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126 Consuming Media

1. When two media or media texts are only passively compared to each other without
being affected or transformed themselves, there is a relatively simple relation of
grouping. Media and/or texts may be treated as similar or related in some way,
based on their perceived similarity or proximity, or a mixture of them both. One
example is when texts are combined into genres according to some principle of
affinity, for instance on the shelves of a CD store, a library or in the consumer’s
home.
2. When both media are activated in a combined action or joint use practice, which
still respects their distinct identities, there is some form of multimedial cooperation.
One example is when texts accompany and fuse with other texts, such as prefaces,
commentaries and covers to videos or records, or when films, books, papers, radio
and television programmes work as a joint ensemble to push each other in
promoting a certain phenomenon, with Harry Potter and Disney film characters
as well-known examples.
3. An even more radical (but still symmetric) combination of two previously separate
media forms and practices fuses them into a single multimedial hybrid unit.
Obvious examples of such fusion are of course offered by digital technologies
(computers, web phones) in which several previously distinct forms may be seam-
lessly combined.
4. If fusion is an intense but symmetric combination of two media, substitution may
be regarded as an equally radical but asymmetric one. CDs may not fully have
replaced vinyls, but computers have almost superseded typewriters, and who uses
old kinds of duplicating machines when there is the photocopier? On the other
hand, several typefaces for the computer mimic those of the old-fashioned type-
writer, and the memory of the old techniques thus linger on in the design of the
new ones.
5. Cooperation may be regarded as an active kind of grouping, where different media
(texts) still remain relatively separate and unchanged as such. It may, however, also
include some form of transfer where one medium or text more actively engages
with, integrates and transforms forms and/or contents from another one. (a) This
kind of intermediality may take the form of intertextual references – direct quota-
tions, pastiche works or hidden allusions – to texts deriving from some other
medium. (b) A second sub-type consists of translations of whole works, of specific
narratives or of more general themes and genres between media: Dracula or the
detective genre moving from novels to films to computer games, or images moving
from photos to posters. (c) A third category is the remediation processes whereby
new media forms imitate older ones, borrowing intratextual (formal) or extratex-
tual (material) characteristics (rather than semantics or narratives) from an older
medium. 9
6. Finally, thematization is a kind of asymmetric, hierarchic or reflexive transfer
where the active medium explicitly thematizes another medium, based on a
symbolic representation of that medium, rather than an imitation of its aspects.
There is a range of genres here, from essays of cultural critique and book reviews