The Reading ‘Cult Movie and Intertextual Collage’

‘A cult movie is proof that as literature comes from literature, cinema comes from cinema’. I this statement is very true, the most ‘notorious’ cult films are highly intertextual and either subvert or blatantly reference past cinema. A particular series of shots that emphasise the importance of intertextuality in cult films as well as the authors statement that ‘only a movie survives as a disconnected series of images, of peaks and of visionage icebergs’ that comes to mind is the final ‘part’ of Wayne’s World which is pretty much a shot by shot remake of Mark Nichols ‘The Graduate’. This part of Wayne’s World has become a stereotyped situation that ‘spawns from previous textual traditions’ which is prominent in today’s film and television. In continuing the discussion the author states that intertextual archetypes aren’t necceseraliy universal. In using the scene at the end of The Graduate and Wayne’s World as my example it is important to note that it may not be as prominent in other cultures, that have their own intertextual archetypes spawning from relevant past texts that are likely unknown to much of the western ‘The Graduate, Wayne’s World’ world.

Something this article by Umberto Eco addresses is the inconsistency that the production of Casablanca entailed and how each of these broken parts strung together to make a spontaneous, muddled yet an electric film. This correlates to Eco’s next statement where he says that ‘the best readings should be made on unhinged texts’. I agree with this statement. Texts that convey a splattering of meanings and muses offer more speculation for the average audience member to partake in, it also leads to a richer text, a text that provokes a series of interesting thoughts. In contrast to this, films that set themselves to suggest only singular meanings pigeon hole the audience, which leads to a less interesting entertainment experience and less impactful film.

A criticism I had with the Eco’s write-up was its lack of specificity, he introduced me as the reader to new terminologies, yet he didn’t use them as sub-categories in his intertextual analysis of the first 20 minutes of Casablanca. Instead he went on an ill-defined tangent that didn’t make best use of the clever terms and notions he articulated at the start of his report.

However in section 4, I thoroughly enjoyed his quote ‘because the characters live not the real life of human beings but as a life stereotypically portrayed in previous films’ because of this a sense of nostalgia is instantly conveyed in the film.