the Author’s Guild, the median income for writers in the USA fell by 24% between 2009 and 2014, while in Britain median author incomes fell by 29% between 2005 and 2013 (Flood 2015). A British survey also found that whereas 40% of authors made a living from their writing in 2005, by 2013 that percentage had fallen to just 11.5% (Flood 2014). What the numbers tell us is that at the beginning of the twenty-first century, it was possible for a good writer to make a decent living through traditional publishing, but now it is the preserve of star names with mid-list authors struggling to make ends meet. A 2017 study for Arts Council England (ACE) discovered that “the price of a literary fiction book has fallen in real terms over the last 15 years. Not only are book sales down by both volume, but, crucially, publishers are receiving less money for every copy sold” (2). In consequence, “there is only a small ‘long tail’ of novels that sell in sufficient quantities to support an author; all bar the top 1,000

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­ riters (at a push) in the country sell too few books to make a career from w sales alone” (2). This might seem like a case of publisher greed, but from the publishers’ perspective, the market has become increasingly challenging. The biggest difficulty is that retail has been transformed, particularly (but not exclusively) by Amazon. Since it was launched in 1994, Amazon has become the world’s biggest bookseller. Yet by 2014, books accounted for only 7% of the company’s annual revenue (Packer 2014). For Amazon, books are primarily a lure to bring consumers to their website. Thus, Amazon does not need to make a profit on book sales and has aggressively demanded discounts from publishers in order to lower prices. According to Packer, these discounts can be as high as 50%, meaning publishers have to sell more books to break even (2014). Amazon’s tactics are mirrored by supermarket chains, which sell a limited number of books, often at a loss, to attract customers. Online and supermarket sales have driven bookstores out of business, with the number of independent bookstores falling by over 50% since the mid-1990s (Packer 2014) and big chains like Barnes and Noble either struggling to stay afloat or going bankrupt like Borders. When your biggest retailers sell your product for a loss, then your industry has a problem. Whereas in the past publishers could use sales from bestsellers to subsidise literary fiction by talented authors who may one day build a large readership, today there is more focus on immediate success. The ACE report emphasises that the current industry is especially difficult for debut authors: The mathematics of literary publishing are, then, exceptionally tough. Say you’ve printed 2000 copies of a book by a debut author. You get lucky and sell 600 to a major chain. This, after discount, nets the publisher £2214. Minus the distribution fee, this comes out at £1660.50, or £2.76 a book, which covers the production costs and leaves a little over. However, if the bookseller then returns 300 copies the publisher would be billed for the £1077 those copies represent. The distributor keeps their cut, but for the publisher any gain has been wiped out, they are looking at a serious loss on those copies and now they have the unsold stock to deal with. Sales of the remaining 1400 will have to go through indies, events, direct and online. These routes can all work, but each has challenges of its own. Whichever way one looks at it, this system of bookselling leaves little for either the publisher or the author to survive on. (2017, 23–24)

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While the precise numbers vary between countries, the overall picture is largely the same. As in other media, whoever controls distribution controls the industry. The digital age has not had a significant direct effect on writing or reading books, but it has enabled the creation of a distribution behemoth in Amazon and publishers and authors are having to adapt accordingly. As a result of tightening margins, publishers have become more risk averse. This has had two consequences: a pursuit of blockbuster hits and investment in reliable genres. This has not benefited literary fiction. It has benefited the Young Adult genre. According to Publishers Weekly, print sales of adult fiction in the USA went from 65,621 in January–June 2016 to 66,061  in January–June 2017, an increase of just 0.7%; in contrast, juvenile fiction sales went from 74,969 to 78,484 over the same period, an increase of 5% (Milliot 2017). Many recent blockbusters have been Young Adult novels, which have always been more welcoming to science fiction and fantasy than adult fiction has. With post-apocalyptic hits such as The Hunger Games, The Maze Runner, and Divergent, it is no surprise that publishers are promoting one of the few genres that promises to be lucrative. It is also significant that those three books became a series of books and later hit movies, showing the convergence culture impulse to develop franchises around imaginary worlds. If authors of literary fiction are increasingly drawn to genre fiction such as the post-apocalyptic, this may have less to do with civilisational angst than with agents and editors giving them frank advice about the current publishing industry. However, there is a second impulse towards the post-apocalyptic coming not from top-down industrial demands but from bottom-up. After the grim news of the last few pages, perhaps it is time for a success story. In July 2011, Hugh Howey wrote a post-apocalyptic novella about a community confined to an underground silo and published it as a 99 cent e-book via Kindle Direct Publishing. Howey published “Wool” with no expectations of success, but in October he realised it was on course to sell 1000 copies that month. He immediately dropped his other writing plans and rapidly produced four more “Wool” stories, which sent him to the top of the Amazon bestseller lists. He then released the “Wool” omnibus in January 2012 and spent two weeks on The New York Times e-book fiction bestseller list. By the summer of 2012, Howey was making $150,000 dollars a month from sales of Wool, making him a poster boy for digital self-­ publishing (Klems 2014).

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What makes Howey’s story significant is that he chose self-publishing because he calculated that this was a better way to build a career than traditional publishing. His first book was published by a small press but, after seeing the process, he decided that not only could he do it himself but it made better career sense to self-publish. Howey had worked in a bookstore and “I saw how few books took off. Even traditionally published authors with marketing and backing, their books just fell flat and didn’t sit on the shelf for more than three to six months before they were returned” (2014). He realised that the criticisms people made of self-­publishing, such as the difficulty in getting one’s work noticed, were a problem for publishing in general. Moreover, Howey realised that the economics of publishing had changed and that self-publishing now made the most sense financially. “Self-publishing pays 70% royalties for the rest of your life. Traditional publishing pays 12.5% for six months (how long you’ll be shelved or weakly promoted)” (2013). An extensive report for the Author Earnings website in 2016 calculated that while the Big Five publishing houses hold a dominant position with authors who started publishing before 2006, the most financially successful authors since 2006 have been self-published indie authors. “Fewer than 700 Big Five authors and fewer than 500 small-or-medium publisher authors who debuted in the last 10 years are now earning $25,000 a year or more on Amazon—from all of their hardcover, paperback, audio and ebook editions combined. By contrast, over 1,600 indie authors are currently earning that much or more” (2016). As Howey argues, it may be better for a writer to amass a body of work online and steadily build a readership than be one of the many hopefuls whose books appear on shelves for three to six months and are then quietly buried. One reason more authors do not follow suit is that self-publishing has typically been looked down on in the literary world. The default assumption is that if a book is good, it will make it past the traditional gatekeepers. What we are now seeing is the emergence of authors like Howey who bypass traditional gatekeepers and appeal directly to readers via digital self-­ publishing. These authors tend to be knowledgeable about digital publishing and have close connections with their fans via online comments and social media, making them highly responsive to reader desires. The biggest genres for online self-publishing are ones with active online fan cultures: romance, science fiction, and fantasy. “Big 5 publishers have nearly as small a portion of Romance earnings (18%) and Science Fiction

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& Fantasy earnings (29%) as indies have of Literary Fiction earnings (13%) and Nonfiction earnings (26%), respectively” (Author Earnings 2014). Digital books have allowed fan cultures to challenge mainstream respectability. Whereas literary fiction is promoted through reviews, interviews, and prizes, genre fiction relies primarily on fan sites and word of mouth. Genre fans are accustomed to the perceived snobbishness of literary gatekeepers. They are used to being told that what they are reading is trash, even if it is published by one of the Big Five. Hence, there is less stigma around self-published genre e-books, which is leading to a rise in genre fiction generally and thus the post-apocalyptic. These twin trends—publisher pursuit of blockbuster hits and authors self-publishing online—converged in 2013 when Hugh Howey agreed a $500,000 deal with Simon & Schuster to publish Wool in print. As publishers become more risk averse, they are signing authors like Howey who have already built a huge following online. Howey turned down two seven-figure contracts from different publishers before he signed a bespoke print-only deal with Simon & Schuster that allowed him to keep control of digital rights and revenues, a unique contract that would be unheard of for someone in traditional publishing. However, the desire for blockbuster hits has led publishers to explore new options, such as publishing online sensation Fifty Shades of Grey despite qualms about its quality. Online fan communities have helped trigger a boom in genre fiction by helping to grow the readership. Wool thus joins other blockbusters such as The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner as successes that are characteristic of modern trends in publishing that are fuelling the rise of the post-­ apocalyptic in print. There is one final economic factor promoting genre fiction and the post-apocalyptic: the growth in tie-in novels for transmedia franchises, particularly in science fiction and fantasy. Like every other medium, publishing is eager to cash in on the hype generated by popular film or television properties. The website for the International Association of Media Tie-In Writers (IAMTW) states, “Our books are published by the major publishing companies, are available everywhere, sell tens of millions of copies worldwide and regularly appear on the New York Times, USA Today, and Publisher’s Weekly bestseller lists” (2018). From Terminator novels to Jay Bonansinga’s The Walking Dead series, post-apocalyptic fiction has benefited from sharing popular IP from other platforms. This is the moment when literary scholars are likely to break out the whisky and start lamenting how serious literature has been abandoned to

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Young Adult fantasies, self-published wannabees, and hacks working for hire. Tie-ins, in particular, may be the most disparaged of literary forms. As David Sweeney writes, tie-in writing “jars with the established cultural image of the author as artistically free … a writer working for hire does not satisfy” (2005). There is no convincing aesthetic reason why a novel set in an established storyworld that must follow external guidelines cannot achieve the status of literary fiction; Sophocles had to cope with an established mythology and the rules of Athenian theatre, but he still made a decent fist of the Oedipus myth. Nonetheless, it is difficult to think of a tie-in novel that has had a major impact on its own franchise, let alone the genre. Rather than lay the blame on authors or the nature of the task, it may be more accurate to say that the conditions under which tie-in writers operate are not conducive to producing influential works. As Michael Clarke explains, tie-in novels “frequently employ extremely rapid production cycles and very tight deadlines … tie-in writers are given anywhere from two-and-a-half weeks to six months to write a novel with three months being the most typical deadline” (2013, 72). Short timeframes discourage risk-taking or experimentation. “Labourers attempt to boil work down to a regularized, machine-like process” and to ensure a stable, predictable product, “tie-in editors tend to use and reuse the same stable of freelancers in multiple projects” (73). Those who write tie-ins have mastered a specific kind of book, but those books—while competently written by experienced professionals—hew too closely to industrial norms to offer transformative visions of the genre. Hence, I could detail how particular tie-in novels for post-apocalyptic franchises expand the narrative universe by offering character backstories and worldbuilding details, but this would merely recap the basic principles of transmedia storytelling. Of greater interest is to ask how fiction is adapting to convergence culture, which may perhaps best be seen in Max Brooks’ World War Z.

The Style of Convergence In a profile for The New York Times Magazine, Taffy Brodesser-Akner calls Max Brooks “a zombie laureate, our nation’s lone zombie public intellectual” (2013, 20). According to Brooks, the leitmotif of his life has been anxiety. Growing up, his parents refused to let him join classmates on field trips because they worried about what might happen; his father’s refrain was, “What if I wake up tomorrow and you’re dead” (20)? This anxiety

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led to an interest in zombie lore because it allowed him to explore fears without believing in them. In 1997, he began writing The Zombie Survival Guide. For Brooks, “horror fans feel deep down in the pit of their souls, they feel safe, and therefore bored. And therefore they want to be scared. I already have a baseline level of just anxiety about the world I live in” (20). The book was marketed as parody, but “I can’t think of anything less funny than dying in a zombie attack” (20). Brooks followed up with World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War in 2006. As distinctions between platforms blur, we may ask how the novel has been influenced by convergence culture. World War Z offers an example of the relationship between the post-apocalyptic novel and transmedia storytelling. Four aspects are particularly worthy of attention: (1) the profusion of different narratives, characters, and locations; (2) how the novel forms part of an integrated transmedial universe; (3) the immersive fan culture; and (4) how the greatest income from the novel comes not from royalties but through associated public talks and film rights. In World War Z’s acknowledgments, Brooks credits three writers as his inspiration: Studs Terkel for his collections of interviews with ordinary Americans, General Sir John Hackett for his history of World War II, and George Romero for creating the modern zombie. These three influences are all apparent in World War Z, which consists of interviews with people around the globe about their experiences during the decade-long zombie war. The opening sections track the emergence of a zombie plague, the failure of authorities to recognise and deal with it, and the panic as civilisation as we know it collapses. “The spread of the virus revealed a lack of trust, total dysfunction of the major world organizations, and the mistaken belief that what could end this invasion was better technology and sophisticated weaponry” (Baldwin 2007, 415). Brooks thus plays on the post-apocalyptic’s ambivalence about how technology may actually be limiting our chances of survival. The second half of the book depicts the turning of the tide as political and social unity and a focus on basic food production, simple engineering, and crude but effective weapons lead to a resurgence and the victorious war to reconquer the world. What marks World War Z as symptomatic of convergence culture is that it creates a storyworld containing diverse, loosely related narratives. The opening chapter dealing with the initial outbreaks is set in China, Tibet, Kyrgyzstan, Brazil, South Africa, Israel, and Kuwait (and some of the narrators are elsewhere when they relate their stories). Each character has a piece of the puzzle about the zombie outbreak. There are occasional

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recurring characters but no real protagonist. Instead, the zombie war scenario allows a proliferation of multiple narratives. The film adaptation starring Brad Pitt had to invent a protagonist, but it primarily followed the book’s premise rather than its structure. In this sense, the film is a transmedial expansion of World War Z rather than an adaptation because it adds another person’s story to the multiplicity in the book. A second point is that the novel interacts with Brooks’ other works to create an integrated narrative universe. At one point in World War Z, a character talks about combating misinformation and references Brooks’ The Zombie Survival Guide: “The civilian survival guide helped, but was still severely limited. … You could see it was clearly written by an American, the references to SUVs and personal firearms. There was no taking into account the cultural differences” (2006, 197). The earlier book is not a prequel but an actual story element that characters in World War Z have read. This highlights a difference between transmedia-inspired texts and a traditional book series: transmedia texts are windows into a narrative universe, whereas the traditional series is the narrative universe. Brooks followed World War Z with a graphic novel featuring different zombie outbreaks throughout history, of which World War Z was the most widespread, while his website has an app that lets you determine which of your friends is a zombie. Whereas novels are traditionally stand-alone media, in convergence culture texts are also paratexts that point to the next in the series. Thirdly, the way fans engage with Brooks’ work is more typical of transmedia storytelling than of the traditional novel. Fans do not simply discuss the book; they treat it as a real history of the actual zombie war as a way of immersing themselves in the narrative universe. A Max Brooks interview with Neal Conan on National Public Radio (NPR) illustrates the point. Conan introduced Brooks by saying, “He’s now, sadly, the definitive chronicler of what was then merely a threat and is now referred to by all of us survivors as World War Z. He’s the author of the new book World War Z: an oral history of the zombie war, and he joins now to talk about it from what’s left of bureau in New York” (Conan 2006). Callers were encouraged to “tell us your stories of the zombie war. How did you survive? What did you learn?” Brooks played along with the conceit, saying, “You know, I would give anything to be a young man again and try to tell people how to head off the zombie plague, instead of talking about how it really happened.” Different callers then rang in with comments and questions, such as asking if zombies may join with international terrorists to form an unstoppable

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Islamo-Zombie threat, or a potential zombie in the attic who “keeps telling us that he’s not a zombie, but you know, he’s a lawyer. How can I trust him?” (The caller eventually opts for the hacksaw because his brother-in-­ law may not be a zombie but he is definitely a lawyer). The fandom surrounding The Zombie Survival Guide and World War Z playfully imagines zombies are real and the events described actually happened, all of which is characteristic of immersive transmedial worlds. The final point is that, even though his books have been bestsellers, Brooks probably makes far more money from public talks and film rights than he does from book sales. Since author revenues have collapsed, authors have to develop other sources of income. The paratexts are often more lucrative than the text. Brooks reportedly sold the film rights for $1 million. More interestingly, when The Zombie Survival Guide was published, Brooks created a lecture to publicise it. Today he flies around the USA giving lectures on the zombie apocalypse that one of Brooks’ representatives suggests cost “in the neighbourhood of $10,000” (Brodesser-­ Akner 21). A look at the calendar on Brooks’ website shows how frequently he gives this talk. Like many authors, Brooks has discovered that the speaking circuit is more lucrative than publishing. There is a parallel with the music industry; bands used to do tours to promote albums and now they produce albums to promote the more lucrative tours. As traditional economic structures are disrupted by digital technologies, artists in multiple media are expanding onto different platforms in order to make a living. What makes Brooks’ collection of zombie works a product of convergence culture is that each text is a paratext contributing to a coherent fictional world that fans enjoy pretending is real.

Post-apocalyptic Literary Fiction In contrast to industry-savvy writers like Hugh Howey, legendary author Cormac McCarthy has never demonstrated any interest in the business of publishing. From the publication of The Orchard Keeper in 1965 to Blood Meridian in 1985, McCarthy refused to promote his books. He didn’t do interviews or give readings. Before the publication of All the Pretty Horses in 1992, “none of his novels … sold more than 5,000 copies in hardcover” (1992a). His ex-wife Annie DeLisle recalls, “Someone would call up and offer him $2,000 to come speak at a university about his books. And he would tell them that everything he had to say was there on the page. So we would eat beans for another week” (1992a).

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As Madison Smartt Bell wittily put it, “he shunned publicity so effectively he wasn’t even famous for it” (1992). McCarthy has no interest in writing a bestseller. “Bestseller lists have nothing to do with literature. … Have you ever looked at the titles that are on the list? Do you think it is flattering to be in such company?” (1992b; my translation). It must have come as quite a shock to him, then, when his bleak post-­apocalyptic novel The Road stormed the bestseller lists in 2006 and he found himself on the same Hot New Fiction bookshelves as James Patterson and Michael Crichton. Given Cormac McCarthy’s proven reluctance to write for money, industry-based explanations for the emergence of literary post-apocalyptic fiction such as The Road are obviously lacking a vital factor. Traditional publishing deserves credit for a financial model that allowed publishers to support writers like McCarthy who had no desire to be a commercial success. Because the book has barely changed in form for centuries, literature has a far longer shelf life than other media. Publishers could support artistic if uncommercial authors in the belief that one day they would finally receive their due acclaim and when they did their back catalogue would suddenly be in demand (this is remarkably similar to Howey’s argument for self-publishing today). The traditional distance from the financial pressure of needing immediate sales has contributed to a romantic conception of the literary author as existing in an autonomous sphere distinct from mass culture. Yet it cannot be a coincidence that McCarthy wrote a post-­apocalyptic novel just as it was becoming a staple of popular entertainment. The straightforward answer to Heather Hicks’ question as to why authors of literary fiction have started writing post-apocalyptic novels is that they are responding to the genre’s prevalence in popular culture. However, this answer seems unsatisfying not just because it doesn’t fit the romantic idea of artists pursuing their internal vision but because literary fiction occupies a more isolated niche within our media eco-system than mass-market fiction. Many literary authors are sustained by grants, such as the MacArthur Fellowship that Cormac McCarthy received in 1981, or hold teaching positions in university creative writing programmes, both of which are based on literary reputation rather than sales. Hence, literary fiction can insulate itself from mass culture to some extent, which is why it is curious that we are also seeing a rise in post-apocalyptic literary fiction. If World War Z shows how convergence culture is affecting the form and content of popular fiction, then the emergence of post-apocalyptic

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literary fiction is an interesting example of how influence spreads through a media eco-system, both in how new genres rise across media and how experiments in different niches can influence the broader trend. Many mass media have a prestige niche, a branch of the medium whose function is to showcase the best that medium has to offer, such as art house cinema or literary fiction. From a media eco-system perspective, a key function of the prestige niche is to establish the distinctive aesthetic qualities of that medium vis-à-vis other media. Therefore, one reason literary fiction generally does not participate in transmedia storytelling is that creating a distance between literature and other media is part of the point. Transmedia storytelling relies on the flow of content across platforms, but within the overall mediascape there are also prestige niches whose primary purpose is to validate a medium’s unique aesthetic qualities, which almost by definition are difficult to adapt into other forms. The significance of a prestige niche in the media eco-system is that it exists somewhat outside the easy flow of media content (e.g. think of the difficulty of adapting James Joyce’s Ulysses) while still exercising a significant influence on creators and influential critics. Designating some post-apocalyptic fiction as literary implies it is qualitatively superior to mass-market fiction and distinctively different from leading genre entries in other media. Both positions are difficult to hold, especially as the last chapter discussed how video games fought against such cultural elitism. However, thinking about literary fiction as a prestige niche allows us to explore what are considered literature’s unique aesthetic qualities in our current mediascape and what influence prestige niches have on convergence culture. The final section of this chapter thus addresses the distinction between literary and popular fiction in relation to three acclaimed post-apocalyptic novels—Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006), Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven (2015), and Colson Whitehead’s Zone One (2011)—to see what literary fiction has contributed to the genre. There is an ongoing debate about whether literary fiction is intrinsically superior or whether the category is an artificial construct. In a widely cited study, Kidd and Castano argued that the sophisticated techniques of literary fiction “may hone adults’ ToM [Theory of Mind], a complex and critical social capacity” (2013, 380). However, Gavaler and Johnson argue that Kidd and Castano define “literary” as an intrinsic property of texts, when they argue it is more a matter of reader expectation. In their empirical study, genre expectations of science fiction “predispose readers to a less

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effortful and comprehending mode of reading—or what we might term non-literary reading—regardless of the actual intrinsic difficulty of the text” (2017, 100). From a reception perspective, almost any text can become literary if readers approach it in a literary manner. To what extent is post-apocalyptic literary fiction qualitatively different from mass-market fiction, licensed tie-ins, and post-apocalyptic narratives in other media? In the first place, it is noteworthy just how much Station Eleven and Zone One draw on genre conventions. They feature numerous moments when characters infer backstories from environmental details, as in audio-visual media: Easy to read the broad outlines of the room’s history, the shelter that had later become a place where people cooked meals, but as always all of the details were missing. How many people had stayed here? Who were they? Where had they gone? (Station Eleven 129) He became a connoisseur of the found poetry in the abandoned barricade. The minuscule, hardscrabble wedge of space between the piled-up furniture and the apartment door the departing had squeezed through. … Those inside had made a break for it, and there the story ended. Did they make it? (Zone One 134)

Using the post-apocalyptic as a means to explore alternative micro-­societies is also a common motif: Some towns are easier to visit than others. Some places have elected mayors or they’re run by elected committees. Sometimes a cult takes over, and those towns are the most dangerous. (Station Eleven 115) The new micro-societies inevitably imploded, on the island getaways, in reclaimed prisons, at the mountaintop ski lodge accessible only by sabotaged funicular, in the underground survival hideouts finally summoned to utility. The rules broke down. The leaders exposed mental deficits through a series of misguided edicts and whims. (Zone One 88)

Both novels, like World War Z, are also composed of several smaller stories, whether tales from different points of view as in Station Eleven or different characters in Zone One relating their histories. In terms of plot structure, typical narrative events, and themes, literary fiction of the post-­ apocalypse shares a great deal with the popular genre.

