Just a Little Taste: My Paper-in-a-Post

What is the Primary Text?

The digital age opened up the interpretation of literature that has made obsolete our original definition of what makes up a primary text.

            Hugo made the claim that “The one will kill the other.”  That is to say, one medium, in this case the printing press and literature, will kill its predecessor, architecture.  Relate the cathedral of Notre Dame, if you will, to our impression of a primary text.  The cathedral was a symbol for Hugo of adapting mediums from architecture to literature.  That idea is paralleled today by the emergence of the digital age.  Hugo said one would “kill” the other, but that is not the case today.  It is merely the pedestal upon which one medium is universally more preferable than another that has been killed. 

            I have looked at eBooks, graphic novels, audiobooks, children’s, translations, apps, amateur video adaptations, remixes, parodies, derivative stage/musical works, derivative photography/visual arts, kitsch/material culture, commentary, etc., and am convinced that not only do these different mediums give us a different perspective on the original work, they often influence and color our impression either before, during, or after we read the original textual work.  We have several different layers of influence and interpretation available to us now because of the digital age.

            A couple examples of social proof:  Gideon Burton was vastly helpful in taking my original idea, a critique of the influence of different mediums of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and transforming them into an argument that we have come to an age of multiple primary texts.  He said, “In the digital age, we have phenomenon of genres or categories that literature and its various forms [that] get put into (curated lists, discussion forums, etc.) interpretive communities not available before.”

            Christophe Vacher said the animators hadn’t even read the book.  He said they just knew the story from having lived in Paris.  Their interpretation to create an adaptation of the book, never even originated from the book.

            Jess, the founder of The Hunchblog, found the book through the musical.  That medium colored her perception of the book when she read it.

            The digital age has created a world where the idea of the textual work as the primary medium for interpretation is obsolete.  We live in an age of multiple primary texts.  You cannot read in isolation.            The interpretive community has opened up to include a much more varied and vast audience.

            We must examine our perception of the primary text.  The literary canon has opened itself to other medium sources, or there is a medium/format canon being created, a hierarchy is already underway.  So, in the classroom, I think we should start incorporating multimodal adaptations of the works of literature studied, not in a way that would overwhelm, but in a way to get a taste of how that work of literature is being perceived by those not studying it in class.  

Remediation: Isolation and Immediacy

A medium in our culture can never operate in isolation, because it must enter into relationships of respect and rivalry with other media.  There may be or may have been cultures in which a single form of representation (perhaps painting or song [or book]) exists with little or no reference to other media.  Such isolation does not seem possible for us today, when we cannot even recognize the representational power of a medium except with reference to other media (98).

Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Grusin. Remediation. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000. Print.

Remediation by Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin is a little outdated, but many of the ideas presented are pertinent to my research.  These ideas link back to my previous post "You Can't Read In Isolation".

The power that all of these various mediums of communication have generated has competed with the power of the press.  We are no longer in the "Age of the Press".  We belong to the "Age of Media".  

These different mediums have added layers upon layers to our sense of reality.  Bolter and Grusin address the idea that this has, in turn, increased our sense of need for immediacy.  Each layer adds to our immediate perception of a work of literature, and by default, our perception of any given medium.  A blogger put it this way:  "Immediacy is the idea that the viewer desires the medium to be transparent, or that the mode of representation should disappear entirely when viewing the subject."

She goes on to talk about how these mediums are not replacing print, but are enhancing it:  "This is not to say that the old media will disappear, but it will take on new forms to adapt to the demands of the new technologies available to it...Print is still valuable and needed in new media, but it takes on a different representation and a different vehicle of communication when it is incorporated into other modes." 

This is my main argument here.  The past mediums that society has been functioning with are no longer all that is available.  Nor do they have the ability any longer to work separate from the new technologies that have advanced.  The way we perceive and experience literature has changed and adapted to work with the new mediums.  It is not separate from them.  They all have come to work as primary texts, in a given circumstance.  They all operate on the same solar system plane, if you will, with an adaptable center of gravity (post).

Victor Hugo said "This will kill that."  That hasn't been the case, however.  Sure, literature has been kicked off its omnipotent pedestal as the embodiment of all human thought, expression, and emotion, but it has landed into a web that incorporates of all these other mediums that enhance and expand our virtual experience.

Linking Austen and Hugo in the Digital Age

Ok, Whitney Simons's posts about Pride and Prejudice, relationships, and the digital age got me thinking about some of my own ideas with my research on The Hunchback of Notre Dame, namely how these works of classic literature are being represented and retold in the media.  In order to better delve into the ideas behind the media and literature, I watched a bit of the Bollywood movie Bride and Prejudice.

I had anticipated cringing throughout the movie and feeling like it was an insult to Jane Austen's memory to have her work so utterly perverted.  However, because I have become more inculcated into the digital world, and have formed my own ideas about its merit, I actually found myself enjoying it.  Though this rendition doesn't hold a candle to the original, and though you can hardly keep from laughing during the whole of the movie, I kind of liked seeing the general story of Pride and Prejudice taken totally out of it's original context and applied to a world so completely different (i.e. India).  It was fun, colorful, and playful, typical Bollywood.  It gave the original story a fiery, Indian spice to it, and not an unpleasant one at that.

Ok, now, how does that apply to Hunchback?  Well, I have had the same kinds of ideas as I have explored the different ways that The Hunchback of Notre Dame has been infiltrated into different forms of media.  Being a passionate advocate of the original (well, translated) text, I didn't think that I could ever accept the other forms of media's renditions/interpretations of the story if they did not exactly correspond with what I thought.  However, my ideas have changed.

Not only do these different forms of media give a new light into the story itself (both for Hunchback and Pride and Prejudice), but maybe the most important and useful thing these mediums, these "translations" if you will, have done is make these great works of literature more accessible to a larger populous.  Someone may not have any interest in 19th century British customs and traditions (though I can't imagine why), but maybe they have a passion for Indian culture and dance.  Bride and Prejudice may then introduce this person to the original book in a way that would get them excited about reading it, and the same thing goes for the Hunchback.  All these things tie back to one another.  Maybe the digital humanities is not so detrimental to classic literature as I once thought it to be.