Who’s Steering the Mothership? The Role of the Fanboy Auteur in Transmedia Storytelling

Abstract

Defi ned by Henry Jenkins ( 2007 ) as “a process where integral elements of a fi ction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unifi ed and coordinated entertainment experience,” transmedia storytelling has been celebrated by media scholars as a narrative model that promotes collaborative authorship and participatory spectatorship. But there is something paradoxical about transmedia storytelling, beginning with dual emphasis on dispersal and unifi cation in Jenkins’s defi nition. Transmedia stories are defi ned by their ability to expand: they expand and enrich a fi ctional universe, they expand across media platforms, and they empower an expansive fan base by promoting collective intelligence as a consumption strategy. However, transmedia storytelling is also a product of industrial consolidation and conglomeration, with the fl ow of content across platforms mirroring the “economic logic of a horizontally integrated entertainment industry” (Jenkins, 2006 , p. 96). Transmedia stories, or at least the majority created by the mainstream media industry that I will be focusing on in this essay, produce a consolidated canon of “offi cial” texts that frequently discourage or discredit unauthorized expansion or speculation by fans. The danger here is that, despite transmedia stories’ collaborative narrative design, the media industry frequently equates fans’ “participation” with their continuous consumption of texts that narratively and fi nancially supplement a franchise.