eJournals Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 40/1-2

Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik
0171-5410
2941-0762
Narr Verlag Tübingen
Es handelt sich um einen Open-Access-Artikel der unter den Bedingungen der Lizenz CC by 4.0 veröffentlicht wurde.http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
The online modernized adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, is the first literary adaptation produced exclusively on the free Internet platform YouTube. This article discusses the implications of choosing Pride and Prejudice as a source text and its suitability for the YouTube context. The mode of narration will prove to be an especially interesting subject of analysis, not only because Austen’s style of focalization lends itself well to the vlog1 format but also because the narrative situation raises several questions about authenticity. As The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was specifically produced for a YouTube audience, certain characteristics of the medium are addressed and analysed. The ubiquity of metareference as well as intra- and intertextual references, are characteristics of YouTube content across all genres and are especially prominent in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, thereby warranting a closer examination here. The adaptation also experiments with transmedia storytelling; a fairly new concept that has grown out of the increased possibilities that come with the multifaceted developments of the ever evolving Internet. Twitter, Tumblr and Lookbook are all examples of platforms beside YouTube that have been utilized to further and/or complement the plot and character development of the vlog series. The tools of the Internet have also enabled new and innovative ways for the audience to interact with the adaptation. All of these features combined create a transmedia adaptation that might very well be the first of many of its kind.
2015
401-2 Kettemann

The Lizzie Bennet Diaries

2015
Silke Jandl
The Lizzie Bennet Diaries Adapting Jane Austen in the Internet Age Silke Jandl The online modernized adaptation of Jane Austen‟s Pride and Prejudice, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, is the first literary adaptation produced exclusively on the free Internet platform YouTube. This article discusses the implications of choosing Pride and Prejudice as a source text and its suitability for the YouTube context. The mode of narration will prove to be an especially interesting subject of analysis, not only because Austen‟s style of focalization lends itself well to the vlog 1 format but also because the narrative situation raises several questions about authenticity. As The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was specifically produced for a YouTube audience, certain characteristics of the medium are addressed and analysed. The ubiquity of metareference as well as intraand intertextual references, are characteristics of YouTube content across all genres and are especially prominent in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, thereby warranting a closer examination here. The adaptation also experiments with transmedia storytelling; a fairly new concept that has grown out of the increased possibilities that come with the multifaceted developments of the ever evolving Internet. Twitter, Tumblr and Lookbook are all examples of platforms beside YouTube that have been utilized to further and/ or complement the plot and character development of the vlog series. The tools of the Internet have also enabled new and innovative ways for the audience to interact with the adaptation. All of these features combined create a transmedia adaptation that might very well be the first of many of its kind. 1 „Vlogs‟ are video blogs, primarily focusing on personal experiences or opinions usually delivered by one person to the camera. AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 40 (2015) · Heft 1-2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Silke Jandl 168 1. Introduction: What is The Lizzie Bennet Diaries? Jane Austen‟s Pride and Prejudice is one of the most enduringly popular novels of the 19th century. It has been read with enthusiasm ever since its publication in 1813 and is still one of the most widely read books, due, in part, to popular adaptations for cinema and TV. The story of Elizabeth Bennet and her family is, in fact, one of the most frequently adapted stories of all time. Several adaptations have been created in written form, as novels and short stories, sequels, prequels and rewrites. Moreover, numerous reinterpretations for the stage, the small screen and the cinema have been inspired by the novel. In April 2012 yet another adaptation, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, was launched, which will be the subject of this article. It was, however, not exactly a traditional adaptation but rather a self-proclaimed experiment. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is not an adaptation produced for the traditional screen, but specifically for the Internet platform YouTube. This version transfers the story of the Bennet family to the year 2012. Lizzie, an American graduate student, is the protagonist and primary first-person narrator telling her story in a format typical of YouTube: the vlog. Biweekly a video was posted on Lizzie Bennet‟s YouTube channel, resulting in an adaptation that spread over the course of almost an entire year, ultimately reaching one hundred episodes on the main channel and adding up to seven hours‟ worth of video material. If Q&A videos (i.e. Question-and-Answer-videos in which questions viewers have left on a previous post are addressed by the creators), bonus videos, and the videos on spin-off channels are additionally taken into account, the complete adaptation amounts to almost ten hours of YouTube content in total. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries creators also chose to embrace a transmedial approach to the adaptation process, thereby allowing them to utilize possibilities beyond YouTube for enhanced storytelling purposes. Various other Internet-based media were employed to enable an unprecedented immersive experience. Recipients can thus venture further into the story by exploring the characters‟, as well as the cast and crew‟s various social media profiles. Consequently, recipients may spend significantly more than ten hours experiencing The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, browsing real and fictitious profiles on websites like Twitter, Tumblr, Lookbook, Pinterest or Facebook. Additionally, The Secret Diaries of Lizzie Bennet, a fictitious diary in print, complementing the YouTube series was published in 2014 and a novelization from Lydia Bennet‟s perspective is due to be released later this year. These publications further strengthen the transmedial stance of the adaptation. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a highly innovative project and the first literary adaptation to use YouTube as its primary medium. It is indeed the first and so far the most successful literary adaptation expressly produced on and for YouTube. Given the fact, however, that YouTube is a comparatively recent phenomenon and has to date been largely neglected within The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 169 literary studies, scholarly literature on the topic is scarce to non-existent. In fact, most academic discourses about interactivity and online storytelling revolve around gaming (see, for example, Ryan 2001, Ryan 2006, Hutcheon 2006 and Punday 2011). Nevertheless, a number of research areas have proven adequate to illuminate the mechanics as well as the implications of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries project. Intermediality studies are chief among the theories that have informed the analysis conducted in this article. This approach is highly useful when considering the literary adaptation critically with regard to intermedial transposition and transmedia storytelling. Narratology is another area that offers valuable insights into the workings and interconnections of narrativity, mode of narration and interactivity across the relevant media. In this article, I aim to introduce The Lizzie Bennet Diaries as a possible model for future literary adaptations in the context of the Internet. In order to do so, I will discuss various issues this transmedia experiment raises. I will first illustrate that Pride and Prejudice is perfectly suited for transposition into the vlog format which is so characteristic of YouTube content. I will then analyze how this newest adaptation of Jane Austen‟s novel interacts with the source material and variants thereof before identifying issues of fictionality that result from the YouTube version. To gain a better understanding of the experimental nature of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries I will also delineate the possibilities and limitations the transposition of a literary work into a relatively new and undefined medium entails. I will outline various medium specific choices and methods and in this context pay special attention to narrativity, metareference and authenticity. Lastly, I will illustrate how the concept of transmedia storytelling relates to The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and affects the role of the recipient. 