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Intertextuality: Interpretive Practice and Textual Strategy

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Intertextuality: Interpretive Practice and Textual Strategy Critical Studies in Media Communication Vol. 17, No.4, December 2000, pp. 429-446 Intertextuality: Interpretive Practice and Textual Strategy Brian Ott and Cameron Walter 0-In contemporary media scholarship, the concept of intertextuality is used to descrihe hoth an interpretive practice of audiences and a stylistic device consciously employed by producers ofmedia. This study examines how the frequent, scholarly conflation ofthese two conceptions has weakened the theoretical usefolness of hoth perspectives. Turning to the view of intertextuality as s!Jlistic device, the essay identifies parodic allusion, creative appropriation, and self-reflexive reference as three distinct intertextual strategies. It concludes by considering the ways audiences use these devices to define their identities and order their experiences. VER the course of the past three and television shows had increasingly O decades, the post-structuralist no­ begun quoting and referencing other tion of intertextuality has rapidly ac­ popular cultural artifacts. Seeking to quired intellectual currency among me­ describe this phenomenon, critics­ dia scholars. Ironically, the rise of this both academic (Campbell & Freed, concept was initiated and then fueled 1993; Collins, 1992) and popular (Bark, by two somewhat divergent forces. In 1998; Griffin, 1998)-adopted the term the early 1970s, media scholars-draw­ intertextuality. The centering of the ing upon the critique of the "Author­ audience as a site of textual production God" by semoticians and literary theo­ and the expanding role of intentional rists such as Barthes (1988), Derrida allusion in media has contributed to (1976), and Kristeva (1986a, 1986b)­ and continues to animate a largely un­ began theorizing the notion of the "ac­ noticed duality in the use of the con­ tive audience." In this tradition, inter­ cept. I Hence, in current practice, me­ textuality served as a descriptor for the dia scholars employ the term general process by which audiences intertextuality to describe two ex­ create meaning. Then, in the early tremely different phenomena.2 1980s, media critics observed that films Television critic John Fiske, for in­ stance, uses intertextuality to describe the way audiences unconsciously create Brian Oll is Assistant Professor ofMedia Stud­ meaning by utilizing their vast knowl­ in ofSpeech Communication ies the Department edge of cultural codes learned from at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523. Cameron Walter is an undergraduate other texts to read a particular text. For student in the same departmtnt. An earlier Fiske (1987, 1989), intertextuality is a version of this paper was presented at the postmodem sensibility shared by audi­ Western States Communication Association ences-a reading formation that con­ Convention in February 2000. ceives of texts as fragments in a larger Copyright 2000, National Communication Association 430 431 INTERTEXTUALlTY DECEMBER 2000 CSMC orr AND WALTER web of textuality. "The theory of inter­ In contrast to Fiske, Collins conceives This essay reflects an effort to flesh account for the way readers/audiences textuality," he writes, "proposes that of intertextuality as inherent to some out the differences between these two come to meaning and experience the anyone text is necessarily read in rela­ texts, strategically included by the pro­ conceptions, and to restore the term's world. tionship to others and that a range of ducer, and referring to specific other hermeneutic value. To accomplish this One premise widely shared by liter­ textual knowledges is brought to bear texts. goal, this essay begins by looking at the ary theorists is that intertextuality rep­ upon it. These relations do not take the The two preceding examples sug­ dual legacy of intertextuality and its resents a clear shift in thinking about who form of specific allusions from one text gest that intertextuality has been used adoption by media scholars. Then this creates texts. In describing intertextual­ to another and there is no need for to describe both an interpretive prac­ essay focuses more closely on the con­ ity, Barthes argues that audiences, not readers to be familiar with specific texts tice unconsciously exercised by audi­ ception of "intertextuality as textual authors, write (i.e., construct) texts: to read intertextually" (1987, p. 108). ences living in a postmodern land­ strategy" by arguing for three distinct types, parodic allusion, creative appro­ We know now a text is not a line of words Though readingintertextually does not scape and a textual strategy consciously releasing a single "theolOgical" meaning require specific textual knowledges, incorporated by media