Vittoria Somaschini

This week, I found the readings to be extremely interesting, however, I also found it challenging to find something that I wanted to focus on. I chose dialogism, and with dialogism I would like to analysis some of today’s RomComs. The first that comes to mind is Gil Junger’s 10 Things I hate about You  (1999) and subsequently Will Gluck’s Easy A (2010). Both films are in dialogue with famous works, the former William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, and the latter Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. 

I chose these two films because both fit neatly into a sub genre of Teen RomComs, but have used the original texts in different ways to tell their respective stories. 10 Things I Hate about You  is more closely linked to the text, including direct lines throughout the film such as when Cameron first sees Bianca and he exclaims, “I pine, I burn, I perish”. Easy A  on the other hand more loosely uses the plot of The Scarlet Letter and re-crafts the story to meet modern tastes as well as understandings of what it means to be ostracized. Easy A  goes one step further and is in dialogue with many of the teen RomComs of the 80’s that came before it. While 10 Things I Hate about You is in dialogue with Shakespeare, Easy A  is in dialogue with Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Say Anything, Sixteen Candles etc. making it an eclectic mix of modern love sagas as well as referencing back to The Scarlett Letter  which dictates the entire plot. In Agger’s article, he states, “literary development is often described in terms of a three-phase model: development, stagnation, and renewal, all of which correspond to different currents” (Agger 1992). I find that both of the films are able to renew the literary works that they are in dialogue with and tailor them to meet modern audiences’ tastes. 

Works cited:

Agger, Gunhild. “Intertextuality Revisited: Dialogues and Negotiations in Media Studies.” Intertextuality Revisited: Dialogues and Negotiations in Media Studies. N.p., n.d.

Easy A. Dir. Will Gluck. Perf. Emma Stone and Amanda Bynes. Will Gluck Productions, 2010.

10 Things I Hate about You. Dir. Gil Junger. Perf. Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles. Touchstone Pictures, 1999.

“No one, no “person” says it:  its source, its voice, is not the true place of the writing, which is the reading… The reader is the space on which all the quotations that make up a writing are inscribed without any of them being lost; a text unity lies not in its origin but in its destination…The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author.” (Roland Barthes, The Death). Following Barthes´ affirmations that the death of the author is the birth of the reader, I wonder if we can extrapolate his theory to the world of music.  That is to say that the author, now the composer and in some cases the singer, has no influence over his text or “musical production” after it has reached its audience.  Therefore the role of the listener is to open up the multiple meanings of this song (I am aware of plagiarism and copyright laws).  It also true that Barthes asserts that giving an author to a text is closing the writing, that is to say, closing the meaning.

However, in the last few years in Spain a very popular flamenco singer, Pitingo, has opened the door to the reinterpretation of flamenco and its possibilities, as have many others who have preceded him, as a way of interacting with other musical genres and cultural manifestations:  seeing flamenco as a component of an intermedial musical network.  He has gone beyond the frontiers of the previous collaborations between flamenco singers and other performers from around the globe by remixing flamenco and soul or flamenco and pop (The Beatles) and experimenting with his live performances, dancing these hybrid songs under a flamenco dance “compass.”  For many years the so called “flamenco purist” supporters defended the need to return to the roots of flamenco in its most pure and original form, completely rejecting any attempt done by an artist who used “flamenco as destination” and not as an origin.  The thought of seeing flamenco as code, as a common ground to intersect, mix, or remix with any other genres was regarded as a degrading or polluting threat.  In the last thirty years a new generation of flamenco singers has emerged who understand flamenco as being “intertextual” as in the case of Jazz (Irvine 4).  Flamenco is composed by over 50 different “palos” (styles) that are classified according to their rhythmic pattern, mode, chord progression, stanzic form, and geographic origin (Wikipedia).  Another important feature of flamenco is called “compás” which is the Spanish word for “metre” and time signature which all flamenco guitar players and singers are able to interpret and give meaning to.  Therefore, the same way that it happens with Jazz, flamenco performers can improvise at any time acknowledging flamenco as a rule-governed code base that is produced with the interaction of the other musicians (Irvine 4).  A flamenco performance is then a semiological artifact as much as it requires shared knowledge of the genre code bases, knowledge of the past performances, styles, and recordings as an encyclopedic network of meanings (Irvine 4).

