When you
watch the latest movie in the cinema, an episode of a popular TV show or a
music video by the most famous singer, there will be a moment you’d go, “This
looks familiar to me” or sometimes even “Wow, what a cool Easter
egg!” Yes, that is a fun reference by the people behind these ideas but
actually, it is not. Intertextuality, in simpler terms, is an interrelationship
between a text, sound and/or images taken as basic to an interpretation of the source.
It is not copying from another source per se, but it is more towards inspiration
or reference that everyone will be familiar with.
For this example, I went for one of
my favourite movies called “Monster High: Why Do Ghouls Fall in Love?” and it
contains several intertextualities but these are the most recognisable ones. During
the opening credits, it shows a scene where Lagoona Blue daydreams about having
a romantic dinner date with her boyfriend, Gil Webber. Instantly, viewers can
recognise it as the well-known spaghetti kiss from Disney’s classic movie, the
Lady and the Tramp. The next scene shows Ghoulia Yelps’ having a problem on who
to choose to be her date as numbers and math formulas circles around her. To
some people, they may say that it’s that Confused Math Lady meme, but actually,
it is referring more towards a scene from the movie, Hangover, where Alan was
counting the cards while he was playing Black Jack and formulas are flying around his head as well. Finally, another recognisable Easter egg is when the
antagonist, Kieran Valentine, holds out a boombox that is playing music in the
middle of the school corridor as a strategy to woo Draculaura. This scene refers to the iconic boombox scene
from the coming of age movie, Say Anything where Lloyd did a similar move in
the movie for his love interest, Diane.
It is so interesting to see the intertextuality between this movies. I've watched the Monster High movie, but I did not realise that the ideas was inspired from different movies. It is clearly seen in the screen shot of scenes that you've attached. The first example is commonly seen in some movies, and definitely it is intertextuality from Lady and the Tramp movie since it was released few years ago. Even the second and third image is from non-fiction movies developed into animation movie which is really creative. There is many movies that have used intertextuality method to make it more interesting, and it works.
ReplyDeletei do see a great high influence of intertexuality even though i haven't watched this movie yet. As mentioned in the following comment above the first example the lady and the tramp are used in many movies or any visual content.also the last one especially in movies and series that ive seen such as dead pool 2 when dead pool tries to make up with colossus and does the stereo-under-your-window thing and family guy the episode 'once bitten' where Neil stands under Chris' window holding an old boombox up to apologize sacrificing their friendship on a fling with Chris's sister meg
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