Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

Telefantasy series Torchwood (2006–2011, multiple production partners) was industrially and paratextually positioned as being Welsh, despite its frequent status as an international co-production. When, for series 4 (subtitled Miracle Day, much as the miniseries produced as series 3 was subtitled Children of Earth), the production (and diegesis) moved primarily to the United States as a co-production between BBC Worldwide and American premium cable broadcaster Starz, fan response was negative from the announcement, with the series being termed Americanised in popular and academic discourse. This study, drawn from my doctoral research, which interrogates all of these assumptions via textual, industrial/contextual and audience analysis focusing upon ideological, aesthetic and interpretations of national identity representation, focuses upon the interactions between fan cultural capital and national cultural capital and how those interactions impact others of the myriad of reasons why the (re)glocalisation failed. It finds that, in part due to the competing public service and commercial ideologies of the BBC, Torchwood was a glocalised text from the beginning, despite its positioning as Welsh, which then became glocalised again in series 4. Audience response often expressed the contradictory historical and contemporary discourses associated with British and American “quality TV.” Therefore, this study qualitatively investigates the various readings produced by audience members in the US, UK and Canada, as well as transnational fans who are long-term residents of one of those nations with a focus upon the interactions between fan and national cultural capital. The study finds that the audience is pseudo-reflexive when it comes to interpretation; though all express an awareness and acceptance that national identity is constructed and fluid, they still express an underlying essentialism when discussing national identity in the context of the series.doi: 10.5294/pacla.2017.20.3.7

Russian dissident artist Pyotr (or Petr) Pavlensky received international attention after a video was broadcast in 2013 that depicted him sitting in Red Square in Moscow with his scrotum nailed to the cobblestones. The incident was later revealed to be part of a series of works of performance art enacted by Pavlensky, which included sewing his own mouth shut, appearing naked within a coil of barbed wire in front of the legislature, building a mock barrier of flaming tires in downtown St Petersburg in imitation of the political uprisings in Kiev, cutting off his own ear while sitting naked on the wall of the Serbsky Psychiatric Hospital, and setting fire to the wooden doors of the headquarters of the Russian Secret Service. Although the Russian authorities have attempted on several occasions to treat Pavlensky as if he were criminally insane, he continues to articulately defend his activities as works of dissident political art. This article explores the idea that Pavlensky is deliberately using transduction as a tool through which his work achieves meaning. Pavlensky consciously invokes two different fields of cultural interpretation. The first is the adherence of authorities to the Russian Criminal Code, which is used to exert despotic control over the Russian people. The second is the international discourse surrounding avant-garde art, which champions freedom of expression, including dissident works. By ensuring that there is a transduction of his work from the first field to the second, Pavlensky creates a collision of opinion in which the legitimacy of Russian state policy is challenged and delegitimized.doi: 10.5294/pacla.2017.20.3.5

Russian sitcoms have gone through a series of rapid changes since their introduction following the end of the Cold War. The genre was initially met with skepticism in the post-Soviet period. Owing primarily to Russian culture’s lack of familiarity with the genre early attempts to localize it failed to attract significant audiences. Only once the television channel STS, with significant help from Sony Pictures Television, began working to bring adapted American sitcoms to Russia did the genre start to resonate with viewers. The first popular sitcom on Russian television was an adaptation of CBS’ The Nanny. The success of that series led to the production of numerous other similar programs. Since the early 2000s, Russian sitcoms have proceeded rapidly through three phases: localization, hybridization, and cultural odorlessness. This paper traces the development of the genre by examining three programs: My Fair Nanny, Daddy’s Girls and The Kitchen. Each of these programs marks the beginning of a new phase in the development the Russian sitcom from localization, the creation of original Russian series and programs aimed at the global market for formats. The paper also looks at the role that STS and Sony bring the genre to Russia.doi: 10.5294/pacla.2017.20.3.6

A broad variety of media traits are transmedial in the sense that they can, to a certain extent, be transferred among media that differ in fundamental ways. This article presents a new theoretical framework for studying media transformation, which should be understood as the transfer of transmedial characteristics. The goal is to explain how meaningful data are changed or corrupted during transfer among various media. First, I launch a few fundamental theoretical distinctions concerning the creation of meaningful media data. The most fundamental distinction is that between mediation and representation. Whereas mediation is the material prerequisite for representation in media, representation should be understood as a semiotic operation, that is, the creation of meaning in the mind. On the basis of this division, I also distinguish between two kinds of media transformation: transmediation and media representation. The article then continues with a section about the transmedial basis. All media have basic and universal (material, sensorial, spatiotemporal and semiotic) properties that are shared to some extent. Furthermore, media form compound characteristics (such as narrativity) that are more or less transmedial, which means that they can be transferred among media to some extent. Finally, a model for analyzing media characteristic transfer is outlined.doi: 10.5294/pacla.2017.20.3.4

Since Spider-Man was born from the hands of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko in 1962, thousands of versions of the arachnid have been created. Among them, two call the attention of this investigation: Spider-Man India and nSupaidaman (1978), from Japan. By using a comparative study of the hero’s journey between these two and the original Spider-Man, this study attempts to understand transduction, made to generate cultural proximity with the countries where the adaptations were made. This study also seeks to understand how all the versions of the arachnid were united to generate onemintegrated and coherent universe that has multiple worlds, by creating a retroactive linkage, which was launched by Slott et al. in 2014. By looking into the rules set by fiction itself, this investigation aims to see if the two Spider-Men studied are just adaptations of the original one, or if they are part of a Transmedial Universe.doi: 10.5294/pacla.2017.20.3.8

In this age of globalization, scholars in cultural studies and translation studies would seem to have a lot to talk about. It is strange, then, that they talk so little with each other. This article seeks to bridge that gap by asking what a theory of translation would look like if it were grounded in the field of cultural studies. It proposes three axioms: 1) to use a sign is to transform it; 2) to transform a sign is to translate it; and 3) communication is translation. Its argument is performative rather than simply expository: it is structured as an example of the phenomenon it describes. It explores the three axioms inductively, starting from strategically chosen examples to arrive at a notion of translation that prompts a final conjecture: translation is inextricably linked to rhetorical invention and, as such, it helps us reframe questions about our relationship with and responsibility toward cultural others. doi: 10.5294/pacla.2017.20.3.2

Despite the recent surge in digitization, organizations still struggle with utilizing international virtual teams. Such teams still tend to follow the concept of top-down planning and are, therefore, controlled by some sort of headquarter. In the context of multiplayer games, however, we observe a more self-organized way of establishing teams, which is commonly referred to as pugging: Teams emerge, establish a shared goal, and disband afterwards. They follow the concept of bottom-up autonomy. Pugging is highly beneficial to the gaming world, which is why we will follow the cultural transduction framework to transfer this team concept from gaming to the corporate context. Since the corporate context and gaming are strongly intertwined and influence one another to a great extent, we will expand this framework with the concept of transtraction.doi: 10.5294/pacla.2017.20.3.9

This article contends that the transmedia franchising model pioneered by the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) has worked to structurally produce an industry-approved conception of an everyfan. This transmedia everyfan, modeled as an avid consumer, collector and completist, importantly privileges stereotypically male-dominated modes of fan engagement, and works to contain or circumvent the transformative textual work performed predominantly by female fans. Though a close (para)textual analysis, this article uses the character of S.H.I.E.L.D Agent Phil Coulson as an allegorical lens to consider how transmedia fan participation is constructed, valued, and gendered in our current franchise-heavy mediascape.

doi:10.5294/pacla.2017.20.2.12

doi:10.5294/pacla.2017.20.3.1