Consuming the White Terror: Transmedia Adaptation and Franchise-Building of Detention

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the Taiwanese video game Detention (Fanxiao 返校, 2017) and its namesake film and television series adaptations, each of which has achieved critical acclaim and commercial success. Despite the franchise’s preoccupation with the history of the White Terror, this article argues that the video game’s theme of “memory as remedy” – a crucial discourse in the quest for transitional justice in contemporary Taiwan – has been diluted rather than preserved in the process of transmedia adaptation and franchise-building. Through a close-playing of the game and close-readings of the film and TV series, I demonstrate that the transmedia development of Detention is not always unified and coordinated, but rather filled with contradictions and incongruities that lead to the displacement of historical trauma. These divergent narratives reveal how the White Terror remains contested terrain in contemporary Taiwan. Dominated by the managerial logic of media franchising, a confluence of social, political, and economic factors has made Detention a unique case for contemplating transmedia storytelling in the age of convergence culture.