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In academic writing, one argument for describing these texts as literary is the belief that they comment insightfully on contemporary social issues. Simon Schleusener reads The Road against the “backdrop of new capitalism” (2017, 1), while Adeline Johns-Putra reads it as “an expression of human experience in an era of desperate damage to the nonhuman environment” (2016, 520). Pieter Vermeulen reads Station Eleven in the context of climate change (2018), while Andrew Strombeck reads Zone One as a reflection on “post-fiscal-crisis divisions between city planners and the under- and working-classes whose lives they sought to order” (2017, 260) and Erica Sollazzo interprets it as a critique of “certain insidious effects not just of capitalism but, more specifically, unchecked corporate influence” (2017, 460). In this framework, meaningful literature is a site of acute socio-political commentary. Ironically, Colson Whitehead parodies just such interpretations in Zone One: He was one of those apocalypse-as-moral-hygiene people, with a college-­ sophomore socialist slant. The dead come to scrub the Earth of capitalism and the vast bourgeois superstructure, with its doilies, helicopter parenting, and streaming video, return us to nature and wholesome communal living. … The human race deserved the plague, we brought it on ourselves for poisoning the planet, for the Death of God, the calculated brutalities of the global economic system, for driving primordial species to extinction: the entire collapse of values as evidenced by everything from nuclear fission to reality television to alternate side of the street parking. Mark Spitz could only endure these harangues for a minute or two before he split. It was boring. The plague was the plague. (2011, 124–125)

Reading certain texts as perceptive social critiques is one way of bestowing literary value but, as Whitehead suggests, this may have less to do with interpreting the text than with making the text a vehicle for the critic’s own politics. Certain works are hailed as carrying important insights and the critic’s job is to work out what those insights are. Virtually any text can be read in this manner. One could, for example, argue that Zombie Strippers (Jay Lee 2008) is a feminist critique of patriarchal capitalism. I don’t intend to make that argument, but the overall approach is more a matter of interpretive practice than textual analysis. Another strategy for framing a particular text as literary is embedding it within a web of high-culture literary references. Thus, The Road has been studied not just in relation to McCarthy’s already canonised oeuvre but

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also the novel’s subtle references to the Grail quest (Cooper 2011) and the existentialism of Kierkegaard (Noble 2011), while Philip Smith has analysed the Shakespearean references of Station Eleven (2016). Yet the influence of pop culture is often made explicit in literary post-apocalyptic novels. In Station Eleven, the motto of the Traveling Symphony, “because survival is insufficient” (58), is taken from an episode of Star Trek: Voyager written by BSG showrunner Ronald D.  Moore (the line has an echo in BSG when Adama tells Starbuck “It’s not enough to survive. You also have to be worthy of survival”). Characters in the novel even call attention to this odd conjunction of high and mass culture: “See, that illustrates the whole problem. … The best Shakespearean actress in the territory, and her favourite line of text is from Star Trek” (120). Many authors of post-­ apocalyptic literary fiction flaunt their pop cultural influences. Colson Whitehead’s Zone One, for example, shows the main character learning the genre’s clichés from old films on television: When Mark Spitz was a child, his father had shared his favourite nuclear-war movies with him. Father-son bonding on overcast afternoons. Fresh-faced rising stars who never made it big and crag-faced character actors marched through the acid-rain narratives and ash-smeared landscapes, soldiering on, slapping hysterical comrades across the face—get a grip on yourself, we’re going to make it—dropping one by one as they chased the rumours of sanctuary. (2011, 120)

Post-apocalyptic literary fiction frequently references pop culture, while an attentive reader could probably discern subtle references to the classics in licensed tie-ins. As with reading insightful socio-­political commentary into texts, tracing webs of textual references reveals as much about the reader’s biases and background as about the author’s intentions. Another argument for literature as an aesthetic form is that it is the supreme medium of ideas. The Road, for example, has been highly praised for its existential examination of what it means to be human once the civilisation that structures our understanding of human values has collapsed. As Randall Wilhelm writes in a discussion of the novel, “In a world bereft of order, without the civilizing structures of generations of human history, a world seemingly in its last stages of existence, what should be the ethical behaviour of a human being—to himself, to others, to higher humanistic or spiritual values” (2008, 133)? Although McCarthy has ­consistently been concerned with such issues in his writing, it is important to note that such questions are also latent within the tragic frame of the post-­apocalyptic.

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The comic frames of the apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic are aligned by specifying the disaster’s cause and making it preventable by human effort, thereby prompting political action in the present. The tragic apocalyptic frame, however, seeks to bring audiences into proper relation to the coming end, and if we project ourselves beyond the end in the tragic frame, we find only the void. The internal logic of the tragic post-­apocalyptic thus implies a world robbed of purpose because the end of the world provides no meaning to human civilisation, which calls into question what we think of as civilised values. These ethical conundrums were already being explored in both Battlestar Galactica and The Walking Dead comics three years before the publication of The Road. If these texts had appeared after The Road’s publication, we would not hesitate to proclaim the novel’s influence, but as the low cultural forms came earlier, there is a conspicuous silence about the direction of influence. Sadly, no one has ever dared ask Cormac McCarthy in one of his rare interviews if he likes sci-fi dramas or has read any good zombie apocalypse comics. Arguing that the distinctions between high and low culture are artificial is a quintessential postmodern move, and many criteria for distinguishing between the two are primarily a matter of reading practices. However, I don’t intend to argue that literary fiction and mass-market fiction are entirely artificial distinctions as transmedia and the study of media eco-­ systems require attention to differences within and between media. There are textual elements that, in our time, generally signify literary fiction, such as the poetic qualities of the narrative voice or greater attention to formal characteristics. For a certain influential class of readers, such considerations are the true hallmark of quality. In popular fiction, plot tends to be paramount with a rapid succession of plot events, mysteries, and reveals driving the action forward. This is often formulaic, with chapters ending on contrived cliffhangers, but readers who want a thrilling story would probably be bored by Zone One, which makes clearing a zombie-­ infested New York seem like the daily grind of street cleaners. Author and journalist Tim Lott has celebrated the demise of literary fiction, declaring that “worrying about plot and story has long been unfashionable on the literary scene. Style and voice are what gather plaudits” (2018). However, as a prestige niche, it makes sense for literary fiction to focus on those qualities that are hardest to imitate in other media. Plot and character are generally transferable; a distinctive style and voice, however, are among the most difficult aspects of any novel to adapt. Of all post-apocalyptic novels, The Road is the most celebrated for its extraordinary use of language: “Nights dark beyond darkness and the days

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more grey each one than what had gone before. Like the onset of some cold glaucoma dimming away the world” (2006, 3). McCarthy’s brilliant simile, comparing the planet to an eye slowly going blind, captures in one striking image the disaster affecting the world. Sentences frequently lack active verbs, removing any possibility of action or change. “Charred and limbless trunks of trees stretching away on every side. Ash moving over the road and the sagging hands of blind wire strung from the blackened lightpoles whining thinly in the wind” (7). Numerous passages consist largely of lists of objects and these remnants of our world create an elegiac effect because the presence of things underscores the absence of people who could make them meaningful: “They trucked along the blacktop. Tall clapboard houses. Machinerolled metal roofs. A log barn in a field with an advertisement in ten-foot letters across the roofslope. See Rock City” (18). The flat quality of such descriptions fills the novel with a quiet sense of desolation. This striking narrative voice is effectively untranslatable into other media. The film adaptation faithfully attempted to capture the mood, plot events, and dialogue but could not capture the distinctive language of the original text. A second quality that tends to distinguish literary fiction is its emphasis on form. Station Eleven, for example, examines the post-apocalyptic’s concern with narrative patterns and ultimate meanings. Near the novel’s end, two characters argue about whether the plague is part of a divine plan: He felt a touch of vertigo. “Elizabeth, what reason could there possibly be for something like this? What kind of plan would possibly require…?” He realised that his voice had risen. His fists were clenched. “Everything happens for a reason,” she said. She didn’t look at him. “It’s not for us to know.” (261)

While the average reader’s sympathies are most likely with the sceptical Clark rather than the religious Elizabeth, the novel’s form, which links diverse characters through their connection to the actor Arthur Leander, creates the illusion of meaning behind the coincidences that structure their lives. Readers gradually attain a broader perspective on events than any of the characters. When Kirsten discovers the dead prophet also owned a copy of a rare comic book written by Arthur Leander’s ex-wife, she wonders, “Who were you? How did you come to possess this page? Kirsten knelt by the prophet, by the pool of his blood, but he was just another dead man on another road, answerless, the bearer of another unfathomable story about walking out of one world and into another” (304). Readers, however, know the prophet is Arthur Leander’s son, thus creating the feeling that

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our insight into events is superior to the characters. Maybe Elizabeth is right about an overarching meaning to events that the characters cannot see. This tension between the apocalyptic’s promise of ultimate meaning and the post-apocalyptic’s scepticism shows a consciousness of the implications of form and genre that is typical of literary fiction. What these qualities suggest is that the rise in literary post-apocalyptic fiction is not due to concern for civilisational crises but the possibility of reworking popular material by giving it a distinctive literary voice and exploring its formal conventions. This has two reciprocal effects on the popular genre. The first is that literary fiction conveys prestige. If audiences tend to consume genre narratives with less care and attentiveness than high culture, then acclaimed literary fiction in that genre can raise audience expectations, encouraging closer reading and more nuanced discussions. Second, variations are beneficial within an eco-system and the distinguishing qualities of literary fiction often help creators across media see a genre in a new light. Those looking for a new angle on a familiar genre often examine prestige niches because their separation from the flow of standard content makes them excellent incubators of new ideas. The creators of The Last of Us, for example, specifically mentioned The Road as having a formative effect on the game and one can clearly see the connection in the relationship between Joel and Ellie and how players are asked to question Joel’s moral behaviour. Literary fiction plays a vital role in changing producer and audience expectations of low cultural genres. Critically acclaimed novels have heightened the post-apocalyptic genre’s reputation and opened new vistas for creators in other media. While transmedia storytelling looks at how content flows across platforms, we should also be aware of how prestige niches affect our media eco-system. Literary fiction is not important to transmedia storytelling, but it has been an important influence on the development of the post-­ apocalyptic genre, which has in turn been integral to the emergence of transmedia storytelling. Integrating such complex paths of influence into our understanding of the mediascape is one of the challenges of convergence culture.

References Arts Council England. 2017. Literature in the 21st Century: Understanding Models of Support for Literary Fiction. artscouncil.org.uk, December 15. Atwood, Margaret. 2003. Oryx and Crake. London: Bloomsbury.

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Author Earnings. 2014. July 2014 Author Earnings Report. authorearnings.com ———. 2016. May 2016 Author Earnings Report. authorearnings.com Baldwin, Gayle R. 2007. World War Z and the End of Religion as We Know It. Cross Currents 57 (3): 412–425. Bell, Madison Smartt. 1992. The Man Who Understand Horses. Review of All the Pretty Horses. The New York Times, May 17. Berger, James. 1999. After the End: Representations of Post-apocalypse. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Brodesser-Akner, Taffy. 2013. I Can’t Think of Anything Less Funny Than Dying in a Zombie Attack. The New York Times, 18–21, June 23. Brooks, Max. 2006. World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War. New York: Crown Publishing. Clarke, Michael J.  2013. Transmedia Television: New Trends in Network Serial Production. New York: Bloomsbury. Conan, Neil. 2006. The Zombies of World War Z. NPR, September 19. Cooper, Lydia. 2011. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road as Apocalyptic Grail Narrative. Studies in the Novel 43 (2): 218–236. Dienstag, Joshua. 2006. Pessimism: Philosophy, Ethic, Spirit. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Flood, Alison. 2014. Authors’ Incomes Collapse to ‘Abject’ Levels. The Guardian, July 8. ———. 2015. Income for US Authors Falls Below Poverty Line  – Survey. The Guardian, September 15. Gavaler, Chris, and Dan Johnson. 2017. The Genre Effect. Scientific Study of Literature 7 (1): 79–108. Heise, Ursula. 2015. What’s the Matter with Dystopia? Publicbooks.org, February 1. Hicks, Heather J. 2016. The Post-Apocalyptic Novel in the Twenty-First Century: Modernity Beyond Salvage. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Howey, Hugh. 2013. My Advice to Aspiring Authors. hughhowey.com, March 14. ———. 2014. Hugh Howey’s Long Journey to Overnight Success. Interview by Tim Knox. Interviewing Authors. International Association of Media Tie-In Writers. 2018. Home. http://iamtw. org/. Accessed 10 June 2018. Johns-Putra, Adeline. 2016. ‘My Job Is to Take Care of You’: Climate Change, Humanity, and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. Modern Fiction Studies 62 (3): 519–540. Kidd, David Comer, and Emanuele Castano. 2013. Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind. Science 342: 377–380. Klems, Brian A. 2014. How Hugh Howey Turned His Self-Published Story ‘Wool’ into a Success (& a Book Deal). Writer’s Digest, January 23. Lott, Tim. 2018. Why Should We Subsidise Writers Who Have Lost the Plot? The Guardian, January 1.

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McCarthy, Cormac. 1992a. Cormac McCarthy’s Venomous Fiction. Interview with Richard B. Woodward. The New York Times, April 19. ———. 1992b. Die Abendröte des Westens. Interview with Matthias Matussek. Der Spiegel, August 31. ———. 2006. The Road. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Milliot, James. 2017. The Rise in Print Continues. Publishers Weekly, July 7. Noble, Alan. 2011. The Absurdity of Hope in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. South Atlantic Review 76 (3): 93–109. Packer, George. 2014. Cheap Words. The New Yorker, February 17. Schleusener, Simon. 2017. The Dialectics of Mobility: Capitalism and Apocalypse in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. European Journal of American Studies 12 (3): 1–14. Smith, Philip. 2016. Shakespeare, Survival, and the Seeds of Civilisation in Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven. Extrapolation 57 (3): 289–303. Sollazzo, Erica. 2017. ‘The Dead City’: Corporate Anxiety and the Post-­ Apocalyptic Vision in Colson Whitehead’s Zone One. Law and Literature 29 (3): 457–483. St. John Mandel, Emily. 2015. Station Eleven. New York: Vintage. Strombeck, Andrew. 2017. Zone One’s Reanimation of 1970s New York. Studies in American Fiction 44 (2): 259–280. Sweeney, David. 2005. Licensed Fiction and the Expansion of Fictional Worlds. iamtw.org Vermeulen, Pieter. 2018. Beauty that Must Die: Station Eleven, Climate Change Fiction and the Life of Form. Studies in the Novel 50 (1): 9–25. Whitehead, Colson. 2011. Zone One. New York: Anchor Books. Wilhelm, Randall. 2008. ‘Golden Chalice. Good to House a God’: Still Life in The Road. The Cormac McCarthy Journal 6: 129–146. Zombie Strippers. 2008. Directed by Jay Lee. Triumph Films.

CHAPTER 8

Antichrist Obama and the Doomsday Preppers

“I think every American household should have a gun. You can never have enough guns, never enough ammo,” says suburban dad and doomsday prepper Tim Ralston, shortly before he shoots his thumb off. The opening shots of the third episode of Doomsday Preppers show a fit, well-tanned man playing catch with his son and eating dinner with his family. The voiceover informs us, “Tim Ralston leads a normal suburban life outside of Phoenix, Arizona, with his wife and three kids. But his two-car garage doesn’t house the family’s SUV. Instead, it is a staging area … for the apocalypse” (“Back” 2011). He is preparing for the destruction of the power grid after an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack. His preparations include inventing new survival tools (the Crovel), rehearsing the family’s bug-out strategy, and guns. In the desert, we see him teaching his children how to shoot when the screen goes black. “It was one of those malfunctions. My thumb went in front of the barrel and, uh, it went off,” Tim later explains. Like any good parent, his first thought upon shooting himself while teaching his children proper use of firearms was “thank God it wasn’t my son.” Fortunately, the film crew had an emergency medic who bandaged the wound and brought him to a hospital. “Thank God the EMT was there, he evacced to a helicopter, went to the hospital and they had me in emergency surgery in, like, an hour of me arriving,” said the doomsday prepper, impressed by the efficiency of modern civilisation.

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In a follow-up spot two months after filming, Tim Ralston explicated the lessons he had learned: his bug-out shelter needed a better med-kit and more guns. What interests me about doomsday preppers is that they may be considered superfans of the post-apocalyptic genre. Thus far in the second part of the book, we have looked at how changes in film, television, video games, and print media have promoted the post-apocalyptic genre, but those reasons ultimately would not matter without an audience for such fictions. We saw in Chap. 3 the appeal of the apocalypse, but the post-­ apocalypse does not possess the same narrative structure or offer the same certainties. Before we conclude our assessment of the factors leading to the rise of post-apocalyptic entertainment, we need to understand the genre’s appeal for fans. This is a difficult question as fans are not homogeneous, but perhaps the best site of investigation is with those for whom the genre’s central conceit, the idea of civilisational collapse, is the main attraction. This chapter therefore examines the appeal of post-apocalyptic beliefs for doomsday preppers. Doomsday preppers have often been assumed to be mentally unstable individuals. James Berger asks, “What degree of hatred for the world—for world as world: the site of procreation and mortality and economics, and the site as well of language and representation—is necessary to generate the wish to end it entirely? Where does this come from? All in all, what historical and psychological alignments can bring about such bizarre, but frighteningly common, imaginings” (1996)? Yet as post-apocalyptic culture becomes more mainstream, we need to consider that fans are not aberrant misanthropes. Something else appeals to them rather than death and destruction. As the interest in prepping becomes more widespread, we should reconsider prejudicial beliefs about its attractions. The growing fascination with doomsday prepping can be seen in the popularity of Doomsday Preppers, the highest-rated show in National Geographic channel’s history. By the time season two premiered, the show had 1.3 million total viewers and spawned a host of copycat series. For those who think this is a “redneck” phenomenon, the press release for season two states that New York was one of the top prepper cities, followed by Denver, Boston, Tampa, and Atlanta. The CEO of National Geographic, David Lyle, stated, “Especially in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, this series taps into the cultural zeitgeist of being fully prepared and equipped for any potential disaster” (“Season 2” 2012). Each episode spends about 15 minutes each on three prepper families before their

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preparations are evaluated by the show’s sponsor, Practical Preppers, a company specialising in surviving the end of the world. Prepping is big business. Some reports estimate that approximately 3.7 million Americans classify themselves as doomsday preppers or survivalists (Ogg 2013). Although it is difficult to garner precise figures, as many prepping supplies are ordinary household items, if each prepper spent $1000 on prepping equipment each year, then the industry would be worth $3.7 billion annually. Tim Ralston estimates that he has spent $20,000–$30,000  in total on his various prepping supplies, which suggests the real figure may be much, much higher. What was once a niche activity pursued by people considered cranks is now becoming mainstream. The combination of popular misconceptions about preppers and the extraordinary growth of prepping subcultures is uncannily reminiscent of how fandom has moved from signifying immaturity and social awkwardness to a practice that is increasingly central to how we consume and interpret media. This chapter first looks at the emergence of fan studies and how it can help us understand doomsday prepping before examining prepping as an immersive fan activity to illuminate the attractions of the post-­ apocalyptic genre for those who are most enraptured by it.

Fan Studies Since the 1990s, fan studies has become an influential approach to understanding popular culture. Mark Duffett explains that while “Fandom research is a very broad, long-standing, multi-disciplinary body of scholarship that takes fandom as its primary focus. … Fan studies is a much narrower area which has emerged from cultural studies in the last two decades. Its practitioners aim to represent fandom in a positive light and tend to study fan communities and practices” (2013, 2). Although reception research has a long history, fan studies pays particular attention to communities such as Trekkies and X-Philes that develop around pop culture phenomena. Typically, such fans have been ridiculed as immature, obsessive dupes of consumer entertainment for devoting an inordinate amount of attention and money to low cultural objects. The publication of Henry Jenkins’ Textual Poachers in 1992 marked a turning point in debates about fandom as Jenkins sought to rewrite this discourse. “To speak as a fan is to accept what has been labeled a subordinated position within the cultural hierarchy, to accept an identity

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constantly belittled or criticized by institutional authorities. Yet it is also to speak from a position of collective identity, to forge an alliance with a community of others in defense of tastes which, as a result, cannot be read as totally aberrant or idiosyncratic” (2013, 23). For Jenkins, fan communities use mass culture as raw material to create their own folk culture. Activities such as writing and sharing fan fiction or attending fan conventions in costume are creative acts of community building rather than signs of inferiority; “Undaunted by traditional conceptions of literary and intellectual property, fans raid mass culture, claiming its materials for their own use, reworking them as the basis for their own cultural creations and social interactions” (18). Importantly for winning academic acceptance, Jenkins cast fandom as a site of popular resistance to the mass media. The first wave of fan studies scholars framed fandom as a counter-culture opposed to the hegemony of corporate capitalism. Slash fiction was celebrated as an example of female fans disrupting patriarchal discourses and expressing female sexuality. In a later article, Jenkins and Sangita Shresthova state, “Fan studies has long depicted fandom as a site of ideological and cultural resistance to the heteronormative and patriarchal values often shaping mass media” (2012, 1.9). However, social science researchers always need to be aware of how they may unconsciously frame subjects in ways that reflect their political priorities. Jenkins was careful to note in Textual Poachers that “readers are not always resistant; all resistant readings are not necessarily progressive readings; the ‘people’ do not always recognize their conditions of alienation and subordination” (2013, 34), but, nonetheless, research often aligns fan activities with left-wing issues and practices. As Mark Duffett notes, “the active audience tradition has sometimes tended to reduce fandom to a progressive social position” (2013, 285). This is a problem for studying apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic subcultures as they often draw adherents from the political right and “conservative” is frequently used as a pejorative term in the humanities. Even if scholars cannot sympathise with conservative phenomena, the experience of alternative worldviews forces us to sharpen our methodological tools and definitions. To illustrate, let us look briefly at the Antichrist Obama phenomenon. In case you didn’t know, Barack Obama is the Antichrist and there are lots of videos on YouTube that prove it. The most popular with 13 million views is entitled “Watch Obama’s Face Freeze  – ‘Antichrist Spirit

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Confronted’” (2011) and depicts a believer denouncing Obama during a speech with “the Holy Name of Jesus.” The video interprets Obama’s stony-faced response as a sign of his demonic possession. The next most popular video is “Obama – Yes We Can = Thank You Satan” (2009) and plays Obama’s famous campaign slogan backwards to show that he is really leading his followers to say “Thank You Satan” (I’m unsure where the “t” sound is supposed to come from, but perhaps there are evangelical theories of phonology that explain it). This video has 5.2 million views. Other popular videos are “Did Jesus Reveal the Name of the Anti-Christ?” (spoiler alert: it’s Barack Obama) and “Top Secret Obama 2012 World War 3 Illuminati Conspiracy!” (2009; 2011). This last one has 2.8 million views and, sadly, is not a parody. Apocalyptic believers are keen watchers of the mass media, scanning the news for evidence of the coming storm and sharing that evidence with others, either in common gatherings such as regular church meetings or online through blogs, social media, or bricolage videos. This provides: an alternative conception of [apocalyptic believers] as readers who appropriate popular texts and reread them in a fashion that serves different interests, as spectators who transform the experience of watching television into a rich and complex participatory culture … their activities pose important questions about the ability of media producers to constrain the creation and circulation of meaning. [Apocalyptic believers] construct their cultural and social identity through borrowing and inflecting mass culture images, articulating concerns which often go unvoiced within the dominant media. (Jenkins 2013, 23)

This quote is actually from Textual Poachers, with “apocalyptic believers” substituting for “fans.” Fan studies often frames certain tactics and practices as socially beneficial. Bricolage, resistant reading, forming like-­ minded communities, and challenging the mainstream media are all generally seen as intrinsically good, but it is hard to maintain that perspective when those tactics equally describe how the Antichrist Obama phenomenon took root. Nick Couldry perceptively comments that “when Jenkins discusses the proto-politics of ‘convergence culture,’ he provides little evidence that the acts he identifies are likely to be associated with progressive rather than with other sorts of politics; and, second, he ignores some obvious contextual factors which might lead to the appropriation of convergence culture for non-progressive politics” (2011, 497).