Pitingo has relied on intermediality and dialogism as a means to generate meaning-making across two auditory sign systems, flamenco and soul, that belong to a endless network, and creating a “node in the musical network” by adapting songs from a different genre into her own personal-flamenco style, opening that way the door to infinite ongoing cultural remix and hybrid interpretations of his adaptations (Irvine 36). For example, his famous appropriation of Paul McCartney’s “Yesterday” seems to be a good proof of a “dialogic a priori” since it originated as a new cultural work that was in a dialogic relationship to a specific past work, in this case The Beatles, contemporaneous works (in the field of modern flamenco music, such as the flamenco music band Ketama), and future works (completely open to new interpretation) (Irvine 15).  It is also true that, for some members of Spanish society, Pitingo´s work can only be understood under the word “plagiarism” since “making the familiar strange” as Jonathan Lethem has stated is seen as a betrayal to the original (63).  Nevertheless, I believe that Pitingo has made us aware of a “constitutive ground for ongoing cultural hybridity, remix and appropriation, the logic of the rule of rewritability” (Irvine 36).

http://www.pitingo.com/esp/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKro9hLrcns

http://www.flamenco-world.com/artists/pitingo/pitingo07122007-1.htm

Works Cited

Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author” Communication, Culture, and Technology

            Department, Georgetown U, Sept. 2013. Web. 23 September 2013.

Irvine, Martin. “Jazz and the Abstract Truth: Dialogism and Network Semiotics.”

Communication, Culture, and Technology Department, Georgetown U, Sept. 2013. Web. 23

September 2013.

Lethem, Jonathan. “The Ecstasy of Influence,” Harpers Magazine, Feb. 2007.

Pitingo Official Website. < http://www.pitingo.com/esp/>

Wikipedia Contributors. “Flamenco” Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia. Web. 23

September 2013.

One of the primary features of postmodernism in aesthetic production including artworks, films, music, and, literature is the use of intertextuality.  There are numerous great examples of intertextuality; Peter Webber’s film (2003) and Tracy Chevalier’s novel (1999) of the same name, Girl with a Pearl Earring, would be definitely some of them.  The film and novel both give fictional accounts of the girl depicted in a 17th –century painting of the same title by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer; more exactly, as known well, the novel came out first; then the film was made based on it.  The painting features a mysterious girl with a turban and a pearl earring; but her identity has not yet been determined (Wikipedia).  Thus, the plot of both Webber’s film and Chevalier’s novel is all about Chevalier’s own interpretation of the famous mysterious painting.

The plot takes place in the Netherlands in the 17th century.  The main character, a young girl named Griet, comes to the city of Delft to serve the Vermeer family. After a critical moment in her first encounter with Vermeer, he begins to look at her as the only person in the house who can understand his art. He sees her as someone who has a somewhat artistic soul and uses her as a model for his painting.  He develops a complex emotional relationship with her that causes his wife to feel jealous (Wikipedia).

According to Kristeva and many other theorists, “intertextuality refers to far more than the ‘influences’ of writers on each other” (Chandler, 2013); this is well evident in the relationship among the painting, film, and novel of the same name, Girl with a Pearl Earring.  First of all, it is obvious that in her novel, Chevalier does not merely refer to Vermeer’s painting but imparts an entirely new meaning to it with her own subjective perspective and imagination.  Likewise, Webber’s film is also not a mere media representation of the painting and novel.  The quiet and slow scenes of the film which are just as captivating as the canvas and the reversed method of seeing the art-making process which allows the audience to become already familiar with the painting before it is finished gives a special tone to the movie. The film successfully draws the audience into the atmosphere of the period and gives them a different perspective of that piece of art: it leads the audience to focus on not only the art itself and the romance behind it but also the social norms, economic situations, people’s lifestyles, and personal fears and struggles in a growing process of one young girl in the 17^th century Netherland. In this sense, as Chevalier’s novel does, it also adds a new meaning to the painting particularly within the audience by creating and manipulating their appreciation and impression of the painting.  More importantly, it helps the 17^th century painting become popularized” among the contemporary mass.  It has, in fact, encouraged the audience to read Chevalier’s novel, put the image reproduction poster of the painting on their walls, or even travel to The Hague, where the painting is held in (Brussat).  Whatever their choice is, it would always take them back to the painting; this can be seen as blurring the line between high and popular culture.

Work Cited

1. Chandler, Daniel. “Semiotics for Beginners”. Mar. 1, 2013. http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/Documents/S4B/sem09.html

2. “Girl with a Pearl Earring”. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl_with_a_Pearl_Earring>