Intertextuality - where one media product creates meaning through referencing the form, style, conventions and/or features of anther media product.
This can be done for many reasons, including:
- To demonstrate or to make clear a narrative
- To provide a special individual response to the target audience
- To use tried and tested methods that will definitely provoke a response
- To generate a wider target audience
- To pay homage or respect to the original product
- To criticise the original product
Underline
Explore how intertextuality creates meaning in the videos to Riptide by Vance Joy and 7 Rings by Ariana Grande
Kneejerk
Intertextuality is an essential way in which producers can demonstrate meaning and ideological perspectives. However, there are many other important ways in which meaning can be encoded in the music videos I have studied.
Ariana Grande - 7 Rings
- References to 'Asian culture' both attract a wider audience, and are used as a symbolic code for trendiness and coolness
- High contrast, colourful and saturated MES may be an explicit reference to the films Enter The Void, Only God Forgives, and music videos by artists like BLACKPINK and A$AP Rocky.
- A range of polysemic representations - Grande is represented as both cute and innocent (for example through the anchorage of the mise en scene of the dollhouse), with heavily sexualised gestures and performances, such as being on all fours and staring directly into the camera
- Many conventions of the rap music genre, for example the rampant consumerism, the emphasis on 'bling', the reference luxury brands like Louboutins, Tiffany's,
- "Breakfast at Tiffany's", a popular audrey hepburn film, with the MES of her jewelry making reference to this, though in a typically over the top style that is more appropriate to a younger audience
- 'Ear' jewelry may be a reference to Japanese geisha buns, Japanese 'Harajuku girls' or a reference to the Disney channel (Grande is a former Disney Channel star, and was known for her wholesome style)
- References to Kpop and Jpop through Japanese language and general MES
- Self-referentiality - car and numberplate a hermeneutic code to a variety of Grande information
Vance Joy - Riptide
- Referential codes in Riptide - opening scene with closeup shot of woman with metal being forced in her mouth, reference to the Saw films and other torture themed horror films
- Late 20th Century French Films: slow paced zoom, voyeuristic, It Follows
- Tarot cards: C/U shot of cards connotes spiritualism, mysticism and the supernatural
- References to reference to Western culture: the knife game, New York City, Midnight Cowboy
- Cognitive dissonance between lyrics and the song. The master shot of the performer singing deliberately depicts the words being badly lip synched, and each time we cut back, se appears more injured, once more a hermeneutic code and a reference to the horror genre. Promotes a range of polysemic readings for the audience
- Lack of explicit narrative is a deliberate postmodern feature and makes reference to surrealist art and cinema, using dreamlike logic and narrative
However...
Please note, it is not essential to include a however... paragraph, especially in component one, where your answers are likely to be more straightforward. This is just an example of how you can suggest some alternatives to intertextuality, and how the products you have studied may function simply by themselves. And yet... we didn't manage to come up with anything too convincing! Even when referring to anchorage or positioning, it was impossible to get away from how referential these music videos are!
Conclusion: intertextuality is one of the most useful and widely used concepts in A-level media studies. Please make sure you not only know HOW to use it, but also that you know explicit examples of how each set text for component one A and component two use it!
- However, intertextuality is in many ways less important than a range of other technical elements
- The use of anchorage is essential to both texts.
- Riptide creates an uncomfortable and disturbing experience for it's audiences. The clearly 'wrong' subtitles create a sense of unease - highly atypical and unconventional
- Audiences are anchored through elements of muse en scene including blood, and close up shots that uncomfortably position the audience with a woman whose thoughts and motives are unclear.
- Audience are positioned in a voyeuristic position, staring at a stereotypically attractive woman undressing, undetected. However also a clear reference to the slasher subgenre
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| An explicit intertextual reference to Louboutin shoes, as well as a declaration of consumerism more commonly associated with the rap/hip-hop genre. The song itself is essentially a mid-tempo hip-hop remix of 'My Favourite Things' from the Sound Of Music soundtrack... which forms a binary opposition to the mildly threatening delivery. Meanwhile the MES is pure K-pop, mixed with a hypersexualised version of Grande's previous schoolgirl/princess look: Disneyland meets Moulin Rouge. If anything, we have moved beyond the referential to the hyperreferential. |