Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Media Paratexts. Jonathan Gray. New York: New York University Press, 2010. 247 pp.

What do a Star Trek lunchbox, a child playing with a Buzz Lightyear action figure, and a water cooler conversation about last night’s Colbert Report have in common? According to Jonathan Gray in Show Sold Separately, these are all media paratexts. More than merely extensions of a central media text, Gray argues these paratexts are all equally vital to cultural and individual meaning-making. Gray, an associate professor of media and cultural studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has explored these issues throughout much of his career, most notably in his book Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality. What sets Show Sold Separately apart from his previous works is the assertion that media and cultural studies need to step away from the emphasis on close readings of primary texts and instead focus on what he labels “off-screen studies.” This form of study, he argues, can best be accomplished through examining the constitutive role of paratexts in creating a mediated experience that breaks up the notion of a central or primary text.  [Read more...]