Intertextuality

Media theorists:

John Stewart- Modern media 'incorporates, raids and reconstructs'

Julia Kristeva- 'any text is the absorption and transformation of another'

The concept of borrowing from, modifying and recycling other media texts to create a new text is known as intertextuality.

One promo which uses intertextuality is Avril Lavigne's music promo to 'Rock N Roll'.

 

 

 

This music promo uses another media text of cartoon and comics. The use of comic strips make the video more interesting but also are an intertextual reference to another form of media. The comic book element has been referenced through the video in a few different ways as shown below.

 

 

One way is through the comic strip captions which are used to tell the narrative of the music promo. This music promo uses these captions as an unconventional way of creating a well structured narrative within the music promo itself.

 

Also instead of the use of speech, the music promo uses comic style text to show characters speech instead of having a music promos narrative heavily relying on speech. If there was too much speech in a music promo the song itself would not be advertised as well.

 

 

The use of onomatopoeias is also used in the same way as they would be used in a comic book itself. This helps make the music promo as close to its intertextual reference as is possible without making it a copy or parody of the original. 

 

As shown in the above two pictures the intertextual reference is used as an exact match to the music promo's narrative as possible. This allows the narrative to be carried on throughout the cuts between the comic book styled reference and the original and conventional video. This allows the video to be different but also easy to follow and understand.