The Social Text
“The
one will kill the other…. It was the presentiment that human thought, in
changing its form, would also change its mode of expression; that the leading
idea of each generation would no longer be written with the same material in
the same fashion” (Hugo 169-170).
One of my first
experiences with literature and digital media came when I listened to Moby Dick by Herman Melville on
audiobook. I had never read the book
before, and admittedly, some points hard to get through, but I enjoyed
listening to it nonetheless. Parts where
I felt like I would have glanced over with my eyes, I could hear and connect it
with other parts of the book. The
narrator’s voice was engaging and helped bring the story to life in a way that
reading the book would not have done. I
felt like I had a valid experience with Moby
Dick even though I experienced it in a nontraditional format.
In an English
class I took, my professor was looking for someone who had read Moby Dick. No one said anything except myself saying I
had listened to the audiobook. My
professor scoffed at me saying that “did not count”. Now, it is an indisputable fact that reading
the actual, textual volume of Moby Dick
is not the primary medium in which most people experience that work of
literature; my professor had not even read or listened to Moby Dick. Yet, the fact
that I had listened to the book instead was viewed as subservient to reading
it. The truth is, my professor had a point. There are things the reader gets from a
textual edition of a work that does not come from the audio; however, just as
this is true, the inverse is also true.
My experience with
Moby Dick was an authentic experience
of the text even though it was not in the traditional fashion. The world is increasingly experiencing
literature through multimedia, and that is not a bad thing. The world of the traditional primary text is
being replaced via digital media by what I will call a “social text”.
What I mean by a social text is two fold: one, it is social because a work of
literature cannot be read isolated from other people (posting on Goodreads,
Facebook, Twitter, texting about a work, etc.), and two, a text is social in
that it cannot be isolated from other mediums (films, plays, translations,
audiobooks, etc.). A medium is defined
in its simplest terms as “that which remediates,” or in more detail “that which
appropriates the techniques, forms, and social significance of other media and
attempts to rival or refashion them in the name of the real” (Bolter 65). Multimedia is the social application of the
traditional primary text, and it is this age that we have entered. Without the social proof, such as posting
pictures on Facebook, we even doubt the completion of the experience. This trend has extended into the literary
canon as it is closely linked now to a medium canon, creating a new
conglomeration of a socialized canon. Furthermore,
it is the social text that provides validity and authenticity to our
experiences within and without a literary work.
My
paper began as a critique of the different mediums through which The Hunchback of Notre Dame is portrayed
and how that enhanced one’s experience when he or she read the story, but as I
did my research, and delved more and more into the intricacies of the uses of
these different mediums and how they interacted with one another, I noticed
some much more interesting trends.
While
it may have been most common for people to experience a book, then want to see
the movie, or more recently, to see the movie then read the book, in most
recent cases, it is increasingly the case that we experience many different
media in our exploration of a piece of literature.
It is common now
for people to have read a work of literature in eBook format downloaded onto
their Kindle or Nook, or to have listened to the audiobook version from
Librivox. Many people’s first experience
with a work of literature came first from reading a summary on an online
resource like Sparknotes, seeing the play or movie adaptation, or perhaps
reading a graphic novel or children’s book adaptation. Some people are first exposed to an
adaptation of these kinds through social media sites like YouTube. The way that people experience literature in
today’s world is very much affected by digital media versions of a particular
work.
The digital age
has revolutionized the way that people interact with literature by widening its
sphere of influence through various mediums.
The presence of digital media has created an age dominated by a social
text. A separate medium can become so
naturalized that it is seen as the primary medium. There is no way to read any work of
literature in isolation anymore. The
various mediums act as modems to spread the textual work abroad to larger and
larger audiences. These factors have
created an appendage to the literary canon, a format canon that has started to
gain a hierarchy in itself by ranking the various mediums. The necessity to incorporate the various digital
media resources in the study of literature is becoming more and more
apparent. Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame gives
examples of how this revolution of mediums has happened before and how to
visualize the changes occurring to the study of literature due to the digital
age.
Victor Hugo
describes in detail the cathedral of Notre Dame, which is the focus of the
novel. He describes the archdeacon’s
anxiety that “the one will kill the other” meaning that the printing press will
kill architecture. Hugo describes this
transformation when he says “that the book of stone, so solid and so enduring,
must make way for the book of papers still more solid and enduring” (170). The
Hunchback of Notre Dame is set in 1482, at the heart of the transition between
the middle ages and the Renaissance. The
Gutenberg printing press has emerged and is gaining power that competes with
the power of the church:
“Human thought
discovered a means of perpetuation, not only more durable and more resisting
than architecture, but also simpler and easier.