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The broader methodological point is that we need to be more precise about what is an ideologically neutral tactic and what actually has political valence. Because scholars generally focus on subjects that appeal to them, academics tend to equate fan tactics with their preferred politics. As Matt Hills argues, “our accounts of fandom will remain highly partial, skewed towards cultural artefacts with certain values or appeals, and skewed away from investigating the fandoms surrounding ‘regressive’ texts, or texts at odds with academic politics, cultural identities and investments” (2013, ix). In Fan Cultures, Hills argues that too often scholars sit in judgement on the politics of fandom. “‘Decisionist’ narratives hinge on making political decisions as to the ‘goodness’ or ‘badness’ of fan cultures; should these fan attachments and interpretations be devalued as industrial complicity or valued as creative expressions of audience agency? Such approaches ultimately carve culture into good and bad objects, objects to be ‘rationally’ denigrated, ignored and despised, or objects to be ‘rationally’ applauded, celebrated and valued” (2002, xii). What could we learn by treating right-­ wing apocalyptic culture as a kind of fandom that interacts with media products to fuel a niche culture? Believers in the apocalypse are both dependent on the mass media and completely distrust it. I have never seen anyone predict the world ending because the garbage has not been collected. Local problems imply local solutions; global collapse requires global problems, which can only be known through the media. Apocalyptic believers thus depend for their coming signs on media reports of distant people, places, and events. They also view the liberal media as spearheading a conspiracy to fool the masses into walking over the cliff, like all those young people who literally voted for the Antichrist in 2008. The media is both the source of apocalyptic believers’ knowledge and the source of others’ ignorance simultaneously because only the chosen know how to interpret it properly. Perhaps they are not very different from us, then, in their beliefs and practices. Consider the following passage from Slavoj Žižek’s Living in the End Times: The global capitalist system is approaching an apocalyptic zero point. Its ‘four riders of the apocalypse’ are comprised by the ecological crisis, the consequences of the biogenetic revolution, imbalances within the system itself (problems with intellectual property; forthcoming struggles over raw materials, food and water), and the explosive growth of social divisions and exclusions. (2011, x)

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I have seen many apocalyptic predictions, but this is the first time I have seen someone suggest that civilisation will collapse because of IP ­problems. I can almost picture a believer in the Antichrist Obama thesis snorting “Liberals!” To support his argument, Žižek begins by analysing “the predominant modes of ideological obfuscation,” which inevitably means Hollywood, and concludes by discerning signs of hope in other media “from Kafka’s community of mice to the collective of freak outcasts in the TV series Heroes” (xii). As with right-wing apocalyptic discourse, the key is to see through the lying media to the not-lying media, which can be properly understood with the aid of a reliable interpreter. The point here is not to discredit apocalyptic discourses on the left and right but to rethink how we frame particular practices. There is a tendency for fan studies to adhere to a Star Wars meta-narrative: mainstream corporate media are the Empire and fan communities are the plucky Rebel Alliance, cobbling technology and tactics together to fight back. One way to correct for this may be to test our frameworks on predominantly right-­ wing fandoms because this forces greater precision. When we look at doomsday preppers, then, we should abandon any desire to frame them as heroes resisting corporate capitalism or as representatives of an evil conservatism bent on destroying the world. The question is not their politics; it is what pleasure ordinary people get out of seeing the world destroyed.

Doomsday Preppers Let’s meet some of the subjects of the first season of Doomsday Preppers. Megan Hurwitt is a “metropolitan party girl” from Houston, TX, who carries a compact “go bag” with her at all times and has mapped an escape route out of the city. According to producer Nick Weissmann, “To see her driving through the sunny downtown streets in her Mustang convertible, one might not suspect that in her nearby apartment Megan has an impressive gun collection, a seed bank, and an intricate plan for evacuating the city” (“Meet” 2011). Megan is prepping to survive a catastrophic oil crisis. Kellene Bishop is a Mormon from Utah who formerly ran a multi-­ million dollar business and now spends her time prepping for the collapse of our financial system. She has an infectious enthusiasm and energy that belies her struggle with fibromyalgia, a disease that amplifies pain throughout the body. She is a “gourmet prepper” who stores delicious food to eat after the apocalypse. Her basement is stocked with dried and canned

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goods and she spends hours with her husband going over the supplies and wondering if they are missing anything. Kellene also teaches a self-defence class for women alongside other prep skills, such as how to store food long term, and even treats her neighbours and friends to a banquet made entirely from stored goods (“Meet” 2011). Christopher Nyerges is preparing for a catastrophic earthquake that will destroy Los Angeles. He has trained himself to live off the land, which is quite a challenge in L.A. County. “Some plants he uses for food, some he gathers for medicinal purposes, and others he uses to harness water in the event that potable water is unavailable” (“Meet” 2011). Like Tim Ralston, Christopher is a fit, well-tanned middle-aged man who looks more than capable of handling an emergency. In New York, we meet Jason Charles, an African American firefighter who is prepping to survive the eruption of the Yellow Stone National Park super volcano. The challenge in New York is maximising the limited space available to store supplies. Jason demonstrates the improvisational spirit of prepping by keeping a box of crushed glass by the door so he can scatter it down the hallway outside his apartment to repel looters (“Meet” 2011). The show tries to get away from the idea that preppers are largely conspiracy theorists from the south or mid-west who worry about liberal elites using the United Nations to take away their guns and freedom. It emphasises variety within the prepper community. The subjects of each episode come from around the country and from many different backgrounds. The everyday quality of the preppers is critical to the show’s appeal. Each episode opens with a voiceover narrator telling us, “Across the country, ordinary Americans from all walks of life are taking whatever measures necessary to prepare and protect themselves from what they perceive as the fast-approaching end of the world as we know it.” Each prepper is briefly introduced in some normal context before the show dives into their prepper activities. This offers us an insight into the strange world of our neighbours’ fantasies even as it normalises those activities by making them part of everyday routines. Preppers are both normalised and exceptional, which offers viewers the opportunity to feel both accepted and special by joining the prepping community. Kabel and Chmidling characterise the movement’s core beliefs as “a mistrust of the federal government, individual responsibility to provide for oneself and one’s family in the event of a disaster, including the assumption that any and all civic and governmental services will cease or become unavailable at the time of a major disaster, and the notion that doing

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‘something’ is always better than doing nothing in survival situations” (2014, 259). Because mistrust of the federal government is primarily (but not exclusively) associated with right-wing politics, prepper communities tend to attract conservatives who favour self-reliance over social welfare. Moreover, conservatives are generally sceptical of liberalism’s progressive belief in a gradually improving world and are more open to the possibility that evils cannot be eradicated by enlightened social policy. Prepper forums often debate whether or not to take advantage of advanced medical care, which would not be available after a global collapse. As Kabel and Chmidling note, “The childhood vaccine issue exposed a serious divide in the Prepper community: mistrust of government vs. a desire to fortify oneself/family against illness in anticipation of the impending social collapse” (264). Again, mistrust of childhood vaccines is a conspiracy theory more prevalent on the American right and illustrates the prepper movement’s conservative leanings. Preppers pose a challenge to academic authors because many of us have difficulty setting aside our pre-existing theoretical frameworks, particularly when dealing with right-wing communities. Casey Ryan Kelly approaches Doomsday Preppers from a feminist perspective and argues, “predominantly white men … are provided a theatrical space to perform their feelings of rage and victimhood, deliver monologues about the collapse of civilisation, model their armaments, rehearse paramilitary battles with post-apocalyptic marauders, and exhibit their masculine know-how” (2016, 95). This is interesting because there are hardly any expressions of rage and victimhood in the series; the show works hard to normalise preppers, rather than portray them as raving conspiracy theorists. Kelly also curiously overlooks the show’s effort to engage with a diversity of preppers: “With its lack of race and gender diversity, Doomsday Preppers frames the performance of prepping as a legitimate expression of white male rage” (100). Of the 18 preppers featured in National Geographic’s “Meet the Preppers” gallery for season one, 6 are women (one featured as part of a couple), and 1 is African American, meaning only 11 of the 18 fit the stereotype and none of them are shown to be full of white male rage. Instead, they seem excited to reveal their preparations and eager to hear expert appraisals of their survival chances. Pre-existing cultural scripts about doomsday preppers are so powerful they can override evidence. The show is most popular with white middle-­ aged men, but Kelly seems to substitute a stereotype of conservative middle-­aged white men, full of rage against threats to their cultural

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hegemony, in place of a nuanced understanding of prepper culture. She is dismissive of the segments on female preppers: “To the extent that women are active participants, it is either in fulfilment of traditionally feminine domesticity or as an obsessive extension of motherly instincts. Constructed as the domestic caretakers of the post-apocalyptic home, women’s roles are heavily circumscribed” (108). Writing of Kellene Bishop, she oddly gets her name wrong (Colleen) and completely elides the sequences of Kellene teaching other women self-defence, both handto-hand and marksmanship: “Although the episode references a variety of other skills she has developed, a large portion is devoted to her pantry skills. Meanwhile, her husband is depicted performing his fighting skills and elaborate plans for home security” (108). Actually, her husband is the willing participant on whom Kellene demonstrates self-defence techniques for the class and it is Kellene’s fighting skills that are showcased. Similarly, David G. Robertson’s materialist analysis of conspiracist millennialism treats preppers as dupes of capitalism whose fears are exploited in order to sell products of little utility. Looking at Alex Jones’ Infowars, Robertson notes: “Jones’ guests are frequently the producers or retailers of [conspiracist] products” (2015, 92), such as the anti-vaccination owners of alternative health websites and water filter manufacturers peddling anti-fluoridation devices. The conspiracist marketplace addresses two concerns of their consumers: first, how can I avoid the machinations of the elite? And what can I do if society collapses? The first is answered by a range of products designed to prevent the individual from being controlled by the conspiracy through cleansing their body and environment of toxins alleged to be weakening their immune systems, actively spreading disease, and stultifying their brains. The second concern is addressed by merchants who offer storable food, water, and other equipment designed to sustain the individual in the event of a collapse. (92)

For Robertson, preppers’ beliefs are manipulated by unscrupulous forces determined to profit from their gullibility. Again, researchers have difficulty imagining that preppers may be rational human beings engaged in activities that give them satisfaction. I admit it’s hard to watch Infowars and assume its audience is anything other than fools or cranks, but this is also what people say of Rocky Horror Picture Show devotees and Tolkien fans who speak Elvish. Fan studies scholars, in particular, should try to

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avoid stereotyping conservative media audiences, given how often fandom in general has been derided in public discourse. A fan studies perspective asks us to think about what pleasure people derive from their experiences with the fan object. Mark Duffett writes, “Fans are less in love with stars, or, for that matter, authors, than with the pleasures and possibilities that those individuals can offer to them” (2013, 157). Likewise, doomsday preppers may be less in love with conspiracy, death, and destruction than with the pleasures and possibilities that post-­ apocalyptic planning affords them. Are doomsday preppers fans of post-apocalyptic media? There is little evidence they are drawn to specific shows, especially as they are preparing for life without modern amenities. I suspect they may be even more likely than casual fans to dislike certain post-apocalyptic texts, just as many historians wince at historical dramas; the flaws destroy the enjoyment. However, it is still useful to interpret their activities in the light of fan studies. Most work in the field tends to be case studies of fans of specific texts. However, thinking about doomsday preppers leads me to propose two other kinds of fans: fans of a genre mythos and fans of a genre experience. Fans of a genre mythos are attracted to a genre’s central conceit beyond any particular text. Doomsday preppers share with the post-apocalyptic genre a fascination with the idea that progress is not linear, that our society either contains the seeds of its own destruction or that our position in nature is more fragile than we imagine. At some point, society may crumble and have to be rebuilt from the ashes, allowing us to imagine alternate societies. They are not dedicated fans of any specific text, but they are fans of the mythos that both the popular genre and doomsday preppers share. This may well be true for other genres, such as the Western, which also have a clear central mythos. Fans of a genre experience like the activities a particular genre enables. Preppers do not simply consume media about the end of the world; for them, the important aspect is the readiness to respond to emergencies, the training, the stockpiling, the planning: bug-out bags, guns, portable water treatment equipment, survival treks, blast shelters, and so on. They are fans of the experience the genre provides rather than any specific doomsday narrative. A similar example may be those who describe themselves as lovers of theatre, which implies the overall experience rather than any specific plays. How does thinking about preppers through the lens of fan studies help explain their behaviour? In the first place, like fans, doomsday preppers

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and survivalists are often negatively stereotyped. People assume they are pathological, paranoid schizophrenics, men attempting to compensate for economic failures, gun-toting rednecks, and so on. However, most of the subjects on Doomsday Preppers are middle class. People below the poverty line are already fighting for survival; they don’t need to play survivor on weekends. People take up these hobbies for pleasure when they can afford them. In order to understand the appeal of post-apocalyptic scenarios, we need to start with a basic principle of fan studies that the object of fandom provides some degree of creative pleasure to many people. The best ethnographic study of prepper culture in the USA is Richard G. Mitchell’s Dancing at Armageddon (2004). Mitchell spent five years studying survivalists and doomsday preppers and rejects many stereotypes about them: Survivalism is neither a retreat from modern social life nor a search for privilege within it. Survivalism does not derive from want, perceived scarcity, or privation. Survivalism is not pragmatic effort to redistribute resources, rearrange status hierarchies, or reorder public agendas for personal gain. Survivalists are not principally wayward protesters dissatisfied with their share of the goods, services, and deference at hand (cf. Lipset 1960; Lipset and Raab 1978). Nor are they underclass authoritarians prone to fundamentalist rage against the conditions of modernity (cf. Hofstadter 1965). It is not diminished possessions, prestige, or sense of autonomy that motivates survivalists. (2004, 9)

This description accords with the portrayals on Doomsday Preppers; most preppers are middle class with stable jobs and family lives. They do not come across as a powerless underclass helplessly raging against the system. Indeed, preppers primarily talk about the agency they derive from feeling prepared for any eventuality. Mitchell’s conclusion is that preppers are primarily motivated by the appeal of culture crafting, that is, imagining an alternate society from the bottom-up. For doomsday preppers, civilisational collapse is merely the pretext for their work to being: The attractions of survivalism lie in imaginatively reforming the totality of social life, not by changing institutions but through discovery and reinterpretation of the cultural assumptions and intrinsic practices that undergird the institutional order … survivalists do not, metaphorically, covet a larger share of the cultural pie. They want something more and different. They

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want to express creativity, not achieve control … it is the imaginative work of culture crafting not the artifacts of culture to which survivalists are attracted. Survivalists relish inventing new narratives, new primal means and fundamental meanings by which the world may be known. (2004, 9)

Much like the pop culture fans documented by Henry Jenkins, Matt Hills, and others, preppers are motivated by opportunities for creative participation, rather than rage and hatred of the world. They are motivated by the desire to imagine a different world from scratch. What skills would become redundant or valuable? What forms of political organisation would emerge? What objects would increase in value and which would become superfluous? From this perspective, we can better answer the curious question of why there are so many different doomsday scenarios and why preppers never take action to prevent them. A striking aspect of Doomsday Preppers is that every subject has his or her own narrative of how catastrophe will strike, just as the post-apocalyptic genre has seen an ever-increasing diversity of explanations for how the world will end. Kabel and Chmidling explain, “The one thing all of these scenarios have in common is complete civil unrest and break down of law-and-order, referred to as ‘the end of the world as we know it’ or TEOTWAWKI” (2014, 258). Unlike apocalyptic believers, who are interested in TEOTW, preppers focus on AWKI.  It doesn’t matter how the world ends, so persuading others the end is nigh is not the goal. Narratives of civilisational collapse are for preppers a kind of narrative art, fanfic, a personal spin on a common central mythos. Everyone is free to have their own interpretation, even if there may be subgroups devoted to particular readings. This multiplicity is common among fan forums, in which fans advance different theories and perspectives because the goal is to share pleasure in the fan object rather than determine the solely acceptable point of view. In Convergence Culture, Henry Jenkins asserts that the impact of networked communities is “apt to emerge first in cultural forms—a changed sense of community, a greater sense of participation, less dependence on official expertise and a greater trust in collaborative problem solving” (2008, 209). The internet has been critical to the emergence of survivalism and fandom, both previously disreputable hobbies that have grown through anonymous forums, leading to a realisation that there is a far larger community out there than enthusiasts previously thought. Just as fans argue that fandom offers space for creativity and community, so

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s­urvivalists value the skills they develop through their passion; “Survival discourse tailors widespread rancour and disorder to fit schemes for maximizing personal competence, actualization, and relevance” (Mitchell 2004, 10). Survivalism can be seen in the wider context of self-­ improvement; “Acquiring a skill that is essential in survival contexts such as cooking, sewing, fixing mechanical items, or anything related to health care, can potentially elevate one’s status among his or her fellow Preppers” (Kabel and Chmidling 2014, 264). This is often a social good as survivalists generally seek to maximise their health; “Preppers are intent on increasing their self-sufficiency skills and are very interested in lifestyle changes which can reduce future health risks” (265). Unless, of course, they shoot their thumbs off. What about the guns and the military training? Mitchell devotes an entire chapter to one of these training exercises, Operation Aurora Borealis, and describes it as exactly what one would expect from some middle-aged American dentists training to be soldiers in the forest, that is, one of the most shambolic acts of chaos ever seen in uniform. “The action bore little resemblance to the media images of martial virility and revolutionary fervour we had been led to expect. Aurora Borealis seemed, well, a flop. The elaborate lesson plans and scoring schemes came to nothing. No one walked far, took the initiative, learned much, or read the handouts. Most of the group had only sunburn, bruises, broken equipment, and memories of a cold night out for their trouble” (2004, 74–75). Yet they never made any effort to correct their problems. Moreover, Mitchell notes that there was an absence of “political talk, ideological talk” (75). Despite all the military equipment and training, there was no discussion of the enemy. Instead, participants “sounded like hardware or sporting goods store employees or handymen, arguing the merits of their favoured merchandise from positions of enthusiasm, knowledge, and long experience” (75). From a fan studies perspective, we may describe this as an elaborate form of cosplay or live action role-playing. The “military training” of many preppers is as meaningful in terms of tactical defence as Harry Potter fans pointing their wands at each other and shouting “Expelliarmus!” The difference is that preppers have actual military weapons. Put an Uzi in the hands of a Harry Potter fan shouting “Cruciatus!” and see how rapidly people begin to treat Potter fandom as a menace to society. Yet the presence of actual weapons should not obscure one of the primary emotional appeals of doomsday prepping—it allows people to live in their fantasy and

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guns are a key symbolic object that facilitates immersion. As Mitchell ­ ractical notes, “For all its apparent calculation and utility, survivalism is no p readiness for uncertainties but a celebration of imagination, an encompassing compelling game of make believe” (17). As part of his seven principles of transmedia storytelling, Henry Jenkins has written about immersion versus extraction: “In immersion, then, the consumer enters into the world of the story, while in extractability, the fan takes aspects of the story away with them as resources they deploy in the spaces of their everyday life” (2009). At the highest levels of fan engagement, though, there may be no distinction between the two. What survivalists extract from their narratives is a chance for further immersion by turning the real world into a world they have crafted for themselves. We can compare this with the Harry Potter fans who developed quidditch as a sport: Is that immersion or extraction? For highly engaged fans, the goal is to turn the real world into the fantasy world to allow the fullest possible immersion. Michael Saler argues that immersion in fantasy worlds creates both “fictional spaces that provide an escape from a disenchanted modernity into self-subsistent realms of wonder … [and] safe and playful arenas for their inhabitants to reflect on the status of the real and to discuss prospects for effecting concrete personal and social changes” (2012, 7). Hence, bomb shelters, bug-out bags, arsenals, and other survivalist equipment are really fan practices that allow increased immersion in the narrative survivalists are crafting. While fears of post-apocalyptic disorder represent a dystopian strain, there are also more “utopian” elements of prepper culture. Kabel and Chmidling note that “speculative posts about the percentage of people expected to die in a collapse scenario indicate assumptions about the profile of post-collapse America being made up of able-bodied individuals who are free of chronic illness and excess weight” (2014, 264). The utopian element is a brutal application of Darwinian natural selection; the unfit are weeded out, leaving only the healthiest specimens. A society founded on exceptionally healthy, resourceful individuals has a much better chance of success. Prepper utopianism begins with the assumption that society will be improved if its individual units are improved. Hence, prepping contains the utopia-dystopia spectrum, both the fear of having to fight for survival and the hope that the result will be a better world. One final point is how doomsday prepper markets fit into all this. Like fans being targeted with kitsch, are preppers simply another demographic being exploited for marketing purposes? This is an area where thinking

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about doomsday preppers can also help us think about fans. Preppers are a hard sell for marketers because, although they do buy certain goods, what they really want cannot be bought. As part of culture crafting, they want: a part in creating the marketplace, in fashioning economic culture, in crafting rituals of appraisal and exchange, a place in the fundamental mediation of value … survivalism serves as a rhetorical means of transforming depersonalised consumer society, rife with mass commodities and mass marketing, a place where survival is merely for sale, into an aesthetic discourse of valuation where survivalists are adventuresome architects of new economic orders. The discourse of valuation brings survivalists imaginatively from the sidelines of passive consumerism to the centre of economic culture crafting. (Mitchell 2004, 37)

One example of this is nineteenth-century science textbooks. For most people, they are worthless curiosities, but for survivalists they contain invaluable information about how to live without electricity. How much would such a book be worth after the apocalypse: 50 bullets, 4 drums of petrol, 6 boxes of aspirin? Survivalist markets are places of barter and exchange that allow culture crafting. “Bartering and trading are expected future activities in the Prepper community and occupied quite a bit of discussion space on the boards. Some sites discussed which items to stock­up on, not for personal use but for future trade” (Kabel and Chmidling 2014, 264). Fans are often ridiculed for the merchandise they buy, but like survivalists they don’t want the market to determine value. They are crafting their own culture, which means they are also crafting its economic values. These actions may be seen as part of a growing impulse towards “DIY citizenship,” which Ratto and Boler in the introduction to their edited volume on the subject describe as an “amalgamation of politics, culture, art, and technology that in turn constitutes identities rooted in diverse making practices” (2014, 18). Rather than regarding doomsday preppers as a fringe movement, we should recognise them as part of a broader cultural desire to craft alternatives to contemporary society.

