Pass the Source: social media, podcasting and sympatric adaptation.
Authors: Berger, R.
Conference: Adaptation Beyond Film
Dates: 3 June 2024
Abstract:For two decades, scholars have been using a number of terms to describe texts that sit outside the source/target text dyad: in 2004, Thomas Leitch used the term ‘post-literary adaptation’ to describe films that were not derived from a novel or a play; in 2010 Jonathan Gray termed the tangential material that circulates around a popular media franchise as ‘paratexts’ and in 2013, Henry Jenkins wrote about narratives that ‘spread’ across different, but related, media platforms. All of these phenomena were ‘beyond film’.
Historically, adaptation has operated across a hierarchy which privileged literary sources. In time, cinema moved up into this sphere as television and then videogames adjoined as viable source material for adaptations. More recently, however, and with the rise of social media from 2006, we are seeing a new trend where YouTube channels, Tik Tok accounts and podcasts, are being reverse engineered into books, television series and even live theatrical performances – here a literary text is often the end of the process, not the beginning.
For example, the Good Reads website currently lists 129 books based on YouTube channels; it even organises this list into genre, including ‘fiction and drama’. Danny Robins’ Uncanny podcast has been streamed over five million times and has been ‘adapted’ into a TV series, a book and a theatrical performance. The ‘confession’ Twitter/X account, Fesshole, has over one million followers and has ‘spread’ to two bestselling books and the theatrical version is currently touring the UK. The acclaimed BBC comedy series People Just Do Nothing and Things You Should Have Done all began as YouTube channels and Tik Tok accounts, respectively. What makes this phenomenon unique, is that content for these social media accounts is often provided by the users of the platform; these adaptations’ own audiences are their source material.
This paper will use the term ‘sympatric’ adaptation to describe the ways in which participants in social media spaces, have their content and contributions reworked into narrative forms, which are then deployed into literary works and live theatrical performances. Many of these adaptations are focused on either the supernatural, true crime or humour genres. Increasingly, as social media platforms mature, book publishers are turning to podcast fiction; while some authors, like Edward J. Brink (Wolf 359) self-publish on Amazon, Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor’s Welcome to the Night Vale podcast, is now an acclaimed literary novel published by Harper Collins - with a writer/producer from Breaking Bad working on the television adaptation. This paper will further argue that adaptation is a natural phenomenon, which is increasingly taking place across a flattened hierarchy of media platforms. Furthermore, these new kinds of adaptations, their creation, and their interaction with audiences, mirrors the biological process of ‘speciation’.
Source: Manual