Architecture was dethroned…. The invention of printing was the greatest
event in history…. It was the renewed and renovated form of expression of
humanity; it is human thought laying off one form and assuming another” (176).
At the heart of all this revolution
and recreation is the transformation of mediums.
Most people would
consider the physical book of The
Hunchback of Notre Dame to be the primary text. There is a discrepancy with this assumption,
however, because the book actually started as Notre Dame de Paris, in French.
The English translation, The
Hunchback of Notre Dame is actually a secondary text to that one. There are discrepancies between the French
text and the English translation because all the cultural nuances can never be
translated fully across language. This
is made apparent by the discrepancies among the various English
translations. For example, the second
chapter of the fifth book in Notre Dame
de Paris is entitled “Ceci Tuera Cela.”
In the audiobook English translation read by Mark Nelson, translates
this chapter to be “This Will Kill That”; however, in the textual, Barnes and
Noble edition, “Ceci Tuera Cela” translates as “The One Will Kill the
Other.” Now, arguably, these two
translations vary little in meaning, but the fact still stands that the
translations obviously vary depending on the translator.
My experience
reading The Hunchback of Notre Dame
brought me to this conclusion. I had not
realized that when I prided myself in loving what I considered the original,
primary text, that it was in fact not the primary text at all.
If we take this
reasoning, of varying primary texts, out a little farther, the book itself is a
textual medium to the actual cathedral in Paris. So really, by the time one reads the English
translation, what would generally be known as a primary text, he or she has
been exposed to at least three different mediums of the same subject. It goes to show in the case of the English
translation, that a secondary, or even tertiary, medium can become so
naturalized that it is accepted as a primary text.
To bring this point a little
close to home, take as another example, the American antebellum novel Gone With the Wind by Margaret
Mitchell. When
most people think of Gone With
the Wind, they do not think of the original text. They immediately
envision the iconic embrace between Rhett and Scarlett of the 1939 movie with
the charismatic Clark Gable and captivating Vivien Leigh. In fact, there are people having critical discussions
about Gone With the Wind,
but not in reference to the book,
in reference to the movie.
The movie is their first,
and most likely only, impression of
the story of Gone With the Wind, and
it colors their perception of the book when and if they actually read it. Even those who did read the novel to begin
with can hardly expect to talk about it with any number of people without
referencing the movie. In this case, the movie has dominated the text.
In a sense, it has become the primary text. Few people read the
book and watch the movie in that order. It is the movie that persuades
people to tackle the massive textual edition.
This demonstrates a very important digital principle: no one can read in isolation. Reading is no longer, as Harold Bloom
puts it, “a lonely activity” (226). It is not just about the book anymore. In order to have a discussion, thoroughly or
otherwise, of a piece of literature with any number of people, one has to have
experienced or at least been exposed to it through these several different
mediums.
There are several
parallels that can be drawn from the detailed image Hugo presents of the Notre
Dame cathedral in comparison with the world of digital media today. Take the cathedral to represent the actual,
physical textual work. As the single,
primary medium, one would have to go to Paris in order to experience it. By limiting oneself to one medium, it is like
being limited to Paris when in actuality, it is possible to experience the
piece of literature in the comfort of one’s own home, or anywhere else in the
world for that matter. They are these
other mediums that open the literary work to the rest of the world. That is the beauty of the digital world. It makes interests, such as literature,
accessible to people all over the world.
Not only through, for example a movie, can the world of literature be
brought to more and more audiences of the same cultural sphere, but also those
movies can be translated into other languages, or even take on certain
attributes of distant cultures that make the story pertinent to those
audiences. Language, cultural,
geographic, and special interest barriers disappear when it comes to digital
media.
For example, take
one of the most beloved and widely acclaimed Western pieces of literature, Jane
Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. This story has been translated into a number
of languages, and has had been the framework for more than one movie
adaptation. In 2004, Pride and Prejudice was taken by
Bollywood and made into the Indian musical movie version, Bride and Prejudice. Now, of
course the accuracy of the movie to the story is another topic entirely, but
what stands is that now the story of Pride
and Prejudice has been taken to a very wide audience who love Indian dance,
music, and drama. These people may never
have been interested in reading the English textual edition of a nineteenth
century British romantic novel, but now they can get the same story but in a
way that sparks their own interests.
Perhaps then, having been exposed to the story in that way, one of these
Bollywood aficionados would be interested in reading Pride and Prejudice. See how
that works? By adapting the original
novel into another medium, the same story gets circulated in many different ways
to a much larger group of people.
