| The collection of narratives featuring the fictional lawyer-detective Perry Mason has been systematically created, produced, and reproduced over time, in various media, and by the contributions of a number of "authors." This narrative system is described and analyzed using transmedia poetics--a combination of neoformalism and production of culture methodological approaches. Perry Mason is viewed as a dynamic system appearing in a number of mystery novels, films, and broadcast series, whose production is seen to be influenced by a number of diverse influences including the series creator Erle Stanley Gardner, the producers, writers, and actors at Warner Bros. and later at CBS television, and actor Raymond Burr, who starred as Mason in the television series that originally ran from 1957 to 1966. This study employs textual, historical, and institutional analysis to show that the case of Perry Mason is not just a case of adaptation that privileges the original source novels. Use of transmedia poetics identifies how and why the CBS television series featuring Burr has been, to date, the consummate production of Perry Mason. |