2. Austen and Vlogs: Why Pride and Prejudice is Perfectly Suited for YouTube Considering that The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was initially conceived as an experiment, the source text for the very first literary adaptation specifically intended for YouTube had to be carefully chosen. The popularity of the source text and its adaptability to the medium had to be taken into account, as had to be financial concerns. Linda Hutcheon has pointed out that “[f]or economic reasons, adapters often rely on selecting works that are well known and that have proved popular over time; for legal reasons, they often choose works that are no longer copyrighted” (Hutcheon, 2006: 29). Besides legal and financial benefits, the fact that Pride and Prejudice is so well known has undoubtedly been advantageous for the YouTube adaptation, at the very least initially. The first viewers of the show were arguably drawn to the videos out of curiosity, interested in how the source text might be adapted to suit the context of YouTube. Silke Jandl 170 Recipients who consciously seek out adaptations to derive pleasure, as Hutcheon stresses throughout her monograph A Theory of Adaptation, “simply from repetition with variation, from the comfort of ritual combined with the piquancy of surprise” (Hutcheon, 2006: 4, also see e.g. 114 or 142 ibid). Yet, in order to be able to feel “the pleasure and the frustration of experiencing an adaptation” through “familiarity […] repetition and memory” (Hutcheon, 2006: 21) recipients have to be aware of the source material and/ or variations of it. As Sanders indicates in Adaptation and Appropriation, […] it goes almost without saying that the texts cited or reworked need to be well known. They need to serve as part of a shared community of knowledge, both for the interrelationships and interplay to be identifiable and for these in turn to have the required impact on their readership (Sanders 2006: 97). The high level of viewer engagement that almost instantly characterized the show‟s audience is due to a great extent to the viewers‟ previous knowledge and love for the novel itself, as well as their inevitable engagement with numerous popular adaptations of Pride and Prejudice for TV and cinema screens. From a practical viewpoint, the plot focuses solely on the inner life of one family and their interactions with a few others. This renders exotic, and thus expensive, film sets unnecessary. The vlog format, which is intimate enough to adequately express the inner life of the characters, makes it possible to shoot the web series in no more than five locations. Given the series started out without any secured prospects of success and/ or income, the production costs had to be kept reasonably low, especially because the series was initially funded privately by the producers. After some time and success, the advertisements preceding and surrounding the videos paid for most of the necessary investments, before the DE- CA (“a leading digital media and entertainment company” that aims to “create high-quality video and operate a network of premium video channels,” especially focusing on female audiences, online 1) made a deal with the show, and paid for expenses after episode sixty (see online 2). Another primary reason for choosing Jane Austen‟s Pride and Prejudice is the novel‟s suitability for adaptation in general and consequently the narrative‟s natural adaptation into the vlog format. This is in part due to the fact that dialogue is so prominent in the novel. In Mastering: The Novels of Jane Austen, Gill and Gregory argue that in the novel “[m]any of the dialogues work like drama” and that, [o]ne of the reasons that the dialogue has dramatic force is because it is vividly characterized: the characters have their own distinctive styles. For example, Mrs. Bennet is eager, agitated yet imperceptive. [...] Her style is flam- The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 171 boyant and unfocused. In contrast, Charlotte Lucas has the authorative manner of a narrator [...] [original emphasis] (Gill and Gregory 2003: 124). This is especially important in view of the prominence of „costume theatre‟ in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries to portray off-screen characters. Interestingly, Charlotte Lu, who unlike Mrs. Bennet is a central on-screen character in the YouTube adaptation, initially resembles an (almost) omniscient narrator although she exists on the intradiegetic level. Her role as narrator will be discussed in further detail below and shows that Austen‟s focalization facilitates the realization of the material as a vlog series. The suitability of Pride and Prejudice for adaptation in this context is cemented by the fact that Austen wrote about “events which could have occurred in any middle-class family of Jane‟s own time, and which could still occur - allowing for some changes of circumstance - in families today” (Le Faye 2011: 151). The realism and plausibility which result from the close observation of the people and circumstances of Austen‟s contemporaries give the novel an air of authenticity which has been attractive for readers these past two centuries. As Austen evidently was aware, first impressions are fundamental in human interaction; after all she originally intended to call her 1813 novel First Impressions. Indeed, Pride and Prejudice depicts how first impressions can be founded on prejudices or overly quick judgements. Therefore, her characters have to revise these first impressions of other people and, occasionally accept them as wrong, as new information inevitably is uncovered with the passing of time in each other‟s company. Elizabeth forms prejudiced judgements of Darcy and has to realize her mistake by accepting her own limitations in assessing the character of others. The story encourages readers to reflect on the tendency to form a first impression immediately upon meeting a stranger, and on how often these impressions prove to be false. Thus, the novel deals with one of the most fundamental aspects of social interaction and human nature, rendering it almost universally accessible. It is therefore no surprise that Austen‟s novels continue to attract audiences as well as inspire creative reinterpretations. 3. Playing with Source Texts: Intertextuality in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries The appeal of an adaptation like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries partly lies in the possibility for playing with interand intratextuality. Every adaptation indubitably alludes back to the source material, be it internally or externally. Adaptations often make use of the opportunities to refer back to the source text externally. Following Genette‟s definition of epitexts, Krämer has devised the following list of epitexts filmic adaptations can utilize for this purpose, Silke Jandl 172 das Werbematerial (z.B. Trailer, Teaser, Poster, Anzeigen, Presseheft, Websites, Tie-in-Produkte) und die Verlautbarungen (z.B. Making-of, Interviews, Featurettes, Berichten) am Film beteiligter oder auch außenstehender Personen (z.B. Regisseur, Produzent, Drehbuchautor, Autor der Vorlage, Schauspieler, historische oder literarische Experten), in denen gerne über die Art des Umgangs mit der Vorlage informiert wird. (Krämer 2011: 215) 2 Most of the period adaptations of Pride and Prejudice use some, if not most, of these epitexts. The 1995 BBC adaptation, for example, is accompanied by the book The Making of Pride and Prejudice and the thirty minute documentary Pride and Prejudice: From Page to Screen, both published and released in 1995 as well. The DVD of the 2005 adaptation comes with bonus material including an audio commentary by director Joe Wright, an additional scene (i.e. the alternative ending, intended for American audiences), discussions entitled “The Politics of Dating”, “The Stately Homes of Pride and Prejudice”, “The Bennets”, “The Life and Times of Jane Austen”, “The Pride and Prejudice Family Tree”, “Galleries of the 19 th Century” as well as “On Set Diaries”, which comprise of interviews with the cast and crew. Besides all of these features on the DVD, there were of course trailers, posters and interviews that accompanied the cinema première in 2005. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries also has a wide variety of epitexts, including, but not restricted to, posts by writers, actors and producers on various websites (e.g. Tumblr, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit etc.), posters, bonus videos, an official website, interviews, a DVD release (financed via the crowdfunding website Kickstarter) and, to date, the publication of two novelizations (The Secret Diaries of Lizzie Bennet was published in June 2014 and The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet is to be published in September 2015). For modernized versions of adapted texts it is possible to allude to the source material internally as well. In Helen Fielding‟s novel Bridget Jones’s Diary, Bridget and her friends are obsessed with the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and with Colin Firth in particular. There are numerous allusions to this adaptation, the name Mark Darcy itself, one of Fielding‟s central characters, is another internal allusion to Pride and Prejudice, as are various plot lines. In the cinematic adaptation of Bridget Jones’s Diary the direct allusions to the BBC adaptation were dropped, most probably because Colin Firth portrays Mark Darcy. Casting Colin Firth for this role, however, is in itself an additional allusion to the BBC adaptation. 