Intertextuality - By Ella Croft

Intertextuality in music

In Andrew Goodwin's theory we came across the word of "intertextuality”. A lot of artist have made sure they include intertextuality into their music videos to make specific references to significant events, people or pictures.  The term Intertextuality refers to the process of creating references to any kind of media text via another media text. In other words Intertextuality for a type of media (film, television, music etc.) to pay respect to another media text.

Examples:

·        Taylor Swift- ‘Love story’: the lyrics of this song talk about Romeo and Juliette. This video is made to look like a modernized version of the story, relating more to the lyrics of the song.

·        Robbie Williams- ‘You know me’: This video features the artist being taken to an ‘Alice in wonderland’ style setting with Robbie Williams dressed up as the rabbit from the film. This creates intertextuality between the film and his music video.

·        One of the most well-known examples of intertextuality is Madonna "Material Girl". In her music video she includes clear reference to Marilyn Monroe in "Diamonds are forever" in the way that she is portrayed in the background maybe by the way she is dressed. People who saw this video were able to know where the reference and inspiration is from because it was such a ground breaking Marilyn Monroe moment. In the end this gained more viewers for Madonna as

she related to a Marilyn Monroe who is a role model to many people.

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The song "Decode" by a popular band called Paramore uses intertextuality in their music video to make it more interesting for the viewer. In this particular music video references from the film Twilight are used. This video uses clips from the film in the music video where it fits with what’s being sung or what type of image they are trying to get across. 

I believe intertextuality is used to attract an audience. Intertextuality would appeal to the audience as they can relate to what is going on. This is especially popular when music videos make intertextual links to films such as “Love Story”, “You know me” and “Decode.” Since films build up such a big fan base. Intertextuality can be an incredibly effective to deepen the themes and ideas in your music video, or to show characters in a subtle way.  It’s all about your personal preference and the style of the work you are trying to show in your video.

I don’t think I will use intertextuality in my music video as it doesn’t suit the song I would like to do. If we do use intertextuality in our music video it most likely won't be something that is extremely well known because recreations of popular references wont suit our music video of “Let it go” by James Bay. We have decided not to do so because if we didn’t pull it of correctly it would look tacky and people wouldn’t understand why it was included.