Reminder: Exam one is next Thursday

Intertextuality

• Text for consideration: "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll"
• Composed by Bob Dylan during 1963 for his The Times They Are A-Changin'
  • Notable album: Dylan's folk protest statement (title track, "Blowing in the Wind")
  • See lyrics
• Based on newspaper article
• Accuracy issues: cause of Carroll's death, level of Zantzinger's aristocracy
• Intertextuality allows the shaping of a text's meaning based on the content of other texts
  • Conceived by Julia Kristeva in 1966
  • Can be accomplished by either the author of the text or its reader
    • No text is entirely original in itself, instead it is associated and influenced by other texts
    • The reader interprets the text based on prior cultural readings
    • Some argue that conscious references may not be considered intertextuality -- there are always subconscious associations made
  • Incorporates Saussure's semiotics -- signs derive meaning from structure and association
• Found throughout cultural forms
  • Dylan's song (text #1) shaped by newspaper article (text #2)
    • Dylan was also a source of intertextual creation
    • "Subterranean Homesick Blues" video is recreated as "Bob" by Weird Al
  • Found in many other forms of culture, whether scholarly works, literature, visual arts, music
  • High culture, folk, pop, mass, sub -- all share within and outside of defined boundaries
• Especially common in popular culture
  • Current popular cartoon programming -- The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy and others -- contain perhaps the most frequent intertextual references in modern television
    • The Simpsons contains, at very least, these film references
  • Other examples from pop culture:
    • Austin Powers (film) -- James Bond series (Blofeld / Dr. Evil)
    • East of Eden (literature) -- the Bible (Genesis: Cain and Abel)
    • Andy Warhol (modern art) -- photographs, objects
    • Fail blog (website) -- modern communication
• Case one: Mona Lisa to Kim Kardashian

Postmodernism, intertextuality and our narrative

• Thus far, we have discussed the evolution of culture and its study
  • This include categorizations formed during periods that occured before the 1950s
  • In the 1950s/60s, new understandings of culture and mass culture emerged to reflect new technologies
  • These new technologies, some argued, made classical distinctions (folk, high, mass/pop) obsolete
  • This is discussed in ch. 5 of the book
  • What evolved is a segment of postmodernism
• Postmodernism
  • Postmodernism: "largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific, or objective, efforts to explain reality" (from PBS "Faith and Reason" series)
    • Modernism: contemporary thought, respects advances made during and since Enlightenment
    • Scientific judgments are suspect; individual relatively determines reality and are equally valid
    • "Truth" is fictional; identity is constructed; the powerful construct reality (language akin to 1984 use)
    • Traditional theories of many academic fields are questioned by postmodernists
  • Postmodernism in mass culture
    • What was the traditional understanding in our field?
      • That culture could be understood within broad categories: folk, pop/mass, high
      • This is unacceptable, said postmodernists
    • Postmodernism in culture:
      • It is impossible to isolate the different types of culture
      • Folk/mass/high become too greatly integrated in electronic communications
      • This integration makes definition difficult in some cases, impossible in others
      • Our Simpsons clip (from last class) contained both high and mass culture -- so which was it?
    • Postmodernism in mass culture is defined by sometimes contradictory terms. It weaves
      1. Past/present
      2. Truth/fiction
      3. Original/Interpretation
  • In other words, intertextuality
  • Postmodernism and intertextuality
  • Because of the intertextuality present in electronic media, the old definitions no longer apply
  • In the book: Austin Powers, Tarantino, opera

 

Contact

Prof. Matt Blake
Tehama Hall 339
530-898-3608
mdblake (at) csuchico.edu