2 Advertisements (e.g. trailers, teasers, posters, announcements, pressbook, websites, tie-ins) and communiqués (e.g. m aking-of, interviews, featurettes, reports) of people involved in the production or external persons (e.g. director, producer, screen-writer, writer of original source, actors and actresses, historical or literary experts), in which dealings with the source materials are readily discussed [my translation]. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 173 In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Pride and Prejudice is never explicitly mentioned, but it is alluded to several times. In the second episode, for example, Lizzie says, “I like rain, classic novels and any movie starring Colin Firth” (online 3). The “classic novels” indirectly refer to Jane Austen‟s novels, in particular Pride and Prejudice and “any movie starring Colin Firth” refers to both, the 1995 BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice and the adaptation of Bridget Jones’s Diary, both of which star Colin Firth and themselves refer back to Austen‟s 1813 novel. The fact that Lizzie mentions rain in this quote can furthermore be interpreted as a hint towards the 2005 proposal scene, one of the most memorable moments of Wright‟s adaptation. In the fourth episode Lydia has just found out that Bing Lee has arrived in Netherfield with his sister and another man: Lizzie: Does your infinite chain of sources know this ambiguously sexually oriented mancake‟s name? Lydia: Darcy. Lizzie: Darcy? That‟s it? Is that his first name or his last name? Lydia: I don‟t know, I just heard them call him Darcy. Lizzie: Well, that‟s an awful name. Lydia: I think it‟s a great name. Isn‟t that, ah, Colin Firth‟s name in that chubby Zellweger movie? Lizzie: I do love that movie (online 4). In this quote, there is an explicit reference to Bridget Jones’s Diary, and thus, by extension to Pride and Prejudice. What this quote also shows is that Lizzie is already prejudiced against Darcy, before she has even met him. She is almost determined not to like either Bing Lee or Darcy in order to spite her mother, who wants to marry her and/ or her sisters off to one of them. In the fifth episode, after having met both men, Lizzie clearly has trouble coping with the fact that Jane is getting along exceedingly well with Bing Lee, “with a man that my mother picked out and practically stalked for me and my sisters” (Lizzie, online 5). In the succeeding episode, Lizzie discusses the encounter with Darcy more fully and says, “Darcy is so obnoxious, I can‟t tell if I like Bing Lee now, or if he just seems awesome by comparison” (online 6). This predisposition towards Darcy, despite her admiration for his namesake, emphasizes her determination to dislike him. The vlog series not only alludes back to Pride and Prejudice but also to some other of Jane Austen‟s novels. In one of Lydia‟s videos, their cousin Mary mentions in passing, “I was supposed to go to Mansfield Park with Silke Jandl 174 him [Ed] today [...]” (online 7). Lydia‟s spin-off makes use of intertextuality for the entertainment of informed viewers, as Mansfield Park clearly refers to Austen‟s novel of the same name. The name Ed refers back to Edmund Bertram, who is a key character in the novel Mansfield Park. Whether Mary is likened to Mary Bennet, Fanny Price or rather to her namesake Mary Crawford, however, is almost impossible to determine, due to Mary‟s marginal role in the narrative. The connection to Mansfield Park, however, is undisputed. The very ambiguity of this intertextual reference might very well be intentional and encourage viewer engagement by leaving room for speculation. There are occasional intertextual references to other Austen novels, most notably to Sense and Sensibility, which is primarily used to define the friendship between Lizzie and Charlotte in more depth. 4. Narrative Fiction on YouTube: Elizabeth Bennet Starts Vlogging The adaptation of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries on and for the Internet not only allowed for the playful use of interand intratextuality, it also provided new challenges and ways to handle them. One of these challenges in creating a narrative on YouTube is the restricted time frame of individual videos. Even though the limitation of ten minutes per video was raised to fifteen minutes in 2010 and then dropped altogether in the same year, most YouTube videos do not exceed the initial limitation. YouTube is fixed in the minds of its users as providing short, entertaining videos on every imaginable topic and in incredible quantities. As Burgess and Green point out in YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture, YouTube massively scales up both the number of people publishing TV „content‟ and the number of videos available to be watched. However, few of the videos are „stories‟ as traditionally understood, not least because of radically reduced timeframes: ninety minutes for cinema; thirty to fifty minutes for TV, and one or two minutes for most YouTube (Burgess/ Green 2009: 133). Since The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was produced specifically for a YouTube audience, the story is told in a series of videos restricted to only a few minutes at a time. On average, a video for the show is approximately four minutes long, never shorter than two and never as long as eight. However, the vlog format, by being comparatively inexpensive, has enabled the creators to take the time necessary for telling the story. The one hundred videos that comprise the core of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries ultimately amount to more than seven hours of content, not counting the spin-offs or the amount of time that could potentially be spent on the various social media websites connected to the narrative. The voluntary limitation The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 175 when it comes to video length plays into the YouTube convention and is by no means unprecedented. In various other YouTube web series using the vlog format, which, however, only rarely depict a continuous narrative, the limited time frame of two to eight minutes is characteristic, if not necessary to comply with viewer expectations. Even though continuous narratives are more of an exception on YouTube, experimentation into the field started early in the platform‟s history. The first notable fictitious story in vlog form was launched in June 2006 on the YouTube channel LonelyGirl15, merely a year after the founding of YouTube. It depicts snippets of the life of Bree Avery, with her as the vlogging narrator. It was presented as the authentic vlog/ life of Bree Avery but was soon revealed to be scripted and funded. This revelation was perceived as somewhat scandalous because “LonelyGirl15 violated the ideology of authenticity associated with DIY culture”, but at the same time it was […] wholly consistent with the way YouTube actually works. [...] LonelyGirl15 introduced new possibilities for experimenting with and expanding the uses of the vlog form within YouTube. The possibilities of inauthentic authenticity are now a part of the cultural repertoire of YouTube [...] (Burgess/ Green 2009: 29). Even though The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was not the first to experiment with a continuous narrative in the vlog format, it is worth noting that it has never denied its fictionality, even if it actively encouraged immersion. The official website (online 9) is entitled The Lizzie Bennet Diaries: An Online Adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. Thus, it unambiguously points out and promotes the status of the vlog series as an adaptation and consequently as fiction. The YouTube channel, on the other hand, tries to preserve the illusion of authenticity to a certain degree, as demonstrated by the channel heading: Lizzie Bennet - My Diary (online 8). Interested users, however, can find the sentences, “The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is based on Jane Austen‟s Pride and Prejudice” (see for example online 10) or “The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is a modernized adaptation of the classic Jane Austen novel, Pride and Prejudice,” (see for example online 11) and variations thereof in the description bar beneath every video that was posted on the series‟ YouTube channel. These statements exposing the inauthenticity of the vlog are, however, placed so that viewers would only come by the clarification by consciously clicking on the “Show more” button. This practice makes The Lizzie Bennet Diaries a prime example of what Green and Burgess term „inauthentic authenticity‟. The discrepancy, however, has generated a few outraged comments from viewers who believed the vlogs were genuine. In a Q&A blogpost, Bernie Su responded to a question addressing this discrepancy: Silke Jandl 176 If I were to gripe about one thing it‟s that we seem to be getting a lot of fans responding to each other with “you know this isn‟t real right? ”, creating [...] a “divide.” I don‟t mind that a divide exists, but I do mind one side knocking on the other as “not getting it” or not interpreting it correctly. I feel it‟s kinda disrupting the experience for the viewers who want to accept it as immersive (online 12). Clearly, the web series‟ creators intended to make the vlog seem as real as possible to create an authentic show in accordance with Austen‟s novel, which is frequently referred to by literary critics as highly perceptive and observant and thus an authentic portrayal of her class and time. While the novel could lead to speculations whether the content might be based on reality, the video diary potentially opens the floor to speculation as to whether the characters and events depicted are real. Whether or not recipients remain ignorant of the fact that The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is an adaptation, the vlog series does invite speculation as to whether or not the characters and events are actively influenced by viewer engagement (e.g. by leaving comments on various social media websites). This dimension of the video blog will be addressed in further detail below. 