Table Of ContentTransmediating the
Whedonverse(s)
Essays on Texts, Paratexts, and Metatexts
Edited by
Juliette C. Kitchens · Julie L. Hawk
Transmediating the Whedonverse(s)
Juliette C. Kitchens · Julie L. Hawk
Editors
Transmediating
the Whedonverse(s)
Essays on Texts, Paratexts, and Metatexts
Editors
Juliette C. Kitchens Julie L. Hawk
Department of Writing and Department of English
Communication The University of West Georgia
Nova Southeastern University Carrollton, USA
Fort Lauderdale, FL, USA
ISBN 978-3-030-24615-0 ISBN 978-3-030-24616-7 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-24616-7
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F
oreword
I first encountered the work of Joss Whedon after coming home late one
evening and catching the first episode of Angel on the UK’s Channel 4
in the autumn of 2000. The show had debuted in the USA a year earlier
and already had an airing in the UK on the subscription-only satellite
television channel Sky One, so I was considerably behind both interna-
tional and UK-based audiences in terms of my viewing experience. To
my shame, I had never paid much attention to Buffy the Vampire Slayer,
but, after quickly becoming hooked on Angel, I began catching up
with BtVS’s fourth season as it aired on BBC2 throughout the end of
2000 and into 2001. Narratively, the so-called Buffyverse had sequen-
tially expanded into its spin-off series Angel, but, for me, the journey was
quite different. Encountering Angel before watching its parent series,
I had three seasons of BtVS to catch up on in order to make sense of
some of the intertwining storylines and crossovers in episodes such as
“I Will Remember You” and “Five by Five,” as well as getting to better
know the characters of Angel, Cordelia, Faith, and Wesley. If we read
these two series as the origin of the transmedia Whedonverse, my trajec-
tory was not one of engaging with what writers such as Henry Jenkins
and Suzanne Scott referred to as the “mothership” of transmediality (in
this case, BtVS) but rather its first spin-off or transmedia text in Angel.
I could enjoy Angel on its own terms but to fully understand the world
that Whedon and his collaborators were building, I had to engage with
the originating series.
v
vi FOREWORD
As I avidly tuned in to BtVS and Angel in the UK (tolerating the
heavy-handed editing of the episodes, the almost constant movement
around the Channel 4 schedules for Angel, and the fact that their air-
ing on two different channels meant that key crossover episodes didn’t
quite line up), the concept of transmedia was still some years away from
being clearly academically defined. However, media franchises and texts
were already engaging in acts of world-building and narrative expansion
in their storytelling; indeed, the concept of transmediality has a much
longer history than the more recent flagship examples of transmedia sto-
rytelling such as the Star Wars franchise, the Marvel Cinematic Universe,
and Doctor Who (especially in its post-2005 incarnation) would have us
believe (see Freeman, Historicising Transmedia Storytelling). Given the
breadth of his work in the twenty-one years since BtVS’s televisions
series debuted, we can add Joss Whedon’s works to the emerging canon
of transmedia storytelling, as they continue to thrive and expand across
texts, media forms, and platforms.
While academic work has approached the linkages between texts
within the Whedonverse in individual essays and conference papers (not
least at the bi-annual conference of the Whedon Studies Association
and in its journal Slayage), this volume is the first to put the concept
of transmediality at its forefront, exploring this from both the perspec-
tive of audiences and fans and the industry that produces such texts. As
a scholar who situates themself within the tradition of audience and fan
studies, the efforts undertaken by fans of Whedon and his texts continue
to be of particular interest to me. As this collection ably demonstrates,
it is the labor of audiences and fans that often works to bring elements
of Whedon’s creations together, offering crossovers via the creation of
fanfiction, artwork, and other mash-ups which enable fans to identify and
create moments of possible interrelation. As we are often reminded in
scholarly work, the audience is key to transmediality and convergence
culture since “consumers are encouraged to seek out new information
and make connections among dispersed media content” and both pro-
ducers and consumers work to “co-construct transmedia narratives, story
worlds and frames for engagement.” Here we see the importance of the
interplay between creators, fans, and other members of contemporary
participatory cultures, reminding us that Whedon was an early adopter
of the opportunities that the Internet presented for creators of media
texts to converse with fans. In my own first encounters with BtVS and
Angel fandom in the early 2000s (while struggling with dial-up Internet
FOREWORD vii
and what now look like very basic Web sites and message boards), I was
astonished to see the level of interactivity that was possible via online
sites and forums. Looking back from a scholarly perspective, these con-
versations between creators and fans, and also among fans, offered the
seeds of many of the ways in which we now see such relationships culti-
vated across a range of transmedia texts and story worlds (even if, as in
the example of recent Star Wars fandom, these relationships can quickly
turn sour when sections of a fandom disagree with a creator’s vision).
