Extratextuality and the silent film serial: read it today, see it tonight.

Morris, Justin J.

As a form initially popular in the second decade of the 20th century, silent film serials represent a unique moment in film history. Playing out in installments over a period of weeks, film serials built on the tradition established by 19th century literary magazines in encouraging audiences to consume the exploits of their favourite characters on a regular basis. Though serials have often been seen as a transitional format along a teleological progress narrative from single-reel shorts to complex, multiple-reel feature length films, closer analysis proves that the serial is not merely a hiccup in the development of film exhibition and style, but a wholly autonomous and original form. As a unique type of film, the serial helped to promote a manner of film going that was not confined to the darkness of the theatre, but one that was innately and necessarily multi-textual, multidimensional, and participatory. Though the relationship between Hollywood serials and American newspapers in the form of serialized tie-ins is most readily understood as founded with the intention of increasing newspaper readership while simultaneously alleviating cinema's status as a lowbrow art form, the varied forms in which tie-ins and films could be consumed implies something more vis-a-vis the creation of movie fandom. (1) Rudmer Canjels argues that the fact that serials "offered audiences the chance to see an episode out of the designated order" subverted Hollywood's hegemonic control of the viewing experience, meaning, "the audience ... perhaps also had some form of freedom." (2) Extra-diegetic devices such as contests and calls for amateur screenplays further endorsed this atmosphere of freedom and involvement on the part of the audience, allowing fans the ability to create new situations with established characters and styles, even perhaps helping to originate what is now understood as "fan fiction". (3) Serials proved to be highly transnational, and the recontextualization of film and tie-ins into different national situations points to the fluidity of the form. In the case of Pathe's 1914 American release The Perils of Pauline, the only extant version is a greatly edited French cut which, when compared with the existing newspaper tie-ins, reveals significant differences that call into question the tie-in's status as a lesser art designed to capitalize on the release of a film, instead suggesting that tie-ins can be understood as wholly autonomous art forms in their own right, offering a more complete vision than that contained within the film. Imported serials that did not fit the American model of tie-ins, promotions, and serial style often failed to capture an audience in the States, only to later succeed by reappropriating the text into specific national contexts, namely by providing opportunity for audience interaction and investment via regimented episode schedules and newspaper tie-ins. American serials were likewise re-edited and re-contextualized for international audiences, trading on local exhibition practices and war-time nationalist fervor to create a internationally alternative film form. Though film serials have experienced periodic resurgence and have arguably endured in television and contemporary Hollywood practice, the end of the initial phase of popularity of the film serial marks the demise of a unique, participatory, and freeing film culture.

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In his investigation of marketing techniques in early film melodrama, Ben Singer describes newspaper tie-ins as "perhaps the most important mode of publicity for serials ... prose-version tie-ins published simultaneously in newspapers and national magazines ... invited consumers to 'Read It Here in the Morning; See It on the Screen Tonight!'" (4) The simultaneous release of the newspaper tie-in, (which could appear in anywhere between 50 and 100 newspaper across the U.S.) (5) and the effect that it had on early film audiences has been interpreted in a number of ways. For Singer, the film serial represents a transitional form between earlier one-reel shorts and the narrative complexity of later feature length productions, with the tie-in serving as a guide to often confusing and ambiguous narrative techniques, suggesting that "both film makers and spectators may have relied on them as a key to narrative comprehension." (6) Shelley Stamp and Barbara Wilinsky have endorsed an economic/gender-based approach, with Wilinsky noting that tie-ins came out of a "focus on getting the newspaper into the home and [a] desire to raise advertising revenue [which] led the [Chicago] Tribune to express an interest in increasing its female readership." (7) And Wilinsky has additionally observed that an association with newspapers was a way for the film industry to rise above its decidedly lowbrow status: "the coproduced serial was a way ... to appeal to the 'mass' audience[,] ... and make the motion picture appear respectable." (8) Though each of these approaches are certainly with merit, regarding the interpretation of tie-ins as not necessarily bound by economics allows for serials and their tie-ins to be read as independent art forms that encouraged an immersive, participatory experience for the viewing audience.

Breaking from the traditional interpretation of serials as a form defined as an economically driven stepping-stone, Canjels asserts that the serial should be read "not as a transitional film form on its way to feature form, but, especially from an international viewpoint, as an autonomous form." (9) This notion of the transnational context and how it transforms audience experience within and without a particular serial's diegesis will prove important in situating the early film serial and its extra-textual elements as an alternative filmic experience. Addressing American serials and their tie-ins such as The Perils of Pauline, and Selig's The Adventures of Kathlyn (1913), in both their original and adapted contexts for American and French audiences, in addition to French series and serials such as Gaumont's Fantomas (1913-1914), it becomes clear that the consumption of the diverse elements that make up the "film serial" was and is a highly immersive yet varied experience, for both the viewer contemporary to the initial serial craze and their modern equivalents.