5. Experimentation: Possibilities and Limitations of a Literary Adaptation in the Vlog Format In addition to the implications of the limited time frame that is characteristic of YouTube, it has to be noted that it is vital to make the first episodes compelling enough to grip an audience and to ensure a stable viewership instantly. The web series is dependent on a large and consistent viewership attained as early as possible, in order to prevent the threat of discontinuation due to lack of funds after a few episodes. There are several methods the web series employs in order to make the initial episodes as appealing and captivating as possible. Unlike other adaptations of Pride and Prejudice, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries opens with one of the most iconic literary opening lines of all time: “[i]t is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife” (Austen 2001: 3). In the online adaptation, Lizzie starts her first vlog by reading the sentence off the bright-pink T-Shirt her mother gave her as a present. Thereby the link between The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and Pride and Prejudice is established from the very beginning. It is, of course, not a truth universally acknowledged, but it is Mrs. Bennet‟s conviction nonetheless. The first sentence, thus, demonstrably represents Mrs. Bennet‟s view rather than Elizabeth‟s. In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries her mother‟s point of view is instantly, openly and unambiguously rejected by Lizzie, while readers of Pride and Prejudice have to read on to find out whose opinion this iconic first sentence actually represents. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 177 The Lizzie Bennet Diaries does not use a lot of different sets; in fact, there are always only parts of rooms visible. The location does not change very often and disregarding the spin-off episodes, there are only five different places in which Lizzie films her videos (her bedroom, Netherfield, VidCon, Pemberley and another room in her parents‟ house). TV or cinema adaptations tend to exploit the visual possibilities of film and frequently change settings to show various places, objects, and landscapes. By not drawing attention to the immediate surroundings, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is in this respect closer to Austen‟s novels which [...] are set in the mansions and manor houses of country villages, about which Jane unobtrusively tells us as much as we need to know to understand the action, without wasting time or words on purple passages describing landscape or the interior of every room of the house (Le Faye 2011: 126). In terms of appearance, however, the characters are physically defined by the very fact that they can be seen. In contrast to this, “[i]n Pride and Prejudice, in fact, no complete description is ever given of Elizabeth Bennet, because most of the action is written by Jane Austen as it is seen through Elizabeth‟s own eyes” (Le Faye 2011: 152). While the vlog format allows for figural narration, the camera inevitably and unambiguously shows us how the characters look. Nonetheless, it is not entirely comparable to other filmic adaptations either, because, for example, when the main character in a film meets another main character for the first time, their introduction is usually highlighted to the audience and in great detail. Not so in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries; for the first twenty-four episodes viewers only see four characters: Lizzie, Charlotte, Lydia and Jane. There is, however, talk of other characters, which provides recipients with indirect characterizations of off-screen characters. Moreover, Lizzie tends to employ the method of re-enacting scenes with exaggerated, almost caricature-like impressions of people who have not been on-screen. Thus, the viewers of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries have to use their imaginations - almost as if they were reading - for most of the characters before seeing them, if, indeed, they ever will see them in a video. Interestingly, these indirect descriptions as well as the costume theater element provided by Lizzie made casting the roles of actors who had already been talked about and imitated considerably more difficult: We wrote ourselves into a corner in that four different characters have all given their „impressions‟ of Darcy. As we could justify that real Wickham was a little more „douchey‟ gentleman than Lizzie‟s portrayal of him, I don‟t think real Darcy could be night and day different from Lizzie and Jane‟s Darcy. Especially since they both spent a month living under the same roof as him (online 13). Silke Jandl 178 Thus, while The Lizzie Bennet Diaries remains faithful to the source material in various ways that previous adaptations could or would not, the vlog format also undoubtedly posed unprecedented challenges. 6. Choices, Methods and their Impact: Narrativity, Metareference and Medium Specific Authenticity in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 6.1. Narrativity: Vlogging Pride and Prejudice Generally speaking, the core story is related from Lizzie‟s point of view. This means that whatever she is prepared to share on the Internet will be subjective as well as selective. Accordingly, her perspective is never presented as the whole truth. What the viewers see and hear in the videos is always filtered through Lizzie. Since her representation of events is continually challenged, she cannot be termed a reliable narrator. This is in accordance with the conventions of this narrative situation; first-person narrators are not typically reliable. A clarification has to be made, however; while vlogging always implies a certain degree of truthfulness and honesty, it is no contradiction to see vlogs being narrated unreliably. In order to attract a great number of viewers, a vlog has to be primarily entertaining. Lizzie‟s exaggerated but humorously sarcastic style of narration is almost a prerequisite for a successful vlog series, and since the videos are presented as a fictional university project on mass media, Lizzie is willing to consciously sacrifice accuracy for entertainment. Lizzie‟s point of view and her representations of off-screen characters are frequently challenged not only by her sisters but also, and most severely by her best friend and project partner Charlotte. Significantly, Charlotte assumes the (fictive) role as an editor for the first forty-two episodes and again occasionally for later episodes of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. In effect, Charlotte, not Lizzie, has the power over what is or is not shown in the videos and she can add her commentary post hoc. Besides interrupting Lizzie on-screen, she can add comments via voice over, freeze framing, textual and non-textual additions (see, for example, online 5), extra scenes (see online 14) and outright and strikingly showy auditory and visual elements: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 179 In the provided screen shot, for example, Lizzie and Charlotte are in disagreement over Jane‟s behaviour towards Bing Lee (online 81). Despite being an intradiegetic, overt narrator, this responsibility makes Charlotte similarly powerful as an authorial narrator would be. Charlotte‟s role, in a way, is to give The Lizzie Bennet Diaries an open perspective structure because her opinions frequently diverge from Lizzie‟s, exhibiting the opposing world views of the best friends. Since the series spreads over several hours in total, characterization is eventually thorough enough to allow the viewers to decide which representations are in fact reliable and which might not be. After all, as Marilyn Butler points out in relation to Austen‟s utilization of inner-thought processes and dialogue, “[p]rivate imaginings tend [...] to be irrational and fallible; direct speech may be right or wrong, true or false, but crucially it has become externalised, evidential, a part of the given world of fact” (Butler 1975: 264). Consequently, all content that is uploaded to YouTube necessarily becomes externalized and leaves it up to the viewers to assess its reliability. 