producers that priation, and self-reflexive reference. The final portion of the essay explores (the "message" of the Author-God) but a there are nonetheless some texts that invites audiences to make specific lat­ multidimensional space in which a variety make specific allusions, that invite read­ eral associations between texts. Inter­ the "symbolic equipment" (Burke, of writings, none of them original, blend that audiences might derive from ers to exercise specialized knowledge, textuality has come to describe both 1973) and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations and this too has been termed intertex­ the general practice of decoding and a the various intertextual strategies uti­ drawn from innumerable centers of cul­ tuality. specific strategy of encoding. Unfortu­ lized by media producers. ture .... [A text) is made of multiple writ­ In this latter formulation, intertextu­ nately, media scholars rarely make this ings, drawn from many cultures and enter­ ality is not something audiences do, distinction, and as the term has spread ing into mutual relations of dialogue, Intertextuality as parody, and contestation, but there is one but something authors do. Far from in popularity, its dual legacy and mean­ Interpretive Practice place where this multiplicity is focused and being a consequence of the death of ing have increasingly been conflated in the work of practicing critics. that place is the reader, not as was hitherto the author (as the first version would The view of "intertextuality as inter­ said, the author. (1988, pp. 146, 148) suggest), intertextuality is an identifi­ James Goodwin's (1994) study of the pretive practice" represents a direct able stylistic device consciously em­ films of Akira Kurosawa affords a prime challenge to the modernist and formal­ For Barthes, the reader affords the ployed by the author or in the case of example of this conflation. Citing ist notions of 'authorial originality' and space upon which a web of textual media texts by the producer, to invite a Kristeva and Barthes, Goodwin argues 'influence' (Hawkes, 1977). "The inter­ quotations (i.e., a text) is inscribed; particular audience response.3Jim Col­ at the outset of his book that, "the textual in which every text is held," consequently, the "unity of a text lies lins (1992) highlights this perspective concept of intertextuality designates a writes Barthes, "is not to be confused not in its origin but in its destination" (1980, p. 148). Moreover, a text as in his discussion of television's post­ multidimensional relation throu~h with some origin of the text: to try to modem elements: which a particular text is intelligible [to find the 'sources', the 'influences' of a constituted by a reader is always fleet­ readers] in terms of other texts" (p. 9). work, is to fall in with the myth of ing, never finished once and for all. The foregrounding of intertextual refer­ In the pages that follow, he consis­ filiation; the citations which go to make Since a text exists within an endlessly ences has become a marker of "quality tently describes the concept as an inter­ up a text are anonymous, untrace­ expanding matrix of intertextual pro­ television." ... Jane Feuer has traced this pretive practice of audiences. When he able ... they are guotations without duction, readers continually bring new self-conscious intertextuality as it devel­ begins his criticism of Kurosawa's films, inverted commas" (1988, p. 160). De­ texts to bear upon their readings of that oped in the MTM style, but more recently, however, he shifts the term's focus from spite subSCribing to this view, several text. The reader who returns to an as "quality television" has developed across audience to author. "Intertextual cin­ scholars (Makaryk, 1995; Payne, 1996) essay or book she has read in the past production companies and networks, the ema," he writes, "is reserved in the will find that that text no longer exists, explicit referencing has played a vital role have paradoxically identified Julia present study for films and the work of that the rereading has been a rewriting. in situating a given program in relation to Kristeva as the "source" of the term other forms of quality and nonquality pro­ cineasts that exhibit conscious, marked, intertextuality and then traced its "de­ Intertextuality for Barthes, then, de­ grams. During the 1990 fall season, for or dominant uses of intertextuality ... velopment" in subsequent writers. scribes the textual 'infinitude' upon example, Michael and Hope of ABC's thir­ intertextual structures of the director's Rather than rehearse and hence per­ which readers unconsciously draw to tysomething referred to watching L. A. Law, own design" (p. 16). To the extent that petuate this narrative yet again, this momentarily give meaning to a text. while on NBC's L. A. Law, attorney Anne these two conceptions involve
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