Fandom and the Post-apocalyptic If we interpret preppers as the most extreme fans of the post-apocalyptic genre, fans who are consumed by its mythos and experience rather than by actual texts, what can their behaviour tell us about post-apocalyptic works

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and fans? Let us look at four key aspects: physical crafting and invention, food self-sufficiency, siege living, and immersive role-playing. A central attraction of prepping is the fun of crafting new objects that might be useful in a post-apocalyptic world, as with Tim Ralston’s Crovel, a multi-tool that is a combination of crowbar, shovel, and axe. In post-­ apocalyptic narratives, we often see characters crafting new tools from the detritus of our world, such as the man’s construction of a makeshift lamp in The Road (McCarthy  2006, 144) or the “Lobo,” a cross between a shovel and a double-bladed axe, that the infantry develop in World War Z. In post-apocalyptic video games, characters can upgrade their weapons with new attachments; while such structured rewards are a tactic for motivating further gameplay, they can also be read as part of the post-­apocalyptic genre’s fascination with tinkering and crafting. Casey Ryan Kelly suggests that shows like Doomsday Preppers recuperate “hegemonic masculinity by restaging the plausible real world conditions under which the performance of manly labour appears instrumental to collective survival” (2016, 96). There is an element of truth to this and yet I disagree with the assumption that the post-apocalyptic offers a site of escape from an existential crisis for masculinity. The word “hegemonic” here insistently reads these activities in a political light. Yet one of the issues with the first wave of fan studies was that it relied on just such “decisionist” narratives, with the critic evaluating fan activities in light of their perceived ideological bent. Instead, let me suggest something more straightforward. There are a lot of people, but primarily middle-aged men, who like tinkering with tools in their garages because it provides a socially acceptable form of masculine creativity. There is also genuine satisfaction in crafting something from scratch or repairing something broken. As sociologist Kai Erickson notes, Virtually every study of job satisfaction I am aware of suggests that repairers enjoy work more and derive more from it. They set their own work pace, command a wide range of skills, exercise a considerable amount of autonomy, and retain a secure sense of craft. It is dirty work, often, but creative, challenging, full of variety. Breakdown, then, may be the surest antidote for feelings of alienation in the modern workplace. (qtd. in Mitchell 2004, 11)

If Marxist theory tells us that modern workers are alienated from the product of their labours, then crafting and repairing represent the satisfaction of mastery over the complete product: the engine fixed, the coffee

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table built from scratch, the children’s bicycle repaired as good as new. One of the temptations of cultural studies is the desire to label everything as political because that is what our discipline is set up to validate. However, in fan studies in particular, it is important to acknowledge that some people like fan activities simply because they derive pleasure from them. A second trend among doomsday preppers is the question of food self-­ sufficiency, with many preppers trying to grow all their own food and build up years’ worth of stored supplies. Post-apocalyptic texts are obsessed with the idea of how urban individuals would survive if the local supermarket was emptied and they suddenly had to forage for sustenance. In I Am Legend, we see Robert Neville growing vegetables, hunting, and raiding apartments for canned goods (2007). In 28 Days Later, Jim collapses on the stairs while fleeing rage zombies because he has had nothing to eat except junk food and his body is crashing (2002). In season three of The Walking Dead, the survivors attempt to grow their own food in the prison yard, painstakingly trying to recapture ancient knowledge that most modern humans have forgotten. Food and control of food production are critical elements in many post-apocalyptic fictions that tap into modern concerns with clean eating and a return to the “natural” diet of human beings, such as paleo diets or diets that feature organic vegetables and a minimum of processed food. The prepper belief that a post-apocalyptic society will force a return to a healthier, more natural state of being harmonises well with broader currents in our society. A third aspect is the emphasis on siege living and fortifications in post-­ apocalyptic narratives. Most preppers are middle class and their preparations involve fortifying their homes or bug-out areas to resist attack. At the top end, there are now luxury bunker resorts such as Trident Lakes in Texas, a $330 million “5-star playground with DEFCON 1 preparedness” (Rowen 2017), which allow residents to ride out the apocalypse in style. Postapocalyptic narratives frequently contain siege sequences in which characters must protect their homes from invasion: the prison in season three of The Walking Dead, Robert Neville’s protection of his besieged home in I Am Legend, BSG’s spacefaring fortress, and Andrew Ryan’s Rapture built underwater to protect it from government encroachment. Throughout the genre, attention is paid to protecting home and possessions; yet there are scenes of joyous looting, too, such as the raiding of the shopping mall in Dawn of the Dead (Zack Snyder 2004)  or the man and the boy’s discovery of the ­well-stocked bunker in The Road. The post-­apocalyptic allows for fantasies of defending one’s home and possessions from invaders while seizing

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the  goods  of the undeserving rich simultaneously. This underscores the genre’s appeal to the urban middle classes and their precarious position within the contemporary economy. Finally, there is the immersive aspect the genre facilitates. Zombie runs are popular worldwide, as are survival weekends (witness the popularity of Bear Grylls and others), all of which allow fans of the post-apocalyptic to immerse themselves in their fantasies, if not to the same life-changing depth as preppers. If we think about what experiences the genre offers, we begin to understand that the appeal of the post-apocalypse has little to do with death, destruction, and finality, but is instead rooted in playful creativity, self-improvement, imaginative transgressions of social boundaries, and immersive fantasy worlds. Preppers take these aspects to extreme conclusions, but perhaps it is at the furthest ends of the spectrum that we can most clearly see the attractions of both a genre mythos and a genre experience.

References 28 Days Later. 2002. Directed by Danny Boyle. Burbank: 20th Century Fox. Back to the Stone Age. 2011. Doomsday Preppers Season 1, Episode 3. National Geographic Channel. Berger, James. 1996. Ends and Means: Theorising Apocalypse in the 1990s. Postmodern Culture 6 (3). Couldry, Nick. 2011. More Sociology, More Culture, More Politics: Or, a Modest Proposal for ‘Convergence’ Studies. Cultural Studies 25 (4–5): 487–501. Dawn of the Dead. 2004. Directed by Zack Snyder. Burbank: Universal. Did Jesus Reveal the Name of the Anti-Christ? 2009. YouTube. November 19. Duffett, Mark. 2013. Understanding Fandom: An Introduction to the Study of Media Fan Culture. London: Bloomsbury. Hills, Matt. 2002. Fan Cultures. London: Routledge. ———. 2013. Preface. In Understanding Fandom: an introduction to the study of media fan culture. London: Bloomsbury. I am Legend. 2007. Directed by Francis Lawrence. Burbank: Warner Bros. Jenkins, Henry. 2008. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. Fredericksburg: New York University Press. ———. 2009. Revenge of the Origami Unicorn: The Remaining Four Principles of Transmedia Storytelling. henryjenkins.org, December 12. ———. 2013. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. Updated Twentieth Anniversary Edition. New York: Routledge.

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Jenkins, Henry, and Sangita Shresthova. 2012. Up, Up, and Away! The Power and Potential of Fan Activism. Transformative Works and Cultures 10. Kabel, Allison, and Catherine Chmidling. 2014. Disaster Prepper: Health, Identity, and American Survivalist Culture. Human Organisation 73 (3): 258–266. Kelly, Casey Ryan. 2016. The Man-Pocalypse: Doomsday Preppers and the Rituals of Apocalyptic Manhood. Text and Performance Quarterly 36 (2–3): 95–114. McCarthy, Cormac. 2006. The Road. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Meet the Season One Preppers. 2011. National Geographic.com Mitchell, Richard G. 2004. Dancing at Armageddon: Survivalism and Chaos in Modern Times. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Obama – Yes We Can = Thank You Satan. 2009. YouTube, January 18. Ogg, John C. 2013. Industries Making the Most Money on Doomsday Preppers. 24/7 Wall Street, August 19. Ratto, Matt, and Megan Boler. 2014. DIY Citizenship: Critical Making and Social Media. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Robertson, David G. 2015. Silver Bullets and Seed Banks: A Material Analysis of Conspiracist Millennium. Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 19 (2): 83–99. Rowen, Ben. 2017. A Resort for the Apocalypse. The Atlantic, March. Saler, Michael. 2012. As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Pre-History of Virtual Reality. New York: Oxford University Press. Season 2 Premiere of Doomsday Preppers Becomes Network’s Highest Rated Season Premiere and Tuesday Night Telecast. 2012. TV by the Numbers, November 14. Top Secret Obama 2012 World War 3 Illuminati Conspiracy! 2011. YouTube, April 25. Watch Obama’s Face Freeze  – ‘Antichrist Spirit Confronted’. 2011. YouTube, September 27. Žižek, Slavoj. 2011. Living in the End Times. London: Verso.

PART III

Paradigms

CHAPTER 9

The Many Deaths of The Terminator

On March 18, 2017, New York Daily News revealed that Paramount had shelved plans for a sixth Terminator film. According to an inside source, “The studio has taken the sequel off the production slate completely, meaning there is no preproduction or any plans for another sequel. … The Genisys movie was seen as a way of reviving (the franchise), but the critics were not happy and somehow the studio bosses fell out of love with making more, even though they made huge profits” (Desborough 2017). It seemed that everyone’s favourite time-travelling cyborg assassin would not, despite his famous promise, be back. While the previous section looked at the factors promoting the post-­ apocalyptic genre on different platforms, the most important reason for the genre’s prominence is the ability to share IP across platforms. In this final section, I look at two post-apocalyptic transmedia franchises to determine some key ingredients for successful transmedia storytelling. While the final chapter examines The Walking Dead as perhaps the most successful transmedia franchise of all, this chapter looks at The Terminator as an intriguing example of transmedia failure. The Terminator has all the elements necessary for a successful transmedia franchise and yet it has consistently failed to take wing. It has a large fan base that spans at least two generations, yet it cannot seem to tap into nostalgia or launch in new directions. In the twenty-first century, four of the six Hollywood majors—Warner Bros., Columbia, Paramount, and Fox—have supported it at various moments and yet, © The Author(s) 2018 S. Joyce, Transmedia Storytelling and the Apocalypse, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93952-0_9

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despite their enormous resources, they have been unable to launch a successful Terminator series. They have tried to reboot the series three times on the big screen and each expansion has met with disappointment. The fourth film, Terminator Salvation, made a coordinated effort to expand the world in quintessentially transmedia fashion: a prequel video game, a machinima series, a trilogy of comics, three novels set before and after the events of the movie, and even an amusement park ride at Six Flags. Yet the project was a failure. There was a well-reviewed TV series, The Sarah Connor Chronicles, which was axed after just two seasons. Everything successful transmedia franchises have done, The Terminator also tried to do and yet it failed repeatedly to find a stable formula for success. This makes it an interesting test case for thinking about transmedia storytelling because it should have worked but somehow it did not and understanding why may reveal insights into what makes transmedia franchises successful. By what standards can we call such a profitable franchise a failure? Obviously, most of us can only dream of such multi-billion dollar flops. Yet in terms of what revivers had planned, the attempts to reboot the franchise this century cannot be termed successful. The Terminator (T1) was a low-budget sci-fi noir that became a surprise hit in 1984, earning $78 million worldwide off a budget of just $6.4 million. At the end of the 1980s, critics began hailing it as one of the decade’s defining films. Norman Friedman argues, “three developments from late 1984 to mid-­ 1991 are related to these critical changes: (1) the influence of the film on other films; (2) the influence of the film as a ‘career-builder’; and (3) the influence of the film on film analysis” (1994, 75). The late 1980s saw a number of blockbuster hits such as RoboCop (Paul Verhoeven 1987) that were clearly influenced by T1, while the film launched the careers of both James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger. When they reunited to make Terminator 2: Judgment Day (T2) in 1991, they commanded a budget of $102 million, then the highest budget for any film ever made, with Schwarzenegger receiving $15 million dollars, over twice the entire budget of the original film. The film smashed box-office records, earning $521 million worldwide. Hollywood, which is often criticised for churning out formulaic sequels, did not make another Terminator film for 12 years. Instead, the franchise continued on minor platforms. Now Comics published a Terminator series from 1988 to 1990, which featured new recruits to John Connor’s resistance in a post-apocalyptic 2031. With the impending arrival of T2,

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the rights were licensed to Dark Horse Comics in 1990, which published a series about a resistance group sent back in time to kill members of Cyberdyne Systems before they can create Skynet. In transmedia fashion, the comics expanded the storyworld and functioned as R&D for the franchise. Some of their ideas would reappear in The Sarah Connor Chronicles in the 2000s, including the idea of multiple resistance units sent back in time to complete different missions and the possibility of alternate timelines. Interesting developments were also happening in video games. While Sega released a number of uninspired side-scrolling platformers that tried to follow the film’s plot, Bethesda used the Terminator license to explore both the storyworld and the medium’s possibilities. Seeking to capitalise on the publicity for T2, in 1991 Bethesda released a DOS action-­adventure game based on T1. The game is notable for being one of the first sandbox games, played on a large map of Los Angeles, in which one could play as either Kyle Reese or the terminator in a pursuit across the city. A follow-up game in 1992, The Terminator 2029, followed the comics’ lead in setting the story as part of John Connor’s future resistance war, this time experimenting with a first-person shooter  (FPS) rather than a sandbox game. This was followed by Terminator: Rampage in 1993, in which the player storms the 32 floors of Cyberdyne’s headquarters; this was another FPS but the gameplay involved grid-based three-dimensional (3D) mazes similar to Wolfenstein 3D. These experiments led to the ground-breaking Terminator: Future Shock in 1995, one of the first FPS games to feature fully texture-mapped 3D environments and mouse-look control. The player controls a young resistance fighter who escapes from a Skynet camp and joins the resistance with John Connor and a young Kyle Reese, again expanding on known narrative events not depicted in the films. The direct sequel, Terminator: Skynet, was similarly acclaimed for refining the revolutionary innovations of Future Shock. What is noteworthy about Bethesda’s approach is how it used the Terminator franchise to further its own ambitions for games, rather than subordinate player experience to the canonical film narrative. Yet what distinguishes such franchising from contemporary transmedia culture is that there was little effort to coordinate the franchise’s development across platforms. This began to change in the 2000s with the development of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (T3). A trilogy of novels written by S.M.  Stirling became the first works to continue the official canon. The first two novels, T2: Infiltrator (2001) and T2: Rising Storm

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(2003), act as prequels to T3, while the final book, a sequel to the film called T2: The Future War, came out in 2004 once T3 had revealed that Judgment Day occurred despite the Connors’ best efforts. Two FPS video games were brought out in November 2003, T3: Rise of the Machines and T3: War of the Machines; both of them, however, were panned by critics as derivative. Most importantly, the film itself divided fans and critics, with many refusing to accept it as a worthy successor to T1 and T2. Despite a more coordinated transmedia approach, the central pillar was unable to bear the weight. From 2005 on, the producers of T3 collaborated with Warner Bros. and Fox to develop a TV series based on the franchise, the excellent Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. The showrunner, Josh Friedman, ignored the most recent film, saying T3 existed in an alternate timeline, and instead positioned the show as a sequel to the first two films. Fox heavily promoted the show in 2007, and when it finally aired, it was the highest-rated new scripted series of the 2007–2008 season. However, while the show had a dedicated fan base, it failed to tap into the legion of Terminator fans who came to the films and was axed after just two seasons. Despite an excellent cast, strong writing, and the advantage of a storyworld with mass appeal, the show proved an abortive attempt by the franchise to take root in another medium. The most ambitious relaunch was Terminator: Salvation (T4) in 2009. According to producer and co-founder of the new rights owner Halcyon Co., Victor Kubicek, “The Terminator franchise represents by far the most popular and successful franchise not owned by a major studio. We see this global franchise as a cornerstone of Halcyon’s future business plans” (Fleming 2007). The producers intended the film to be the first part of a trilogy with multimedia spinoffs. Moritz Borman said, “With T3, we included many incidental details and plot points that, along with the main narrative, set the stage for an entirely new set of interrelated stories covering the future adventures of John Connor and the Terminators. This new Terminator trilogy will build upon the already huge worldwide Terminator fan base” (Fleming 2007). Alongside the film, Halcyon produced a six-­ episode prequel machinima series that expanded on the backstory of the character Blair Williams. It was made using the same game engine as the licensed video game, Terminator: Salvation, a third-person shooter co-­ developed by Halcyon Games that was released alongside the film and filled in some narrative gaps between T3 and T4. Three commissioned novels acted as prequel, coquel, and sequel to the film’s narrative. A four-­ part comic book prequel (featuring a different story to the machinima

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series and the prequel novel) helped build anticipation for the movie. Alongside toy merchandising, there was even an amusement park ride at Six Flags. Halcyon had clearly studied other transmedia empires and saw T4 as its golden ticket. Yet the film alienated fans and the anticipated trilogy never materialised as franchise entropy took hold. Halcyon filed for bankruptcy in August 2009. Once again, the franchise went dormant as production companies negotiated for the rights. What happened next falls into a familiar pattern. The rights were acquired by Annapurna Pictures and Skydance Productions, with Paramount signed as distributor in 2013. The new producers sought to distance themselves from T3 and T4 and planned an entirely new trilogy, with a potential spinoff TV series. The new film, Terminator Genisys (T5), did poorly in the USA and only broke even thanks to a strong showing in China. Paramount pulled the plug on the rest of the trilogy and the TV series never appeared. What are we to make of this repeated failure by many different producers to develop one of the world’s biggest franchises? I argue that there are five key reasons why The Terminator has failed to take wing as a transmedia franchise in the twenty-first century: Production 1. The unstable rights regime has hindered coordinated development. Text 2. The original films, T1 and T2, contain a difficult time-travel paradox. Fans demanding continuity with the “true canon” are also demanding fidelity to the paradox, which has seriously hindered development of the narrative universe. 3. The producers have not made optimal use of different media in addressing this problem. Reception 4. The franchise guardians, James Cameron and Arnold Schwarzenegger, have overshadowed attempts to expand the franchise beyond their influence. 5. Producers have been unable to manage fan expectations, particularly when new entries have failed to gain widespread acceptance.

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Unstable Rights Regime Many production factors condition the success of a transmedia franchise. The most obvious is a lack of capital, but aside from the first film, The Terminator franchise has never wanted for money. Nor has it ever struggled for access to distribution channels, given the support of media conglomerates. What has hindered the franchise, however, is an unstable rights regime. Because no one has been able to establish sustained control over the IP, the franchise has fragmented in many different directions with each relaunch disavowing the previous reboots in a manner that has ultimately discouraged fans. Given that The Terminator franchise has to date generated $3 billion, it is ironic that James Cameron originally sold the rights to Gale Anne Hurd for $1. Cameron wanted to direct the film, but when your only previous directorial experience is Piranha II: The Spawning, then you don’t have a lot of bargaining chips. Hence, he sold the rights to Hurd for a nominal sum in order to direct, a decision he would later come to regret: “If I had a little time machine and I could only send back something the length of a tweet, it’d be—‘Don’t sell’” (Phillips 2015). This decision meant that the rights to the franchise would ping-pong between various production companies over the next three decades. With Hemdale Productions holding up attempts to make a sequel, Carolco Pictures bought the rights for $5 million in 1990, paving the way for T2. Carolco then went bankrupt in 1997, but Carolco producer Andy Vajna bought 50% of the rights for $8 million in the bankruptcy auction and he and Mario Kassar founded a new company, C2 Pictures, which finally made T3 in 2003. Vajna and Kassar later had a falling out and the rights passed to the Halcyon Company for an undisclosed amount. Halcyon filed for bankruptcy in 2009 after the failure of T4 and the rights were sold to hedge fund Pacificor for $29.5 million. They were eventually sold to Annapurna Pictures, which tried to rush T5 and its planned trilogy into production as the rights would revert to James Cameron in 2019. The chaotic rights history has exacerbated problems with developing the franchise as each new producer has had their own vision for the franchise, leading to conflict between the different versions. Following Henry Jenkins’ lead, most transmedia scholars think of copyright in terms of creative freedom for fans. Yet The Terminator franchise offers a different perspective. Let us think about it in terms of Colin Harvey’s directed and detached transmedia models (2015, 187–188). At

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one pole is a central rights holder who exerts control over the entire franchise; at the other pole is an open rights regime where anyone can contribute. Although fan scholars often object to directed transmedia because it imposes legal restrictions on fan creativity, The Terminator shows that an even worse model is one with neither a unitary rights holder nor an open rights regime. An open rights regime allows for a wide variety of storyworld expansions and fans have the freedom to choose or create the ones they like best. A unitary rights regime, on the other hand, creates a canonical scaffolding that enables licensees and fans to engage in limited creative expansions. In most transmedia franchises, particularly when the narrative and industrial cores are aligned, media corporations create and distribute the canonical scaffolding from which transmedia extensions and fan productions build. The problem with The Terminator is that a succession of different rights holders have built and torn down the central scaffolding, leading to an unworkable structure that has alienated fans completely. Transmedia scholars have typically defended the rights of fans against the power of corporations, but it is also necessary to acknowledge that fans generally do not want their favourite franchises to develop in a chaotic, ad hoc manner. Most Terminator fans would prefer if the rights had stayed with James Cameron all along so that he could have developed consistent canonical works. Instead, the unstable rights regime has led to many contradictory elements in the narrative-industrial core, causing disappointment and confusion. While there is a significant antipathy to conglomerates in media studies, virtually all transmedia franchises require the participation of a corporation that can marshal the financial, technical, and creative resources necessary to create film, television, or video game materials and distribute them to the public. These corporations can only justify these investments if they control the rights to these products, and extensive transmedia franchises generally require a stable rights regime in order to flourish. While this suggestion may cause Adorno and Horkheimer to roll over in their graves, transmedia scholars should take seriously the idea that many fans would prefer if a single owner established unitary rights control over the narrative-industrial core of a transmedia franchise. This would create a canonical scaffold on which the imagination could build. The alternative open rights regime is discussed in the next chapter, but The Terminator shows that an unstable rights regime may be the worst model for fans and producers alike.

