Paratext

In a world where the TV screen isn’t the only screen in town, where the tablet, the smartphone and even the good old PC/laptop screen vie for attention, you could expect the TV show industry to do something to hold on to their viewers.

So what did they do? Well, they’ve accepted the reality that the “two-screen experience” (or even more screens) is here to stay. TV shows in the West even ask you to “log on to the show's website and participate in real-time chats and interactive razzle-dazzle”, as this article by Thomas Doherty says. The term for this “decorative wraparound material”? Paratext. The longer definition?

“The paratext is the satellite debris orbiting and radiating out from the core text: what the post-­telecast chatfest Talking Dead is to The Walking Dead, what Madonna-vs.-Lady Gaga mashups are to the original music videos, what Wolverine action figures are to the X-Men franchise—what all the buzzing swarms of trailers, teasers, bloopers, tweets, swag, webisodes, podcasts, chat rooms, fanzines, geek conventions, DVD extras, synergistic tie-ins, and branded merchandise, in all their infinite varieties, are to the mother ship.”

Wait a minute: doesn’t this sound just like an ad? Not so fast, says Doherty:

“To the paratextually minded, commercials are so 20th century.”

So what are the differences? John Caldwell says there are 2 types of paratexts:

“(The) motion-picture trailer from a major studio, say, and the copyright-defying YouTube video that demolishes same. Beware the manipulations of the big-money paratext; celebrate the subversive assault on monolithic entertainment conglomerates by the homemade paratext.”

Put simply, the paratext does not necessarily toe the official party line.

Also, unlike “old-school media scholarship” where “the bits on the periphery were worthy of the critical intelligence only insofar as they illuminated the star attraction”, paratexts “are often as complex and intricate, and as generative of meanings and engagement, as are the films and television shows that they orbit and establish”.

If all this sounds like what literary critics have done for centuries (“attended to secondary material to provide a context, inform a reading, and in general make the meaning of a text richer and more resonant”), here’s the difference:

“Paratextual scholarship is more likely to draw from the fields of economics, technology, and sociology than from the humanities, where residual disciplinary affinities may still privilege the text as the holy of holies.”

Or as Doherty puts it:

“(The paratext is) outshining the prize in the box. The irritating distractions have morphed into the main attractions.”