Intertextuality

Intertextuality is essential the idea the of using other texts to inspire a new one which creates feelings of nostalgia and reliability within the audience or whole new meanings. Music videos can link to many different things including cinema, fashion and photography.

A classic example of music video intertexuality would be the video for Material Girl by Madonna which refers to the iconic image of Marilyn Monroe from the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

The music video for Without Me by Eminem uses a lot of intertextual references to popular TV programmes and news stories, however the main theme of the video is the intertextual link between the video and comic books/ superheroes in which he dresses up in a similar outfit to Robin and gives himself the name 'Rap Boy'. The video aims to make a humorous link to comic book heroes by poking fun at saving a boy from listening to his music, this would appeal to his majority male audience who may have read such comics when they were younger and also just creates a funny video for all audiences to enjoy.



What You Waiting For? by Gwen Stefani is based around Alice in Wonderland, showing things such as the mad hatters tea party and the queen of hearts.

Music videos can also use other previous music videos as reference for example Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus, although aimed at a completely different generation, uses the iconic scene from the music video for Nothing Compares 2U by Sinead O'Connor in which there is just a close up of the artists face looking sad with a single tear.


This could either be the artists trying to expand her audience by creating an affinity with the older audience or it could simply be bringing new meaning to the original text and using a theme that was popular before to become popular with a new generation.



Artists tend to develop and grow over time by changing their image and sound. Avril Lavigne's video for Here's To Never Growing Up plays on the nostalgic feeling of the song by reverting back to her old image from videos like Sk8er Boi, this would help to make consistent fans feel nostalgic about her past and their own creating meaning for them, help bring back old fans and just give new depth to more recent fans.





Generally when artists use intertextual references to other music videos they tend to stay within the same genre, most likely because those were the videos they probably grew up with and so draw inspiration from. As was shown with Wrecking Ball (staying within the pop genre), Situations by Escape The Fate draw an intertextual link to the video for Hot for Teacher by Van Halen, which essential shows the same thing.