Page - 169 - in JRFM - Journal Religion Film Media, Volume 07/01

Reading The Book of Joseph | 169www.jrfm.eu 2021, 7/1, 145–171 for Far Cry 5. The artist, the drawing’s text-immanent author, is not visible on the drawing and exists only theoretically. The image-characters are, as said before, the four Seeds and a “Judge” wolf. However, a text-immanent viewer can be identified by following Joseph’s stare, as we have already indicated above. The cult’s leader is looking, as are the other three humans, directly at the viewer, by which the viewer becomes a part of the text of the image, in what could be described as a “second-person perspective” or a “visual you”. Finally, there is also a real viewer, but, as was the case in the text of the book, either as a real-world communicative instance or as a theoretical devotee of the (still to be) de-fictionalized cult of Seedism. Concluding Remarks First of all, we would like to draw the obvious conclusion that communica- tion takes place via and within all medial objects, drawings, films, games, and texts alike. A communication-oriented method provides the tools not only to make this communication visible, but also to make clear the differences in communication in the various medial objects. When comparing the different communications in the texts of game, book, drawing, and trailer, we can identify three shifts. The first is the shift in text-immanent author: in the game, the trailer, and the image, this commu- nicative instance is only theoretically present, while in (the text of) The Book of Joseph it can be easily identified. The same applies to the shift in text-imma- nent reader: in game and trailer the game’s and film’s text-immanent readers are invisible and only theoretically present, while in the book (text and image) the text-immanent reader is spoken to in multiple ways (first-, second-, and third-person singular, and first- and second-person plural). This communication-oriented analysis of the intertextual and intermedial complex of various medial objects connected to The Book of Joseph, as a part of the fictional universe of Far Cry 5, illustrates clearly that the materiality of Joseph’s book differs according to the communicative process in each individ- ual medial object, as the table below shows. In the cases of the game and the trailer, the materiality is found on the level of the characters witnessing and interacting with the book without be- ing able to discover its content, while in the physical book, the materiality is found on the levels of the real author and real reader, who can actually and physically take the book in hand in order to read it. (This includes those real readers who read the book through digital reproductions, as we have.)