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Bayan 2.0
Intertextuality. Sounds complicated, scientific. But if we break the word
down and analyze the different elements of the word, we can figure out what
it means. "Inter" is the Greek word fo "between" or "among." Text referes to
things we can read or interpret: poetry, books, films, essays, and the like. The
suffix "-ity" has to do with the "quality" or "state of." So put it together: the
state or quality of the relationship between texts. Simply put, intertextuality
has to do with the ways books, songs, films are linked orassociated to one
another other.
One form of intertextuality most of us are familiar with is adaptation, how
one story derives from another. Authors of adaptations revise an earlier work;
these revisions can be from book to book, from book to play, from play to
film, from poem to movie. For instance, L. Frank Baum wrote The Wonderful
Wizard of Oz in 1900; it was Baum's attempt to create an American fairy tale.
Most everyone is familiar with the 1939 film version The Wizard of Oz starring
Judy Garland, but there was an earlier adaptation, a silent film version
produced in 1925. The story pretty much remained the same, but some more
significant changes were made in subsequent versions. The Wiz, the 1975
musical theater adaptation of the Wizard of Oz updates the originals, moving
the story from a farm to an urban setting and adding a racial twist to the
original. In this case, Dorothy is an African American teenager. This play was
further adapted into a 1979 film. In this version, Dorothy is a school teacher in
Detroit played by Diana Ross, and Richard Pryor plays the Wiz. Michael
Jackson made his film debut in The Wizplaying the Scarecrow.
Another adaptation of the Wizard of Oz is Gregory Maguire's 1996
novel Wicked, which was also adapted into a 2003 Broadway musical.
Maguire's version shifts the perspective from which L. Frank Baum's initial
children's book is told. Readers originally experienced Oz from the perspective
of a white teenager from Kansas who arrives in Oz, accidentally killing the
Wicked Witch of the East. Maguire's version re-imagines the story from the
dead witch's sister, a green skinned witch named Elphaba,whose name honors
the original creator by echoing the initials of his name (El-Fa-Ba = L. Frank
Baum, get it?). This reference is known as "allusion," referring to a an outside
person, place or event.
Many other versions of Baum's original exist.
Syfy TV station produced a mini-series adaptation called Tin Man that adds a

science fiction twist to the original. All newer versions are similar enough to
the original to be familiar and comforting. But by changing settings, racial
identities, and perspective, the adaptations expand and complicate the
original. The folks behind the adaptations can add their own spin onto the
original themes, even to the point of unsettling or disrupting our
understanding
of
the
the
primary
texts.
Another example of intertextuality is Tyler Perry's 2010 film adaptation of
Ntozake Shange's 1979 choreopoem and stage play For Colored Girls Who
Have Committed Suicide when the Rainbow was Enuf. Jane Smiley's 1991
novelThousand Acres, also adapted into a movie, re-imagines Shakespeare's
play King Lear. The book and movie update his classic tragedy, setting it
instead on a farm in Iowa in the 20th century. These adaptations demonstrate
that the themes of the originals are not only relevant to contemporary times,
but that there are particularities that make the theme fresh and new.