No media text exists by itself. Media texts take their place alongside countless others. The Quality Street advert is just one of many that have been made to advertise chocolate, and indeed, just one of millions of advertisements that have been created to sell things.
No Time To Die is not just the 25th James Bond film, but joins lots of other films not just in the espionage genre but in the world of film overall. The poster for that film, meanwhile, has much in common with the poster for The Man With the Golden Gun (have a look above!) We can draw links between the two – and not just because they’re both Bond films.
This Girl Can not only had a number of posters and a TV advert separate to your case study, but it also joins a number of advertising campaigns designed to empower women and reshape the way that society thinks about women’s bodies.
Media texts, then, exist in a web. They relate to one another and link to one another. They even refer to one another. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes just because.
We call this intertextuality: when one media text makes a reference to another.
There are two broad types of intertextuality, and we’ll deal with the more common one first. If you want to read about direct intertextuality instead, you can do so here. Indirect intertextuality is when audiences can draw a link between two pieces of media, but that link hasn’t been made by the content creator on purpose.
For example, let’s say I shoot a Western film called Showdown at Farside. At the end, the lawman and the outlaw have a showdown in the town square in Farside. As part of mise-en-scène, the props are big cowboy hats and six-shooter guns. I am not making any direct reference to any other Western films, but by including things like six shooters and big hats and, I’m making reference to all the Western films that have come before. I’m showing my influences and inspirations. I’m not doing what any one film has done but what a lot of them have done. Notice how it’s not just mise-en-scène. I can make indirect intertextual reference to other media texts by using similar plot points. Lots of Western films end with a shootout in the town square. I can do it with camerawork and soundtrack too, making sure that I have lots of dramatic close-ups of the lawman and outlaw and a soundtrack full of whistling and guitar strums. I can make sure that when it comes to editing, I have lots of nice, long duration establishing shots of the surrounding landscape, just like lots of other Western films, followed by quick, dramatic cuts between shots of the duelists and their guns.
Similarly, I can make indirect intertextual references with my layout and design choices. If I’m making an advertisement for a chocolate box, chances are I’m going to have a picture of someone (probably young and attractive) in the centre deciding what one to eat next or some life-size shots of the sweets in their wrappers – just like lots of other chocolate box advertisements that have been made before. I may even use similar fonts and colours. These are all indirect intertextual references to other, similar texts that have come before mine. These references add to the audience enjoyment of the media text – and if you’re thinking that there’s a lot of overlap with the ‘repetition’ part of Steve Neale’s genre theory, you aren’t wrong! Next time, we'll look at the other, slightly more complex form of intertextuality: direct intertextuality!