The loyalty that these early interactions, and Whedon’s apparent
accessibility for fans, engendered can surely be seen as the root of the
fannish support for the projects he was unable to see through to fruition
in their original forms. The clearest example of this is the cancellation
of Firefly after just fifteen episodes (some of which were never aired by
FOX during its original run); without ardent fan support, which man-
ifested itself in both vocal online outrage and high sales of the series’
DVD box set, the Firefly ‘verse is unlikely to have been resurrected for
the big screen in Serenity. In my own previous work on the concept of
“Post-Object Fandom,” Whedon’s texts were frequently cited by fans
as being key examples of their continued engagement with a series after
the ending of its official televisual run of episodes. Equally, as noted
in many of the chapters in this collection, Whedon’s texts do not die;
instead, they live on in their post-object periods via fan interpretations
and discussion, the creation of fanfiction and other texts, and a complex
web of transmediality including both direct narrative extensions (in, e.g.,
comics and novelizations or in the recently announced reboot of Buffy
the Vampire Slayer, as discussed in the Conclusion) or the web of inter-
textual links to other media objects. As shows such as BtVS and Angel
live on through the medium of comic books, which Whedon himself has
worked on and sanctioned as official, the question of the canonicity of
transmedia worlds—of what “counts”—inevitably rears its head. As the
narratives of many of Whedon’s creations continue outside of their orig-
inal forms, how do we read their relationship to these? As the editors
note in the Conclusion, in some readings, “Whedon himself is relatively
inconsequential to the life of the Whedonverse(s)” since the “transme-
dial structure [of the texts] creates an erasure that sustains Whedon-as-
memory through the embodied object not only of the narrative, but
also the paratextual narratives.” Even in the potential erasure of Whedon
himself, however, it is worth paying attention to how official transmedia
texts such as comics offer opportunities for multiple possible storylines
viii FOREWORD
and futures, or how a new series of these may challenge or rework a pre-
vious narrative. For some fans in particular, the sanction of Whedon’s
authority or approval of a transmedia text may continue to be crucial
to their responses to it, and we must consider how this complicates and
expands the Whedonverse, and our existing understandings of its charac-
ters and stories.
Another of the most intriguing elements of Whedon’s transme-
dia approach is his use of the same actors—a practice discussed in the
Introduction—which allows for intertextual readings between differ-
ent texts and the potential for understanding his various works as pieces
within a broader tapestry. Thus, in contrast to the MCU or Star Wars
universes—which expand their narratives and stories across media forms
but which are resolutely situated within the same world—the notion of
the Whedonverse(s) offers a unique chance to explore and understand
how transmediality operates under the umbrella of a set of specifically
authored texts. While Whedon does not work alone, as chapters in this
collection attest, his status as an auteur figure has been well analyzed in
previous academic work, even as his reputation (both professional and
personal) has faltered in more recent years.
Indeed, while detailed discussion falls outside of the scope of the
chapters in this collection, it is crucial to consider how Whedon’s move
from celebrated feminist auteur toward occupying a more complex and
complicated position in relation to debates around gender and sexual-
ity may impact upon how we read his transmedia universe. After a series
of events including leaving Twitter (albeit temporarily) after accusations
of sexism in his treatment of the character of Black Widow in Marvel’s
Avengers: Age of Ultron and, even more damningly, allegations of infidel-
ity and emotional abuse by his former wife in 2017, Whedon’s status as a
progressive, feminist ally was called into question. Compounded further
by unfavorable responses to his leaked draft of a script for DC’s Wonder
Woman movie and outcry regarding his involvement with a Batgirl film
(a project he exited in February 2018), there is scope to consider how
readings across transmedia products and texts that depend largely on the
presence of an auteur figure such as Whedon may be challenged when
the reputation of that author alters. Exploration of how readings predi-
cated on exploration of gender and sexuality, as in BtVS and Dollhouse for
instance, may be impacted by changes in the perception of Whedon as a
person, offers fruitful avenues for further work on the Whedonverse(s),
a discussion already being taken up at recent Slayage conferences.
