Powerlessness In Electronic Literature: By Blake Aschenbrener, Sriram Satyavolu, and Savannah Walters

Lack of Control for the Readers

Even though the elements of electronic literature such as auditory and visual components are prevalent in “I Got Whacked in the Face with a Baseball Bat”, there seems to be a sense of lack of freedom in the literature. The controls given to the readers in the works by Yang-Hae are limited since there is no freedom to physically manipulate the literature and change the story in some way. Aside from just not being able to make decisions to manipulate the literature, there is no way to slow down the video during the parts the text moves too fast for the readers to catch what is said. The visual and auditory components are also controlled by the authors. The way the uplifting music was selected deceives the readers to feel what the author intended for you to feel. The lack of control in most other types of literature such as Heart Suit would make those pieces of literature less engaging, but in the case of this electronic literature work, that engagement is still found. For example, without letting the readers interact with Heart Suit would just make it similar to linear types of literature. The story is not read online, so it will not have as much of an effect. The way that Heavy Industries formats their pieces allows for the readers to be engaged since they are very minimalistic. Simplicity is important to engaging audiences since making any type of media too complicated can cause the readers to become distracted on how to control the piece of media. For “I Got Whacked in the Face with a Baseball Bat”, there is no distraction since the way that the media is presented is simple. The reader only needs to press the play button and let the author take you on an adventure with the use of engaging music and font sizes. In some ways, the author wants to keep the control since by it makes the readers focus on the text itself. 

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