viz.

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I recently encountered Annenberg Media’s program series, entitled “Invitation to World Literature,” and was pleased to find a television show dealing with literary texts. This presentation of the Odyssey (one episode within a series ranging from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the 1,001 Nights) is surprisingly rare on television—a medium relatively resistant to literature (if we discount the tested format for 19^th c. novels and the "mini-series"). While much of the literature studied in colleges never ends up on television, Salman Rushdie has recently explained to the UK Telegraph that the writing in contemporary television far exceeds that in film (where literary themes are currently in vogue). As an instructor and consumer of English literature, I wondered— how might television possibly adapt or introduce a literary 'canon'?

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Annenberg media’s “Invitation to World Literature” summarizes famous texts from the perspective of several commentators, who each represent a different way of approaching the printed book. In the initial clip above, we hear the Odyssey likened to a comic book (“Superman”), a movie (“Wizard of Oz”), and even a script for comedic interpolation (this one is interesting). This “remediation” of literature seems to employ a tactic media theorists refer to as “hypermediation,” in which “the artist (or multimedia programmer or web designer) strives to make the viewer acknowledge the medium as a medium and to delight in that acknowledgment. . . . the logic of hypermediacy expresses the tension between regarding a visual space as mediated and as a ‘real’ space that lies beyond mediation” (Bolter & Grusin 41–42). By employing several different windows for consuming the Odyssey, “Invitation to World Literature” compels a conscious engagement with medium in hopes of rendering content “transparent” to a range of potential “readers.” We are most familiar with hypermediated environments via internet “windows” or television formats of windowed audience/pundit participation. To what extent might hypermediacy enable more complex presentations of literary texts, authors, or contexts in the future? The National Library of Ireland’s interactive online W.B. Yeats exhibit offers such a “hypermediated” format that balances general overview with narrower frames of interest. As television and internet increasingly cross over and share more in common, how might we adapt interactive, finely-tuned presentations of the "literary tradition"?

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The video above is one of my favorite examples of literary history on the small screen. The original run of Richard Curtis and Rowan Atkinson’s Blackadder aired on the BBC between 1983 and 1989. This sitcom differs from the “didactic” shows I have been considering. It expects viewers to have some basic literary and cultural familiarity, but one can understand the jokes even without thorough research. Through comedy and pastiche, Blackadder includes content otherwise unpalatable to television.

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The video above represents an example of the possible limitations to remaking literature on the television. The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb (1993) adapts a story popularized in old English ballads and eighteenth-century stage performances. This 1993 stop-motion animation first aired on BBC as a ten-minute short, before being banned for its dark content. After this controversial prohibition from television, The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb enjoyed acclaim and cult status as a film. Intriguingly, only one year after Secret Adventures was banned from television, Warner Brothers released Thumbelina as a blockbuster animated film cartoon. While this is the context in which most people know of “Tom Thumb,” the Secret Adventures has a good deal more in common with the baroque literary original. Perhaps there are many cases in which literature doesn’t translate well to television because it is actually too controversial—not because it is boring or outdated. Since "respectable" writers are no longer averse to admitting television as a space for literary engagement, we might start thinking about how this changing media environment might bring audiences into contact with the diverse array of texts in the literary tradition.   

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