6.2. Metareference as a YouTube Convention Intracompositional as well as extracompositional metareference has become a major characteristic of vlogs on YouTube. The first and most popular YouTube vloggers continuously, directly and indirectly, point to the vlog format, the platform YouTube, the mode of (re)presentation, themselves and their occupation as YouTubers. Thereby they contribute to “the eliciting of a medium-awareness” in the recipient, which according to Wolf is “the most basic function of metareference” (Wolf 2009: 25). The focus on the recipient here is crucial in the context of transmedia storytelling, which relies to a great extent on the previous knowledge of the source texts as well as the willingness of recipients to cooperate and to immerse themselves further into the story. Metareferences have become an almost inescapable convention for creators on YouTube. Since they are a genuine part of traditional vlog- Silke Jandl 180 ging, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries makes use of metareferential comments as authenticating devices. As Nünning observed, “metanarration, depending on the type and context, can just as well support the illusion of authenticity created in a text and in the act of narration” (Nünning 2004: 17). Wolf has similarly argued that metareference does not necessarily “always disrupt the aesthetic illusion” and that indeed “in some cases, in particular where metareference is employed to suggest the authenticity or truthfulness of a representation, it may even, as a secondary effect, strengthen aesthetic illusion” (Wolf 2009: 29). Because metareference is so prominent in YouTube vlogs, it enhances the aesthetic illusion in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and fosters medium specific authenticity. In Lydia‟s spin-off, the status of the vlog series as an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice is handled rather interestingly. In a Q&A video she is asked to tell an anecdote from her childhood and she chooses to share with her viewers that, “[...] Lizzie used to always make me and Charlotte and Jane [...] perform plays with her in the backyard, and she would usually steal plots from books [...]” (online 16). This quote is highly metareferential, since Lydia herself is a character from a book, portrayed by an actress performing a „play‟ and recipients aware of this are invited to enjoy the metacomment. Additionally, adapting a literary text is arguably doing exactly that: “stealing plots” or, as Linda Hutcheon argues “more acurately, sharing stories” (Hutcheon 2006: 4). Of course, this is also an instance of intratextual reference, pointing to the costume theater that Lizzie repeatedly performs in her vlogs. Another equally explicit metareferential utterance in Lydia‟s video is her answer to the question of whether she ever feels like a secondary character in somebody else‟s story, to which she exclaims, “HELL NO! You‟re only a secondary character if you let yourself be! And The LY-DEE-YAH does not do background” (online 16). This remark, besides being metareferential, is also highly ironic, since Lydia is indeed a secondary character in the original Elizabeth Bennet‟s story. However, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries has attempted to make Lydia herself a primary character and has, to a certain extent, been successful, especially with regard to character development. Charlotte as the fictitious editor of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries most often uses explicit metareference. She is the one who repeatedly refers to various aspects of video production, for example in episode eight, when she explains to Lizzie how to avoid the „boob close-up‟ of the previous episode or when she reflects on the expectations of viewers, “People like the DIY look. The video feels more authentic when it‟s not too polished” (online 14). These instances remind the audience that the story is constructed and that the scenes shown are selective. Since Charlotte is homodiegetic, her remarks point to the self-assembly element that goes hand-in-hand with vlogging, but they never allude to the fictionality of herself or any other of the characters. These metareferential comments, moreover, serve as authenticating devices as outlined above. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 181 6.3. Effects of Convincingly Presented Authenticity In one of the spin-off video series to The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, Gigi Darcy experiments with the new application “Domino” that her brother‟s firm Pemberley Digital is developing. What is most interesting about this fictional plot line is that it has drawn an unexpected audience. Remarkably, India is listed as the number two viewing country on this particular spinoff, even though it is not even among the top five nationalities of the main series‟ viewer statistics. According to Bernie Su‟s Tumblr post on February 26 th 2013, […] the high traffic from India is because [...] there are programmers there who were watching the videos thinking that it was demonstrating a real application/ user interface. [...] in some of the earlier episodes, it‟s clear that there is a slightly different audience coming in. Whether they continue to believe it to be a real application is another thing, but clicking a video for “app research? ” Makes sense to me (online 18). The set-up of the web series and all of its spin-offs is produced with such an air of authenticity as to attract the attention of an audience unaware of its status as an adaptation of Jane Austen‟s Pride and Prejudice. The degree of authenticity of the videos, thus, creates a vacuum of ambivalence between reality and fiction. While the boundaries are still relatively clear within the YouTube content, they are less clear when it comes to additional content that is not necessary for plot development. Jane‟s Lookbook, for example, has drawn almost equal attention from The Lizzie Bennet Diaries viewers as from regular Lookbook users who remain unaware of Jane‟s status as a fictitious character. The creators of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries blurred the boundaries between fiction and reality even further by establishing the fictional company Pemberley Digital as a real, registered company which has funded, and continues to fund subsequent literary adaptations on YouTube. Among the adaptations funded by Pemberley Digital are Austen‟s unfinished Sanditon (Welcome to Sanditon) and Emma (Emma Approved), alongside reinterpretations of Mary Shelley‟s Frankenstein (Frankenstein, M.D.) and of Lousia May Alcott‟s Little Women (The March Family Letters). One method employed to make the series seem as authentic as possible is Lizzie‟s declaration, “My name is Lizzie Bennet and this is my life” (online 10) in the first episode. This statement promises the portrayal of real, unscripted life, which is what the show essentially tries to convey. Viewers who know Pride and Prejudice, be it the novel or one of the adaptations, should be able to recognize Lizzie as a fictive character. Elizabeth Bennet is, after all, a prominent figure in literature as well as in popular culture. However, those who do not realize the adaptation status implied by the very name of the vlogger, are invited to believe the show is an Silke Jandl 182 authentic portrait of Lizzie Bennet‟s life. That this can become problematic has been shown by the serious concern recipients expressed about Lydia‟s predicament concerning the sex tape Wickham threatened to publish online, which is the appropriated equivalent of an unmarried Lydia running off with Wickham in the novel. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries had to deal with the threat of DoS attacks because recipients wanted to actively help Lydia. A DoS (Denial of Service) attack is intended to make the services of a website unavailable, at least temporarily. It costs time and money to get a site working again after a DoS attack which is why such an attack might have rendered further plot developments of the web series impossible. This goes to show that The Lizzie Bennet Diaries has indeed succeeded in engaging an audience to actively participate in the story, as demonstrated by the passionate level of interest and engagement on the part of some of its viewers. Partly, this might stem from the fact that, unlike novels, films or online games, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries does not ask viewers to imagine or even navigate in an alternate reality. On the contrary, the YouTube adaptation strives to bring the characters of Pride and Prejudice further into the real world than ever before. Even though The Lizzie Bennet Diaries is actively concerned with maintaining its air of authenticity, recipients are still asked to suspend their disbelief on occasion. Most recipients are aware of the adaptation status of the web series and know the plot of Pride and Prejudice relatively well. Some of these recipients then tend to leave comments for Lizzie, which give away important events and twists. Others like to leave warnings, urging her to look out for Lydia when she starts seeing Wickham or to distrust Caroline and, of course, to reconsider her opinion of Darcy. The vast number of comments under each and every video makes the assumption that Lizzie might disregard or overlook some of them plausible, yet the Q&A videos and the frequent references to comments prove that she must have come across many messages detailing plot elements. Lydia is also faced with comments that warn her about Wickham, a problem which is solved by thematizing them in her vlogs, “[w]eirdly, a lot of you guys guessed I was gonna be hanging out with Wicks and you seemed totally judgy about it [...]” (online 19). To address these comments directly is one way of regaining authenticity. In terms of characterization, it is plausible that Lydia would bring up such comments in order to defend her choices, while Lizzie is presented as headstrong enough to disregard or ignore comments suggesting she revise her opinions. Another aspect of the web series is problematic when it comes to authenticity, namely what and who is actually shown on camera. One method employed to make it plausible that a particular conversation or person is shown in the videos is, again, to thematize it. In the case of Bing Lee‟s first onscreen