Textual Immersion

4.1. Textual Immersion

Within media and fan studies, most existing literature related to immersion is focused specifically on textual immersion, a mode of engagement that reflects the viewer’s desire to be “lost within” and “surrounded by” a text, to become completely familiar with its texture and details, and to “believe” in the text’s narrative world as a real, inhabitable space. While television is not the only medium that allows for textual immersion, the nature of serialized television narratives can provide viewers with particularly vivid and detailed texts within which to become immersed.

12 Murray. 98. 13 Christopher Lasch (1979/1991: 21), as cited in Sandvoss, C. Fans: The Mirror of Consumption. 2005.. 14 Lee and Lee. "How and Why People Watch TV: Implications for the Future of Interactive Television," 15.

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In large part, this potential for textual immersion in television’s fictional worlds results from the increasingly common practice of world building. As Matt Hills has noted, many of the most popular cult

texts allow for viewer immersion through:

The creation of a vast and detailed narrative space, only a fraction of which is ever directly seen or encountered within the text, but which nevertheless appears to operate according to principles of internal

logic and extension. 15

The introduction and gradual proliferation of these self-contained fictional worlds in popular entertainment embodies Murray’s observation that new media technologies allow creators to develop rich, immersive worlds that dominate the viewer’s “entire perceptual apparatus.” Furthermore, as Gwenllian-Jones has indicated, television’s power to create immersive worlds is also aided by the fact that “television series usually consist of scores of episodes that together constitute a hundred or more screen hours and that are played out

across several years of production and distribution,” 16 providing an enormous creative canvas. Building upon Murray’s work, Gwenllian-Jones has also observed that viewers seeking immersion often invest tremendous effort in developing an “encyclopedic” level of knowledge about the diegetic worlds featured in their favorite programs. In order to do so, these viewers demonstrate an active desire to acquire and consume the sorts of textual extensions described in the previous chapter. More specifically, viewers seeking immersion will draw upon narrative extensions, which provide additional details, diegetic extensions, which allow them to infer details first-hand, and relevant informational content, which may flesh out the details of the fictional world to an extent far beyond what is required for the narrative events and plots featured in the show. While such content extensions have often been developed around “cult” television programs (which tend to unfold in unfamiliar times, places, and worlds), an increasing number of mainstream television properties are now experimenting with touchpoints that enable greater viewer immersion. Thus, as the definition of the “television text” is expanded to include the range of additional

15 Hills. 137. While Hills’ description of this practice (which he refers to as hyperdiegesis) is used to describe one of the defining appeals of “cult” television programming, it is increasingly relevant to mainstream content as well. If cult television programs are

defined as those that attract a cult-like following of dedicated fans, it is worth noting that the designation of ‘fan,’ in turn, might simply describe a viewer who seeks deep, perpetual engagement with a television text. Thus, as suggested at the beginning of this chapter, television’s gradual transformation into an “engagement medium” also entails the mainstream viewer’s transformation into a fan, or something that resembles one.

16 Gwenllian-Jones. 87.

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content, activities and opportunities for engagement described in the previous chapter, the immersive potential of television’s hyperdiegetic spaces becomes even greater.

The desire to engage with television’s immersive worlds on a meaningful level also creates a market for experiential activities. In his exploration of role-playing games, Daniel Mackay has observed that most forms of serialized entertainment now contribute to the cultivation of what he describes as the imaginary entertainment environment:

fictional settings that change over time as if they were real places and that are published in a variety of mediums (e.g. novels, films, role playing games, etc), each of them in communication with the others as

they contribute toward the growth, history, and status of the setting. 17

In effect, Mackay’s formulation of the imaginary entertainment environment expands Hills’ concept of hyperdiegesis to apply to multiplatform properties and transmedia narratives, and suggests that each opportunity for audience engagement (“novels, films, games, etc”) can be understood as an “interface” through which a viewer-participant can pursue immersion.

Building upon this framework, Lancaster devoted an entire volume to describing and analyzing the different experiential and immersive opportunities developed around Babylon 5, a list that included role- playing games (The Babylon Project), strategy games (Babylon 5 Wars) and performative re-enactments (the

Babylon 5 collectible card game) 18 . Similar commercial offerings have been produced and marketed in relation to a great number of television programs which establish rich diegetic spaces, including Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Star Trek, Doctor Who, Firefly, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and, as discussed in the next chapter, Lost.