The new within the old, the old within the new: Transmediality and the introduction of the kinematograph in the case of ALADIN OU LA LAMPE MERVEILLEUSE (1898)

The article outlines the transmedial associations involved in the reception of ALADIN OU LA LAMPE MERVEILLEUSE, an unidentified French film screened that the German-Belgian showman Henri Grunkorn screened at Dutch fairgrounds in 1898. Various forms of Aladdin stories appeared on different media throughout the nineteenth century. Contrary to the widespread definition of transmediality, this paper argues that it was not a coherent narrative that stitched these forms of Aladdin together, but a recurring motifs about modernity or a 'transmedial imagination'. The article concludes transmediality functioned as a mechanism to demonstrate the medium-specific qualities of the new medium of the kinematograph as well as to highlight the kinematograph’s distinctive modern nature.