Intertextuality
Horizontal
Vertical
Primary, secondary,
tertiary texts
Theory of intertextuality
 Any one text (literature, film, TV show, song, dance, game,
etc.) is ‘read’ in relationship to others
 A range of ‘textual’ knowledge is brought to bear on a
‘reading’ of a text
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDav4PMjDMs&featur
e=related
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PluRW3_FEt0
Intertextual relations
 Two dimensions
 Horizontal – relations that are between primary texts that are
more or less explicitly linked
 Vertical – relation between a primary text and other texts of a
different type that refer to it (secondary and tertiary texts)
 Secondary texts – e.g., publicity, journalistic features, criticism
 Tertiary texts – produced by viewers themselves – e.g., letters, gossip,
conversation
Genre
 Genre is a cultural practice
 An order applied to texts and meanings that circulate in our
culture for the convenience of both producers and audiences
 3 strategies for constructing a genre
 Aesthetic – the characteristics of a genre
 Ritual – repeated exchange between industry and audience
 Ideological – the way that genres can be called upon to deliver
audiences to advertisers by structuring dominant ideology into their
conventions
 Genres are intertextual
Genres and the Popular
 Genres are popular when their
conventions bear a close
relationship to the dominant
ideology of the time
Survivor, intertextuality, genre
 Survivor is part of a larger trend in the television industry toward the
production and global proliferation of so-called reality television (RTV).
 forms and conventions are understood as part and parcel of a specific
genre
 "reality television" & unscripted or "documentary" feel
 reliance on "ordinary people" rather than professional actors
 thematic emphasis on contest, competition, strategy and winning
 explicit claim to "veracity" and "authenticity."
 genre's implicit claim to capture "reality" accurately and faithfully
 Intertextual constructedness of television texts.
 Survivor owes as much to game shows and soaps, as it does to the castaway
premise of Gilligan's Island, and the contrived social arrangements of The
RealWorld.
 Dominant ideology – gender (and race) relations of our time
Horizontal relations
 What Survivor is and is not
 Conventional elements of Survivor and other
representations:
 Survivor II:The Australian Outback, Survivor Season One:The
Greatest and Most Outrageous Moments, etc.
Vertical relations
 Secondary texts
 Survivor fans & "official" Survivor merchandise like baseball caps,
bandanas, T-shirts, books, and a soundtrack recording featuring
"survivor-themed" music.
 Early Show, CBS's struggling morning program, began featuring
interviews with Survivor participants, ratings soared
 the cast of Survivor has found its way onto various CBS programs
including: JAG, Nash Bridges, and The Guiding Light, to name a few.
 survivors have found their way onto the nation's radio waves
 cameo appearances by these survivors help promote other CBS
programs and media outlets.
Vertical relations
 Tertiary texts
 proliferation of web pages devoted to the show demonstrate the
level to which audiences invest meaning into the show's "characters"
its "plot twists" and its "resolution."
 online chats and water cooler discussions illustrate that audiences
take away different meanings from media texts: meanings that are
determined, in part, by an individual's race, class, gender, ethnicity,
and lifestyle.
 Survivor's meaning, therefore, does not reside solely in its images,
words, and sounds, but rather is produced by audience members.
 level of popular discussion of reality television in general, and
Survivor in particular, indicates that these programs resonate with
audiences and that viewers do indeed take these shows seriously.
Some Analysis
 Survivor is indicative of a society enamored with voyeurism,
titillation, and spectacle.
 Survivor and other reality programs which place "ordinary" people
in extraordinary situations demonstrate the lengths to which some
people will go to achieve even fleeting moments of fame and
celebrity.
 reality television programs tap into deep-seated cultural anxieties
related to fundamental issues of individual autonomy, privacy,
security, and survival.
 Like other forms of popular culture, then, Survivor is a polysemic
text:
 a cultural artifact whose meanings are not rigidly determined nor
fixed, but rather open to different interpretations.
Media scholar John Fiske
 "Communication is too often taken for granted when it
should be taken to pieces."