Coping With Intertextuality

According to artandpopularculture.com, "Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can refer to an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another." 

Intertextuality in all its forms has always interested me, from its literary theory incarnations to clever allusions in current and past TV shows and movies.  The device seems to be expanding in use in popular culture, in its allusionary aspect especially, and becomes a fun sort of interactive game we can play as viewers of film and television programming with our ever-shrinking attention spans.  The game is based on a "who can get the most inside jokes" premise, and can demonstrate intelligence, awareness, or simple dominance of trivia that puts us "in the know" and recreates us as masters of our domain, to reference a Seinfeld contest of an entirely different nature.

Parody can be a form of intertextuality, though I wouldn't consider SNL to be intertextual as much, considering the entire show's premise is based on parody.  The Simpsons and Family Guy are more along the lines of intertextuality, showing an awareness of popular culture that works its way into the storylines as clever references.  Or when a movie character refers to himself in some former character incarnation, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger in Twins with the line, "I'll be back."  The USA show Psych is one of my new favorites for this literary device, with recent episodes focusing around Twin Peaks (which included the self-aware parody of the former cast of the show) and It's a Wonderful Life.

I mention this ironic use of intertextuality only to point out how creatively our culture has adapted to the speed and flood of options within the pop culture sphere.  We probably have to make fun of ourselves and our past viewing habits just to make sense of the whirlwind of influences, and having a healthy dose of ironic appreciation for it all helps us connect the otherwise unconnected randomness that infects many other areas of 21st century life.  Many theorists compare intertextuality to hypertextuality, an idea that is also explained further on artandpopularculture.com, in that the interlinking of texts by reference is similar to the way we read and interact on the Web.  I push this idea further in that the community-building on the Web that is defining the current marketplace and social sphere is accomplished through visual media such as TV programming and movies via intertextuality.  We build communities through our different levels of understanding of these "links" to our own popular culture habits, and feel a sense of belonging when we "get" it.  It's a way of connecting beyond our increasingly isolated physical lives and a healthy and enjoyable coping mechanism for modern detachment.  Community-building in any form, Web or otherwise, is good for our psyches and our culture.  I say, "Bring it on."  Minus the cheerleaders.