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Continuity Versus Multiplicity One reason the absence of a consistent rights holder has been so critical for The Terminator is that T1 and T2, considered the true canon by fans, are riven by a time-travel paradox that threatens to collapse the fictional universe. Fans of the series are therefore particularly attendant to continuity issues, which have hindered attempts by other rights holders to create multiplicity. Perhaps the most significant of Jenkins’ seven principles of transmedia storytelling is the tension between continuity and multiplicity. Continuity “contributes to our appreciation of the ‘coherence’ and ‘plausibility’ of fictional worlds and many hardcore fans see this kind of ‘continuity’ as the real payoff for their investment of time and energy in collecting the scattered bits and assembling them into a meaningful whole” (2009). On the other hand, “multiplicity allows fans to take pleasure in alternative retellings, seeing the characters and events from fresh perspectives” (2009). Colin Harvey has argued that sci-fi and fantasy are favoured genres for worldbuilding because they can use magic or time travel or parallel universes to maintain coherence while allowing alternatives to flourish (2015, 94). Jenkins emphasises, though, “that there needs to be clear signalling of whether you are introducing multiplicity within the franchise” (2009) and this is something The Terminator does not do because the discontinuity is built into the accepted canon. The original film ends with a variation on time travel’s grandfather paradox, the question of whether you could go back in time and affect your own future without creating a temporal paradox. In T1, Kyle Reese is sent back in time to protect Sarah Connor from being killed before her son John can be born, and the film ends with the realisation that Kyle is John’s father. Because of this, the timeline of The Terminator is locked into a causal loop—everything must happen exactly as it happened between now and the moment Kyle Reese enters the time machine, else we will have a temporal paradox in which he is never sent back and John Connor is never conceived. However, in T2, Sarah Connor tries to prevent the apocalypse from occurring and the film ends with the insistence that there is no fate, that the future is not set, which contradicts the causal loop created by the original. In his analysis of this paradox, William Devlin defines the two films as being based on different models of time. The first film adheres to the growing universe model in which “the past and present are fixed and

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unchangeable, while the future is still open” (2008, 111). In this case, the present is the furthest known point in the timeline, when Kyle Reese enters the time machine, and everything that happened before then is fixed. The sequel, however, is predicated on a branching universe model that allows for “the possibility that the past and present can be changed because there are possible branches along the past and present that link to alternative world timelines” (112). This contradiction between the two is obvious even to non-philosophers because if doomsday is prevented in T2, then Kyle Reese will never come back in time and so John Connor should simply wink out of existence. All subsequent films have struggled to get around this problem. T3 undercuts the ending of T2 by making Judgment Day happen after all. This resolves the paradox by calling T2 a mistake and returning us to the causal loop of T1, but as T2 is considered canonical this move was greeted with howls of protest. The TV series The Sarah Connor Chronicles simply ignored the events of T3 and continued from T2, with Sarah and John continuing their struggle to stop Judgment Day. This would have been a plausible solution as it keeps the paradox in suspense, but unfortunately contradicts the franchise’s narrative-industrial core after T3. T4 tries to ignore the problem by situating itself after the apocalypse instead of before. This avoids the paradox altogether by situating the planned trilogy within events narrated but not shown in the original canon, but the film also scrapped the time-travelling terminator formula that had defined the first three films. T5 then tried to sweep up the mess by returning to a time-­ travelling terminator plot and a branching universe model that could sweep away the previous films as alternate timelines, but trying to explain this in a high-speed action movie put an intense strain on exposition in the script, which it was unable to bear. These were not the only issues with T3-5, but the larger point is that they all had to face the grandfather paradox set up by the first two films. The Terminator has trouble expanding because it baked contradictory rules for how its storyworld operates into the canonical text. This contradiction initiated a heightened attention to continuity on the part of fans, who wanted to see it resolved. The inability of producers to solve it, and their dismissal of previous rights holders’ attempts, has alienated the fan base from each successive entry. One could compare this to Doctor Who, which likewise has very confusing timelines, but unlike The Terminator, Doctor Who is careful never to take itself so seriously. As every Doctor Who fan knows, “people assume that time is a strict progression of cause to

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effect, but actually, from a nonlinear, non-subjective viewpoint, it’s more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey … stuff” (2007). Piers Britton notes, “Until around 1980 continuity was barely a consideration for the authors of Doctor Who” (2011, 22) and the series’ hyperdiegesis is “palimpsestic” (23) rather than coherent, with “effectively overwritten earlier histories, albeit leaving the original elements partially visible” (23). The Terminator, however, considers itself hard sci-fi and cannot get away with British whimsy. Its world has to be logically consistent and so the paradox inhibits its ability to expand. I imagine such objections to philosophical inconsistency would have been dismissed as “nerd-talk” when T2 was smashing box-office records in 1991. However, several of the world’s largest media conglomerates have thrown almost a billion dollars at this storyworld incoherence since then to no avail, which shows that a transmedia franchise cannot afford to be cavalier with its storyworld rules.

Ancillary Media The franchise’s experiments with comics and games in the 1990s showed some of the benefits of ancillary media. Both platforms explored directions in which the franchise could expand its narrative universe: into the post-apocalyptic war between John Connor’s resistance and the machines, or with alternate groups sent back in time on a variety of missions to stop Judgment Day. Such explorations may not reach the wider fan base, but they are useful for future creators. For example, Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi film in the Star Wars franchise makes use of a little-known Jedi technique called the doppelgänger or similfuturus at a critical moment. Responding to criticisms that he was simply inventing new rules for the fictional universe, Johnson tweeted on January 19, 2018, a series of images showing that the technique was described in the book The Jedi Path (Wallace 2011) in the section “Advanced Force Techniques.” Ancillary media not only provide ideas that can later be incorporated into the narrative-­industrial core but also offer a justification for innovations within the mothership by effectively saying that “real” fans would already have known about these innovations because they were part of the expanded universe. Transmedia franchises can  use ancillary media when the narrative-­ industrial core is unsuitable for dealing with particular world­ building  issues. As Marie-Laure Ryan and Jan-Noël Thon write in Storyworlds across Media, “the leading question now becomes: what can

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medium  X  do  in terms of storyworld creation (or representation) that medium Y cannot” (2014, 3)? However, The Terminator franchise’s focus on creating successful films, with all other media as ancillary, has hampered attempts to deal with the grandfather paradox. As The Terminator’s various timelines become more confusing, it becomes increasingly difficult to deal with them within the medium and genre of action cinema. T5 had significant exposition problems, with characters trying to explain parallel universes and alternate timelines during high-speed chases and gun battles. Producers naturally wanted to provide the action fans expect, but this made it difficult to give a coherent explanation of how the film fit the rest of the franchise. While I think almost anything can be accomplished in any medium, given sufficient resources and creativity, in practice creators have to work under time pressure and within existing conventions. Hence, it is not so much a question of what a medium is capable of achieving in an abstract universal sense but of what a creative team can achieve in that medium at a specific historical moment. The Terminator franchise’s problem is that the grandfather paradox created by T1 and T2 is difficult to resolve in an action film. It takes time and patience to understand the knotty philosophical thought experiment of time travel. If one had to choose a medium in which to explore complex issues that take patience to understand, then the obvious choice is the novel. For a fraction of the cost of a Hollywood film, the franchise’s producers could have commissioned a respected science-­fiction author to write a novel that clarified the Terminator universe’s rules and basic timeline. This could then have been a resource for hardcore fans and future creators. I doubt most of the film audience would read it, but the knowledge that an explanation existed would allow casual fans to sit back and enjoy the action, while providing creators with solid guidelines for what is possible within the storyworld. Instead, the novels were non-integral expansions of the film universe that did nothing to clarify the world rules. Without a coherent canonical resource, the confusion of the franchise’s proliferating versions and timelines was destined to grow. By treating other media as ancillary rather than integral, the franchise robbed itself of perhaps its best method of resolving the contradictions that dog it. The franchise’s difficulties offer some useful ways of thinking about the functions of ancillary media in transmedia storytelling. It is already clear that ancillary media creators rely heavily on worldbuilding and character backstory. However, we may go further and define some expansions as

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R&D ancillaries. They explore new possibilities in cheaply produced, non-canonical media. Other expansions may function as coherence ancillaries. They do not just flesh out the skeletal hints of the core narrative; they provide the vital ligaments and tendons that coordinate the main structure. While The Terminator has made some use of R&D ancillaries, it has not paid as much attention to coherence ancillaries. This has placed far too much weight on the narrative-industrial core, which given the constant shifts in rights holders has been unable to maintain the continuity necessary to satisfy fans.

Franchise Guardians Of course, it is impossible to talk about The Terminator without bringing up Big Arnie. Using our earlier terminology, we may call Arnold Schwarzenegger and James Cameron The Terminator’s franchise guardians. The roles these two have played in the franchise’s history have also inhibited its development beyond the first two films. Cameron, as the prime creative force behind the original, is a more typical example of a franchise guardian than Schwarzenegger and fans call the first two films the “true canon” because they are the only ones made by him. Although he has had little creative input into the franchise’s development in the twenty-first century, fans still hold his opinion in high regard. In an interview, Cameron said that he did not feel “the third or fourth film lived up to that potential” (Lamble 2015) and these criticisms helped damn the timeline T3 and T4 had created in the eyes of fans. Cameron also said of The Sarah Connor Chronicles, “I never really watched much of it, so I never gave it a chance … to get hooked, like you have to with a TV series” (Acuna 2014). Many spinoff series need the endorsement of franchise guardians to cement their legitimacy with fans, but The Sarah Connor Chronicles had to make do with references to the films. Summer Glau’s female terminator is called Cameron as a nod to the franchise’s creator and she repeats the first line Kyle Reese speaks to Sarah Connor in T1 when she tells John Connor in the first episode, “Come with me if you want to live.” Such strategies promoted the series as a legitimate expansion, but the involvement of franchise guardians is still critical in gaining the acceptance of fans. Recognising the problem, the producers of T5 were keen to secure Cameron’s endorsement and the director obliged, saying, “I feel like the franchise has been reinvigorated, like this is a renaissance” (Levine 2015). Promotional material

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trumpeted Cameron’s endorsement, yet many fans refuse to embrace anything that has not been directed by Cameron himself and remain hopeful that they will finally get the true third film in the series and can consign the others to the “false canon” pile. While James Cameron is a more typical example, Schwarzenegger’s status as franchise guardian is more interesting. Many actors become identified with a series, as Richard Hatch was with BSG, but what makes Schwarzenegger a singular case is that he has grown larger than the world that made him. The Terminator was a turning point in Schwarzenegger’s career, transforming him from a muscular curiosity into the world’s biggest action star. When he went to speak with Andrew Vajna and Mario Kassar in April 2001, he wanted to bring up his political ambitions and was surprised to be asked about making T3. Schwarzenegger’s campaign to become governor of California overshadowed the filming and release of T3. Moreover, his on-screen persona was critical to his political persona; “The word terminator itself and its variants were everywhere—in the candidate’s speeches, in his campaign literature, and in statements by supporters” (Freedman 2004, 541). The actor styled himself “The Governator,” thus melding his political persona with the films. Schwarzenegger’s political ambitions also meant that T3 was more family friendly, with less swearing and more jokes. Comic scenes provide some laughs at the expense of the atmosphere of dread that defined the first two films. After Schwarzenegger’s terminator dons the famous leather outfit from T2, he puts on some ridiculous pink star-shaped glasses; then he shakes his head, removes the glasses, and puts on shades to complete the costume. This sly nod to the audience generated laughs in the theatre, but it also broke the fourth wall and undermined the film’s tone. It was more about Schwarzenegger as a self-aware media star than the terminator as a character. Ellexis Boyle argues that, by this phase of his career, “What appealed to audiences most was Schwarzenegger’s ability to poke fun at himself” (2010, 49). However, the self-parody showed that Schwarzenegger the star had grown bigger than the role that made him famous. In many successful franchises, the character is bigger than the actor—James Bond or Doctor Who for example—but the reverse is true for the Terminator. For many fans, T4 could never be a true Terminator film without Schwarzenegger, who was typically blunt in his assessment of the only Terminator film he didn’t star in, saying simply, “it sucked” (Lee 2015). Recognising the importance of Schwarzenegger as a franchise guardian, the producers of T5 brought Schwarzenegger back to reprise his famous

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role, even though he was now less of a killing machine and more a man in his 60s looking a bit exhausted from all the running. The Terminator shows how important it is for new entries to win the endorsement of franchise guardians if fans are going to accept them as canonical. Perhaps this is best seen in the absence of franchise guardian support for The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Of all the attempts to develop the franchise, the TV series made the best attempt at maintaining continuity with the first two films by suspending the grandfather paradox. It did not deny, as T3 did, the impact of the events of the T2, but instead portrayed Sarah Connor’s attempts to prevent Judgment Day as an ongoing struggle. This opened the possibility that the doomsday loop of T1 will ultimately happen while also offering the hope that the optimistic ending of T2 may be achievable. The series received good critical reviews and has only grown in esteem over time. In 2015, when T5 appeared in cinemas, numerous articles lamented the TV show’s demise. For example, Helen O’Hara in The Telegraph declared, “Lena Headey’s sadly cancelled TV series is the greatest Terminator sequel we will ever see” (2015), Gem Seddon for Inverse Entertainment said the series “was everything Terminator Genisys should have been” (2015), and Matt Fowler for IGN called the series “the best Terminator story since T2” (2015).  Yet the show struggled to gain ground among fans and, while there are other reasons for this, one of them was probably the absence of an official stamp of approval from the franchise guardians. A cameo from Arnold Schwarzenegger would have done much to heighten interest and establish the show as a legitimate heir to the films, but by then he was, unfortunately, the Governor of California. While endorsements from the franchise guardians may not have saved the show, their absence certainly did nothing to help it win over fans of the movies.

Fan Relations As we have seen, the Terminator franchise was beset with difficult problems in relation to world paradoxes that caused severe continuity problems, shifting rights holders with different visions, disjointed use of ancillary media, and franchise guardians who overshadowed the narrative universe. In such a situation, it is imperative that producers maintain excellent relations with hardcore fans. They are the ones most likely to write detailed reviews of new films, to buy ancillary media, and to comment in online forums and influence the overall fandom. Typically, hardcore fans

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want to see that creators are as passionately committed to the franchise as they are. Creators need to demonstrate reverence for the canon, respect for the characters, and fidelity to the rules of the narrative universe. Ron Moore, for example, used his podcasts to position himself as the ultimate fanboy for BSG, just as Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss used a variety of media to establish their own fan credentials for the BBC’s Sherlock (Hills 2012). The advantage of such a strategy is that it creates a safety net when you fail to meet fan expectations. Fans will generally accept great films or TV series on their own merits, but when new entries in a franchise fail then the creators need to persuade fans that it was an honest failure and they are working hard to fix the problems and do better next time. This is where T3 and T4 in particular let themselves down. Resolving the closed loop/parallel universe issue created by the first two films was always going to be difficult, but what really annoyed fans was the blatant and pointless disregarding of canonical details. In T3’s  opening monologue, John Connor says, “They tried to murder me before I was born. When I was thirteen, they tried again.” Fans were quick to point out that John Connor was ten years old in T2, a fact that no one on the production team had bothered to check. As one fan wrote on the Terminator Files Forum, “the fact that the writers of T3 deliberately ignored established facts like JC’s age irks me no end. I don’t mind a retcon now and then, but at least make it logical within the fiction’s universe” (LoganTH 2012). The director of T3, Jonathan Mostow, also seemed unfamiliar with basic principles of the storyworld. One fan, who created a detailed scene-by-­ scene criticism of T3, complained, “He admitted on the audio commentary that he has no clue why terminators come naked” (GothamStreets 2013). This is actually an important worldbuilding detail. In order to explain why time travellers do not bring advanced weapons with them, the first film states that only organic living tissue can come through time. The T1000 in T2 is entirely metallic, but its arrival is off-screen and ancillary media explain that it arrived in a flesh cocoon (for fans who want to nit-­ pick). In T3, however, the more advanced T-X is entirely metallic and contains powerful built-in weaponry, so by the series’ internal logic it should not have been able to travel through time at all. Details like these are guaranteed to annoy fans, who will then suspect the production team do not share their interest in the narrative world or have little respect for fans’ ability to put the pieces together in a meaningful way. Above all, creators should refrain from confirming that impression in comments and interviews. Mostow’s joke about not knowing why

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t­erminators come through time naked allowed disappointed fans to criticise the creative team for not caring about the canonical originals. Worse followed online in the wake of T4 when one of the writers, John Brancato, gave a frank account of his involvement in T3 and T4. In his blog post “How to Beat a Twice-Dead Horse” on October 9, 2009, Brancato called T1 “unapologetically B,” T2 “a sprawling mess, bloated and self-important,” and mocked hardcore fans by saying “the two Terminators had come to be seen as sacred works of genius, fueling the cult of James Cameron.” Forced to rewrite the script for T3 in a matter of weeks, he and writing partner Mike Ferris delivered something “safe, expected, paint-bynumbers.” When they were approached about a script for T4, Brancato thought “No fucking way. However, Mike was building a home and really needed the money.” Their planned ending, in which John Connor dies, “had been leaked months before on the internet, engendering such outrage from fan geeks that the chicken-hearted filmmakers killed it.” The blog post ends with the news that their agents had approached them about a possible fifth film, to which Brancato replies, “Was this some kind of joke? How humongous would the stick have to be to whomp this now fossilised equine?” Everything Brancato wrote simply confirmed fans’ worst fears: the new films were being made by people with no respect for the originals, had no coherent vision for the franchise, were only motivated by money, and considered the fans their enemies. Here are some sample fan comments to this post: You didn’t even like the movies so you weren’t passionate about the story and you didn’t bother or care for consistency and facts established in the mythology … you didn’t even care to check the most basic facts like Terminator’s model number or John’s age. There’s some fundamental things you don’t understand about Terminator, but hey, you guys needed the cash, right? I’d like to punch you in the face for all you done … you really should be ashamed of yourself!

Such responses can hardly be unexpected. The wider point is that successful franchises need to demonstrate that the creators are as passionate about the series as fans. Worldbuilding is

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­ ifficult enough without sloppy continuity errors, but when these are d compounded by members of the creative team admitting they don’t know the rules of the fictional universe, have little respect for the canon, and only did the job for the money, then fans are going to reject new entries in the franchise. This creates a problem when those entries are part of the narrative-­industrial core rather than ancillary media because it is harder to reject entries in the narrative-industrial core as non-canonical. Fan relations are critical not so much when franchises are churning out one success after another but when a series hits a rocky patch because fans need to be reassured that creators are as concerned as they are, that fan criticisms have been heard and taken on board, and the next entry in the franchise will be better. The Terminator has consistently failed to do this. Constant shifting of rights holders means that new creative teams consistently dismiss previous instalments and promise to reboot the franchise, thereby confirming the fans’ suspicions that previous entries were cash grabs rather than enthusiastic continuations of a beloved narrative.

I’ll Be Back? On The Terminator Files Forum, a thread arose after T5 asking, “Has the Franchise Died?” Most of the replies felt that if it wasn’t dead then it had a very grim prognosis. Regular contributors felt the franchise was “dead as far as fan enthusiasm goes. Interest in T5 fell off here much faster than the previous movies did” (Klasodeth 2016). Another lamented the effect of all the reboots: “Terminator has fallen off the wagon after one bad sequel or another, and the general audience perceives terminator as a joke—they see it as some movie franchise with Arnold with couple of laughs, bad one liners, and shooting” (T1 2016). Most felt the only way forward was for James Cameron to reclaim the rights and restore coherence to the fictional universe. Perhaps they may get their wish. After 35  years, the rights revert to James Cameron and, in the autumn of 2017, it became clear that another Terminator film was on its way, scheduled for July 26, 2019. The film will reunite the old cast, with Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton scheduled to star as the terminator and Sarah Connor, and James Cameron will be the producer. According to Cameron, “This is a continuation of the story from Terminator 1 and Terminator 2 … we’re pretending the other films were a bad dream” and the plan is to follow the Star Wars model, with the old cast returning one last time to legitimise new characters who will take

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the franchise forward (Belloni and Kit 2017). The return of the franchise guardians will probably bring the fans back one last time, especially with the rights now returned to the original creator. The franchise will still have to reckon with the grandfather paradox in order to establish continuity, but if it can do that successfully then maybe the terminator, true to his word, will finally be back.

