Monstrueuse convergence ? Penny Dreadful, ou la littérature à l’épreuve de la transmédialité

TV Series

关键词: gothic;    convergence;    transmedia;    literature;    spectrality;    Penny Dreadful;   

DOI  :  10.4000/tvseries.2162

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Although it was labelled a monster mash upon its release, Penny Dreadful (Showtime, 2014) offers a subtle combination of literature and film. Indeed, the series strangely blends Shakespeare with The Exorcist, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with The Phantom of the Opera, The Picture of Dorian Gray with An American Werewolf in London. Above all, the show stands out for the way it distorts the literary plots on which it is based. To name but one example, the series alters the Frankenstein myth by having the protagonist create two monsters rather than one: Caliban and Proteus. The show thus turns mythical characters into protean beings who brashly stray from their literary models, as they get closer and closer to their filmic versions. This puzzling strategy does not merely confirm that adaptation fidelity is an obsolete concept: it encourages viewers to consider the impact of contemporary convergence culture and of transmedia storytelling on literature. In this paper, I analyze Penny Dreadful as a metacultural reflection that aims to define the place of literature in the context of contemporary media. In particular, I argue that the show’s array of literary features serves to identify the ways in which literature may re-emerge, to conclude that the spectrality of literature has become essential to fiction in all its forms, and therefore to literature itself.

【 授权许可】

Unknown