appearance, for example, Lizzie dedicates a whole video to discussing the “Ethics of Seeing Bing Lee” (online 20). The problem is that Bing Lee does not and cannot know about Lizzie‟s video The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 183 project. Were he to find out about the vlog prematurely, the misunderstanding between him and Jane, which is crucial for the plot, could not be realized. When the opportunity to show Bing Lee in her videos presents itself, Lizzie posts the footage online. However, she then struggles with the ethical implications and discusses how it does not seem right to show him in her vlogs when he is under the impression that he walked into Jane filming a video letter intended only for Charlotte. At that point he had no reason to suspect that the conversation he had on camera would be posted on the Internet and since nobody enlightens him, he has not given his consent to be in Lizzie‟s vlog. This particular conflict is rather weakly solved by having Caroline convince Lizzie to leave the videos featuring her brother online. There are several instances throughout the series which are not convincingly realistic, an issue the creators were acutely aware of. Around episode sixty, for example, characters would often accidentally come into a room Lizzie was at the time filming in. This led to a number of intimate situations that were subsequently posted to the internet. The exceeding convenience of these chance encounters on camera has generated some discussion online. In response Bernie Su himself discussed some of the problems surrounding the choices they had to make: I‟ll admit it‟s a bit of a narrative leap. If we were being 100% authentic, I don‟t think Lizzie would talk about/ criticize Darcy for 6 months over 60 episodes and actually use his real name. I also don‟t think if Darcy has this crushing level of love for Lizzie, he wouldn‟t at some point [have] Googled her and discovered “everything”. It‟s a leap we have to take to keep the structure of the narrative intact. [...] In general it‟s like this. 1st priority: Tell a great story. 2nd priority: Be as authentic as possible. [Therefore, w]e do our best to justify the presence of our more dramatic episodes by Lizzie either being told by someone to post it [...] or feeling compelled to show her audience [...] (online 21). As is clearly stated in the above quote, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was occasionally required to sacrifice authenticity for the sake of the story. However, the instances of inauthenticity or implausibility do not seem to have been detrimental to the web series‟ popularity in any way, as recipients are evidently willing to suspend their disbelief to a certain extent in favour of the narrative. 7. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and Transmedia Storytelling The fact that the fictional characters of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries have their own social media accounts further contributes to the authenticity the vlog series strives for and the constant increase in the variety of me- Silke Jandl 184 dia allows for new opportunities in presenting stories. „Transmedia Storytelling‟ incorporates several media, traditional and new, and thus creates an innovative way of dealing with narratives. Henry Jenkins is prominent among the scholars observing the tendency towards narrating a story across media and has defined it as follows: Transmedia storytelling represents a process where integral elements of a fiction get dispersed systematically across multiple delivery channels for the purpose of creating a unified and coordinated entertainment experience. Ideally, each medium makes it [sic] own unique contribution to the unfolding of the story (Jenkins, 2007). The Internet is multitudinous and transitory in nature and therefore cannot be seen as a single medium. It is more accurate to consider the various websites, which serve very different purposes and utilize different tools, as separate media. YouTube, for example, provides audiovisual content, while Twitter is restricted to short and often elliptic personal comments and short text-based conversations. Lookbook is a visually oriented platform consisting of photographs and short captions. Tumblr allows the collection, manipulation and commentary of creative content, encourages the „reblogging‟ of material from basically any other website and additionally provides the tools to create blogposts; the sum of all of these activities is supposed to be representative of the users personality. Pinterest, too, allows the „pinning‟ of primarily photographic posts from various websites to showcase preferences and interests. Facebook, like Twitter, enables short text-based conversations and is used primarily to share personal thoughts, photos, videos and interests. Since The Lizzie Bennet Diaries makes use of all of these websites, it is a prominent example of how transmedia storytelling can work. There have previously been stories which have made use of several media for the furthering of the narrative. However, “[m]ost often, transmedia stories are based not on individual characters or specific plots but rather complex fictional worlds which can sustain multiple interrelated characters and their stories” (Jenkins, 2007). In contrast to Jenkins‟ assessment, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries focuses on individual characters and a very specific plot while putting very little emphasis on setting, and thereby exemplifies Christy Dena‟s statement that, “[n]ot everyone is thinking the same way about transmedia. While in the past this was a sign that no-one had a clue what was going on, it is now a sign that people are making it their own” (Dena 2013). Thus, just like YouTube itself, transmedia storytelling is still in the process of being defined. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries experiments with this new form of storytelling; therefore there are several potential challenges to be considered. Firstly, the plot of the series plays out in „real time‟. The twice weekly instalments represent the events that happen to Lizzie and her friends and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 185 family shortly before the video or during filming. For recipients who have not followed the series from the very beginning, navigating the amount of content that has been put out can easily become overwhelming and confusing. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries has attempted to avoid confusion in that respect via readily accessible and well-structured link collections on the official website (see online 9). Those links comprehensively point to the story-relevant social media elements, Tumblr and Twitter posts and, of course, the videos. At this point, it is important to note that the decision whether or not to participate in and experience the full extent of the transmedia project lies completely in the recipients‟ hands. As Bernie Su points out, Statistics show that only 50% of our audience jumps down one story level. Meaning if 100% of the audience watches Lizzie‟s channel, only 50% would dive down to Lydia‟s and then only 10-20% would dive down to the deepest level (twitter). [...] So those of you who chose to dive down in our story world are rewarded and enriched with enhanced story experiences like San Francisco [i.e Lydia‟s vlog], Team Figi [i.e. Gigi and Fitz], and Maria mending Charlotte and Lizzie‟s friendship [i.e. Collins and Collins‟ “Better Living” video spin-off]. Everyone else gets Pride and Prejudice as a video diary and that is perfectly fine. (online 22) Consequently, there are several ways to experience The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and those who want to immerse themselves more deeply into the story can do so as often and as thoroughly as they choose. Since there are different opportunities to engage more deeply with the primary story, it is essential to explore how transmedia storytelling is realized in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. The head writer of the series has emphasized on several occasions that the story works perfectly well in Lizzie‟s videos without any further transmedia elements. Thus, the transmedia aspect is additional, recipients consciously choose whether to consume more content related to the series or not. However, the series had its own transmedia team working solely on cross-medial elements, and even more importantly, these additions not only contributed in some ways to characterization but also to plot. The vlog style restricts the relating of the story elements to one main point of view. It is Lizzie‟s vlog, therefore she presents only her view of events, with some corrective interruptions from her sisters and friends. Other adaptations of Pride and Prejudice (e.g. the adaptations of 1995 and 2005) have made a point of showing more of Darcy than there is in the novel. In part this aids in explaining his behaviour and also in anticipating and understanding Elizabeth‟s change of heart about him. In contrast, a video blog by definition focuses on a single, subjective perspective. Moreover, Darcy only appears in person when well over half of the series has already played out and then only reappears occasionally, often as an Silke Jandl 186 intruder into Lizzie‟s filming. Lizzie has the liberty to talk about him without his knowledge for most of the series, while he can never speak freely and publicly about her in her own video blog. Therefore, room for Darcy‟s opinions is radically restricted, especially