References Acuna, Kirsten. 2014. James Cameron Gave an Amazing Reddit AMA on Movies He Never Made and the Future of Avatar. Business Insider, April 12. Belloni, Matthew, and Borys Kit. 2017. James Cameron Sounds the Alarm on Artificial Intelligence and Unveils a Terminator for the 21st Century. The Hollywood Reporter, September 27. Blink. 2007. BBC. Doctor Who Season 3, Episode 10, June 9. Boyle, Ellexis. 2010. The Intertextual Terminator: The Role of Film in Branding Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Journal of Communication Inquiry 34 (1): 42–60. Brancato, John. 2009. How to Beat a Twice-Dead Horse. johnbrancato.blogspot. dk, October 9. Accessed 14 May 2018. Britton, Piers. 2011. TARDISbound: Navigating the Universes of Doctor Who. New York: I.B. Tauris. Desborough, James. 2017. Hasta la Vista, Terminator: No More Sequels for Arnold Schwarzenegger Franchise, Source Says. New York Daily News, March 18. Devlin, William J. 2008. Some Paradoxes of Time Travel in The Terminator and Twelve Monkeys. In The Philosophy of Science Fiction Film, ed. Steven M. Sanders, 103–118. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky. Fleming, Michael. 2007. More Terminator on the Way. Variety, May 9. Fowler, Matt. 2015. Five Reasons Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Was Awesome. IGN, July 1. Freedman, Carl. 2004. Polemical Afterword: Some Brief Reflections on Arnold Schwarzenegger and on Science Fiction in Contemporary American Culture. PMLA 119 (3): 539–546. Friedman, Norman. 1994. The Terminator: Changes in Critical Evaluations of Cultural Products. Journal of Popular Culture 28 (1): 73–80. GothamStreets. 2013. All That Is Wrong with Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. downfallofterminator.blogspot.dk, April 6. Accessed 14 May 2018. Harvey, Colin. 2015. Fantastic Transmedia: Narrative, Play, and Memory Across Science Fiction and Fantasy Story Worlds. Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. Hills, Matt. 2012. Sherlock’s Epistemological Economy and the Value of ‘Fan’ Knowledge: How Producer-Fans Play the (Great) Game of Knowledge. In

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Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom: Essays on the BBC Series, ed. Louisa Ellen Stein and Kristina Busse, 27–40. Jefferson: McFarland. Jenkins, Henry. 2009. The Revenge of the Origami Unicorn: Seven Principles of Transmedia Storytelling. henryjenkins.org, December 12. Klasodeth. 2016. Has the Franchise Died? The Terminator Files Forum, December 1. Lamble, Ryan. 2015. Are We Too Hard on Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines? Den of Geek, June 10. Lee, Benjamin. 2015. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Terminator Salvation: ‘It Sucked.’ The Guardian, April 6. Levine, Nick. 2015. James Cameron Endorses Terminator Genisys: ‘The Franchise Is Reinvigorated.’ NME, June 9. LoganTH. 2012. Should There Be a Terminator Canon? The Terminator Files Forum, May 22. O’Hara, Helen. 2015. Forget Terminator Genisys: Watch The Sarah Connor Chronicles Instead. The Telegraph, July 6. Phillips, Ian. 2015. James Cameron Sold the Rights to Terminator Back in the ‘80s for $1 – And It’s One of His Biggest Regrets. Business Insider, July 2. RoboCop. 1987. Directed by Paul Verhoeven. Burbank: Orion Pictures. Ryan, Marie Laure, and Jan-Noël Thon. 2014. Introduction. In Storyworlds Across Media: Toward a Media-Conscious Narratology. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Seddon, Gem. 2015. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles Is Everything Terminator Genisys Should Have Been. Inverse, September 10. Stirling, S.M. 2001. T2: Infiltrator. New York: Gollancz S.F. ———. 2003. T2: Rising Storm. New York: Gollancz S.F. ———. 2004. T2: The Future War. New York: Gollancz S.F. T1. 2016. Has the Franchise Died? The Terminator Files Forum, December 26. T3: Rise of the Machines. 2003. Atari. Terminator 2: Judgment Day. 1991. Directed by James Cameron. Burbank: Tristar Pictures. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. 2003. Directed by Jonathan Mostow. Burbank: Warner Bros. and Columbia. Terminator Genisys. 2015. Directed by Alan Taylor. Burbank: Paramount. Terminator: Rampage. 1993. Rockville: Bethesda. Terminator Salvation. 2009. Directed by McG.  Burbank: Warner Bros. and Columbia. Terminator Salvation (Video Game). 2009. Directed by Ulf Andersson. California: Evolved Games. Terminator Salvation: The Machinima Series. 2009. Warner Premiere. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. 2008–2009. Developed by Josh Friedman. Fox.

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The Terminator. 1984. Directed by James Cameron. Burbank: Orion Pictures. The Terminator (Video Game). 1991. Rockville: Bethesda. The Terminator 2029. 1992. Rockville: Bethesda. The Terminator: Future Shock. 1995. Rockville: Bethesda. The Terminator: Skynet. 1996. Rockville: Bethesda. Wallace, Daniel. 2011. The Jedi Path: A Manual for Students of the Force. San Francisco: Chronicle Books.

CHAPTER 10

The Many Lives of The Walking Dead

The first time I experienced a zombie apocalypse, I was coming out of a pub in Düsseldorf after lunch. I had been lunching, as was my habit at the time, on Weissbier. I stumbled onto the street, blinking in the sunshine, to find a few hundred zombies bearing down on me. We eyed each other vacantly. I tried to recall The Zombie Survival Guide’s advice. Eventually I remembered something about not standing there gawping while the zombie horde closes in, but by that time they were on me, shuffling and groaning while I prepared for the inevitable carnage. One of them bit my forearm gently. Then they shambled up the street towards the unsuspecting Altstadt. Zombified, I staggered with them for a while before entering another pub. If the world was ending, then I intended to die as I had lived—inebriated in some foreign city. Thinking about those zombies enjoying a Sunday afternoon walk makes me hesitate to endorse the view that the zombie is a creature of horror, a blank canvas onto which we project our fears. A brief survey of these arguments may be useful. In both popular and academic discourse, zombies represent almost every social ill imaginable, including the election of Donald Trump. For Stephen Gencarella, “The Walking Dead [TWD] is the only show that actively courts, rather than critiques, fascist ethics” (Collins 2016). Dawn Keetley argues, “While there are many reasons for Trump’s emergence as Republican frontrunner, the huge commercial success of TWD is in part causally connected to what might well be Trump’s successful bid for the Republican presidential nomination” (2016). © The Author(s) 2018 S. Joyce, Transmedia Storytelling and the Apocalypse, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93952-0_10

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Actually, given that the show emphasises strong leaders, guns, and walls, maybe she has a point. However, Keetley also notes that TWD can “accommodate all kinds of politics” and that this is “crucial to its success” (2016). This point has been taken up by Harper et al., who argue that TWD “operates as an ‘ecosophic object,’ which has the potential to create a post-­ capitalist subject; even if that subject may have been persuaded to vote for Donald Trump” (2017, 715). Perhaps this is the great pop culture question of our time: do you think zombies would have voted for Clinton or Trump? After all, accusing them of being incapable of rational choice would be the height of hypocrisy. Cultural critics generally see the zombie as a reflection of cultural anxieties. Kyle Bishop argues, “Zombie cinema had always represented a stylized reaction to cultural consciousness and particularly to social and political injustices” (2009, 18) and connects the post-9/11 zombie with fears of terrorism, immigration, and pandemics. For Muntean and Payne, “the label of ‘terrorist’ possesses an ontological blankness strikingly similar to that of the zombie, as they are both outward physical threats to Western civilisation whose inner motivations remain hidden from view” (2009, 255). Jon Stratton connects zombie narratives with fears of refugees and immigrants: “the underlying characteristics of zombies are similar to those attributed to displaced people: that is, people predominantly from non-­western states striving for entry into western states” (2011, 205). Gerry Canavan contends that zombies conjure “racial panic” (2010, 433) and “zombie apocalypses, like imperialistic narratives of alien invasions, repackage the violence of colonial race war in a form that is ideologically safer” (439). A number of feminist critics interpret the zombie narrative as a conservative reaction to the collapse of white patriarchy. For Katherine Sugg, “The historical influence of feminist and multicultural challenges to white male supremacy and neoliberal transformations of everyday practices of governance, labour, identity, and citizenship have undermined the privileges and economic assumptions associated with normative white masculinity” (2015, 797). In this reading, TWD returns audiences  to a more primitive society in which men are men and women are glad of it. A content analysis of TWD comics concludes, “The majority of the female characters are depicted as weak and men continuously have to intervene for their protection” (Garland et al. 2018, 73). Baldwin and McCarthy argue, “TWD makes a strong case that the most effective method of survival is rooted in patriarchal rule where white men prevail” (2013, 93). Several scholars see the zombie as symptomatic of capitalism’s contradictions and impending collapse. For Dan Hassler-Forest, “The zombie, as the

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uncanny bearer of colonialism’s horrific legacy, is one of the most potent symbols of capitalism’s machinic dynamic of subjection and enslavement” (2016, 151). Evan Calder Williams interprets zombie narratives as reflecting how “the global economic order and its social relations depend upon the production and exploitation of the undifferentiated” (2011, 8). Torie Bosch argues, “the zombie apocalypse is a white-collar nightmare: a world with no need for the skills we have developed. Lawyers, journalists, investment bankers—they are liabilities, not leaders, in the zombie-infested world … in TWD, the strongest survivors come from blue-collar backgrounds” (2011). However, these attempts to connect zombies with racial, gender, or capitalist panic don’t quite capture what anyone can see at their nearest zombie run, now a global pop culture phenomenon. While there may be only one Terminator, anyone can be a zombie. Anyone can tell a zombie story, because we all know the basic rules. If you get caught in a zombie walk and someone bites you, then you’re morally obliged to start shuffling up the street with the rest because, once you’re bitten, you’re part of the zombie horde. Rather than see the zombie apocalypse as a reflection of contemporary fears, I prefer to focus on its creative, participatory elements. The zombie apocalypse is perhaps the greatest example of detached transmedia storytelling, told across media from literary fiction to the trashiest straight-to-video flick, each entry a window into a massive collective imaginary event. Even the contradictions serve to validate the confusion of civilisational collapse beneath the zombie hordes. One way of considering the zombie apocalypse’s popularity may be through Klastrup and Tosca’s three core features of transmedia storyworlds: mythos, topos, and ethos (2003). Mythos refers to the overall backstory, “the central knowledge one needs to have in order to interact with or interpret events in the world successfully.” Topos describes the environment, “what is to be expected from the physics of and navigation in the world.” Finally, ethos denotes the “knowledge required in order to know how to behave in the world.” For most fantasy or science fiction worlds, mythos and topos can rapidly cause continuity problems. For the zombie apocalypse, however, mythos and topos are simply our world plus zombies. This provides a richly detailed but easily grasped storyworld. From fan events to blockbuster cinema, anyone can participate in the zombie apocalypse without damaging the narrative universe’s integrity. In this final chapter, I consider the success of TWD as being in large part because it is a localised version of a vast, pre-existing transmedia storyworld: the zombie apocalypse. TWD focuses on events in Georgia, although the spinoff series Fear the Walking Dead moves the same concept

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to the west coast. What makes TWD a significant transmedia franchise is that it breaks new ground in at least three media (comics, television, and video games) and seems to be successful at not only building audiences in each medium but also transferring those audiences across media. TWD is a popular and acclaimed comic (Kirkman et al. 2003-present), winning the Eisner award for Best Continuing Series in 2010. The TV series (2010-­present)  is the first cable show to match broadcast network audiences, with viewership ranging from 10 to 17 million. Telltale’s TWD game (2012) won over 80 game of the year awards and, by 2014, the company had sold 28 million episodes (Ohannessian 2014). The spinoff series Fear the Walking Dead is into its fourth season and there are also several novels by Jay Bonansinga. I can think of no other franchise that is as successful and critically acclaimed across so many platforms; this is all the more impressive in that it does not rely on a mega-conglomerate such as Disney or Time Warner. TWD represents the final triumph of the zombie apocalypse, marching unstoppably across our mediascape in a spectacular transmedia conquest. Why has it succeeded where The Terminator failed? As a counterpart to The Terminator chapter, I examine five aspects of TWD as a transmedia franchise: Production 1. The zombie apocalypse has benefited from an open rights regime. Text 2. The franchise has benefited from having a comic as the narrative core medium as comics are particularly suited to media franchising. 3. The zombie apocalypse is an infinitely suspended narrative centred on ethos rather than continuity of plot and character, which facilitates flexible collaboration in the same storyworld. Reception 4. The franchise guardian, Robert Kirkman, has encouraged multiplicity across platforms, thus legitimising new entries. 5. The zombie apocalypse encourages creative, participatory fan cultures, which TWD has encouraged through digital media.

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Open Rights Regime After summarising the many scholars who interpret the zombie apocalypse as a thundering jeremiad against social ills, I will now advance a stunningly boring reason for its global popularity: someone in the 1960s incorrectly followed copyright procedure. I know—the doom prophets are more interesting. Yet the zombie has benefited immensely from not having any copyright owner, allowing different creators freedom to experiment with the concept. Although the zombie exists in earlier folklore, the modern zombie follows the rules established in George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (1968): the zombie has no higher brain functions, it devours human flesh, it can only be killed by destroying the brain, and it infects humans by biting them. This creation should have been the filmmakers’ IP, but prior to the Copyright Act of 1976, films were required to print copyright ownership in the credits. Unfortunately, the first prints contained the wrong title. According to Ben Hervey, “it was Night of Anubis, then Night of the Flesh Eaters, until the producers of The Flesh Eaters threatened legal action. In the hurry to substitute the final title card, the copyright declaration was omitted, and Night entered the public domain” (2008, 14). It was not long before “some theatre owners discovered they could simply purchase a print from Thunderbird Films and show the film without paying a rental. … That lack of copyright notice immediately placed the film in the public domain and cost the producers millions of dollars” (Pierce 2007, 129). Moreover, the lack of copyright meant “anyone could use this new cannibalistic creature without the need to pay” (Moreman and Rushton 2011, 3). The consequences of this error have revealed the creative possibilities of an open rights regime. This is rarely possible with Hollywood properties. However, in Hollywood’s Copyright Wars, Peter Decherney discusses some interesting alternatives to monopoly adaptation rights, which have prevailed since the landmark Ben-Hur case of 1908: Before the [Ben-Hur] decision, there was a competitive market for adaptations. Many companies would adapt the same novel or play, and the best one would emerge as the more popular or successful version. Of course, book and play authors were not properly compensated for the exploitation of their work, but it is a problem that Congress might have solved without creating monopolies on adaption rights. Congress could have imposed a compulsory

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license for film adaptations, as it did with song performances and recordings. Many companies could then have adapted the same novel as long as they paid the author the price determined by statute. (2012, 55)

The absence of copyright over the modern zombie promoted the kind of situation the Ben-Hur decision foreclosed. Anyone was free to make a zombie movie and thus a thousand flowers bloomed, or more accurately a thousand weeds bloomed, but some flowers among them. Anyone who has seen Detention of the Dead (Alex Craig Mann 2012) or Zombie Strippers (Jay Lee 2008) may want to curse whoever failed to copyright Night of the Living Dead. Yet the overall outcomes have largely been positive. The profusion of zombie narratives means that virtually every media consumer knows the basic mythology. George Romero may have lost a fortune with Night of the Living Dead, but the film’s public domain status helped create a mass audience for his later zombie movies, such as Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Land of the Dead (2005). Moreover, “the tradition of Romero’s zombie apocalypse is increasingly supplemented and augmented by individual filmmakers and writers wanting to explore what happens to their places when the end comes” (Moreman and Rushton 2011, 3). One may argue that there is only one zombie apocalypse and every entry in the genre is a transmedia localisation of this central event. With so many versions, the ideas latent in the concept have emerged into a coherent form. TWD has inherited the best of what has already been achieved. Instead of focusing on zombies as objects of horror, the series focuses on the apocalypse’s impact on characters, their efforts to construct a viable new ethic for this brutal world, and the construction of new communities amidst the wreckage of the old. This balance of fear and hope is the emotional source of the dystopia/utopia strain in post-apocalyptic fiction, a balance that Robert Kirkman emphasises on the back cover of every comic: “How long has it been since any of us really NEEDED something that we WANTED? The world we knew is gone. … In a world ruled by the dead, we are forced to finally start living.” TWD maintains narrative tension through the possibility that the survivors may one day create a better society, while always knowing that the zombies will overrun any refuge. If TWD has built a storyworld that fascinates millions of fans, this is partly because it has freely built on the work of those who have gone before.

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Comics as Narrative Core TWD, which published its first issue in 2003, had become by 2009 one of the biggest titles in comics. In Comichron’s list of the most popular comics issues of the twenty-first century, TWD’s highest issue comes in eleventh place. However, the raw numbers hide the true picture. Virtually all the titles above it are #1 of a new comic that either drew on popular source material (Star Wars, Orphan Black, Big Trouble in Little China) or took part in established comics universes (Secret Wars, Dark Knight III Master Race). In contrast, TWD issues inside the top 20 are #100, #115, and #132, suggesting that readers have become more engaged as the storyworld develops in richness and complexity. The only other long-running comic with an issue in the top 20 is Amazing Spiderman and that is primarily because its March 2009 issue put Barack Obama on the cover. In terms of continuous, infinitely suspended narratives, TWD stands supreme. All the franchises discussed so far have used comics as ancillary expansions, but a feature of our current mediascape is the prevalence of comic book adaptations. Hollywood has always raided the bestseller lists and Broadway for inspiration, but the current influence of comics suggests a structural shift for which comics are suitable raw material. Liam Burke writes, “At the start of the twenty-first century Hollywood faced certain cultural, technological, and industrial challenges that comics were uniquely equipped to surmount, thereby facilitating their ascendancy from subculture to mainstream fodder. However, modern comic book film adaptations were not merely symptomatic of these filmmaking practices, but proved influential in their development” (2015, 4). Burke posits four reasons why the genre emerged: the post-9/11 need for superheroes; the rise of digital technologies that allowed film to portray comic book stories; the emergence of a new generation of film producers who were also comics fans; and the ability of comics to tell serial narratives in open-ended scenarios worked on by multiple creative teams. The last point is the most relevant for TWD. Comics occupy a prominent position in our mediascape because they faced the challenges of convergence culture before the internet’s arrival. They had already evolved narrative and production strategies that today’s media franchises would require once on-demand content, media conglomeration, and more powerful groups of dedicated fans became the norm. These strategies enable multiplicity and creative flexibility, balance seriality and continuity, and encourage sustained fan engagement.

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Media franchising requires that multiple creative teams be able to use the same IP without fundamentally changing it. Comics have been addressing this challenge for decades. The rights to characters such as Superman and Batman belong to the publisher, not the writer, which means various writers and artists have worked with these characters over the decades. “Until the beginning of the 1980s, the logic of individual creation did not exist in the universe of mainstream comic books” (Gabilliet 2009, 122). As writer Dennis O’Neil recalls, “I have been fired off books and didn’t know it until I suddenly realized I hadn’t done a Wonder Woman for four months and found out there had been six issues done in that time” (1991, 27). This industrial organisation meant that comics developed flexible, collaborative strategies for storytelling, which makes them ideal for media franchising. “Many different creators have interpreted comic book characters over decades of publication. Consequently they lend themselves to franchise reinvigoration more readily than comparatively inert sources like novels and plays” (Burke 2015, 63–64). Even though TWD as an independent comic is more of a vehicle for individual vision, it still operates in a medium built around infinitely suspended narratives developed by creative teams. While Robert Kirkman has always been the writer for TWD, Tony Moore provided the art for the first six issues with Charlie Adlard taking over from #7, showing how useful it is for comics to develop a creative approach that allows for the departure and replacement of key members of the creative team. Comics also had to grapple with issues of continuity and seriality two decades before the internet allowed on-demand content for every medium. In 1973, Phil Seuling created the direct sales market, which led to the rise of specialist comic book stores. These stores could make every issue available in a systematic manner, which allowed greater continuity between issues. “Thanks to the direct market, it is now possible to get every issue of everything. Back in the old days, it was sort of newsstand roulette and fans couldn’t worry about consistency because they didn’t have all the stories” (O’Neil 1991, 23). Once content became accessible on-demand, comics became more narratively complex as they balanced individual issues with longer story arcs. According to Peter Lunenfeld, “The entire American comic book industry serves as a model of the perpetually suspended movie” (2000, 16). Once other media had distribution channels that allowed audiences to access content on-demand, they also moved towards being perpetually suspended movies. Comics, however, wrestled with these challenges 20 years ahead of other narrative media. With the

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advent of complex television, it was perhaps only a matter of time before a television producer approached TWD to discuss its adaptation into a television series. With greater seriality came dedicated fans who valued continuity and drillability. These fans encouraged creators to write more expansive, challenging stories because this smaller, more cohesive fandom was keenly following each narrative development. According to Dennis O’Neil, “I think maybe the audience is more cohesive. Comic books are not read on a hit or miss basis anymore. They are read by fewer people than they were in the ‘40s but the current fans read a great deal more intently and with a great deal of care. … Also, letter columns did not exist back then so there was no arena to exchange opinions, nor were there conventions and all those other places where fans can get together and compare notes” (1991, 23). Well before the internet allowed fan forums to proliferate, comics printed letters from fans that demonstrated their level of engagement and influenced the understanding creators had of their audiences. Continuity became important as fans demanded greater consistency in their heroes’ fictional universes. “This continuity is a vital part of comic books, and relies upon the imagination and memory of its readership to retain fluency in storylines, and often very discrete subplots, that can take months and sometimes years to develop fully, helping to demarcate distinctions between fans, and thereby promoting hierarchical structures of knowledge” (Wolf-Meyer 2003, 500). In TWD, Robert Kirkman’s “Letter Hacks” column allows him to address fan questions, indicate the series’ future direction, and gauge how fans assess plotlines or characters. For example, in #2 Kirkman addressed a letter about electric power still operating in #1 by explaining, “Places like police stations and hospitals would have backup generators and I’m thinking for the most part that power would remain available until something went wrong.” The question indicates how fans want TWD to be solidly grounded in our world and the selection of that letter and Kirkman’s answer indicates his desire to let fans know he has thought about the realistic basis for events. Thus, the flexible production strategies, serial narration, and active fan cultures that emerged with the internet already existed in comics, which had developed strategies for addressing them. As media franchising grew in importance, other industries looked to comics for inspiration in serial storytelling for highly interactive fan communities. If TWD became a television sensation in the 2000s, then that owes a great deal to its narrative core medium being ahead of the curve in developing serial narratives and cultivating dedicated fan groups.

