CINE 980 - Transmedia Storytelling in Japanese Cinema

4 credits
Recently, Hollywood cinema has embraced a business model of building large franchises that exploit numerous extra-cinematic media and merchandise: TV spinoffs, novel adaptations, toys, magazine tie-ins, comic books, theme parks, and video games, amongst others. Media scholar Henry Jenkins calls this approach to filmmaking “transmedia storytelling.” Unlike earlier franchises, transmedia films are not stand-alone, self-contained texts but spread narrative and character information across a wide platform of media. This course examines how Japanese cinema has long embraced such strategies. Anthropologist Mizuko Ito describes the practice in Japan as media mix. This class will study how Japan’s long history of media mix and transmedia storytelling situates Japanese cinema within a wide range of visual media, historical myths, cultural rituals, and industrial practices.