in comparison to other adaptations. Darcy‟s Twitter account, thus, is the only public way to express his opinion, even if he does not use it extensively. He is a rather private character, which is why it would not make sense for him to have a public video diary of his own. Even in his Twitter posts he is reserved and unwilling to discuss personal issues. The mere existence of the account, however minimally it is used, contributes to Darcy‟s characterization that otherwise falls short in the video blog. In a Twitter conversation on May 5 th 2012 (in between episodes eight and nine, online 23), Darcy is worried that Bing Lee is behaving too impulsively about Jane, but Caroline tells him, “I wouldn‟t worry too much”: The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 187 This Twitter conversation shows that Darcy is worried about Bing Lee relatively early on but also that he entirely fails to consider Jane‟s wellbeing. He is prompted by Caroline‟s comment about Jane‟s indifference to regard the latter‟s motives more critically. This characterizes Darcy as someone who has his friend‟s best interests at heart, but also depicts him as being aware of his own inhibition in social situations. In addition to that, Caroline is established as manipulative, calculating and clever enough to exploit her friend‟s nature for her own ends; after all, it has been established in the videos that Caroline knows full well that Jane‟s feelings for Bing Lee are genuine. 8. Interactivity: Getting the Audience Involved One of the most interesting aspects of transmedia storytelling is the role the audience can play in plot development. The transmedia aspect of storytelling in The Lizzie Bennet Diaries seems to work according to Sanders‟ argument that “[t]he spectator or reader must be able to participate in the play of similarity and difference perceived between the original, source, or inspiration to appreciate fully the reshaping or rewriting undertaken by the adaptive text” (Sanders 2006: 45). In Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth is the focalizer and therefore “her attempts to see past hypocritical words and deceptive body language encourage readerly participation, assistance and investment” (Harris 2011: 43). This participation of readers of the novel, however, remains passive, which becomes apparent when compared to the wealth of responses Lizzie receives from her viewers. On a narratological level, Lizzie, as vloggers tend to do, directly addresses her audience, which is one reason why the recipients are more likely to become active, as they “feel personally concerned by the textual utterance” because of the “immersive power of the second person” (Ryan, 2001: 138). Although Ryan argues that using “the pronoun you retains the power to hook the attention of the reader” she goes on to say that it “is a short-lived effect” and “often more an allegory of immersion” (ibid). The effect of directly addressing an audience on YouTube, however, is neither short-lived nor abstract. The practice of making use of the second person to encourage participation on YouTube is metareferential, as it always points to the medium and yet it is not, as Ryan suggests, “decentering” (ibid) but highly effective; recipients of YouTube videos (even of clearly fictional ones) comment, respond, demand, criticize, create their own imaginative alternatives, discuss and are generally extremely involved on every platform intended to encourage interaction. This and the real time development of the The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, in effect, means that Nünning‟s communication model for dramatic texts has to be modified for a YouTube series: Silke Jandl 188 This model shows the heightened dynamic that comes with the vlog series. The audience becomes the addresser by active involvement. After the first video, the recipients thus become an actual part of the production process, resulting in a vlog series that resembles a conversation. This, however, is only possible when two essential preconditions are met. Firstly, the audience has to react almost immediately upon the posting of a video, which means that they have to be real time viewers. This is due to the fact that only comments that are posted in time can be influential for the production of the next videos and only those comments can actually be mentioned or used in the Q&A videos. Audience involvement includes The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 189 pressing the „like button‟, sharing the videos, creating fan art and writing fan fiction and choosing to immerse themselves more fully into the story by seeking out the additional content provided transmedially. That all of these activities have an effect is shown, for example, by the fact that the writers of the show admitted at the time that “Lydia‟s increased role in the show has entirely been due to viewers‟ reaction to her” (online 24). The opportunity to react to recipients is not exactly new. Charles Dickens, for instance, who published as well as wrote his fiction serially, regarded his readers‟ responses highly. He even changed aspects of his novels according to those responses (e.g Miss Mowcher‟s role in Emily‟s seduction in David Copperfield, see online 25). There are, however, two essential facets to The Lizzie Bennet Diaries that are different from Dickens‟ fiction. Firstly, people who want to comment on the web series can do so on various Internet platforms, they can leave comments for individual writers of the show, the producers, the actors and even the characters. Moreover, they can do so instantly, upon consumption of the respective video or social media output. Via social media accounts, recipients can actively interact with the fictive characters and coax them into commenting on the plot or other characters. Secondly, the status of the web series as an adaptation draws a well-informed audience. The general plot lines and characters of Pride and Prejudice are known to the majority of the recipients, either because of the novel itself or one of its various adaptations. This enables proficient commentary and precise criticism. While nineteenth century writers who published serially could choose whether or not to acknowledge their readers‟ responses, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries actively invited and celebrated the recipients‟ involvement and made use of it in several ways. In the case of fan fiction and fan art this would be advertised on the Tumblr sites of various persons involved in the production of the series as well as on characters‟ Tumblrs. One of the consequences of such a high level of involvement, besides allowing some adjustments to be made according to commonly expressed preferences and suggestions of viewers, is the meta-discussion about this practice. Commentary and criticism posted on one or the other social media platform or a production decision mentioned on one of the writers‟ blogs would occasionally be the starting point of a serious discussion about the adaptation process. Consequently, encouraging and rewarding active recipients not only leads to a heightened interest of the audience, but also can enhance the overall quality of the adaptation. Concerning the Q&A videos, one of the most fascinating aspects, of course, is the opportunity for viewer interaction. As Bernie Su makes clear, “The only question we‟ve ever planted was the Maria Lu question that we used in this QA [i.e. “Q&A 7”; online 26] video. Everything else is taken from the fans” (online 22). Thus, the viewers can with their comments and questions help in providing “extra character depth (and sometimes even a little plot) through these „interactive‟ videos” (online Silke Jandl 190 22). Indeed, a major part of the recipients‟ involvement is interactive and manifests in questions they were invited to leave on all the platforms utilized for the transmedia adaptation. Over the course of the series, Lizzie created ten Q&A videos in addition to the one hundred that form the core content of the adaptation. Interestingly, these videos are used to help adjust and enforce characterization. Mrs. Bennet, for example, is accused of being sexist by a Tumblr follower, but Lizzie explains that she is “less sexist than paleozoic. I‟d like to think that if I had brothers, she‟d be just as focused on finding them wives” (online 27). Unlike Mrs. Bennet, Caroline‟s manipulative nature, on the other hand, can be observed first-hand. In the third Q&A video, Caroline calculatingly comes into Lizzie‟s room when she is filming the video and presents her with a designer handbag counting on the fact that Lizzie would never normally accept such an expensive gift. She then suggests giving it away to Lizzie‟s viewers rather than returning it. Quite obviously Caroline is trying to win Lizzie‟s viewers over because she has been represented so unfavourably on the video blog earlier (see online 28). The fact that the handbag - that is shown in the Q&A with Caroline - was actually given away to a fan on Facebook (online 29) and that comments of actual recipients are featured in the videos and blogs, raises the question of where the boundary between fiction and reality really lies. In novels and films, even if the protagonist directly addressed the recipients, there is a temporal delay between production, publication, reception and reaction. In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, however, this temporal divide has become basically immaterial; the story plays out in real time, is presented in real time and recipients