Intertextuality in music videos

Intertextuality is when a text’s meaning is influenced by another text. This can be subtle or obvious and theses references allow for a deeper understanding of the text. Intertextuality can be used to reference a certain style in the video or as a parody, mocking the original.

A lot of intertextuality is based on film and interestingly, a lot of film directors started out by making music videos. For example, Simon West directed the music video for Rick Astley’s ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ before going on to direct ‘The Expendables 2’ and ‘Lara Croft: Tomb Raider’ amongst many others.

Charles Bazerman from the University of California once said, “We create our texts out of the sea of former texts that surround us, the sea of language we live in. And we understand the texts of others within that same sea. Sometimes as writers we want to point to where we got those words from and sometime we don’t. Sometimes as readers we consciously recognize where the words and ways of using words come from and at other times the origin just provides an unconsciously sensed undercurrent. And sometimes the words are so mixed and dispersed within the sea, that they can no longer be associated with a particular time, place, group, or writer. Nonetheless, the sea of words always surrounds every text.”

He is saying that there are no longer any original ideas. We simply get our ideas from the world around us even if we aren’t aware that we are doing so. So intertextuality is a technique used in almost every music video because the ideas have all been influenced by some other media text that is already present in the world. The original ideas become generalised and we can’t pin point who first came up with them or in which media product they were first used.

A great example where intertextuality has been used very obviously is in Iggy Azalea’s music video for ‘Fancy’. She has replicated the film ‘Clueless’ through similar characters, setting, costume and storyline. Iggy played the character of Cher from the film as she looks quite similar to Alicia Silverstone, the actress who played her in the film. They copied the costumes so that there were almost exactly the same. This makes the audience instantly aware of the link between the media texts. When I watched the music video for the first time, I had not heard about the intertextuality but within ten seconds of it starting I knew that the link was to ‘Clueless’. This music video is considered to be a parody because the lyrics contradict with the main character. Cher is a spoilt girl living in California who loves to spend her dad’s money and think she is so much better than everyone else but at the same time is very sensible and extremely naive. This contrasts with the lyrics “I’m still in the murda bizness” and “trash the hotel, let’s get drunk on the minibar.” I think this music video is very successful as the intertextuality emphasises the message in the song, which is what the music video was created for.