Why Intertextuality Is Important - Essay Example

In “Intertextuality: How Texts Keep Going and Going and Going”, the author discusses how a text could “enter another text and change them” (560). The writer’s concept about the subject is illustrated in the Energizer Battery commercials popularly shown on TV during the 1990s. It is said that when the advertisement was first shown, it was initially thought by viewers that the commercial was about shampoo or snack crackers because the ad introduced the product using one text before introducing another. This method gives an impression at the beginning of the commercial and then it introduces another text wherein the bunny enters with the battery on its back. The bunny is considered another text which eventually combines with the former text to make an entirely different text.  The writer calls this process intertextuality and considers it important because it does not only happen in commercials such as the one cited above but also occurs in everyday communications. For instance in the case of the novel by Jane Austen entitled Emma, readers, and viewers of its movie adaptations called Emma in 1996 and Clueless in 1995, will have different interpretations because of intertextuality. The settings of the two movies are different but they somehow tell the same story and so viewers will definitely see their similarities to the novel.