Georgiana Angus

Intertextuality

Intertextuality, a way to make the nerd feel smart and the movie fans feel honoured. The time old method of paying homage to other pieces of text, within your own work. I plan on using a lot of intertextuality within my work, even my magazines name is based entirely off of intertextual references within intertextual references. So what is it?

Intertextuality is a way some content creators add references to other peoples work. A good example of this is actually the entirety of The Simpsons, which one of its main points of humour is built around intertextuality. Other shows like family guy and south park also use but sometimes in a more satirical way than The Simpsons.

However intertextuality can extend further than comedic value. In the recently released film The Martian, they have the character played by Sean Bean explain what the council of Elrond is from the Lord of the Rings. I thought this was a nice intertextual reference as Sean Bean is obviously in the Lord of the Rings films.

Intertextuality comes in a few different forms, Extreme, Subtle and unintentional

Extreme 

Extreme would be the Family Guy example to the right, where they are obviously dressed a posed like the Star Wars movie poster. This type of reference is so obvious you don't need to be a fan of the thing they are referencing to get it. This usually happens when people want to pay tribute to something and they want people to know they did. Some other examples are The Simpsons reference to Clockwork Orange, and the album cover of Nirvana

Subtle

Subtle would be like The Martian example I said earlier. It's only usually noticed by people who are fans of the text they are referencing. This personally is my favourite type of intertextuality as it makes you feel flattered and smart if you get the reference, and we all like to feel smart. I know that when I was in the cinema watching The Martian, it made me so happy that I got the reference they made and the person I was seeing it with didn't. So subtle intertextuality is usually used as a lighter way to pay homage to a previous piece of text, but is also used as a way to make the audience feel good about themselves.

Unintentional

This happens when someone does something in their content that is similar to that of another creators work. As this is unintentional, it means it is not a way to pay respect to the original idea, or a way to flatter the audience, it just sometimes happens by accident. It's usually much later when someone comes along and says that something the creator made is similar to something another creator made, and usually the person who had the reference in their content, didn't even know the other persons content existed.