are involved in it in real time. In this context, real time means that the beginning of Lizzie‟s story is set in April 2012 and the videos are posted very shortly after the fictive events have taken place. There is the negligible delay that is needed for producing, editing and uploading a video, which can vary between mere hours to up to a week in the case of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries. As a fictional diary the adaptation represents a “relative simultaneity,” as Marie-Laure Ryan calls it because “[t]he diarist lives her life and tells it at the same time, as she recounts in discrete entries the stories of the day past” (Ryan, 2006: 79). Thus, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries does not fall into the trap of presenting the illusion of simultaneous narration (e.g. by using the present-tense), which Ryan judges “really a disguised form of retrospective narration” (ibid). Instead, simultaneity is conveyed via the narrative leap of having several key scenes happen on camera. When it comes to retrospectively related events, the temporal distance remains insignificant, even though it does enable the conscious selection of issues to be discussed publicly. This abrogation of temporal delay, of course, only holds true for those recipients who consumed the web series between April 2012 and March 2013. For those who only discover the series after its conclusion the temporal aspect becomes significant in a different way, not only because the series The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 191 has already reached its end, but also because any comments, which still can be and are left on all the platforms, for all the videos, photos and posts, are rendered invalid for the course of events because, as Ruth Page observed, “[c]ompleted narratives that are posted in their entirety are unlikely to be revised and then reposted[…]” (Page, 2010: 218). It also seems highly unlikely that recipients would consciously and consistently restrict themselves to two videos a week when playlists of all the videos are so readily available. The comments then merely serve as community building tools, as a way for people to connect over the content and to generate discussions about it. Arguably, the series loses a certain amount of its appeal after its conclusion, because the real time aspect is no longer relevant. For example, only those recipients who watched the series before November 2012 were able to observe and potentially participate in the excitement for “Darcy Day”, i.e. the very first time Darcy would be present in the vlog series. After the first of November 2012, even those who make a point of watching the series from the beginning will hardly be able to avoid thumbnail pictures, the channel banner, or memes with pictures of this adaptation‟s Darcy on them. In effect, this means that The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, like other transmedia projects, is firmly embedded in the time at which it was produced because the full interactive element has now expired. This is not to say that the adaptation cannot be enjoyed post episode one hundred, merely that the experience will be radically different. 9. Conclusion In a way The Lizzie Bennet Diaries project reflects current cultural tendencies, which are largely determined by the advanced technologies and our use of them. The Internet offers new channels of communication, platforms for new ways of self-expression and identity formation and innumerable opportunities for creating and showcasing artistic experiments, and it does so at an unprecedented speed. The velocity of technological changes affects our communicative behaviour, culture and art. With the Internet, art has become both, volatile and permanent. While the whole immersive experience which The Lizzie Bennet Diaries offers could only be experienced in the rigidly limited time span of one specific year, the Internet, as the saying goes, is forever. In fact, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries continues to collect views (and thus monetary rewards) and comments on all social media platforms and it will continue to do so as long as the videos remain available on YouTube. All in all, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries has been a highly successful experiment; in fact, it has been more successful than any of the other four subsequent literary adaptations funded and produced by Pemberley Digital so far. The choice to adapt a novel as well-known and as beloved as Jane Silke Jandl 192 Austen‟s Pride and Prejudice has certainly played a role in the success of the series. Building on the novel‟s continued popularity and its numerous well known and popular adaptations, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries was able to draw from a variety of versions of the source text and, more importantly, engage with them. This playful use of intertextuality has not only aided the creation of an interesting adaptation in its own right but has also ensured an almost instantaneous and well-informed audience. The fact that Austen made Elizabeth the figural narrator of her novel is the perfect precondition for it to be adapted into the newly emerged vlog format on YouTube. Both the subjectivity and the protagonist‟s sarcastically humorous voice are a perfect fit for a YouTube audience who appreciates the more personal and often sarcastic tone prevalent in vlogging. This, as well as the inclusion of transmedia elements, has resulted in more complex characterizations than either the novel or filmic adaptations have been able to provide in the past. In particular, characters such as Lydia Bennet and Charlotte Lu have, through the inclusion of various social media sites, gained character depth. Lydia Bennet has generated as much interest from viewers as Lizzie has, as evidenced by Lydia‟s viewer numbers on her own YouTube channel, her Twitter followers and, most recently, the fact that a tie-in novel with her as the protagonist is to be released in late 2015. The trandsmedia aspect of this adaptation has not only aided in the creation of more convincing and complex characters, but it has also given rise to questions of fictionality and reality. Concerning this transcending of boundaries between reality and fiction, I agree with Rage and Thomas, who in their Introduction to New Narratives: Stories and Storytelling in the Digital Age point out that “the various ways in which narrators and readers treat stories told in digital media as bridges between their online and offline experiences” will have to be further investigated. In The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, the numerous social media profiles of the fictitious characters have undoubtedly enhanced the experience of recipients who chose to immerse themselves into the story beyond the core adaptation. The transmedia extras are interesting in that they, unlike the core adaptive material, only properly work in real time, i.e. if consumed around the dates the Lizzie Bennet videos were posted. This temporal dependency fuels questions regarding the recipients‟ willingness to engage; as does, indeed the overwhelming wealth of material that accumulated during the year-long project. It is interesting to note that The Lizzie Bennet Diaries functions successfully for recipients with no interest in immersion beyond the classical storyline as well as for recipients willing to delve deeper into the Internet to find the various additional story elements. The fact that this shift in responsibility results in varying versions of the same adaptation depending on the recipient makes The Lizzie Bennet Diaries a new kind of adaptation that might be a catalyst for future dealings with literary adaptations and opens innovative possibilities concerning the role of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries 193 the recipient. The adaptation is also a prime example of the utilization of new media and particularly social media to draw and engage an audience as well as further character and plot development. In future research it would be interesting to identify to which extent The Lizzie Bennet Diaries has paved the way and indeed been formative for subsequent literary adaptations on YouTube. In fact, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries has already inspired a variety of different literary adaptations beyond Pemberley Digital that have adopted methods and aesthetics from the vlog series (see, for example, adaptations of James Barrie‟s Peter Pan, J. S. Le Fanu‟s Carmilla or Charlotte Brontë‟s Jane Eyre; online 30-32). In conclusion, it is clear that The Lizzie Bennet Diaries can be considered a successful transmedia experiment that can function as a model for future literary adaptations that wish to include new media and thus introduce young audiences to literature. Bibliography Andersen, Michael (2013). “How a Year of Video Blogging Brought Jane Austen to YouTube” [online]. www.wired.com/ magazine/ 2013/ 04/ lizzie-bennet-dia ries-taking-austen-to-youtube/ (16 April 2015). Austen, Jane (2001). Pride and Prejudice (1813). Donald Gray (ed.). London, New York: Norton Critical Edition (3 rd edition). Burgess, Jean & Joshua Green (2009). YouTube: Online Video and Participatory Culture. Cambridge: Polity Press. Butler, Marylin (1975). Jane Austen and the War of Ideas. Oxford: Claredon Press. Dena, Christy (2013). “How Sound can „Unify‟ Transmedia”. 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Silke Jandl Centre for Intermediality Studies University of Graz