Transmediality

The quality of transmediality applies to a great variety of different phenomena. Transmedial phenomena can occur on the content level, for instance in the form of myths or legends that have become part of a culture and lost their connection to any specific medium. They can also be formal devices that are present in various media, or characteristic aesthetics and traits of a given historical period.^[8]

The vampire is a mythical creature that frequently appears in many different media nowadays, such as literature (e.g. Interview With the Vampire), film (e.g. Dark Shadows), TV series (e.g. Buffy the Vampire Slayer), or comic books (e.g. American Vampire). The vampires in these stories are not adapted from one story in a specific medium; the vampire myth has become common cultural knowledge. Although the vampire myth can be traced back to south-eastern European legends, and Bram Stoker’s Dracula has greatly influenced the modern idea of the vampire, the vampire myth is not connected to or adapted from one specific source medium anymore and can therefore be considered transmedial.

A basic formal device and mode of representation which is clearly transmedial is narrativity.^[9] Humans permanently use narratives to express themselves, and therefore, narratives can not only be found in obviously narrative media such as literature or film, but also, to a certain extent, in paintings or even music.

The culture of sensibility had a great impact on Western Europe in the eighteenth century, and its characteristic traits, most importantly the celebration and expression of emotions such as love, care, and pity, can be seen in different kinds of media and are not connected to any specific medium.^[10] Some examples are fiction (e.g. Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded by Samuel Richardson), drama (e.g. The Conscious Lovers by Richard Steele), painting (e.g. Le Fils Ingrat by Jean-Baptiste Greuze) or music (e.g. Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach).

In narratology and new media studies, the term transmediality is frequently used to refer to the concept of transmedia storytelling, which was coined by Henry Jenkins in 2006. Transmedia storytelling is the technique of unfolding a story across multiple media platforms, “with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole.”^[11] This is often done, for instance, by extending the story of a film in a computer game or TV series.

Less frequently, the term transmediality is also simply defined as ”the state of being represented in multiple media.”^[12] By this definition, any content which occurs in more than one medium is transmedial, which includes adaptations.

For some scholars, the term expresses the process of the transfer of content from an origin medium to a target medium, the transition from one media specific expression to another.^[13]