New Narratives: Stories and Storytelling in the Digital Age

9 Narrative Supplements

9 Narrative Supplements dvd and the Idea of the “Text” paul cobley and nick haeffner The so-called dvd revolution is said to have brought about substantial change in films, change that also impinges directly on narrative. According to Barlow, the dvd is now “fundamentally changing the way we interact with movies,” has taken films outside of “time” and into “boxes,” and has created a new commodity or artifact in which the film’s “original narrative ” is not the sole feature (2005, xi). Of course, some claims made for the “revolutionary” aspect of dvd, particularly in respect of narrative, are open to challenge. In general, suggestions that the dvd newly empowers users in respect to their receptions of narrative need to be viewed critically . Cover, for example, is circumspect enough to speak of the matter in terms of “desire” rather than real change: “a desire for democratisation of the media process, by which I mean the desire or demand of audiences for co-participation in scheduling, timing, controlling, viewing and engaging with media and entertainment texts” (2005, 138). Similarly, he suggests that “dvd is a media audiovisual format and a media practice that not only invites, but often requires, the active engagement of the user,” mainly in contrast to broadcast tv schedules and “within various authorgiven constraints” (139). In the last twenty years, especially in the climate of communication and media studies, the activity of audiences and fans has been to the fore, authority has been seen to be in decline, both in grand narratives and smaller ones, and successive entertainment technologies have been hailed as facilitating the liberation of the reader (see Cobley 2001, 183–200). It therefore makes sense to pause before jumping on the dvd bandwagon. In the case of the dvd, it is worth considering how its innovations fall not just within existing narrative theory but also how it marks out new directions for understanding narrative. This essay will discuss some of the features of the aforementioned “dvd revolution,” a revolution that, even 170 now, may be seen to be merely the first wave with the establishment of new “sub”-technologies such as Blu-ray. It will ask how the mixed media facility of dvd contributes to narrative and how “add-ons” supplement or obliterate the notion of “text.” Before this, however, and in order to be absolutely explicit, we should say exactly what dvd entails and give a couple of examples of the dvd experience. The Medium and the Experience The Digital Versatile Disc was developed in the mid-1990s as a portable and convenient format for the storage of multimedia data. The story of the massive adoption of dvd as a medium is well known, and it is usually assumed that all its features contribute to its popularity. The dvd format purports to provide more than other formats in which an audiovisual narrative might be offered. That is to say, the dvd has become synonymous with the “add-on” (see Brereton 2007). In the case of a film or television series, this might involve further content such as “official trailers,” “making of” documentaries, interviews with auteurs and/or stars, outtakes, alternative endings that were shot, as well as material in non-audiovisual media such as photographic stills, facsimiles of scripts, storyboards, and so on. Although not visual, one of the most characteristic of add-ons for the dvd is the “audio commentary” offered by many dvds, which consists of a running vocal account of the film or program’s making, its content and form, given by directors or others involved in the production, and available to be switched on while the visuals and much reduced sound of the “main” narrative are playing. Even dvd presentations that do not contain a classical Hollywood narrative—for example, filmed performances of operas—invariably offer the same arrays of supplementary material. Often coupled with these “add-ons” are a series of further facilities that were previously unavailable to vhs video users: subtitles (in various languages ), options for the viewing ratio on the screen, sound options (e.g., Dolby), and the opportunity to watch the film by choosing from a menu of “chapters” or discrete episodes.1 Of course, it should be noted that the production of special dvd versions of narratives is an instance of the commodification that is visited on other products. Economically speaking , dvd special features render a previously cinematic or vhs narrative desirable by “adding value.” In spite of such commodification, the dvd experience of...