Fig. 1.1 – SKAM
Austin promotional photograph
(from Deadline - 2018)
“SKAM Austin is a unique, inventive and fresh approach to online content and entertainment. The series takes a realistic and authentic approach to telling stories of American teenagers from their point of view. It’s not only a series but an immersive storytelling experience that rolls out in real time across various platforms. The sophomore season, like the first, will be full of digital elements and Easter eggs, building a fan frenzy that you can see firsthand in the show’s Facebook Group…”
-
Dino
Ray-Ramos of Deadline (my emboldening)
A mostly ‘Western’ international
phenomenon, SKAM – the Norwegian term for ‘shame’ – is a teen drama originally
set in Norway. The series distinguishes itself through its ‘authentic’
(Banet-Weiser, 2012; Cunningham & Craig, 2017) representations of high
school students as they migrate to Hartvig Nissen School, an actual
post-secondary high school in an upper-class region of Oslo, Norway called the Uranienborg neighborhood. Significantly, many of the actors chosen for the original
drama themselves attended the Hartvig Niessen school, and this fact has been
cited as contributing to the perceived “realness” of the program. I first learned of this phenomenon while
teaching media, advertising, and society at the University of Iowa during the
Spring 2018 term. At the time, SKAM hadn’t yet been released in the
U.S., though one of my students was brimming with excitement for its impending arrival[1].
My pupil – a gen-Z-er and digital native – explained that SKAM was a television
show that originally aired in Norway, that it had (at the time) TV versions in
three countries aside from Norway, and that a forthcoming instantiation of the
show was to be set in Austin, Texas. My interest was solidified when I
discovered later, as a result of subsequent discussions motivated by said
student’s increasing excitement in anticipation of the show’s release, that the
characters (not the actors, the CHARACTERS) each had their own Instagram accounts.
Although the character profiles were similar for each international version,
they were not entirely the same – meaning that there were then four[2]
sets of character prototypes with four accompanying Social Network Site
(Ellison & boyd, 2013) profiles on Instagram. Figures 1.2 and 1.3 provide
visual representations of two of the original characters' Instagram accounts (Sana and Isak, respectively).
Fig 1.2: From “therealsanabakkoush” – star of the final season of SKAM (2015-2017)
In less than three years, SKAM
(2015-2017) managed to become an award-winning, transnational sensation
(Petersen & Sundet, 2019). My student explained to me how fans of the show gathered
more information about the characters from their Instagram profiles, and that
this act enabled a greater understanding of the overall narrative of the show. I
didn’t know how intricately intertwined the Social Network Sites (SNSs) were
with the web series until I began researching the object in earnest last year. Arguably,
the main novelty in SKAM’s formatting is its reliance on Instagram to construct
a holistic narrative universe.
SKAM began as
a web series about the lives of high school students in Oslo, Norway, and was
originally released in snippets (Van Djick, 2013) via a combination of Norway’s
NRK P3 website and Instagram on September 25, 2015. Van Djick (2013) explains
that ‘snippets’ are video fragments “…of limited length, ranging from several
seconds to ten minutes, with the bulk of postings averaging between three and
six minutes” (p. 118). To get what fans might deem the “full experience” of SKAM,
the most engaged audiences must keep up
with a steady release of video clips over the course of a week; this requires following
characters’ Instagram accounts very closely. As an “intracompositional” (Dena,
2009) object, the show’s narrative can only be understood completely by
engaging with snippets released on both the NRK P3 website and (not or) Instagram
at varied times of the day and on different days throughout the week. As Dena
(2009) explains, ‘transmedia fiction’ is composed of ‘the sum of multiple media
platforms’ (p. 164); in the case of SKAM, fans of the original are tasked with enacting
lateral surveillance of SKAM’s characters by switching between a public broadcasting
website and a social networking site over the course of a week – in real
time (Bengtsson, Kallquist & Sveningsson, 2017).
This means that there is not a “predetermined” time
or schedule for an episode’s release. Although snippets are released in “linear
sequences” (Lobato, 2018), the timed release of video clips corresponds to the
action occurring within the diegetic world of the narrative. This mode is
familiar to SKAM’s followers, since they’ve become accustomed to ‘following’ their
friends, acquaintances, and celebrities ‘updates’ on a day to day basis. For
example, Gen Z-ers are often tasked with ‘keeping informed’ about their friends
lives not through spoken dialogue with them, but through acknowledging their
daily activities on social network sites via likes or typed comments. In other
words, the show engages its target demographic by integrating itself into teens’
day-to-day social interactions; this contributes to the perceived authenticity
of the narrative universe – a world created partially by the viewers involvement
with various digital texts. This level of immersion has been lauded as
groundbreaking, and is understood as one of the most significant reasons the
show garnered transnational acclaim (Rustad, 2018).
The map below indicates where the first SKAM
remakes cropped up across the world. Beginning with Norway, remakes were then
released (chronologically) in France, Germany, Italy, USA (Austin), and Spain. Prior
to these televisual releases, the first season of the show was adapted into a
one-act play in Denmark. This is an interesting anomaly, though it does not
relate to this project, as I am interested in how notions of authenticity
function transnationally for each show as a result of its intracompositional
narrative.
If you are having trouble accessing the map below, please click here: SKAM - Mapping Transnational Media Phenomena
If you are having trouble accessing the map below, please click here: SKAM - Mapping Transnational Media Phenomena
Each pin offers information as to when the respective
instantiation of the show began and whether or not it is still running. My plan
is to map the first five versions of the show – including the original – and continue
to add to this visual representation of where the different instantiations were
commissioned as new versions appear. The second step in this process will be to
layer a timeline of each versions’ run by date and number of seasons, and the
third step will be to add visual representations of popularity metrics which
rank each version based on certain values such as “Most Authentic (to the
original)”, “Most Authentic (to the respective culture),” “Best Overall,” etc.
Works Cited
Banet-Weiser,
Sarah. Authentic: The Politics of Ambivalence in a Brand Culture. New
York: New York University Press, 2012.
Bengtsson,
Emelie, Rebecka Kallquist & Malin Sveningsson (2018). “Combining New and
Old Viewing Practices. Uses and Experiences of the Transmedia Series ‘Skam.’” Nordicom
Review 39 (no. 2) 63-77.
boyd, danah. It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. Yale
University Press, 2014.
Cunningham, Stuart & David Craig
(2017). “Being ‘really real’ on YouTube: Authenticity, community and brand
culture in social media entertainment.” Media International Australia 164
(no. 1): 71-81.
Dena, C. (2009). “Transmedia Practice: Theorizing
the Practice of Expressing a Fictional World Across Distinct Media Environments”
(Unpublished doctoral dissertation).
Name of University of Sydney, Australia.
Ramos, Dino-Ray. (2019, February) “’SKAM
Austin’ Sets Season 2 Premiere Date on Facebook Watch” Deadline: News
Alerts. Retrieved from https://deadline.com/2019/02/skam-austin-season-2-premiere-date-facebook-watch-1202566729/
Ellison, N. B. & boyd, d. (2013). “Sociality through
social network sites.” In W.H. Dutton (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Internet Studies. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, pp. 151-172.
Rustad, Gry
(2018). “Skam (NRK, 2015-17) and the rhythms of reception of digital television”
Critical Studies of Television: The International Journal of Television
Studies 13 (4), 505-509.
Sundet, Vilde Schanke (2019). “From ‘secret’ online teen drama
to international cult phenomenon: The global expansion of SKAM and its public
service mission” Critical Studies in Television: The International Journal
of Television Studies
Van Djick, Jose. The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History
of Social Media. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
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