Intertextuality

Intertextuality:  flattery or plagiarism?

The term “intertextuality” was coined by philosopher Julia Kristeva in 1966 and is described as “the shaping of a text meaning by another text.“

Examples of intertexuality are all around us because the idea behind intertextuality is that there are no new ideas.  Well, at least not completely new, completely original ideas.  “Any text (or video, film, image, music, etc.) is the absorption and transformation of another.”  I believe the philosophical meaning of intertextuality is that interpretation is created by the audience, rather than, presented by the creator.  Readers become writers; writers write in relation to prior influences and interconnections to all other media.  The theory suggests that an artful expression is created by the influence of previous work.  The artist intent, whether subtle or blatant, is to make a specific reference to a prior piece.  This is particularly common in the film industry where remakes of prior scripts are frequently updated and re-released [sometimes under new title names such as when An Affair To Remember (1957) was remade into Sleepless in Seattle (1993)].

In the examples below, note the intertexual relationships between Robert Palmer’s, Addicted to Love (1986) and Shania Twain’s, Man I Feel Like A Woman (1999).

Below, The Simpsons are posed as The Brady Bunch.

Although, the intertextual references in the Simpsons are very frequent and well-documented, note another famous carton series, The Flintstones, and its intertextual reference to The Honeymooners. 

As pictured below, Absolut Vodka frequently uses the concept of intertextuality to promote their brand.

In my Second Home-Finding Your Place in the Fun book project, I choose to present the concept of intertextuality by inserting an image of Edgar Allan Poe, as well as a famous quote from Picasso.