Examining the serialization of The Perils of Pauline in different newspapers from around the United States suggests that an audience's experience of consuming The Perils varied even from city to city. Responsible for catapulting actress Pearl White to "soaring stardom" surrounded by a "vast mythology," The Perils of Pauline follows the eponymous heroine's cliffhanging exploits as she is consistently endangered by Raymond Owen, the villainous guardian of her father's fortune. (10) The first chapter of the serialization of The Perils (written by Charles Goddard and Paul Dickey) featured in the April 9th, 1914 issue of The Bakersfield Californian introduces a contest rewarding readers of the tie-in: "as you read the installments of this story printed here today, you will discover a message is whispered by a mummy--WHAT WAS THAT MESSAGE?" The article goes on to promise, "One Thousand Dollars in money prizes ... given for the best explanation of what the mummy said." (11) In addition to encouraging the paper's readers to read both the tie-in and "see the pictures at the Pastime Theatre Friday and Saturday," the paper provides for an immersive, participatory experience that allows the audience (of the newspaper and/or the film) to feel a sense of agency in the promotion of the serial, even going so far as to state that "the words she [the mummy] spoke have not yet been written," despite the fact that the serial's second chapter had already been filmed and was about to show in Bakersfield. (12) Comparing the Californian's serialization of the first chapter of The Perils with that of the Chester, PA Times from just over a month later, May 19, 1914, one notices the absence of the contest. (13) It can be assumed that because the Chester Times began running the serialization of The Perils a month later that it had missed the contest window, and though the paper describes the serial as "an enthralling motion picture novel," there is no mention of where or when the film would be showing in Chester, if in-fact it did at all. In addition to the absence of the Californian's serial contest and advertisement of show times, the Chester Times' version of The Perils' first chapter includes a photograph of serial-queen Pearl White in her Pauline costume, and a detailed illustration of the mummy that was the focus of the Californian's contest. These differences in presentation of the serial are suggestive of Kathryn H. Fuller's argument that despite the fact that the "structures and programs of nickelodeon theatres everywhere were in many ways similar ... [O]utside the largest urban centres, there was a regional flavor to smalltown moviegoing." (14) This "regional variation" extended not only to exhibition practices, but also to newspaper publication practice and audience interaction with the filmic event outside of the theatre. The varied experiences presented to viewers/readers of The Perils of Pauline--as readers anticipating a film and interested in being involved in its creation, or as readers imagining the film experience via its serialized text because of limited access to the actual film--suggests that the multitextual experience that was the film serial was consistently varied.

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In addition to contests, which gave avid fans the impression that they too could be involved in the production of their favorite serials, newspaper ads frequently underscored the more participatory aspects of film serial consumption by encouraging readers to write and send in treatments. One ad, from the April 18th, 1914 issue of the Californian, declares: "Owing to the large number of new motion picture theatres which are being opened throughout the country, there is offered to the men and women of today, a new profession, namely, that of writing moving picture plays. Producers are paying from $25 to $150 for each scenario accepted, upon which they can build a photo play." (15) The invitation to audience members to become involved in writing film treatments was sufficient enough for the writing of scenarios to become "one of the most popular and widely available opportunities for audience participation in the production of films" and "scenario writing provided one way for fans to create their own 'fan literature' based on film characters and situations." (16) Fans were given the occasional opportunity to contribute to the ongoing narratives of their favorite serials. Fuller recalls the case of one Ida Damon, who "experienced momentary fame as a photoplay author in 1913 when she won a contest sponsored by the Thanhouser Film Corporation to supply an ending for its popular film serial, The Million Dollar Mystery." (17) And though it is evident that this fad was promoted by studios in the hopes of securing original ideas without having to pay the higher fees of legitimate writers, the practice of encouraging fans to write and create using established film characters and those of their own creation helped to further establish a filmic culture that transcended the darkened theatre, pushing the film going experience towards the makings of a lifestyle.

