Intertextuality

Probably so far my favourite lecture for media histories and cultures, something that i’ll now probably keep referring to over and over again in my life outside of university, (and hopefully not annoy to many people)

Julia Kristeva’s  refers to intertextuality as a  “transposition of one (or several) sign systems into another.” [i] And another good quote which can sum up the idea of intertextuality from Graham Allen denotes “ no text much as it might appear so, is original and unique in itself, ..... and to an extent unwitting,  references to and quotations from other texts.” . [ii]

Originally relating to literacy texts of poetry and novels for example, the concept as been applied to practically everything in our cultures, like Fashion to design, even art and of course what i will be referring to, films.

And in films, TV, animations there is much intertextuality to discover, i believe i spent the whole lecture going, “Oh yeah” and  “i see now”. 

There are two wonderful forms of Intertextuality, we have-

Unconscious, where it is true intertextuality, it is beyond the authors control that the audience make this connection. An example of mine is the APU desings in the Matrix and Avatar, (although its possible because the of the type of structure), as i was watching Avatar i did think it looked smiliar to the ones in the Matrix revolutions. 

Other examples of unconscious intertextuality of what i found is in animated films in of disney and dreamworks, intended or not, i found some characters were kind of similar or certain scenes. for example i choose Hercules (Disney) Pain and Panic, and The Prince of Egypt (Dreamworks) Hotep and Huy. Even though they're mannerisms or character personality are not alike, to me it was the pairing of characters, one short and fat, the other tall and thin with a pointed noise that reminded me of Pain and Panic.

We then have Conscious or Self-Conscious, pretty much done intending to be recognised by the audience, that they have in fact referenced from something else, normally we find these in Spoofs and Parodies. Great examples of this are Family Guy, The Simpsons, and what i think is the king of intertextuality of these is Robot Chicken.

 

Above we have Family Guy's Spoof on the Neverending Story, which takes a small clip to parody, and below we have Robot Chicken which makes parodies of nearly everything.

If there is  one video i have to post here its from Assassins Creed, Brotherhood and the reference to the Mario games and show. When intertextuality was first explained a number my friends and i mimicked this with much enthusiasm.

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[i] juliakristeva

[ii] GrahamAllen

Reading the signs….All the Signs!

I found this week’s lecture to be very interesting, yet feel like it could take me many a year to actually explain it as clear as possible, without rambling on too much that is.

Signification!

Here’s a kind equation, the Signifier (physical form) + Signified (concept it represents) = Signs

Okay so for example we are given the image of a tree and we know that it is a tree; if we are given the word tree we would have the idea that it would be a tall rectangle shaped thing with green around it.

However the problem with this, is that not everything is universal

Romanian pisica, Mayan miss, Indonesian kucing. What are the words highlighted? Are they the same thing? Would everyone know them? These all mean Cat, but still, would everyone know what that is?

When we see the image above we instantly link that to being a cat, pisica or kucing, it’s not real, but it’s an image that is highly used to portray one.

The image below is one I discovered in a cafe, and found to be quite amusing for an example of a sign used for toilets to distinguish between the two genders. 

So anyway, this brings us to some more terms (yay). Let’s illustrate these using 'human' characters as examples.

We start of with Arbitary (symbolic) this being less constrained by reality. Here we have Joe from Viewtiful Joe. 

 He's supposedly a young man, but from what we see he's completely out of proportion from what a man would look like, over sized head small legs and feet, especially because its a flat 2d image, but its style that can represent one. We recognise that its male and human from his features such as clothing eyes and mouth, even the posture can make our brains say "yep, its not realistic but its meant to be a guy."

Then we have a character from Unreal Tournament 1 game.

Compared to Joe his body proportions are more accurate and has a 3d form, making it look more human, though in the sense of being realistic the level of detail appears flat and the character himself consists of sharp blocks and edges. (baring in mind the game was made about a decade ago)

Coming up to the term Iconic (in the sense of being realistic that is) i chose Grendel's mother in the fillm Beowulf, probably because of all that work that went into Angelina Jolies' character to look like...well Angelina Jolie. 

The level of detail can be quite convincing and, well okay Grendal's mother isnt exactly a human, but compared to the other two images it reaches the highest bar mark for being realistic, this goes for shadow and lighting, facial features and colour which all makes the character here resemble a real human being.

 

Models of Communication

Shannon and Weavers process model of communication had an aim to maximise the efficiency of communication using different media and channels, producing the process.

There being the information source that’s transmitted to the receiver, the signal of how it’s transmitted, and the noise surrounding it. Referring to any disruption or distortion to the signal as it is being transmitted to its destination. Terms such as redundancy and entropy can also refer to the type of information being sent, redundant information establishing forms of familiarity and entropic being unpredictable, yet possibly allowing us to new and useful information conveyed in unexpected ways. Where in my seminar, I found useful to separate the animations we watched, and reflecting on this, previous films and books I have seen, into what I found to be conventional and mainstream to experimental and unusual. We watched two short animations with solid differences in storytelling.

Pixars ‘For the Birds’, displaying a gathering birds on a telephone wire, conventional and something, us the audience understands to be normal, of course there being forms of entropy such as visual design of the birds, we understand the story, how it was told and the message being successfully received by us.

 In comparison to us the short ‘Yankee Gal’ proved to confuse us but also allowed us to discuss our various views and what we believed the film to be about, some receiving different visual information to help understand the short better than others. For example subtle shapes, symbols and hidden meanings behind the female character, allowed the class to have more opinions than when we watched the first clip. Using the film as an example we can say, because rather that straight storytelling and answers, the audience had more questions and confusion, its unpredictability caused the feedback from the receiver to be distorted and not well received. 

There is also the fact that entropic information can eventually become redundant, for me watching ‘Yankee Gal’ seemed familiar in its style and narrative, as I am used to, and enjoy, watching films that are experimental, and therefore predicted the ending where as others in my class claimed it to be unexpected. Though it doesn’t mean that I understood all its meanings at the first viewing, I can still say it’s entropic as there is still much more information to be discovered and to be received by me, as not all the information was successfully transmitted in one goes, whether or not if that was the director’s intention.

http://vimeo.com/3173246
http://www.pixar.com/shorts/ftb/index.html