Intertextuality

Intertextuality is how things link together, say between different films, photographs, adverts and so on. It’s almost like semiotics how signs and signals refer to each other to make a contextual link like a pun for example.

All the examples I can think of right now are all in children’s films, and this is usually because adults need something to entertain themselves as well, when sat in a dark cinema watching some character they would fall asleep, but if there is another level of wit and humour, along with a small reference to an adult film, this can make it entertaining. Like the example in the lecture of Madagascar and the visual and oral reference to Planet of the Apes.

Also spoof films such as the Scary Movie franchise are all based around intertextuality. Without the original films this branch of the film industry wouldn’t have developed.

From a model perspective, all models must be intertextual otherwise they would not be models? They need a level of meaning to gain the audience’s attention and understanding otherwise they just wouldn’t work.