The recontextualization of the film serial for different national markets also points towards a notion of the form as flexible and open to interpretation. Though The Perils of Pauline was "originally in America shown in 20 episodes," prints that survive today are actually an "adjusted French version, that had been re-cut into nine episodes of around 600 meters and released as Les Exploits d'Elaine [1916]." (18) Comparing the significantly reduced (yet only extant) version of The Perils to the American newspaper serialization in its original form offers some interesting revelations. Returning to the first chapter of The Perils published in the Chester Times, it becomes apparent that the aforementioned mummy (which serves as a major plot device in the serial) is nearly completely removed from the French film version. In the serialization, the mummy belongs to primary protagonist Pauline Marvin's adoptive father, Stanford Marvin, who is described as "the old man" whose "hobby had been Egypt." (19) In the newspaper serial, Marvin has the mummy, which he has recently procured, moved into his study and at the climax of the chapter he believes that he sees an Egyptian woman that closely resembles Pauline emerge from the mummy's bindings and attempt to communicate with him. Though the mummy's words are not revealed, the re-animated corpse's resemblance to Pauline convinces Marvin to allow her time to explore the world before marrying her adopted brother, Harry. (20) The mummy, then, is a fantastic plot device, which serves to enable Pauline's exploits as an adventurer and associate her with the intrigue of her father's interest in Egyptology. This entire mummy subplot is completely absent from the first chapter of the surviving film version of The Perils, likely removed when the film was re-cut for French audiences. This discrepancy between the extant print and film versions of The Perils underscores the notion that the early film serial was not a monolithic entity defined by one version or another, but a multitextual form subject to a number of different narrative interpretations. The reapporpriation of the serial along national boundaries reaffirms this interpretation.

Discussing the adapted context of American serials exhibited in France, Canjels insists that "one of the special and important qualities of seriality is its capacity to appear in several forms ... [P]roducts of seriality are constantly in change and are not merely distributed in their original form upon import." (21) For American serials adapted for French audiences, an attempt was made to transform the serial to fit within political and social contexts in France. Canjels suggests that "by adding anti-German and pro-American views and adjusting the serial more to a French reality and history, the serial integrated with daily public experience while perhaps also softening the differences of the imported American product." (22) As previously mentioned, this transformation along political lines can be identified in the disparity between the French cut of The Perils of Pauline and its original American print serialization. In the newspaper tie-in, the villain of the series (Marvin's secretary) is named Raymond Owen and is described as a once good person who has been corrupted by debt resulting from his addiction to morphine. (23) Owen's back-story sets the stage for his eventual and continuing schemes to eliminate Pauline in an effort to gain the inheritance she received from her recently deceased adoptive father. In the French film version however, Owen's name is changed to the overtly German sounding Koerner, and his back-story is removed. Thus the hard-luck case of Raymond Owen is transformed into the unrelenting and inherently evil German Koerner. (24) This subtle change places The Perils in line with French anxieties towards Germany during the First World War, and thus the context of the serial is once again molded and adapted to offer a different viewing experience for different audiences and, as the French cut is the only version of The Perils that is now available, the marked differences between film and newspaper tie-in versions solidify these two formats as separate, yet interconnected, art forms.

If the divide between the available versions of The Perils of Pauline in its film and text forms provides an avenue to explore the film serial as an evolving intertextual medium, then the situation of a lost American serial from the same era, The Adventures of Kathlyn, emboldens the importance of said intertextuality. Discussing Kathlyn, Barbara Wilinsky admits that the "lack of information about the filmic experience of The Adventures of Kathlyn is certainly one of the most problematic aspects of researching this serial ... [and] although reviews of the film serial confirm that it had the same plot structure as the printed installments, visual information about the actual film installments and the way they were filmed and screened is sorely missed." (25) Without visual filmic material to base the interpretation of the legacy of Kathlyn upon, newspaper tie-ins and advertisements become increasingly important not simply as reductive siblings to the serial film, but as significant sources of information for historically addressing the importance of the serial. Wilinsky's primary argument--that the simultaneous release of a film and a newspaper tie-in was an economically driven enterprise specifically designed to attract female readers and viewers--is a defense that must necessarily rely on tie-in material as no known copies of the film exist. And while Wilinsky's assertion that "the promotion of the serial was specifically designed to attract women" as "the first teaser advertisements of Kathlyn were placed on what was obviously considered ... the 'women's' page," is sound, her interpretation can be said to only truly relate to one element of the multi-textual entity that is the silent film serial. (26) Just as the existing version of The Perils of Pauline offers a different interpretive experience than that of its newspaper serial, it can be assumed that the filmic body of The Adventures of Kathlyn may differ with the gender dynamics presented in the tie-in. This dichotomy between the concerns of potentially different representations of the Kathlyn narrative can perhaps be resolved by addressing additional elements of the multi-textual experience that was the film serial. Questioning the gender implications of various serial narratives, Shelley Stamp suggests that "if serial plot lines register marked ambivalence about women's independence and physical prowess, this was rarely in evidence in fan discourse, for actresses' astonishing athletic accomplishments became one of the central features of celebrity profiles." (27) Relating this notion specifically to Kathlyn Williams (the star of The Adventures of Kathlyn), Stamp cites Moving Picture World as bragging that Kathlyn "has never refused to risk her own safety for the sake of a good picture." (28) Indeed, Kathlyn's courage seems to have been the defining aspect of her star image, with a short piece on her in the Chicago Day Book musing that "earth, sea or sky have no terrors for Kathlyn Williams, the beautiful star of the Selig photo players, whose pet ambition is to be the first successful woman hydro-aeroplane operator in the world." (29) As another crucial element to the multi-textual nature of serials, fan discourse can perhaps serve to fill holes left in the historical record.