From the perspective of the audience too—and as noted above,
FOREWORD ix
Whedon’s work has certainly had a dedicated and large fanbase—how
does it feel when one begins to question loyalty to the expansive sto-
ryworlds of a creator figure? How do our responses to the texts created
by such a figure shift and change as we move into moments of what
Jonathan Gray terms “anti-fandom” where we may take up more critical
and sometimes outright negative standpoints? For my own part, I have
found myself ever more resistant to rewatching and engaging with the
series I once loved so much; there are clear questions here about how we
separate the art or the text from the creator, questions that have become
ever more apparent given recent cultural shifts and debates around the
#metoo movement and revelations about the behavior and character of
many previously celebrated and respected media figures. Linked to this,
given the relatively high number of what Henry Jenkins calls “aca-fans”
(those academics who identify as fans of the texts they study) working
on Whedon, we can also call into question the academic interrogations
that a change in opinion or perspective toward a transmedia auteur like
Whedon might offer. Considering how we balance the personal, and
our own experiences as scholars, and the broader implications of these
debates offers another unique opportunity to explore how reading trans-
media texts and universes can highlight the interplay between users,
audiences, and professionals, in this case scholars and academics.
Equally, as Whedon works with pre-existing brands and franchises, it
is of interest to explore how the needs and demands of these intersect
with his own vision for his storytelling. As the pull between the com-
mercial demands of studios such as Marvel and one’s own ideas for nar-
ratives and characters development continue to coexist, to what extent
can we continue to really view works such as The Avengers or Age of
Ultron as part of the Whedonverse? As transmedia storytelling contin-
ues to offer lucrative opportunities for merchandising and marketing,
we cannot overlook the tension between creativity and commerce and
the challenges that reading a shared Whedonverse through a sole author
figure generates. Furthermore, having spoken about his own issues
in managing this tension on Age of Ultron, how might Whedon’s sub-
sequent involvement in the DC Comics Universe (via his work on the
Justice League movie) further complicate these questions? As he works
for different taskmasters with their own narrative, aesthetic, and mar-
keting requirements, how might Whedon’s future projects force us to
again reconsider how we understand the Whedonverse(s) in all its forms?
The nature of contemporary transmediality forces us to consider these
questions and to challenge some of the long-held assumptions around
x FOREWORD
authorship, creativity, and control. This collection offers a compel-
ling starting point for exploring some of these issues in the depth that
Whedon’s work demands and deserves.
Cardiff, UK Rebecca Williams
BiBliography
Freeman, Matthew. Historicising Transmedia Storytelling: Early Twentieth-
Century Transmedia Story Worlds. London: Routledge, 2016.
Gray, Jonathan. “New Audiences, New Textualities: Anti-fans and Non-fans.”
International Journal of Cultural Studies 6, no. 1 (2003): 64–81.
Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New
York: New York University Press, 2006.
Jenkins, Henry. “How to Break Out of the Academic Ghetto.” Confessions of an
Aca-Fan (blog), July 12, 2006. http://henryjenkins.org/2006/07/how_to_
break_out_of_the_academ.html. Accessed 8 June 2018.
Scott, Suzanne. “Who’s Steering the Mothership? The Role of the Fanboy
Auteur in Transmedia Storytelling.” In The Participatory Cultures Handbook,
edited by Aaron Delwiche and Jennifer Jacobs Henderson, 43–52. New York:
Routledge, 2013.
Stein, Louisa Ellen, and Kristina Busse. “Introduction: The Literary, Televisual
and Digital Adventures of the Beloved Detective.” In Sherlock and
Transmedia Fandom: Essays on the BBC Series, edited by Louisa Ellen Stein
and Kristina Busse, 9–24. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2012.
Williams, Rebecca. Post-Object Fandom: Television, Identity, and Self-Narrative.
London: Bloomsbury, 2015.
Rebecca Williams is a Senior Lecturer in Communication, Cultural and Media
Studies at the University of South Wales, UK. She is the author of Post-Object
Fandom: Television, Identity and Self-Narrative (2015) and has been published
in Critical Studies in Television, Continuum, Media History, Journal of British
Cinema and Television, Popular Music and Society, Television and New Media,
Series: International Journal of TV Serial Narratives, and Cinema Journal.
