What is Re-Mediation? Definition, Meaning and Examples in Film

Re-mediation is the process of adapting content from one medium to another. Examples include adapting a novel into a movie, a comic book into a television series, or converting a film into a video game. As a theoretical concept, re-mediation operates on the principle that media forms do not exist in isolation but constantly interact with and influence each other. This ongoing dialogue between different media formats helps to shape cultural narratives and technological advancements.

Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin popularized the term in their 1999 book Remediation: Understanding New Media. In it, they explore how new media derive their cultural significance by paying homage to and sometimes improving upon older media.

Understanding re-mediation requires exploring how content is translated across various platforms, each with its affordances and constraints.

Types of Re-Mediation

You can divide re-mediation into adaptation, remake, and transmedia storytelling when you want to be more specific in your movie analysis.

Adaptation

Adaptation is one of the most common forms of re-mediation. This involves taking a story from one medium and recreating it in another.

Example: J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series started as a popular book series and was later adapted into a highly successful film series.

Remake

Remakes involve revisiting an existing film or television show and producing a new version. This often involves updating the content to reflect contemporary cultural and technological contexts.

An example is the remake of Ocean’s Eleven (2001), which originally was a 1960 film.

Transmedia Storytelling

Transmedia storytelling extends a narrative across multiple media platforms, allowing different parts of the story to be told differently.

This can be seen in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), where stories are told across films, television series, comic books, and video games (e.g., Avengers: Endgame, 2019).

Theoretical Perspectives

Bolter and Grusin discuss two key concepts in re-mediation: immediacy and hypermediacy.

Immediacy

Immediacy aims to make the audience forget the medium and focus solely on the content, striving for transparency:

"[…] immediacy is transparency: the absence of mediation or representation. It is the notion that a medium could erase itself and leave the viewer in the presence of the objects represented, so that he could know the objects directly. In its psychological sense, immediacy names the viewer’s feeling that the medium has disappeared and the objects are present to him, a feeling that his experience is therefore authentic."

Bolter and Grusin, in Remediation: Understanding New Media (1999), p. 70.

I’d argue that immediacy is closely tied to the strive for creating immersive experiences, such as Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), 3D movies, first-person video games, photorealistic graphics in video games, and IMAX Dome movies.

It’s also interesting that novel technologies often have the opposite effect—at least initially. The technology built for immersion (letting us forget the media) is so interesting that that is all we focus on; "wow, look at the photorealistic graphics in The Lion King live-action movie."

If my argument is correct, there is transitioning from immediacy to hypermediacy as the particular technology becomes common.

See also authenticity.

Hypermediacy

Conversely, hypermediacy is aware of and emphasizes the medium itself, often layering multiple forms of media to enrich the narrative experience on a single surface.

Hypermediacy is described as

"[…] hypermediacy is opacity – the fact that knowledge of the world comes to us through media. The viewer acknowledges that she is in the presence of a medium and learns through acts of mediation or indeed learns about mediation itself…[I]t is the insistence that the experience of the medium itself an experience of the real."

Bolter and Grusin, in Remediation: Understanding New Media (1999), p. 70-71

Examples include computer interfaces and operating systems, which include multiple focus points – from windows to drop-down menus, icons, and more. Also, news websites and social media feeds often have multiple media layers, including text, images, videos, and live feeds, making users constantly aware of the diverse forms of media they consume.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010) is a good movie example that explores this somewhat. It uses comic book and video game aesthetics, including on-screen text and visual effects, to remind the audience of its multimedia origins.

See also the concept of "breaking the fourth wall," which also brings attention to the media.

Aesthetics and Fidelity

The aesthetic choices made during re-mediation also impact our perception. Fidelity to the source material is often a point of contention.

For instance, fans of the graphic novel Watchmen had mixed reactions to its film adaptation (Watchmen, 2009), which strived to stay true to the original material while making necessary changes for cinematic effect.

Challenges and Considerations

Different media have unique technological constraints that can affect how content is adapted. For example, a book’s extensive internal monologue may need to be visually represented in a film, posing creative challenges for screenwriters and directors.

Also, different media have different audience expectations. A novel’s audience might appreciate detailed world-building and internal character thoughts, while a film audience might prioritize visual spectacle and pacing.

Summing Up

According to Bolter and Grusin, re-mediation is how new media refashion or repurpose existing media forms.

It involves a dynamic interplay where new technologies incorporate and transform previous media, emphasizing a dual logic of immediacy (erasing traces of mediation) and hypermediacy (highlighting the medium itself).

Re-mediation aims to preserve the original message while leveraging the new medium’s strengths, such as converting text to interactive digital formats or turning a book into a film.

However, it also poses many challenges, such as adopting inner monologues from novels to film and staying true to fx the visual style of a comic book in a new media.

Up Next: What is Intertextuality in Film?

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