Though the freedom afforded film serial fans in the construction of their own stories, interpretations, and star discourses created a highly malleable and popular film form, a given serial's inability to adapt to these various intertextual dimensions that made serials so popular (tie-ins, cliffhangers, stars, etc.) could result in failure, especially when being imported to the U.S. from foreign markets. Louis Feuillade's film series Fantomas, the first cinematic adaptation of the popular crime novels by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, concerns the hopeless attempts of Police Inspector Juve and his sidekick Fandor to apprehend Fantomas, an infamous crime lord and master of disguise. Discussing the series' American release in 1913, Canjels contends that "the five episodes of Fantomas were in America, as when released in France, of irregular length and were released in an irregular release pattern over a period of one year, ... [I]ts irregular distribution patterns may also have contributed to the lack of success of Fantomas in America." (30) Instead of appropriating the multi-textual elements that had made American serials so popular at home and in France, Fantomas was released as a kind of film series comprised of five separate films that offered no real room for audience interaction or interpretation. Three years later however, Fantomas was re-issued in America with its episodes "issued at a weekly rate, while they all had the same length." (31) The film's narrative was also serialized in newspapers, thus "marketing it just like American serials at the time" with the "streamlined seriality [seeming] to have made Fantomas more popular in re-release than during its first American release in 1913." (32) Contributing to the reappropriation of Fantomas into the American serial multi-textual style was the addition of another entry point into the Fantomas mythos, as the subsequent American newspaper serialization seems to have been based on the film, as opposed to a direct serialization of the popular novel by Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre. The novel opens with a famous enigmatic description of the illusive villain:

"Fantomas."

"What did you say?"

"I said: Fantomas."

"And what does that mean?"

"Nothing ... Everything!"

"But what is it?"

"Nobody ... and yet, yes, it is somebody!"

"And what does the somebody do?"

"Spreads terror!" (33)

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Discussing the above quotation, Tom Gunning suggests that the passage "seems designed to encourage the reader to insert herself in this unknown questioner's position," a pursuit that is not dissimilar to the more participatory aspects of American serial reception. (34) The newspaper tie-in however, opens with a disclaimer that "these stories are along typical French lines, which portray the 'crook' as he actually is, and not as a hero in any sense of the word" before launching into the first episode of the film serial, written in no nonsense hard-boiled prose, adapted by an unknown author. (35) Though the novel is decidedly superior to the serialization written for Fantomas's American re-release, the creation of a separate serialization helped to reappropriate Feuillade's film from a French series nearly lacking in serialized elements to one that fit the American model of serial distribution and reception, further emphasizing the fluidity and multi-textuality of the silent film serial.

Fantomas's initial lack of success in America suggests that the French context of film serial reception may have been different from the inter-textual elements so pervasive in the American serial form. Discussing Feuillade's 1919 serial Tih Mink, Canjels notes that this serial may have been "too different and too slow" to truly adapt to the "breakneck" America serial style, thus making it unpopular in the States. (36) French serials were not, however, without elements that suggest the serial form's perhaps inherent ability to extend the cinematic experience outside of the theatre. Richard Abel describes Fantomas's, strength as residing in its ability to expose the moral reality of criminality:

   it is not the action and violence that remain so
   remarkable about this film ... instead it is the
   acute sense of verisimilitude in certain scenes
   which 'naturalizes' Fantomas' exploits, rendering
   them even more terrifyingly marvelous. Close
   shots give added weight and significance to the
   ordinary objects of everyday life ... [As] symptoms
   not of the moral truth that Pathe's earlier melodramas
   sought to reveal ... but its grand guignol
   opposite. (37)

The functioning of cinematic reality in Fantomas, as Abel describes it here, is significantly different from the American usage of the tie-in to create a multi-textual, alternative film experience, and yet the perceived verisimilitude of the Fantomas films creates an alternative viewing practice that removes the exploits of Fantomas and his gang from the silver screen and places them decidedly on the streets of Paris.

