2.3 Transmedia Migrations in 'Moby-Dick'
Often, an author who samples from others is inspired beyond their discipline or usual mode of creating and is influenced by the wealth of media sources.
Wyn Kelley states:
Along with his references to literary texts, Melville mentions many artists in other media. Throughout the novel Ishmael studies examples of paintings (the “boggy, soggy, squitchy” picture at the Spouter-Inn, Garneray’s two paintings of whaling), quilts (the counterpane on his bed), architectural wonders (the Pyramids, the Pantheon), sculptures (Cellini’s Perseus, Queequeg’s carved wooden idol), numerous prints and engravings of whales, tattooings, a stamped doubloon, music (from sea chanteys to a symphony), weavings, and many other forms of nonverbal art. Three chapters (55-57) take up explicitly the representation of whales in different media, and from the beginning in “Loomings” Ishmael compares himself with artists of all kinds. The book is rich in its embrace of widely various media texts and expressions. This sequence from a 2010 version of Moby-Dick offers us a glimpse of the painting and also shows the men singing sea chanties and playing games.
Modes of Perception
Moby-Dick also recognizes and borrows from other media as they influence ways of seeing. Melville’s writing registers the impact of newer media forms like the journalistic sketch, the panorama, and the engraving in relation to more traditional forms like painting and sculpture. The nineteenth-century literary sketch, for example, had become a popular skill and art for capturing the quickened pace of travel by streetcar and railroad; as a name for both an impressionistic visual image and a brief narrative form or character study, it suggests the influence of journalism and other ephemeral forms for gathering a quick image of (often urban) life. Melville offers brief sketches of characters like Elijah and Bulkington, who quickly appear and disappear, or stories like those encountered on the gams, the social meetings at sea, where the sailors trade news and gossip. Another form useful to Melville’s wide-angle views of the sea, especially from the masthead, is the panorama, an early version of moving pictures, in which a long roll of canvas might display a painting that when unfurled could take up all the walls of a large gallery. Ishmael enjoys his panoramic views as much as his on-the-ground sketches of life at sea.
Transmedia Stories and Themes
Melville’s use of multimedia insists, as in the example of Queequeg’s coffin, on the fluidity of texts as they travel across media and genre boundaries and illuminate each other. The “boggy, soggy, squitchy” picture at the Spouter-Inn is both a painting and a narrative that tells the story of the Pequod in miniature, as, in both, a furious whale attacks the ship. The Town-Ho’s story travels and grows from sailor gossip to Tashtego’s talking in his sleep to Ishmael’s Lima tavern tall-tale, Gothic-revenge-story, Providential-allegory in Chapter 54. In comparing Ahab to Cellini’s Perseus, Melville draws on both the myth of Medea’s killer (Ahab too will try to kill a monster) and an image of a youthful Greek hero, surprisingly different from scarred old Ahab. Jonah’s story of traveling through a whale appears in biblical allusions, in Father Mapple’s sermon, and in Ishmael’s dissection of the whale’s body. The iron forged in Ahab’s harpoon also appears in his “iron-grey locks” (Chapter 30) and the “iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run" (Chapter 37). As themes and stories appear in one medium and travel to others, Melville captures the beauty and fluidity of storytelling across cultures, genres, and art forms.
Being Remixed
As much as Moby-Dick gives evidence of Melville’s creative habits of remixing texts in different forms and media, it has itself appeared in a dizzying array of verbal, visual, cinematic, dramatic, and commercial adaptations. From the Classics Illustrated comics to Sam Ita's pop-up book, from Orson Welles’ Moby Dick Rehearsed to Ricardo Pitts-Wiley’s Moby-Dick: Then and Now, from John Barrymore’s silent Ahab to Gregory Peck’s and Patrick Stewart’s later versions, from Star Trek television episodes to the heavy metal band Mastodon’s Leviathan and Laurie Anderson’s Songs and Stories from Moby-Dick, from Sena Jeter Naslund’s Ahab’s Wife to every waterfront chowder house or sandwich shop called by some variant on Melville’s whale’s name, American culture offers an infinite variety of different reworkings of the book or its characters. The availability and richness of these offerings make it easy to share them with students and to show the resiliency and power of the book as popular entertainment, cultural mixture, and pliable source for new creative forms.
