Comments on: I, Reboot (Part II)

By: Eric Dienstfrey

Eric Dienstfrey — Fri, 23 May 2014 17:53:01 +0000

Yes, I thought you were saying that Chabon used the term reboot in his “minute zero” comment, but I may have misread it.

By: William Proctor

William Proctor — Fri, 23 May 2014 14:40:38 +0000

Hi Eric,
did you say Chabon offered a playful comparison somewhere? Be interested to read that please if you know where to find it. Many thanks

By: William Proctor

William Proctor — Fri, 23 May 2014 14:38:09 +0000

Just to make explicit: the reboot as wiping the slate clean and beginning again is not MY exclusive concept. The concept emerged from comic book fandom so perhaps a reboot means different things to different interpretative communities. Here’s Thomas R Willits description: A reboot ‘restarts an entertainment universe that has already been previously established and begin with a new storyline and/ or timeline hat disregards the original writer’s previously established history, thus making it obsolete and void’ (2009).
Eric Burns: Finally, we have the major event. The big one. The big block of cheese in the White House lobby. The retcon that completely starts everything over. This retcon is often called a ‘reboot,’ because that’s what it does. It starts from the very beginning, wiping clean all continuity so new readers can jump right in. Everything’s up in the air because nothing’s happened yet.
Even Wikipedia: In serial fiction, to reboot means to discard all continuity in an established series in order to recreate its characters, timeline and backstory from the beginning.

I offer these examples to illustrate that I did not invent this use of the word.

By: William Proctor

William Proctor — Fri, 23 May 2014 14:15:30 +0000

I agree with everything you say Eric, and thank you for your articulate thoughts. I think that words like text and audience, for example, are not the same. I am not trying to essentialise here – although I have been called such! My thesis seeks to determine what the word means in a certain context. The fact that it may be used discursively in other ways and come to mean more and more things as the word evolves is something I accept wholeheartedly. I am simply trying to ‘clear the ground,’ as it were so that further studies of reboots and otherwise can continue into the future. Here’s what Will Brooker had to say and I thank him for his insights:
‘a reboot has to have some specific meaning because I think the terms used in scholarly discussion must be associated fairly precisely with a specific meaning, or they are not useful. I feel the same way about “deconstruction,” for instance – I think it’s broad and inexact use in journalism, and in some academic work, has been unhelpful. Cultural Studies is not science, and everything we do is part of a “series of debates” but I do think we have to have a reasonable agreement about what key words mean. “Reboot” is not the kind of word we can never pin down, like “culture or “realism”. I don’t think it needs to be complicated or unclear.’

By: Eric Dienstfrey

Eric Dienstfrey — Fri, 23 May 2014 14:08:53 +0000

*make that ‘one word, ONE meaning’

By: Eric Dienstfrey

Eric Dienstfrey — Fri, 23 May 2014 14:05:57 +0000

Good points, but I think you might be presuming that a coherent definition is ‘one word, word meaning’ when plenty of words — like text, audience, technology, and media — all have multiple meanings within the industry and scholarship. It is not only possible to discuss the industry while acknowledging the many uses of these words, in many ways it is necessary when trying to understand how the industry works and how people within the industry are conceiving of their work. Further (and this is now just a side point), but the difference between sequel and reboot is that sequel is a literal reference to a sequence or series, whereas reboot is a deliberately playful comparison between stories and software. Being that your definition of reboot is already stretching the technological use of the term in order to make one type of playful comparison, I don’t think you’ve made much of a case in suggesting that other playful comparisons (such as one offered by Chabon) are in anyway less valid. That said, your dissertation sounds like a great contribution to Dark Knight and franchise studies, and it looks like it is already starting the types of discussions that most doctoral candidates only hope to incite.

By: William Proctor

William Proctor — Fri, 23 May 2014 09:38:01 +0000

Thanks Eric. I see what you’re getting at – but without a coherent definition, how can we begin to discuss how industry, text and audience operate? In my thesis, I do examine how the word is being used in discourse, but I think some uses are ill-conceived and a part of how buzz-words become fashionable. Why can we define a sequel, for example, and not a reboot? I think definitions of sequels and prequels are ‘exclusive,’ too. Will Brooker points out that some people use the term ‘deconstruction’ erroneously. Is that ‘exclusive’? Indeed, signifiers must have some exclusivity or they lose all their moorings. Providing a set of definitions for discursive uses is one thing, but they should be challenged I think to construct a coherent definition. Without a definition, the concept becomes useless. Of course, you’re free to disagree.
Thanks Kaitlin – I think ‘retcon’ is the right spelling, unhypenated so thanks for pointing that out.

By: Kaitlin Fyfe

Kaitlin Fyfe — Fri, 23 May 2014 02:51:52 +0000

Small point. Isn’t it “retcon” rather than “ret-con”? I’ve always seen the former spelling rather than the latter, and I recall “retcon” being the spelling when the word first appeared and started to be used on rec.arts.comics on Usenet in the late 80s/early 90s.

By: Eric Dienstfrey

Eric Dienstfrey — Thu, 22 May 2014 16:30:05 +0000

Thank you. The definition you provide is very exclusive. You say that the computer term “reboot” is about 40 years old. All subsequent uses of the term in comic book and film discourse are then figurative uses that mean to draw some analogy between restarting a computer and restarting a story. But by providing a very exclusive definition of one figurative use of “reboot”, and by stating that other figurative uses of the term are incorrect, you are inadvertently arguing that there is (and has only been) one correct way for people to use the term “reboot” in order to form an analogy between computers and stories. Why go so far as to say that some uses are incorrect? Why not simply provide a set of definitions for all the ways that “reboot” has been used in film and comic book discourse? This would still clarify many of the misunderstandings that you highlight, but it would do so without asserting a sense of right and wrong into the conversation.

By: William Proctor

William Proctor — Thu, 22 May 2014 08:44:48 +0000

Hi Eric,
Yes, I defined a reboot in Part I of the series. http://blog.commarts.wisc.edu/2014/05/08/i-reboot-part-1/