THIRD POST!: Intertextuality

Our third lesson was on Intertextuality, which is a key aspect in most comedy films or series, which is able to recreate jokes from old programs. in the words of Julia Kristeva "the term interextuality denotes the transportation from one media to another" which is just a fancy way of saying " one piece of media borrowing content from another" be it a line, object or situation.

there are 2 types of intertextuality:
-concious: purposly putting it in
-unconcious: putting somthing in that was meant to be a piece of interextualy intentionally.

the only diffrence is if the author of whatever media knew they were inserting a piece of interextuality, this is possible because levels of interextuality are determined by the viewer, one person may get reminded of somthing they have seen (which is when it becomes intertextual) while the other dosnt thinks it does not intitally relate to anything that have seen before. the author has no control over what the viewer may reminisce about.



example of some intextuality are:

Marcel Durchamps LHOOQ, which is intertexualised from the mona lisa, creating somthing that looks simular to it, this piece would be considered a concious example of intertextuality because i think the marcel durchamp was very aware that he had copyied a famous peice of art.







General models, of objects or characters before the final render stage are also considered as a form of intertextuality because, they are being designed to look like somthing that has been created or will be created.
but of corse the order the viewer sees them in will determine what they see as the refrence, a person totally oblivious to art could see marcel durchamps piece mocking the mona lisa, and then see the mona lisa, beliefing that the mona lisa was based on marcel durchamps piece.

this can also be applied in movies and series. commonly it will be ones taken from the past 50 years, this way to can normally be understood by most the family.

this scene from "planet of the apes" showed the main character punching the ground and shouting "you blew it up damn you all to hell" this is commonly recreated in todays television.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW3LtmH5M_c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32lwKxakec8&feature=related

as you can see here both the simpsons and madagasar using the same line from that clip. this is useful in animation because it can add another layer of comedy for an oder audience. a very good example is the simpsons which target age group is the whole family, entertained by homers antics while the parents can laugh at the same joke but on a diffrent level, and again in madagascar, but because the words have been altered slightly it can still be enjoyed as a pun. the simpsons even done it a second time!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ba7qTvBJnQY&NR=1

the simpsons is a very fine example for intertextuality because of most of there episodes are based on books, movies or series that are already created, but they recreate them slightly to hit a diffrent audience. the first one that comes to mind for the simpsons is there parody of "The Shinning"

as you can see from both of these videos the simpsons pretty much copy the setting, background music and some of the lines, but they add a element of light heartedness because it is a childrens program. they change it enough so that from a persons point of view that has never seen the shinning would still find it funny, but those who have would find it funny in 2 ways.

all of this is extremly useful in animation! because in animation the main concern is your audience and there vierwing experience, the main way to keep somones attention is either with drama or comedy, and using intertextuality it is very easy to grasp the attention of many generations, which is espically useful in childrens programs since the adult is the one who controls what is on.


when talking about intertextuality, there is a very fine line between simply borrowing from a program and stealing from them, which is really needed to know the legality of it all since you wouldnt want to find yourself in court. the key is really to take the idea or lines but alter them slightly so they give a diffrent effect but can still be reconized as a concious piece of intertextuality. the 3 types of intertextuality to look out for are:

-Pastisque: copying somthing in a crtical way
-Parody: copying somthing in a hyper crtical way.
-Omage: copying somthing in a honorable way.

each showing diffrent levels of copying, a pastique and parody would be more making jokes about the medium, while an omage would use intertextuality as a refrence or as a joke about a situation.

an example of a parody is family guys Blue Harvest. which critcally makes fun of Star Wars, pratically sceen for sceen.





Take the intro for example, where you have the scrolling text explaining the general story and setting so far. family guy took this because it would be familiar and went completly off tangent, althought it does only tell the sort of jokes that a person who has watched star wars would know so it would be a smaller market. but this can be seen as a total rework of the movie, because it is almost taken scene by and scene and parodied.








even at some points they make refrences to other popular movies that the viewwer who enjoy star wars will properally enjoy. and somtimes they make a refrence to there own show.

in this example they parody the nerd classic. Wonder Woman. who is well known for deflecting bullets with her wrists. and is actually what darth vader does in the original series of star wars.








in comparison a example of a omage would be in somthing like, the simpsons where they dont make jokes about the shows, they make jokes based around the concept of the show. like in my earlier "The Shinning" example,  they poked fun at the idea of homer going crazy without his 2 favourite things in life, rather than poking fun at the idea of somone going crazy.

as ive already mentioned this is all very useful in animation, to make a scene or overall concept more interesting to a wider public.