Recombinant Appropriation : Remix, Mashup, Parody

This essay considers the ways in which new intertextual forms engendered by emerging technologies—mashups, remixes, reboots, samplings, remodelings, transformations—further develop the impulse to adapt and appropriate, and the ways in which they challenge the theory and practice of adaptation and appropriation. It argues that broad notions of adaptation in adaptation studies and the emergence of media protocols are useful for the analysis of recombinant appropriations and adaptations/appropriations in general. Best read in conjunction with the companion essay by Kyle Meikle in this volume, it explores the political and aesthetic dimensions of participatory mashups and viewer engagements with, and appropriations of, transmedia franchises, taking a variety of Internet memes and the BBC franchise Sherlock as case studies and focusing on the politically, ethically, and aesthetically transgressive potential of recombinant adaptations.