Stolen Stories: Transmedia Meta-Narratives and Commodification of Human Suffering

• In Event: Storying Just Futures: Emancipatory Analyses of Representations of People Who Sought Refuge

Abstract

Seeking Refuge is an animated documentary miniseries about children who experienced forced displacement and sought refuge in the UK. Produced by Mosaic Films for the BBC in 2012, the series received numerous awards and was subsequently adapted into five picturebooks. The films and picturebooks are marketed as being “real-life” stories told in the “own words” of children. For well-intentioned educators, the stories of Seeking Refuge appear credible and authentic. Yet these children are not credited as authors, illustrators, or designers for their words and artworks. What were the circumstances and conditions under which these children told their stories? To whom do the stories of Seeking Refuge really belong? This study investigates how political, cultural, and economic power shapes authorial and institutional discourses in this transmedia production, critically examining the commodification of human displacement and interrogating whose/what interests are served in the production and consumption of these texts.

Grounded in Generative Metanarrative Theory of Human Displacement described above, this work draws from critical multicultural perspectives of children’s literature and media as cultural artifacts representing/reproducing social organization and hierarchies of power (Botelho & Rudman, 2009, Stephens, 1992), involving intersecting logics of transmedia storytelling, branding, and activism (Dena, 2014, 218; Jenkins, 2017). Our analytic lens draws from critical race theory (Collins, 2021; Crenshaw, 2011), decolonial scholarship (Tuck & Gaztambide-Fernández, 2013), and critical refugee studies (Espiritu et al., 2022).

The research is guided by methods of critical multicultural analysis (Botelho & Rudman, 2009) and multimodal critical discourse analysis (Machin & Mayr, 2023; Van Leeuwen, 2014), adhering to a multiphase, iterative analytic process (Miles, et. al, 2014). Data derived from television, print, and digital texts that comprise the Seeking Refuge series, including five animated documentary episodes, their respective picturebook adaptations, and the production’s official websites. We applied an emancipatory intersectional lens to investigate how these recursively interact with racialized geopolitical histories and futures in the global context.

Although marketed as a collection of individual accounts, Seeking Refuge constructs one overarching story. Analysis reveals homogenizing patterns in visual, literary, and mechanic elements, reinforcing uniformity of narrative structure, characterization, and conflict/resolution. Identities and personalities of children are erased through the genericizing and commodification of trauma across three dimensions of power in production:
- Stolen stories: Series texts are created with the theft or misappropriation of children’s voices, creative works, and intellectual labor. Identities are rendered invisible or generic.
- Obscured participations: Modes of representation are obscured or distorted (e.g. by masked interviews and poetic animation) that create a false perception of performative (self-representative) storytelling.
- Interest convergence between series producers and the BBC (concomitantly functioning as semi-autonomous government agency and commercial subsidiary): Distribution/consumption of Seeking Refuge accrues social and material capital to multiple stakeholders in a media-industrial complex, serving racialized geopolitical and neoliberal interests.

We draw from our findings to challenge the appropriation and commodification of children’s experiences and stories, and explore humanizing possibilities of refugee refusal (Espiritu, et al., 2022) that invite more expansive storying of unique characters and seek to (re)imagine and catalyze radical change.

Authors

• Nora Peterman, University of Missouri - Kansas City

• Ekaterina Strekalova-Hughes, University of Missouri - Kansas City

• Richard M. Minaya, University of Missouri - Kansas City