“Intertextuality” is a term coined by Julia Kristeva (1967) to describe the ways texts relate to and reference other texts, through devices such as allusion, quotation, pastiche, and parody. While somewhat contentious among scholars, intertextuality attempts to capture a nebulous concept that a number of authors including Barthes (2001) and Bakhtin (1934) have given various names and definitions. Kristeva’s definition considers that in reading a text, knowledge is not simply transferred from author to reader, but its significance is instead interpreted through the lens of reader experience and cultural codes developed from other texts. Text can appear in multiple iterations, as written words, or even as representations of such in a physical article such as clothes, hair, or architecture. In digital games, not only does text appear onscreen in narrative and descriptive forms, but every bit of scenery, character appearance, and diagetic sound could be considered text. As discussed by Wolf (2001), digital games draw upon divergent texts and provide an interactive environment for users to read these texts.

Consalvo (2003) defines intertextuality in digital games as a “sophisticated understanding of the ‘text’ and its place in the greater media marketplace” (p. 327). These texts often originate in other media, in cinema, literature, television, the Internet, and from any number of users and producers. Digital games operate completely within a world fabricated from these texts, making digital games far more intertextual that other media such as print, radio, television, and film. I argue intertextuality is the keystone on which digital games are built. Gamers, who operate in this environment and manipulate this intertextual world, are thus more easily encouraged to participate in participatory and remix culture, itself a highly intertextual context. Gamers, who formulate their identity in this intertextual and interactive world, are themselves remixed creatures. Gamers share information, communicate, and connect with others through shared experiences in participatory and remix culture. For an example of this, one has to look no father than the link below:

Heralded indie game creations the Boy and Tim (from the games Limbo and Braid respectively) immediately evoke the indie aesthetic, which of course is not simply a digital games invention. The indie aesthetic referenced here is a notion of networked meaning, drawn from a number of sources in pop culture that is intertextually recognized in these disparate forms. Tim and the Boy are positioned as hipsters, their independence from standard digital game conventions and narratives acts as point of pride and differentiation from the more commercial properties Mario represents. Mario, as Nintendo’s flagship icon, has been the definitive measure for an entire genre of adventure and platform games. It could certainly be argued that the term “platform game” owes its origins to Super Mario Bros, where much of the game is spent jumping from platform to platform to moving platform. In addition, as a commercial success and a flag bearer for gaming as a general leisure activity, his position as a non-controversial, spunky everyman positions him as a target of the indie aesthetic scorn.

While it’s true that gamers read the video’s Parappa the Rapper posters in the background and the Pacman ghosts in the next booth immediately as referents to digital gaming, the greater network of meaning comes not only from these clever nods to gaming. The decor of the bar harkens to any number of literary and cinematic locales, from the Spouter Inn to Kavanagh’s Irish Pub. These influences are easily identifiable, but what should be understood is that “Mario is Too Mainstream” does not reside in a cultural vacuum. These references instead marinate in the cultural experience of all those who read this text.

As a result most viewers will recognize the very same nerd-heavy arguments Tim and Mario had as much as they from their own pub crawling experience as they might from Woody’s L. Street Tavern in South Boston. Both are instances are part of the shared cultural experiences readers have. In that shared experience, the various meanings are traded and understood, possibly tying the cinematic to empiric.

References

Bakhtin, M. (1981). The Dialogic Imagination.  Austin, TX: U of Texas P.

Barthes, R. (1977). The death of the author. Image / Music / Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 142-7.

Barthes, R. (1977). Barthes, Roland. The death of the author. Image / Music / Text. Trans. Stephen Heath. New York: Hill and Wang, 142-7.

Consalvo, M. (2003). Zelda 64 and Video Game Fans A Walkthrough of Games, Intertextuality, and Narrative. Television & New Media, 4(3), 321-334.

Kristeva, K. (1967). Bakhtine, le mot, le dialogue et le roman. Critique. 33 (239), 438–465.

Wolf, M. J. P. (Eds.) (2001) The medium of the video game. Austin : University of Texas Press.

Defining YouTube has been problematic for scholars, resulting in a variety of contexts in which academics write about the website. Is YouTube a “platform, an archive, a library, a laboratory, a medium” (Snickers & Vonderau, 2009)? Is it a “complex parasitical media” (Mitchem, 2008) or rather “networked individualism” (Haythornthwaite & Wellman, 2002)? Some see YouTube as a digital bard (Hartley, 2009), storyteller (Ryan, 2006), or a modern day myth-maker (Mosco, 2005). Yet, there seems to be a troubling trend in research which confines YouTube into a box that can be easily consumed and considered. Limiting discussion of YouTube to inclusions of Web 2.0 or a singular point of remix or participatory culture is a deleterious endeavor.