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Ethos and Society in the Zombie Apocalypse Another reason TWD has been so successful across platforms is that the storyworld offers ample scope for continuity and multiplicity. Whereas a single core narrative involving Sarah and John Connor binds The Terminator, TWD is bound by a global event, the zombie apocalypse, of which we only see local manifestations. “The pieces of the puzzle refer to the same world in decomposition, one that, owing to its potential infinity, allows for a myriad of different stories that can each develop following a stand-alone narrative model. However, these pieces may potentially and effectively be linked together” (Genovesi 2017, 354). This allows TWD to develop single episodes, multi-issue stories, and season-long arcs, for new characters to appear and disappear, for conflicts to arise and be resolved without the overall situation changing. As Dan Hassler-Forest explains, “While the many different versions across multiple media platforms thus each provide possible entry points to the larger franchise, they remain unified by their shared use of a central brand and a common set of aesthetic and narrative conventions” (2016, 163). To understand the success of TWD, it is important to grasp these shared conventions and the central conflicts of the narrative universe. While other fantasy worlds focus on mythos and topos, TWD is concerned with the ethos of the zombie apocalypse, on the ethical challenges normal people would face adapting to a Hobbesian state of nature. The crux of the problem is that the ethics required for individual survival—kill or be killed, trust no one, look out for yourself first—are incompatible with developing a community. The characters of TWD are infinitely suspended between individual survival and precarious micro-societies that experiment with new ways of being before falling inevitably through internal dissent or before the zombie hordes. The series protagonist, Rick Grimes, continually faces ethical dilemmas with opposing sides of the debate voiced by other characters. While Season 1 of the TV show is primarily concerned with bare survival, Season 2 grapples with the morality required to survive in this new world. On one side we have Dale Horvath, who articulates “what he conceptualizes as ‘reasonable’ moral and socio-ethical behaviour based upon a pre-­ apocalyptic code of western rationalism” (Williams 2016, 54). While he originally occupies a paternal position, watching over the group with his rifle from the roof of his RV, he becomes increasingly isolated as he attempts to impose pre-apocalyptic views of morality. In “Judge, Jury, and

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Executioner,” the group decides they must kill a hostile prisoner to prevent him escaping and revealing the farm’s location. Dale pleads in vain for them to reconsider: “That’s what a civilised society does.” Dale: Andrea: “Who says we’re civilised anymore?” “The world we know is gone, but keeping our humanity? Dale: That’s a choice.” Dale finally recognises that the values he cherishes are no more: “If we do this, the people we were, the world we knew is dead. And this new world is ugly. It’s survival of the fittest. And that’s a world I don’t want to live in.” As Williams puts it, “the world he knew, the world informed by rationality and hope, is no longer the stage for their choices and decisions, a fact that the rest of the group has acknowledged” (2016, 64). Shane, in contrast, espouses the survival of the fittest approach Dale decries. In “Save the Last One,” Shane and Otis try to escape a zombie pack with medicine necessary to save Rick’s son, Carl. At the end of the episode, it is revealed that Shane shot Otis in the leg, thereby sacrificing him to the zombies in order to escape. Television critic Zack Handlen commented, “His decision to sacrifice Otis is easy enough to rationalize; somebody had to get back for Carl’s sake, Shane was faster, and both of them probably weren’t going to make it. That’s the beauty of it. In a certain light, he made the right choice” (2011). Nate Rawlings in Time looked forward to the coming showdown between Rick and Shane: “Given Rick’s extremely rigid moral code and Shane’s now demonstrated willingness to do whatever it takes to survive, the showdown promises to be bigger than just a battle of two alpha males. The Rick/Shane divide is a battle of two leaders with different ideas of humanity and survival” (2011). Fans regularly debate these moral conflicts. As Murali Balaji puts it, “In TWD graphic novel and television series, survival is predicated upon the living being able to make choices that test their previous ­constructions of what it means to be human” (2013, 8–9). The ethical questions facing the characters, rather than the zombies, are the true engine of the series. Although Rick begins as TWD’s moral centre, he slowly abandons any moral code other than survival. In the final encounter between Rick and Shane, Rick unexpectedly stabs Shane to death, thereby winning the battle but losing the war as he has accepted Shane’s morality. When he returns to

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the group, he declares, “This isn’t a democracy anymore.” In the comics, when they discover the perfect refuge at the prison, Rick kills the inmate Dexter in cold blood to secure control of the penitentiary. Engstrom and Valenzano argue that the collapse of pre-apocalyptic morality is depicted visually in the series’ churches: “earlier a clean and respected structure, a church is now just another building, devoid of the meaning and institutional power it once held” (2016, 132). Yet characters making what we might consider ethically correct choices are often responsible for the most damage. When Andrea refuses to kill the Governor in his sleep, her failure to act results not just in her own death but the deaths of several others. In Season 5, Morgan spares a member of the savage Wolves gang, only for the Wolves to attack the Alexandria settlement and butcher many residents at the beginning of Season 6. In TWD, ethical behaviour is liable to get you and everyone around you killed. This obviously creates problems for building a new community, which is the second major focus of TWD. “The zombie imaginary interrogates the nature of the social bond in the face of civil society’s collapse. It calls into question the nature and extent of individual responsibility to and for others” (Coonfield 2013, 18). TWD feeds into the doomsday prepper interest in imagining alternate societies. Peter Paik has argued, “The crucial limitation of TWD, and perhaps the main source of its popular appeal, is the inability of the narrative to get beyond the motif of the Hobbesian state of nature” (2017), but returning to a Hobbesian state allows the series to reimagine the social contract. The survivors lurch from one refuge to another, each one dramatising a possible society amid the chaos. The pastoral farm is undermined by the group’s inability to agree on the ethics of their new society. Woodbury is rendered safe by the Governor’s tyrannical rule. The prison is destroyed by a war between Rick’s group and the Governor’s, while Alexandria is an oasis of pre-apocalyptic civility that Rick mistrusts because the residents have never experienced the horror outside the walls. For Geoffrey Wright, “The television series stages a debate between tyrannical and democratic philosophies of political and moral governance” (2017, 148). However, it may be more accurate to say these micro-societies exist along a spectrum between the two with no privileged moral centre. In TWD, exemplary democracies may just be vehicles of death for those inside them. Some have criticised TWD for not taking the opportunity to sketch a better world or for representing conservative choices. However, as Dawn Keetley explains, “one of the (many) things I love about TWD—a thing

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I’m convinced is crucial to its success—is that it accommodates all kinds of politics” (2016). TWD resists the post-apocalyptic genre’s pull towards either utopia or dystopia and instead explores the spectrum in-between, which allows the narrative to stay infinitely suspended between dread and hope. Moreover, the establishment of a new utopia would offer narrative closure in a form that benefits from open-ended structures and probably run counter to the enjoyment we derive from zombie tales. “So much of the pleasure of the zombie narrative in both cinema and other forms originates in the audience’s knowledge that the heroes’ preparations and fortifications will never be sufficient, that no matter what happens in the end the zombies will break through and kill nearly everyone” (Canavan 2010, 445). The survivors face a Sisyphean task, but for viewers the pleasure comes from evaluating the different attempts. The importance of adapting the series’ focus on ethos can be seen in the fate of two video game adaptations. In 2013, Activision published The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct. The game, a first-person shooter, was licensed by the TV series with a plot that functioned as backstory for Daryl Dixon, a character unique to the show. However, aside from being criticised for poor gameplay, graphics, and overall design, the game suffered from trying to allow players the chance to explore the storyworld’s mythos and topos, when what matters in TWD is the ethos. “While the shooter mainly reproduces the act of killing zombies in a quite tiresome way, it completely misses the overall emotional tones which are constituted by the character-driven serialized original” (Beil and Schmidt 2015, 81). In contrast, Telltale’s game was licensed by the comics and, as game developer Kevin Bruner explains, “We were not going to pitch a game that was about killing zombies. Instead, we were going to pitch an episodic story game that focused on the thing we felt made his books so compelling: normal people adapting to impossible situations” (2013, 38). Instead of exploring spaces, “we knew that in TWD you’d be confronted with awful choices, not much time to consider these choices, and then have to deal with the fallout of those choices” (Bruner 2013, 39). Although Activision’s FPS may have seemed a better vehicle for exploring the storyworld, Telltale’s narrative-focused adventure game allowed players to experience the ethical dilemmas at the heart of TWD. The video game tells the story of Lee Everett, a history professor convicted of a crime of passion just before the zombie apocalypse occurs. On his way to prison, the police car crashes and Lee flees, finding an eight-­year-­old girl, Clementine, stranded at home alone. The two become members of a fractious

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group of survivors. Much of the game is spent managing character relationships. According to Bruner, “we also discovered that smaller, more intimate details often worked much better for us than giant, sweeping, branching opportunities. For instance, it’s often more interesting to let the player slight or insult NPCs than it is to let the player outright steal all their belongings or completely betray them” (2013, 39). Conversations have indicators letting players know how characters feel about their responses. “The uncertainty this generates serves not only to unsettle the player and keep them on their toes but also to convince them that, as stated, The Walking Dead is constantly reacting to their choices” (Smethurst and Craps 2015, 281). Players have no idea which decisions will have significant consequences, at least during the first playthrough. Sometimes the choices are false. On Herschel Greene’s farm, the player is suddenly presented with a choice between saving Herschel’s son Shawn and saving a young boy called Duck. On my first playthrough, I chose Duck, who remains a character for much of the game, which left me wondering what would have happened if I had saved Shawn. However, no matter what choice the player makes, Shawn dies and Duck survives. The choice has no meaning, except for conditioning how Duck’s parents feel about Lee, but this does not change the feeling of agency the game provides as players wonder about the choices not taken. It is difficult for games to offer the feeling of both meaningful choice and narrative structure, but “TWD gets close to this ideal situation, offering the player enough choices so that the holes in the decisional field almost pass by unnoticed, giving a strong illusion of agency” (Prundaru 2016, 112). Much like the series, there is no obvious end goal. No refuge will ever be safe enough. At the beginning of the game’s second episode, the group is ensconced at a fortified motel but running low on supplies. Duck’s father wants to run for the coast, while Lilly insists they stay where they are safe. Both sides want Lee’s support, leaving the player to choose in a classic TWD dilemma. Ultimately, the player’s decision won’t affect the o ­ verall narrative, but it will affect his relationship with other characters. “We didn’t set out to make a game you could win or lose. We wanted to expose difficult and interesting possibilities to players and reward them whatever they chose, while still leaving the choices not taken as a lingering possibility” (Bruner 2013, 40). By capturing the ethos of TWD in a way that took advantage of the medium’s capacities, Telltale Games showed how the franchise could expand flexibly across any platform.

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Franchise Guardian While The Terminator’s franchise guardians inhibited its growth, Robert Kirkman has been instrumental in encouraging fan acceptance of TWD’s expansions. Most importantly, he has legitimised the differences between the comics and the TV show, thus minimising conflict between the narrative and industrial cores. Right from the beginning, the TV series introduced show-only characters, such as Daryl Dixon, and proceeded to change the destinies of important characters from the comics. Dale unexpectedly dies at the farm in Season 2 and Carol, the downtrodden homemaker, metamorphoses into a ruthless warrior. Such changes could have alienated fans of the narrative core, but Kirkman has helped legitimise these changes by celebrating them: One of the most important aspects of The Walking Dead that makes the comic book so successful … is the fact that you never know what’s going to happen at any time. Anyone could die, anyone can leave, new people come in; and it’s a very volatile comic that you can never really expect what’s coming. If we were to adapt the show directly, be extremely faithful to the comic, we would lose that key component. (“The Ink is Alive” 2012)

Kirkman identifies the core of TWD as the storyworld ethos rather than canonical plot details. This defuses potential criticisms from fans demanding strict continuity, while legitimising multiplicity across different platforms. Producers thus know they have creative flexibility and can do what they feel is best in their medium. The franchise guardian’s role is primarily to sanction expansions, which is important not just for fans but for creative teams on other platforms. Kevin Bruner of Telltale Games, for example, declares: Robert Kirkman and everyone else at Skybound were (and are!) amazing partners. Even as the television show was becoming a runaway hit, they always made time to ensure we had the feedback and support we needed. One of the best things Robert did early on was introduce us to his friend Gary Whitta (screenwriter of Book of Eli and After Earth). Robert trusts Gary, and Gary really understands what makes The Walking Dead unique and special. (2013, 38)

Kirkman’s role here is less authorial than managerial, approving the concept and installing collaborative partners who understand his vision for

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TWD. As long as the ethos is maintained, the details of plot, character, mythos, and topos are up to the creative team involved. As Kirkman explained about the Telltale game: I was slightly more involved in Season 1, I think, but really it was just a matter of me approving their story when they ran it by me. The team there did an enormous amount of work to get the tone and feel in line with what I do in the comics before they ever came to me. Before we started Season 2, they asked me a lot about where I was going in the comic and some things they should avoid, and I gave them some notes, but for the most part, those guys have taken the ball and run with it … to what I think we can all agree is great success. (“I’m Robert Kirkman” 2016)

Whereas authorial figures assert control of the canonical narrative core, what makes Kirkman such a successful franchise guardian is that he deprivileges the narrative core he controls and spreads canonical weight across the dual industrial cores of the franchise, regardless of issues with continuity. The importance of Kirkman’s perceived contribution for fans can be seen in reviews of TWD novels by Jay Bonansinga. There are six novels exploring the backstory of the Governor and the Woodbury settlement. The first four are written by Kirkman and Bonansinga, although it is unclear the extent of Kirkman’s involvement. Again, Kirkman has been highly supportive: “Jay Bonansinga is killing it with those books and I’m really excited about doing more” (2016). On Amazon, there are currently 703 positive reviews and 156 critical reviews of the first book, The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor (Kirkman and Bonansinga 2011). The positive reviews are mostly from fans who “really wanted to know more about the Governor, and this book shows us just how he became who he is” (Zelazny 2015) and felt “it’s a much-needed backstory to one of the most fearsome villains in the Walking Dead universe” (LC 2017). However, some fans felt Bonansinga’s sixth novel, Invasion, was a disappointment and “the novels that Kirkman wrote with Bonansinga were better, obviously more thought out and character driven than when Bonansinga writes alone. … Kirkman needs to either take the reins again or close this part of the series down because it’s starting to lose what we love about the Walking Dead universe and become another money making spinoff/sequel” (Baldwin 2016). Fans often blame inferior entries on the franchise guardian’s lack of direct involvement.

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The only entry Kirkman has specifically disavowed is Survival Instinct: “I’m pretty sure there’s an AMC logo before the title of that game and not a picture of my face. If there was a picture of my face in front of the logo, then I’d be completely responsible for that. I can only oversee/be involved in so much … and my efforts were focused more on the Telltale games series” (2016). The game becomes a running joke throughout his Reddit AMA, which helps cement Kirkman’s bond with the fans. By acknowledging areas where the franchise has let itself down, Kirkman demonstrates sympathy with fans and that he will work to maintain the standards they expect. Through his “Letter Hacks” column, interviews, and public comments, Kirkman has legitimised multiplicity over strict continuity, encouraged the creative teams on each platform to take a flexible attitude to adaptation, distributed canonical authority beyond the realms he directly controls, and reassured fans through selected criticism of some entries that he is working to maintain TWD’s standards.

Zombie Life As well as providing an expansive transmedia storyworld, TWD also has highly active online fan communities, who have created numerous fan sites. Recognising the importance of online material, AMC has created transmedia bridging projects to bring fans to its official website, where they can be sold show-related merchandise. Short webisodes offering backstory were released on the AMC site in the run-up to new seasons, while the site also offers an official blog and fan forums. Since the Season 3 mid-season finale, each episode of TWD has been followed by The Talking Dead, in which fans join host Chris Hardwicke and special guests to discuss the episode. TWD also tops Nielsen’s Twitter rankings: “With an average of 435,000 Tweets sent about each new episode, TWD topped our social TV series list for the third consecutive year” (“TV” 2016). The second screen audience for TWD is bigger than the total audience for most TV series: “On average, about 4 million people saw one or more of the 424,000 tweets sent about each new episode, and these tweets were sent by an average of 153,000 unique authors and seen about 28 million times” (Kissell 2016). There is no doubt AMC has skilfully used social media. “The network used the web to create a consumption cluster, leaking storylines from the second and third seasons on fan pages and zombie blogs while airing its own original web content in the leadup to season two” (Balaji

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2013, 231). However, fans of TWD are not simply herded like sheep. Fan communities are quite vocal about their favourite characters, with the “If Daryl Dies We Riot” meme taking hold across the internet and inspiring fan merchandise from T-shirts to bumper stickers to crossbow mugs (a mug with a crossbow handle, in case you were curious). Fanfiction.net currently records 18,600 TWD fan stories, while Archive of our Own has 15,712, making it one of the most popular series for fan fiction. The active fan community is one reason TWD has become a cultural attractor. However, looking online may actually be misleading. Regarding a TWD theme park attraction, executive producer Greg Nicotero explains, “Genre fans are unlike any other type of people because they really want to experience every aspect of a show … to walk through and see the bullet holes in the wall and the blood splattered on there” (Schwartz 2012). Zombies enable immersive fantasy experiences. Zombie walks, zombie runs, and zombie survival challenges are popular across the globe. A photo journalism article for The Atlantic details dozens of “zombie events from Peru, Japan, Mexico, the United States, Italy, the Philippines, England, Taiwan, Serbia, Nicaragua, Argentina, Israel, Germany, Costa Rica, Spain, and Australia” (Taylor 2015). In the UK, the entertainment company Zombie Experiences offers “movie grade special effects make-up and professional horror actors bringing the events to life … now is the time to not only face, but to experience, the fear” (2018). Minneapolis’ Zombie Pub Crawl, begun in 2005, holds the world record for the largest gathering of zombies with thousands of revellers descending each year to perfect the drunken zombie shuffle. Everyone knows the basic rules of zombie behaviour and appearance, which don’t require elaborate preparation. In an era when cosplay has grown in popularity, zombies represent an instantly recognisable costume idea with plenty of variation. No matter where you are in the world, no one with a zombie costume ever has to be alone. Perhaps the biggest reason TWD is so successful as a franchise is that the zombie apocalypse is bigger than the show. Robert Kirkman is open to new expansions of the storyworld on different platforms because it isn’t really his storyworld. The core of TWD is the focus on the storyworld’s ethos, but its mythos and topos belong to everyone. If we look at fan practices, we may see that the zombie is not an empty signifier onto which we displace modern anxieties about climate change, capitalism, pandemics, terrorism, and so on. Instead, it is a triumph of collective participatory imagination. Since 1968, we have built a global understanding of a wholly fictional event. Each media entry in the genre offers

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another window into a global panic that happened everywhere and nowhere, which we all remember though none of has lived through. Anyone can participate or contribute their own entry in this infinite fictional history. TWD succeeds because it is already taking part in a vast transmedia franchise that spans decades and continents and genres. And it is all possible because, back in 1968, some unknown individual incorrectly followed copyright procedure.

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Terror and American Popular Culture: September 11 and Beyond, ed. Andrew Schopp and Matthew B.  Hill, 239–256. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Night of the Living Dead. 1968. Directed by George A.  Romero. Pennsylvania: Continental. O’Neil, Dennis. 1991. Notes from the Batcave: An Interview with Dennis O’Neil. In The Many Lives of the Batman: Critical Approaches to a Superhero and His Media, ed. Roberta Pearson and William Uricchio, 18–32. London: Routledge. Ohannessian, Kevin. 2014. Walking Dead Game Episodes Sell 28 Million, Will Have Season 3. Tech Times, July 28. Paik, Peter. 2017. Doing What Comes Unnaturally: The Gnostic Zombie in Robert Kirkman’s The Walking Dead. Voegelin View, July 2010. Pierce, David. 2007. Forgotten Faces: Why Some of Our Cinema Heritage Is Part of the Public Domain. Film History 19: 125–143. Prundaru, George. 2016. Walking the Dead: The Makings of a Game Within a Successful Transmedia Franchise. Ephemerides 61 (1): 93–118. Rawlings, Nate. 2011. Walking Dead Recap: Save the Last One. Time, October 30. Schwartz, Terri. 2012. Walking Dead Maze Staggers to Universal Studios. MTV, September 10. Smethurst, Toby, and Stef Craps. 2015. Playing with Trauma: Interreactivity, Empathy, and Complicity in The Walking Dead Video Game. Games and Culture 10 (3): 269–290. Stratton, Jon. 2011. Zombie Trouble: Zombie Texts, Bare Life, and Displaced People. European Journal of Cultural Studies 14 (3): 265–281. Sugg, Katherine. 2015. The Walking Dead: Late Liberalism and Masculine Subjection in Apocalypse Fictions. Journal of American Studies 49 (4): 793–811. Taylor, Alan. 2015. The Walking (and Running) Dead. The Atlantic, June 1. The Ink Is Alive. 2012. The Walking Dead Season 2, DVD. AMC. The Walking Dead. 2010–Present. Developed by Frank Darabont. AMC. The Walking Dead. 2012. San Rafael: Telltale Games. The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct. 2013. Directed by Angel Gonzalez Jr. Santa Monica: Activision. TV Season 2015–2016 in Review: The Biggest Social TV Moments. 2016. Nielsen. com, June 6. Williams, Evan Calder. 2011. Combined and Uneven Apocalypse: Luciferian Marxism. Winchester: Zero Books. Williams, Andrew. 2016. Apocalyptic Absurdity: Dale Horvath: Raisonneur of The Walking Dead. Midwest Quarterly 58 (1): 51–68. Wolf-Meyer, Matthew. 2003. The World Ozymandias Made: Utopias in the Superhero Comic, Subculture, and the Conservation of Difference. Journal of Popular Culture 36 (3): 497–517.

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Wright, Geoffrey. 2017. Hobbes, Locke, Darwin, and Zombies: The Post-­ apocalyptic Politics of Survival in AMC’s The Walking Dead. Quarterly Review of Film and Video 34 (2): 148–170. Zelazny, T. 2015. Very Well Done. Review of The Walking Dead: Rise of the Governor. Amazon.com, August 15. Zombie Experiences. 2018. zombieexperiences.co.uk. Zombie Strippers. 2008. Directed by Jay Lee. Triumph Films.

