Conan the transmedial. Identity and metamorphoses in a transmedial character

Abstract

[Abstract] The goal of our work is to investigate, from a sociosemiotic point of view, the status of character (and serial carachter in particular) in transmedial storytelling and the persistence of his identity through the different medial platforms. In this paper (part of a larger study) we will examine what we consider an examplary case: Conan the Barbarian. Conan is in fact a hero who has a long history of remakes and translations from one medium to another: it was originally created as a literary character by Robert Howard on the page of the pulp magazine «Weird Tales»; after his creator’s death, the life history of Conan w caosmpleted by several tales written by L.S. De Camp and Lin Carter, then the same two writers and several other authors «continued» it in a long series of apocryphal novels. Finally the carachter was translated and replicated by most other media: illustration (from the pulp covers of the'30s to the drawings of Frank Franzetta, who has somehow established his canonical iconography), comics (Marvel Comics, then Dark Storm), movies (2 films, and a third in production) a nadlso — what is less known — television (the TV serial «Conan», and two series of cartoons), computer and role playing games. What is left of the character, in this sequence of translations, remakes and rewritings? Vanished a figurative identity (partially modified over time), and changed, of course, even his narrative attributes; does at least his modal identity (in the sense of Greimasian semiotics) still remain? Paolo Bertetti is professor of Semiotics of audiovisual text at the University of Sienne, and of Philosophy and theory and of languages at the Polytechnic of Turin. He has been secretary and vicepresident of AISS, (Associazione Italiana di Studi Semiotici). He is editorial coordinator of the magazine Carte Semiotiche and Italian correspondent of De Signis, organ of FELSA.m ong his recent books: Semiofood. Comunicazione e cultura del cibo (2006; ed. With Giovanni Manetti and Alessandro Prato), Mediamerica. Semiotica e analisi dei media in America latina (2007; ed. with Carlos Scolari).