The history of YouTube is well documented and oft-cited. Founded by former employees of web-based financial PayPal, Chad Harley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim officially launched YouTube with little to no fanfare in June 2005. “The website provided a very simple, integrated interface without high levels of technological knowledge, and within the technological constraints of standard browser software relatively modest bandwidth” (Burgess & Green, 2009, p. 1). There were a number of other video and file-sharing websites competing at that time, but as Burgess and Green suggest, the simplicity of YouTube’s design and its relative ease of use made it stand out in an otherwise crowded field. A number of scholars have argued that this openness has ultimately fed YouTube’s success, a “hybrid model of engagement” driven by consumer-citizens experiencing the site in a variety of ways. “From an audience point of view, is it a platform that provides access to culture, on a platform that enables consumers to participate as producers?” (Burgess & Green, 2009, p. 14). Kavoori (2011) adds “I suggest that we see YouTube as much more than a website – it is a key element in the way we think about our online experience and (shared) digital culture” (p. 3).

In an interview, Jawid Karim attributed the early success of YouTube to four essential properties: video recommendations via the ‘related videos’ list, an email link to enable video sharing, comments (and other social networking functionality), and an embeddable video player (Gannes, 2006). YouTube then becomes the logical destination for many users and their expressions of remix culture.

Fagerjord (2010) calls YouTube a remix in itself: “You might call the site a clever remix of a video gallery, a blog-like commenting system, a system of friends and connections as in a social network site such as LinkedIn and a file-sharing site or network” (p. 195). But Halbert (2009) argues that video remixes constitute a different logic than that of commercial production, whereby professionals create artistic content that is then distributed to the masses. The logic of remix, Halbert argues, does not rely on the motive of profit, but of cultural circulation and provides an alternative to the commercial model, “By using the term “user-generated content,” the structure of the narrative implicitly undermines the value that can be placed on the original work of “users” and implies that professional contributions are somehow superior” (p. 929). Video remix, then, constitutes the creation of original creative content using commercial sources in a way that often undermines or speaks back to the original source. Rather than seeing remixed videos as derivative entertainment, some scholars argue that these products stand as creative works in their own right.

The mash-up above is archetypal YouTube music remix, subverting the previous text, that is The Cosby Show, with its wholesome Huxtables and jazz loving obstetrician, and inserting the salaciousness of the hit of Summer 2013, the sexually charged and overtly over-the-top “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke. The remixed text then reads as a deft reordering, the dancing family sniffs of puerile impropriety all while Bill Cosby shimmies with a sly wink and a nod. A battle of the mind commences, was 80’s television so vapid or was the quintessential sitcom really so naughty?

The result of such interplay between consumers and consumers as producers or “produsers” to borrow the term from Bruns (2009) position YouTube as a curator of remix culture, especially interesting when one considers YouTube’s original byline of “Your Digital Video Repository” as opposed to the current iteration, “Broadcast Yourself.” Castells (2000) writes “We live in a new economy, characterized by three fundamental features”: informational, global, and networked. With this understanding, we can view YouTube through a particular lens, as a network of global citizens and individuals sharing and creating new cultural products, all while experiencing and using YouTube in vastly different ways and for vastly different purposes. In the end, there are really multiple YouTubes, as each visitor experiences the site in different ways, i.e. some may use the site for subscription, instantly clicking to their favorite channels, while others use the site as a cultural aggregator, “scanning and sorting through a magazine catalog: when one is flipping through a magazine catalog, the stories, advertisments and images are skimmed through, with attention resting briefly on one or more items” (Kavoori, 2011, p. 8).

References

Bruns, A. (2006) ‘Towards Produsage: Futures for User-led Content Production’, in F. Sudweeks, H. Hrachovec and C. Ess (eds) Proceedings: Cultural Attitudes towards Communication and Technology 2006, pp. 275–84. Perth: Murdoch University.

Burgess, J. & Green, J. (2009). YouTube: Online video and participatory culture. Polity, Malden, MA.

Castells, M. (2000, January/March) “Materials for an exploratory theory of the network society,” British Journal of Sociology, 51/1, 5–24.

Fagerjord, Anders. (2010). After convergence: YouTube and remix culture. In J. Hunsinger et al., (Eds.), International handbook of internet research (pp. 187-200), Springer.

Gannes, L. (2009). YouTube changes everything: The online video revolution. In Television Goes Digital (pp. 147-155). Springer New York.

Halbert, D. (2009). Mass culture and the culture of the masses: A manifesto for user-generated rights. Vanderbilt Journal of Entertainment and Technology Law, 11, 921-961.

Haythornthwaite, C., & Wellman, H. (2002). The Internet in everyday life: An introduction. The Internet in everyday life, 1-41.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York, NYU Press, 2008.

Lessig, Lawrence. (2008). Remix: Making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy. New York: Penguin.

Mitchem, M. (2008). Video social: Complex parasitical media. In G. Lovink & S. Niederer (Eds.), Video vortex reader:  Responses to YouTube (pp. 273-282). Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures.

Snickers, P., & Vonderau, P. (2009). The YouTube Reader. Stockholm: National Library of Sweden.