In defense of the often detested Hollywood practice of creating cheap novelizations to coincide with major film releases, Grady Hendrix pointedly remarks that "what ultimately makes novelizations interesting is the fact that they aren't truly adaptations of movies ... [B]ecause they're timed to come out before a film is released, novelizations are based on a screenplay that changes significantly during filming ... [T]his creates a situation in which the finished film becomes one interpretation of the material, and the novelization another." (38) Here, Hendrix identifies an important economic legacy of silent-era film and print serialization. Referring to the wealth of novelizations released in the 1960s and 70s intended to coincide with the release of major Hollywood productions such as Star Wars, Halloween, The Omen, and the Planet of the Apes films, his assertion that extra-textual material (such as the film novelization) should be considered a separate art form, working in tandem with the release of a film proper, can be easily applied to the phenomenon of newspaper serial tie-ins in the early 20th century. While recognizing this link--beginning his article invoking the promotional practices surrounding the serials The Adventures of Kathlyn and Edison's What Happened to Mary (1912) as early forerunners to contemporary movie novelizations--Hendrix tendentiously asserts that extra-textual materials allow an added element of freedom to the audience consuming the text, providing multiple entry points and interpretations, "turning movies from top-down commercial properties into part of the decentralized creative commons." (39) As this interpretation of the extra-textual material's ability to provide an explorative and immersive experience has arguably only intensified in a culture of convergence, the historical contexts of silent serial production, exhibition, and reception prove revelatory for a complete understanding of the remakes, reboots, and rebrandings of current Hollywood practice.

Notes

(1) See Marina Dahlquist, "Introduction" in Exporting Perilous Pauline: Pearl White and the Serial Film Craze, ed. Marina Dahlquist (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2013), 5.

(2) Rudmer Canjels, Distributing Silent Film Serials: Local Practices, Changing Forms, Cultural Transformation (New York: Routledge, 2011), 18.

(3) Kathryn H. Fuller, At The Picture Show: Small-Town Audiences and the Creation of Movie Fan Culture (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1996), 126.

(4) Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 268-269.

(5) Canjels, 43.

(6) Ben Singer, "Fiction Tie-Ins and Narrative Intelligibility 1911-18," Film History 5, no.4 (1993): 499.

(7) Barbara Wilinsky, "Flirting with Kathlyn: Creating the Mass Audience," in Hollywood Goes Shopping, ed. David Desser, and Garth S. Jowett (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 39.

(8) Ibid., 38.

(9) Canjels, xx.

(10) Dahlquist, 1.

(11) "$25,000 Money in Prizes Given Free With This Story The Perils of Pualine [sic]," Bakersfield Californian (Bakersfield, Cal.), Apr. 9,1914.

(12) Ibid.

(13) "Read This Thrilling and Interesting Story in the Times The Perils of Pauline," Chester Times (Chester, PA), May 19,1914.

(14) Fuller, 28.

(15) "Write Stories For Moving Picture Plays," Bakersfield Californian (Bakersfield, Cal), April 18th 1914.

(16) Fuller, 126.

(17) Ibid., 128.

(18) Canjels, 86.

(19) "Read This Thrilling and Interesting Story in the Times The Perils of Pauline," Chester Times (Chester, PA), May 19,1914.

(20) Ibid.

(21) Canjels, 181.

(22) Ibid., 62.

(23) "Read This Thrilling and Interesting Story in the Times The Perils of Pauline," Chester Times (Chester, PA), May 19,1914.

(24) For more discussion of French re-edits of American serials see Canjels, 41-62.

(25) Wilinsky, 37.

(26) Ibid., 44.

(27) Shelley Stamp, Movie-Struck Girls: Women and Motion Picture Culture After the Nickelodeon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000), 143.

(28) Ibid., 144.

(29) Gertrude M. Price, "Kathlyn Williams: Selig Star," Chicago Day Book (Chicago, III.), July 9,1915.

(30) Canjels, 16.

(31) Ibid., 19.

(32) Ibid.

(33) Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, Fantomas (New York: William Morrow, 1986), 11.

(34) Tom Gunning, "A Tale of Two Prologues: Actors and Roles, Detectives and Disguises in Fantomas, Film and Novel," The Velvet Light Trap 37 (1996), 30.

(35) "Detective Stories: Fantomas," Perrysburg Journal (Perrysburg, Ohio), Sept. 28,1916.

(36) Canjels, 124.

(37) Richard Abel, The Cine Goes To Town: French Cinema 1896-1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 374-376.

(38) Grady Hendrix, "Pulp Fiction: In Appreciation of Movie Novelizations," Film Comment 47, no.6 (2011): 47.

(39) Ibid., 49.