CHAPTER 11

Epilogue: After the End

In apocalyptic narratives, the ending is supposed to provide meaning to all that has gone before. In the spirit of the apocalypse, then, this short epilogue recaps the main concepts introduced in this book and offers a final explanation for the relationship between the emergence of transmedia storytelling and the rise of the post-apocalyptic genre. Although many tend to see media narratives as direct reflections of cultural concerns, this book has argued that we must first understand the media eco-system, which filters and transforms the dreams of creators and the desires of audiences. The eco-system metaphor recognises dynamic processes in which changes in one aspect of the media system, such as government regulation, economic structure, or technology, can have complex effects across the system. Changes in government regulation have enabled the emergence of mega-conglomerates, while media franchising has become central to conglomerate strategy as a way of attracting audiences dispersed through processes of splintering and fragmentation. At the same time, changes in financing and distribution in individual media have altered economic incentives. The threat to film’s secondary distribution windows is driving a demand for additional content beyond the film itself. Cable and streaming services need signature serial dramas that appeal to targeted niche audiences. Video games have become a rival industrial core in many franchises, fuelling a demand for greater creative independence to prevent franchise entropy. Literature has seen a collapse in author incomes alongside a boom in genre fiction. All platforms have a © The Author(s) 2018 S. Joyce, Transmedia Storytelling and the Apocalypse, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93952-0_11

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problem grabbing audience attention, making the sharing of established IP across platforms more attractive than ever. These transformations have led to a demand for immersive worldbuilding stories that audiences can experience across platforms and flexible intellectual properties that multiple creative teams can work on simultaneously. While the term “convergence culture” captures many key trends, eco-systems also allow distinctive niches to exist, such as prestige niches within a medium, which retain a certain independence from convergence culture yet may benefit the overall system by operating as incubators of new ideas. Thus, although literary fiction and art house cinema may not be economically valuable and rarely participate in the flow of content across platforms, their ability to generate both new approaches and convey prestige make them valuable for the overall media system. The major development in our contemporary mediascape is the emergence of transmedia storytelling and media franchising. This has led to a preference for infinitely suspended narratives that have no clear endpoint and can support expansions across platforms by different creative teams. Such franchises, however, pose creative issues that are different from the challenges of traditional narrative forms. Entries in the franchise risk being compromised by the trans-integrity dilemma. They need to contain compelling storyworld information and developments while at the same time not punishing those who haven’t seen every instalment. The Marvel Cinematic Universe may be the pre-eminent example of how this can be accomplished, but Marvel have the advantage of drawing on decades of comics experiences in infinitely suspended narratives. In contrast, the disappointing box-office returns of Disney’s Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018) led many to declare a case of franchise fatigue, with spinoffs that offered no new developments in the ongoing storyline and little variation or experimentation within the narrative universe. A more serious case of franchise fatigue is franchise entropy, when a sub-standard entry causes a cascade effect, with declining interest across all platforms. Terminator Salvation (T4) and Terminator Genisys (T5) offer a rare case of two instances of franchise entropy within the same franchise. Franchise entropy is more likely when there is a unified narrative-­ industrial core. Many successful franchises benefit from having a separate narrative core medium, which provides the canonical texts, and an industrial core medium that generates the greatest revenue and finances extensions across other platforms. This creates a dense web of texts across platforms that can act as a safety net in the event of a major failure in the

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industrial core. An example of this is Batman and Robin (Joel Schumacher 1997), which killed the Tim Burton series of films but fortunately could not do permanent damage to Batman as an iconic fictional hero because the film versions are only ever adaptations of a character from a different narrative core medium. The rapid emergence of video games as a financial powerhouse has created dual industrial core franchises, with games and their film adaptations retaining a large amount of autonomy in how they use the IP. However, franchises built on separate narrative and industrial cores need to be wary of friction between the two, particularly when fans privilege fidelity to the canonical narrative core. The potential for fragmentation and contradiction in franchises lacking a unified narrative-­ industrial core makes control of the rights vital. Franchises tend to prosper when they have a stable rights regime, with the IP holder providing a clear vision, or an open rights regime, when the storyworld embraces contradiction and multiplicity in an open-source creative model, as with the zombie apocalypse. The worst of all worlds is probably an unstable rights regime, as with The Terminator, with control of the IP repeatedly changing hands to creators with different visions for the franchise. Although the narrative and industrial cores are the most critical parts of any franchise, intelligent use of ancillary media can be of significant benefit. Franchises may make use of coherence ancillaries, which deal with continuity issues arising from the core media, or R&D ancillaries, which explore new options within the narrative universe. Some ancillary media may be used to target specific demographics in a process of transmedia localisation. Other ancillaries may bridge the gap between both serial instalments and platforms for consumption in a process of transmedia bridging. Understanding the different ways ancillary media can be used is a creative challenge for producers and a major task for transmedia scholarship. Today’s media consumers increasingly seek immersive transmedia storyworlds with ever-increasing levels of drillability. However, they also know these are industrial products and thus are keen to find ways of determining if an expansion is a cheap cash grab or a genuine addition to the storyworld. Fans have thus anointed certain figures to be franchise guardians, people whose blessing is considered essential for establishing the legitimacy of new entries. Franchise guardians are often the authors of the narrative core, but they can also be important actors, showrunners, directors, or even superfans who have attained prominence in the fan community. Franchise guardians offer a convenient shorthand for whether a new

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entry is canonical and play an important role in industry-audience ­relations. The ways in which franchise guardians attain, deploy, and lose legitimacy is a promising future topic of investigation. How have these changes in media production and consumption contributed to the rise of the post-apocalyptic genre? The post-apocalyptic meets the structural needs of the current mediascape by offering a shared imaginary world with an easily understood mythos and topos. This allows for multiplicity and drillability without damaging continuity. The apocalyptic event is not so much a contemporary anxiety as a useful narrative portal to a fantasy world exploring themes of independence-dependence, progress-regression, the utopia-dystopia spectrum, and ambivalence about technology. Under the pressure of cultural events such as the Bush administration’s framing of 9/11, as well as industrial demands for infinitely suspended narratives, the post-apocalyptic has moved away from the binary good versus evil narratives of The Matrix and I Am Legend towards the moral ambiguity of Battlestar Galactica and The Walking Dead. The genre’s growing complexity and evolving conventions, in turn, have attracted creative talents to explore its possibilities in prestige niches, thereby enhancing its reputation as an aesthetic form. The post-­ apocalyptic’s emergence as an ideal form for transmedia storytelling is not a fortuitous accident but a process of genre-medium coevolution, in which new ways of telling stories shape emergent genres, while the possibilities opened up by those genres also drive creators to find new ways of telling stories. In terms of reception, post-apocalyptic culture attracts fans because it allows playful immersion in a fantasy world with extractable real-world benefits. Prepping emphasises personal competence and the acquisition of useful skills. It encourages creativity in designing new tools and mastering technical repairs, while also encouraging personal fitness and healthy eating that does not rely on industrial processing. Its appeal to urban middle classes is also reflected in the emphasis on defence of one’s own property and freely seizing others’, which indicates contemporary economic insecurities. However, the most important aspect of post-apocalyptic culture is the freedom it offers for culture crafting, allowing fans to imagine and explore alternate social, economic, and political structures. The playfulness of this immersive culture is best seen in the worldwide triumph of the zombie, which allows fans to irreverently transgress social norms and participate in a shared imaginary global event.

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Even as you read this, however, you may be thinking that there is more to it than I have laid out here. Apocalyptic rhetoric saturates our political discourse, which cannot be divorced from the proliferation of apocalyptic imagery in our popular entertainment. I have said nothing at all about the news media and the impact of media transformations on democracy and the public sphere. The emergence of immersive transmedia storyworlds bears an uncanny similarity to the emergence of partisan epistemic bubbles, with conservatives and liberals retreating into their own political echo chambers, thus feeding levels of partisan polarisation that threaten the foundations of democracy. Surely more needs to be said about the connection between the media eco-system, the apocalyptic, and the tensions roiling contemporary politics? In the spirit of transmedia, all I can say is that every text is a paratext—you will just have to wait for the sequel.

Reference Batman and Robin. 1997. Directed by Joel Schumacher. Burbank: Warner Bros.

Index

NUMBERS AND SYMBOLS 24, 81 28 Days Later, 9, 57, 58, 65, 160 A Aarseth, Espen, 19, 107 Activision, 197 Adama, Commander William, 78, 86, 87, 136 Adlard, Charlie, 192 Adorno, Theodor, 17–18, 171 Aleitheia, 48, 59, 95 Alice in Wonderland, 72 Altman, Rick, 60 Amazon, 124–126, 200 Ambivalence about technology, 10, 61, 65–67, 129, 210 AMC, 81, 201 Angeli, Michael, 91 Annapurna Pictures, 170 Antichrist Obama, 146–147 Arts Council England (ACE), 123–124 Assassin’s Creed, 103–105 Atwood, Margaret, 121

Auden, W.H., 43–45 Audience fragmentation, 21, 71, 81, 207 Audience splintering, 21, 71, 207 Austen, Jane, 122 Author’s Guild, 123 Autobiography, 48–50 B Bacigalupi, Paolo, 122 Balaji, Murali, 5, 195, 201 Balanced transmedia, 101 Baltar, Gaius, 89 Batman, 26–28, 192, 209 Battle of Elderbush Gulch, The, 10 Battlestar Galactica (BSG), 10–12, 51, 52, 58, 77–79, 94, 95, 137 Bay, Michael, 57 Bazin, Andre, 10 Begley, Paul, 45 Benioff, David, 115 Benz, Ernst, 43 Berger, James, 122 Bethesda, 112, 167 BioShock, 101, 108–116

© The Author(s) 2018 S. Joyce, Transmedia Storytelling and the Apocalypse, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-93952-0

213

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INDEX

Bishop, Kyle, 186 Blackwell, Jeannine, 63 Blade Runner, 110 Blitz, Mark, 37 Blood Meridian, 131 Boer, Ronald, 44 Boll, Uwe, 103 Bonansinga, Jay, 127, 188, 200 Bond, James, 177 Book of Job, The, 68 Book of Revelation, The, 3, 39–41 Boone, Kathleen C., 45, 46 Booth, Paul, 95 Bosch, Torie, 187 Bowman, Shayne, 15, 16 Boyle, Danny, 9, 58, 65 Boyle, Ellexis, 177 Brancato, John, 180 Breaking Bad, 47 Britton, Piers, 174 Broich, Ulrich, 63–67 Brooks, Max, 123, 128–131 Bruckner, Pascal, 43 Bruner, Kevin, 197–199 Burke, Kenneth, 50 Burke, Liam, 191, 192 Burton, Tim, 26–28, 209 Bush, George H.W., 84 Bush, George W., 11, 12, 77–79, 83–88, 90, 96, 210 C Cameron, James, 166, 169–171, 176, 177, 180, 181 Canavan, Gerry, 186, 197 Canticle for Leibowitz, A, 4 Capitalism, 5, 15–17, 43–45, 50–52, 135, 146, 149, 152, 186, 187, 202 Carolco Pictures, 170 Cast Away, 63

CBS, 23–25, 80 Character-driven arc, 110 Children of Men, The, 60 Chmidling, Catherine, 150, 155–158 Chronicles of Narnia, The, 61 City of Thieves, 115 Clarke, Michael, 30–32, 93, 102, 128 Clasen, Mathias, 63 Clear Channel Communications, 24–25 Coherence ancillaries, 176, 209 Columbia, 24, 165 Comcast, 24, 25 Coming Apocalypse, The, 37–39 Communications Act 1934, 23 1996, 24 Community, 9 Conan, Neal, 130 Confessions, 48 Conglomerate, 24–28, 31, 74, 83, 170, 171, 174, 207 Connor, John, 166–168, 172–174, 176, 179, 180, 194 Connor, Sarah, 172, 173, 176, 178, 181, 194 Consalvo, Mia, 117 Continuity, 33, 169, 172–174, 178–182, 187, 188, 191–194, 199–201, 209, 210 Convergence culture, 12, 32, 52, 72, 105, 191, 208 definition of, 19–22 and fandom, 148, 155 and publishing, 123–125, 128–133, 139 and television, 79, 82, 83, 85 Couldry, Nick, 20, 147 Court, John M., 41 Crichton, Michael, 132 Crocker, Paul, 27 C2 Pictures, 170 Culture crafting, 154–156, 210

 INDEX    

Cumberbatch, Benedict, 92 Cylon, 78, 86–91, 93, 95 D Dallas, 28 Dark Horse Comics, 167 Darkseekers, 59, 67–74 Dawn of the Dead, 61, 160, 190 Day of the Triffids, The, 61–63 Decherney, Peter, 189 Delisle, Annie, 131 Detention of the Dead, 190 Deus Ex, 104 Devlin, William, 172 Dienstag, Joshua, 121 Disney, 22, 24, 25, 27, 28, 72, 188 Divergent, 125 Dixon, Daryl, 197, 199 DIY citizenship, 158 Doctor Who, 173, 174, 177 Doomsday Preppers, 143–161 Dowling, Forrest, 100 Drake’s Fortune, 115 Drillability, 193, 209, 210 Dr. Strangelove, 4 Druckmann, Neil, 115 Dual industrial core, 104, 117, 200, 209 Duffett, Mark, 145, 146, 153 E Earth Abides, 4 Ebert, Roger, 105, 106, 109 Ebooks, 126 Eco-apocalypse, 4 Elder Scrolls, 112 Elkington, Trevor, 102 Environmentalism, 11, 41–42, 51 Entertainment Retailers Association, 19 Entertainment Software Association (ESA), 100

215

Eschatology, 44, 49 Eskelinen, Markku, 107 Ethos, 95, 187, 188, 194–200, 202 Evangelical Christianity, 11, 39–47, 49, 51, 66, 83–85 Everett, Lee, 197 Expansion technology, 72 Extraction, 157 F Falero, Michael, 99 Fan fiction, 17, 31, 146, 202 Fans of a genre experience, 153 Fans of a genre mythos, 153, 161 Fan studies, 145–149 Fear the Walking Dead, 187, 188 Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 22–24 Fifty Shades of Grey, 127 Fight Club, 47, 101 First-person shooter, 109, 167, 197 Forensic fandom, 9, 12, 65 Four Blood Moons, 37–39 Franchise entropy, 102, 103, 169, 207–209 Franchise guardian, 94–96, 169, 176–179, 182, 188, 199–201, 209, 210 Frankenstein, 4 Frasca, Gonzalo, 107 Freeman, Martin, 92 Freeman, Matthew, 32 Fugitive, The, 80 G Gaeta, Felix, 91 Game of Thrones, 29, 79, 104 Gatiss, Mark, 179 Gencarella, Stephen, 185

216  

INDEX

Genre-medium coevolution, 10–12, 52, 77, 210 Glau, Summer, 176 Goldsman, Akiva, 58, 70 Granados, Nelson, 72 Gray, Jonathan, 72 Griffith, D.W., 10 Grimes, Rick, 194 Grylls, Bear, 161

Independence Day: Resurgence, 79 Independence-dependence, 10, 61–65, 67, 210 Industrial core, 103, 104, 170–176, 181, 199, 207–209 Infinitely suspended fictions, 7–9, 12, 51, 100, 110, 188, 191, 192, 194, 197, 208, 210 Infowars, 152

H Hagee, John, 37 Halcyon Company, 168–170 Hamilton, Linda, 181 Hardwicke, Chris, 201 Harry Potter, 8, 27, 30–32, 61, 94, 103, 156, 157 Harvey, Colin, 28–31, 170, 172 Hassler-Forest, Dan, 186, 194 Hatch, Richard, 93, 94, 177 Hayward, Andrew, 100 Hicks, Heather, 122, 132 Hills, Matt, 8, 73, 93, 148, 155 Hill Street Blues, 82 Hocking, Clint, 114 Hofstadter, Richard, 66, 154 Horkheimer, Max, 17–18, 171 Horvath, Dale, 194, 195 How I Met Your Mother, 47 Howey, Hugh, 125–127, 131 Hulme, Mike, 42–43 Hunger Games, The, 64, 125 Hurd, Gale Anne, 170 Hyperdiegesis, 8, 174

J James, William, 83 Jenkins, Henry, 6–8, 15–20, 29, 101, 107–108, 145–147, 154–157, 170, 172 Jericho, 80, 81 Johnson, Derek, 26–28, 94 Johnson, Rian, 174 Johns-Putra, Adeline, 135 Jones, Alex, 152 Joyce, James, 133 Juarez, Vanessa, 57 Jurassic World, 27 Juul, Jesper, 116

I I Am Legend, 10, 12, 52, 57–74, 77–79, 95, 110, 160, 210 Immersion, 157, 210

K Kabel, Allison, 150, 151, 155–158 Kassar, Mario, 170, 177 Keetley, Dawn, 185, 186, 196 Kermode, Frank, 48 King, Stephen, 64 Kirkman, Robert, 188, 190, 192, 193, 199–202 Klastrup, Lisbeth, 187 Kojima, Hideo, 105 Kolakowski, Leszek, 43 Kompare, Derek, 93 Kraft Television Theatre, 79 Kubrick, Stanley, 4

 INDEX    

L Land of the Dead, 190 Last Man, The, 4, 139 Last of Us, The, 99–101, 109–116 Late Great Planet Earth, The, 39 Lawrence, Francis, 58 Leander, Arthur, 138 Leftovers, The, 9 Levin Russo, Julie, 91 Levine, Ken, 111 Lewis, C.S., 61 Libertarianism, 109, 112–114 Lindsey, Hal, 38 Logan, John, 57 Lonedale Operator, The, 10 Lord of the Rings, The, 8, 103 Lost, 81 Ludology-narratology debate, 105–108 Ludonarrative dissonance, 114 Lunenfeld, Peter, 192 Lyle, David, 144 M Mad Max, 60, 64 Mad Men, 47, 79 Martin, George R.R., 104 Marvel, 8, 27, 208 Marxism, 17–19, 43–45, 51, 159 Masculinity, 5, 62, 159, 186 Matheson, Richard, 57, 63, 70 Matrix, The, 5–8, 10, 58, 64–66, 77, 210 Maze Runner, The, 125, 127 McCarthy, Cormac, 131–139 Media eco-system, 6, 11, 15–19, 72, 132–133, 137–138, 207, 211 Media franchising, 26–28, 52, 58, 101–105, 188, 192, 193, 207, 208

217

Meehan, Eileen, 26 Metro: Last Light, 112 Miller, Walter, 4 Mitchell, Richard G., 154–157 Mittell, Jason, 29–30, 79, 90–93, 101 Modernity, 5, 62, 122, 154, 157 Moffat, Steven, 179 Molthrop, Stuart, 107 Moo, Jonathan, 42 Moore, Ronald D., 82, 86, 89, 93–96, 136, 179 Moore, Tony, 192 Morpheus, 5–6, 65 Morpheus complex, 5 Mostow, Jonathan, 179 Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), 71, 100 Mulligan, Rikk, 90 Multiplicity, 130, 155, 172, 188, 191, 194, 199, 201, 209 Munich, 90 Murray, Janet, 106–107, 111 Mythos, 153–155, 187, 194, 197, 200, 202, 210 N Narrative core, 71, 103, 104, 188, 191–193, 199, 200, 208, 209 Narrative quantum state, 47, 60, 93 National Geographic, 144, 151 Naughty Dog, 115 NBC Universal, 23, 25, 82 Negroponte, Nicholas, 15 Neville, Robert, 57–74, 160 Nicotero, Greg, 202 Night of the Living Dead, 189, 190 Nimoy, Leonard, 94 Nolan, Christopher, 26–27, 90 Now Comics, 166 Nuclear war, 4, 5, 10, 42, 64, 136

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INDEX

O O’Leary, Stephen D., 45, 49–51 Olney, James, 49 O’Neil, Dennis, 192, 193 Orchard Keeper, The, 131 Oryx and Crake, 121 Ott, Brian, 87–90 P Pagels, Elaine, 39–41 Paik, Peter, 196 Palmer, James T., 49 Pandemics, 5, 51, 73, 116, 186, 202 Paramount, 24, 165, 169 Paratext, 7, 30, 72, 117, 130, 131, 211 Parker, Felan, 106, 109, 112 Patterson, James, 132 Pearce, Celia, 107 Perlin, Ken, 107 Pinker, Steven, 41 Piranha II: The Spawning, 170 Planet of the Apes, 4, 77 Plants v. Zombies, 116 Playstation, 25, 115 Polymorphic storytelling, 104 Pong, 101 Poole, Steven, 99 Portal fantasy, 10, 60–61, 67, 210 Postmillennialism, 50 Practical Preppers, 145 Premillenialism, 50, 69 Prestige niche, 123, 133, 137, 139, 208, 210 Producer’s Guild of America, 32 Progress-regression, 10, 63–65, 67, 210 Q Quidditch, 157

R R&D ancillaries, 167, 175, 176, 209 Rand, Ayn, 109 Reese, Kyle, 167, 172, 173, 176 Regulation, 6, 11, 19, 22–25, 27, 207 Replication technology, 72 Resident Evil, 104 Rights regime, 170–171, 189–190, 209 Road, The, 115, 121, 131–139, 159, 160 Robertson, David G., 152 Robinsonade, 10, 63–64 Rocky Horror Picture Show, The, 152 Romero, George A., 129, 189, 190 Roslin, Laura, 86–89 Rowling, J.K., 30–31, 94 Russell, Bertrand, 43 Ryan, Andrew, 109–114 Ryan, Marie Laure, 28, 174 Ryan Kelly, Casey, 151, 159 S St. John Mandel, Emily, 123, 133 Saler, Michael, 157 Sandbox game, 167 Schaffner, Franklin, 4 Schleusener, Simon, 5, 135 Schulzke, Marcus, 102, 116 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 57, 58, 94, 166, 169, 176–178, 181 SciFi Pulse, 94 Scott, Ridley, 57 Scott, Suzanne, 93 Second Life, 74 Sega, 167 Self-publishing, 123, 125–127, 132 September 11 attacks, 11–12, 52, 77–90, 96, 186, 191, 210 Seriality, 12, 52, 79, 191–193 Seuling, Phil, 192

 INDEX    

219

Shelley, Mary, 4 Sherlock, 92, 179 Shirky, Clay, 15 Silent Spring, 42 Sixth Sense, The, 47 Skopal, Pavel, 72 Skynet, 167 Smartt Bell, Madison, 132 Smith, Adam, 62 Smith, Philip, 136 Smith, Will, 57–59, 63, 68, 71, 80 Sollazzo, Erica, 135 Sony, 24, 25, 103 Soprano, Tony, 81 Sorcher, Rob, 81 Space Wars, 101 Spengemann, William, 48 Spielberg, Steven, 90 Spitz, Mark, 135, 136 Square Enix, 104 Stand, The, 64 Star Trek, 82, 94, 136 Star Wars, 8, 27, 94, 104, 174, 208 Station Eleven, 133–138 Stephan, Matthias, 89 Stewart, George, 4 Straley, Bruce, 115 Stratton, Jon, 186 Strombeck, Andrew, 135 Strozier, Charles, 84 Sugg, Katherine, 5, 186 Survivalism, 143–161 Swift, Jonathan, 122 SyFy Channel, 82, 83

Thompson, Mark, 32 Thon, Jan-Noël, 174 Tie-in novels, 32, 73, 123, 127, 128 Time Warner, 22, 24–27, 73–74, 188 Tomb Raider, 104 Topos, 187, 194, 197, 200, 202, 210 Tosca, Susana, 187 Trans-integrity dilemma, 29, 30, 59, 101, 208 Transmedia bridging, 92, 201, 209 Transmedia localisation, 73–74, 190, 209 Transmedia producer, 32 Trekkies, 145 Turteltaub, John, 80 Tuveson, Ernest L., 43 21st Century Fox, 22, 24–28

T Telltale Games, 198, 199, 201 Terminator, 13, 94, 127, 165–182, 188, 194, 199, 209 Theory of Mind (ToM), 133 Third-person shooter, 168

W Wagon Train, 78 Walking Dead, The, 8–13, 74, 77, 82, 127, 137, 160, 185–203, 210 War of the Worlds, The, 20 War on Terror, 11, 78, 83, 87, 90, 96

U Ubisoft, 102–103 Ulysses, 133 Unbalanced transmedia, 101 Utopia-dystopia, 10, 64, 67, 157, 190, 197, 210 V Vajna, Andrew, 170, 177 Valerii, Sharon, 86–89 Varieties of Religious Experience, The, 83 Vermeulen, Pieter, 135 Viacom, 24, 25 Voltaire, 78

220  

INDEX

Wead, Doug, 84 Wealth of Nations, The, 62 Weissmann, Nick, 149 Welles, Orson, 20 Western genre, 10, 60, 99–101 White, Walter, 81 Whitehead, Colson, 122, 123, 133, 135, 136 Williams, Andrew, 5, 194, 195 Williams, Evan Calder, 187 Willis, Chris, 15, 16 Wire, The, 79 Wolf, Mark J.P., 8, 94 Wolfenstein 3D, 167 Wool, 125–127 World of Warcraft, 103 World War Z, 123, 128–131, 159 Worldbuilding, 7, 8, 12, 28, 32, 73, 101–103, 117, 128, 172, 174, 175, 179, 180, 208 arc, 110 Writer’s Guild Association, 33, 91 Wyndham, John, 61

X X-Men, 27 X-Philes, 145 Y Yeats, W.B., 122 Z Zarek, Tom, 93 Žižek, Slavoj, 148, 149 Zombie, 5, 8, 61, 80, 160, 161, 208–210 novels, 122, 128–131, 137 video games, 100, 115–117 See also Darkseekers; Walking Dead, The Zombie Experiences, 202 Zombie Strippers, 135, 190 Zombie Survival Guide, The, 129–131, 185 Zone One, 122, 133–137