In my own
experience, it has often been other mediums of a text that brought me to the
text in the first place, or back to the text had I already read it. For example, I read The Hunchback of Notre Dame in ninth grade and have always
remembered loving the story, mostly because I would get into critical
discussions about it with people who had not enjoyed the book as I did. Just recently, years later, I found the
musical adaptation of Notre Dame de Paris. I fell in love with it. Watching clips of it on YouTube, hearing the
music and seeing the story unfold visually in that way brought me back to the
work, and I read it again if only to compare it with the musical. I have contacted another who had a similar
experience. Jess Nalbandian, the founder
of the Hunchblog, came to the book because she too fell in love with the
musical. The difference in our
experience lies in the fact that she had not originally read the book. It was the musical that sparked her interest
and persuaded her to read the book in order to compare the two. Arguably, her primary text is first the
musical because that is to what she based her interest and in what light she
read the book (personal communication).
All these mediums play different roles and color the way we experience
the story as a whole. Each of them
serving in their own way as a primary text, depending in which light they are
placed and to what purpose they are trying to serve.
This brings us
into the canon. A medium canon has
arisen closely linked and intertwined with the literary canon. Together, they have created a social textual
canon, a combined primary medium. Though
a medium canon would be considered by most literary scholastics to be
subservient to the literary canon, it still exists and it is the topic of many
critical discussions.
If we now move
into the dynamics of that canon, we see a hierarchy not only of literature to
digital medium, but among the digital mediums themselves. Let us revert back to our Pride and Prejudice example. When most people think of Pride and Prejudice not in direct
reference to the book, they think of the five hour-long A&E movie
adaptation, which is spoken about in and of the fact that it is so long. In discussion, many Pride and Prejudice fans would swear by the A&E movie
version. No other movie adaptation is a
valid depiction of the story. The
A&E movie with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle is Pride and Prejudice. The Keira Knightly version, the Pink Bible
version, and Bride and Prejudice are
all disregarded. Many people get very
passionate in their defense of that A&E version, but hold on a minute. Is not even the A&E version secondary to
the actual novel? Critical discussion
surrounds that movie as they compare medium to medium without reference to the
novel whatsoever. Does this alone not
signify the validity of digital mediums as primary texts?
Digital media has
changed the way we approach, experience, and study literature. We have entered an age of the social text,
where one is not and cannot be the dominant medium of experiencing a literary
work. We cannot read in isolation. It is therefore essential to bring digital
media into the classroom. Incorporating
digital media into the English classroom will help us study literature more
effectively. It is true, there is
something lost if the text is cut out, but that is why it is so important to
study the social text, with the literary work at the core that links this
closely knit conglomeration of mediums. The
other mediums bring many additional levels of information, expression, and
emotion that add to the literary work. By
bringing the other mediums into the classroom such as Sparknotes, movie
adaptations, audiobooks, etc. (mediums the students experience despite any
classroom discussion) and incorporating them into the critical discussion
around the novel itself would put those other mediums into the proper light as
they relate to the book and to each other.
These are the primary mediums through which students will experience
literature, and so together, they could all be studied as the primary texts in
the social text. Just as the cathedral
was a communal gathering place and was constructed of various mediums (stain
glass windows, gargoyles, engravings, etc.), the digital world, as Dr. Kathryn
M. Grossman says, “links texts and contexts” (483) providing a social outlet
that connects all these different digital mediums. Not only does studying the various mediums
bring more into the discussion of the textual work, but it addresses the
condition of the digital age where there is no dominant medium. It is necessary to study the social text in
order to study literature in the role it plays.
Exposing oneself to all the different mediums makes the literary work
more than just a book; it becomes an entire experience to be seen and
felt. It does not do in this digital age
to limit oneself to the confines of Paris when one can experience the entire
world.
Thank you to Dr.
Gideon Burton, and my cohort: Emily
Coleman, and Whitney Simons for their general contribution to the cohesion and
comprehension of this paper.
Works Cited
Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation:
Understanding New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999. Print.
Bloom, Harold. "Elegiac Conclusion." Falling Into
Theory. By David H. Richter. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2000. 254-233.
Print.
Burton,
Gideon. Personal Interview. 23 May 2012.
Coleman,
Emily and Whitney Simons. Personal
Interview. 22 May 2012.
Grossman,
Kathryn M. "From Classic to Pop Icon: Popularizing Hugo." JSTOR.
American Association of Teachers of French, Feb. 2001. Web. 19 May 2012.
<http://www.jstor.org/stable/399430>.
Hugo, Victor, and Isabel Roche. The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004. Print.
I loved reading through the chat stream and commenting on questions people would pose. It was gratifying to get thanks from people as I posted links and comments. The idea of having my face on so many people's screens when I presented was a little terrifying, but once we got rolling, it was actually a lot of fun. I even voluntarily went back and spoke again on my ideas of social proof. 