Wyn Kelley states:
Besides reworking language, plots, genres, and themes from literary sources, Melville, like Queequeg, adapts from and translates sources in other media. We might identify these according to the ways he incorporates them into his work: as sources for direct allusions, as modes of perception, and as signs of the fluidity of transmedia migrations of texts.Allusions to Non-Print Media
Along with his references to literary texts, Melville mentions many artists in other media. Throughout the novel Ishmael studies examples of paintings (the “boggy, soggy, squitchy” picture at the Spouter-Inn, Garneray’s two paintings of whaling), quilts (the counterpane on his bed), architectural wonders (the Pyramids, the Pantheon), sculptures (Cellini’s Perseus, Queequeg’s carved wooden idol), numerous prints and engravings of whales, tattooings, a stamped doubloon, music (from sea chanteys to a symphony), weavings, and many other forms of nonverbal art. Three chapters (55-57) take up explicitly the representation of whales in different media, and from the beginning in “Loomings” Ishmael compares himself with artists of all kinds. The book is rich in its embrace of widely various media texts and expressions. This sequence from a 2010 version of Moby-Dick offers us a glimpse of the painting and also shows the men singing sea chanties and playing games.
Modes of Perception
Moby-Dick also recognizes and borrows from other media as they influence ways of seeing. Melville’s writing registers the impact of newer media forms like the journalistic sketch, the panorama, and the engraving in relation to more traditional forms like painting and sculpture. The nineteenth-century literary sketch, for example, had become a popular skill and art for capturing the quickened pace of travel by streetcar and railroad; as a name for both an impressionistic visual image and a brief narrative form or character study, it suggests the influence of journalism and other ephemeral forms for gathering a quick image of (often urban) life. Melville offers brief sketches of characters like Elijah and Bulkington, who quickly appear and disappear, or stories like those encountered on the gams, the social meetings at sea, where the sailors trade news and gossip. Another form useful to Melville’s wide-angle views of the sea, especially from the masthead, is the panorama, an early version of moving pictures, in which a long roll of canvas might display a painting that when unfurled could take up all the walls of a large gallery. Ishmael enjoys his panoramic views as much as his on-the-ground sketches of life at sea.
Transmedia Stories and Themes
Melville’s use of multimedia insists, as in the example of Queequeg’s coffin, on the fluidity of texts as they travel across media and genre boundaries and illuminate each other. The “boggy, soggy, squitchy” picture at the Spouter-Inn is both a painting and a narrative that tells the story of the Pequod in miniature, as, in both, a furious whale attacks the ship. The Town-Ho’s story travels and grows from sailor gossip to Tashtego’s talking in his sleep to Ishmael’s Lima tavern tall-tale, Gothic-revenge-story, Providential-allegory in Chapter 54. In comparing Ahab to Cellini’s Perseus, Melville draws on both the myth of Medea’s killer (Ahab too will try to kill a monster) and an image of a youthful Greek hero, surprisingly different from scarred old Ahab. Jonah’s story of traveling through a whale appears in biblical allusions, in Father Mapple’s sermon, and in Ishmael’s dissection of the whale’s body. The iron forged in Ahab’s harpoon also appears in his “iron-grey locks” (Chapter 30) and the “iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run" (Chapter 37). As themes and stories appear in one medium and travel to others, Melville captures the beauty and fluidity of storytelling across cultures, genres, and art forms.
Being Remixed
As much as Moby-Dick gives evidence of Melville’s creative habits of remixing texts in different forms and media, it has itself appeared in a dizzying array of verbal, visual, cinematic, dramatic, and commercial adaptations. From the Classics Illustrated comics to Sam Ita's pop-up book, from Orson Welles’ Moby Dick Rehearsed to Ricardo Pitts-Wiley’s Moby-Dick: Then and Now, from John Barrymore’s silent Ahab to Gregory Peck’s and Patrick Stewart’s later versions, from Star Trek television episodes to the heavy metal band Mastodon’s Leviathan and Laurie Anderson’s Songs and Stories from Moby-Dick, from Sena Jeter Naslund’s Ahab’s Wife to every waterfront chowder house or sandwich shop called by some variant on Melville’s whale’s name, American culture offers an infinite variety of different reworkings of the book or its characters. The availability and richness of these offerings make it easy to share them with students and to show the resiliency and power of the book as popular entertainment, cultural mixture, and pliable source for new creative forms.
Let's consider an example of Moby-Dick as remixed: Hakugei: Legend of the Moby Dick, an animated series produced for Japanese television in 1997-98. Here, we see the characters from nineteenth century New Bedford whaling culture transposed to a futuristic outer space environment. The American novel has been translated for a Japanese audience, and science fiction has been added to the novel's genres. As you watch this trailer for the series, think about what elements remain true to the spirit of Melville's original text.
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