extraordinario de matrícula para el Practicum de Derecho
I.9 COMISIONES DE LA UNIVERSIDAD
objects, but a movie is an artifi cial construct, a ‘text’,
a body of discourse (words and images) based on
principles born of history and convention. In Chapter 1
we looked at some of these conventional practices,
and revealed how any fi lm can be viewed as a mosaic
of signs. However, semiotics is just one aspect of the
intertextual nature of cinema.
The body of the text
It would appear that from earliest times people have made the connection between texts and textiles. Storytellers are said to spin a yarn and weave the fabric of a tale. Audiences are drawn into the story, follow (or lose) the thread, see (or not) an emerging pattern. Plots are said to become knotted and get untangled – to zigzag, crisscross, wind to a close, and reveal a fi nal twist.
This metaphor is deeply embedded in our language. It suggests that a text is a tapestry woven from many intertwining strands, and that a fi lm-maker’s task is to select this ‘stuff’ and tie it into a tight and coherent whole. A text is like a quilt of disparate fragments cunningly stitched together to make something arresting and unique. This analogy is central to a great deal of modern theoretical thought.
The term intertextuality was fi rst introduced by Julia Kristeva in the
late 1960s. She sought to assert that the meaning we fi nd in a text is not to be located in its relationship to the mind in which it seems to have originated, but in its relationship to other texts. In a very real sense texts have a life of their own, enabling, inspiring and generating each other. Film begets fi lm.
These thoughts of Kristeva’s build in turn on earlier ideas about language derived from another theorist, Mikhail Bakhtin. He suggested that all human communication is dialogic – meaning that every utterance is a contribution to an ongoing dialogue. Every word refl ects what has gone before, and is shaped by anticipation of how it will be received.
Cinema, too, is dialogic. Any fi lm refers (however obliquely) to other fi lms, and is a response to them. What is more, the meaning a particular fi lm has for an audience is determined by its relationship to this textual background. We read a fi lm in the light of its resemblance to other fi lms, and the associations (conscious or otherwise) it has for us. As a fi lm-maker you need to engage deliberately in this ‘conversation with the familiar’, and ensure as far as possible that the connections viewers make are consistent with your intentions.
TEXT BLACK Glossary
Intertextuality: The shaping
of one text by other texts – the interrelationship between texts.
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Bodysnatching?
As we saw in Chapter 1 (pages 32–37), intertextuality is explicitly at work in David Fincher’s Seven. Other texts and contexts imported from theology, psychoanalysis, literature, painting, and classical music, as well as fi lm, are easy to spot on its surface. David Fincher is not cheating.
All fi lms tap into a shared cultural heritage and emerge from a web of pre-existing materials and expressive forms.
Intertextuality is not theft – it is the inevitable state of all art. Any fi lm builds on (and from) what has gone before. This may sound rather uninspired, and uninspiring, but the ‘artistry’ is in making something that strikes an audience as new and distinct.
Far from limiting originality, the ‘restriction’ of working within a set of conventions can be genuinely liberating. Not only is there a wealth of ready-made ideas to play with, but genre provides a backdrop against which tiny individual touches are thrown into sharper relief and take on a disproportionate signifi cance.
The bigger picture
Intertextuality is not confi ned to the impact of one text on another. It cannot be reduced entirely to a simple matter of original sources. Nor are we always referring to direct infl uence and conscious imitation.
Of course, ideas do get copied or recycled for obvious commercial reasons. One successful comic book movie will spawn another, and then another, until the novelty wears off and the profi ts diminish. But this is in part a natural consequence of the social contexts from which movies arise. The ever-vigilant and mysterious ‘caped crusader’ is an appropriate fantasy in an age when real terror invisibly stalks our city streets.
Larger-than-life images from books and fi lms get traded back and forth – in playground games and newspaper columns, in coffee shop discussions and classroom debates, until they become the staple currency of our thought. They refl ect the anxieties and issues that preoccupy us. The media pick them up and use them as a sort of shorthand.
Figures such as Wall Street’s (dir: John McTiernan 1989) Gordon Gekko and Die Hard’s (dir: Oliver Stone 1988) John McClane have fallen into the collective imagination as concentrated personifi cations of unscrupulous greed and determined heroism. They have become part of our cultural landscape – their characters and catchphrases encapsulating attitudes towards unfettered capitalism and terrorist threats, which continue to shape contemporary reality.
Te x t > Q u o ta ti o n TEXT BLACK
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Inter te x tualit y TEXT BLACK
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Te x t > Q u o ta ti o n Die Hard
(dir: John McTiernan 1988)
Films emerge from and contribute to the all-embracing text we call ‘culture’. In the Die Hard fi lms, Bruce Willis’s wry-smiling, no-nonsense character protects everything he loves from a host of international villains. The character both refl ects and reinforces the idea of the lone all-American hero that has been a part of US culture since the days of the The Lone Ranger in the 1930s.
TEXT BLACK
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