Intertextuality In Documentary Now ! Essay

As a member of the parody genre, Documentary Now! , its episode “Gentle and Soft” in particular, inherently employs a more overt intertextuality than what is most commonly at play in televisual texts, because the foundation of this genre is in the humor created by references to other texts, genres, events, or people. This blatant intertextuality also exists in the program because of the integration other program’s creators in the television industry and the program’s adjacent industries, primarily, the music industry.

Thus, intertextuality is the basis of the text’s structural categorization as a parody and the intertextual knowledge that viewers have affects the ways that they consume the text and what meanings they receive from it. As such, as a member of the parodic genre and according to Jason Mittell’s A Cultural Approach to Television Genre Theory, Documentary Now! is an important text in defining genres as cultural constructions through its generic referents and intertextually founded humor. Lastly, as a parodic text, the episode “Gentle and Soft” of Documentary Now! mploys the divided responsibility model of intertextuality according to the various forms of intertextuality provided by Jonathan Gray in Intertextuality and the Study of Texts. As suggested by Gray in Intertextuality and the Study of Texts, as well as in his work with Jeffrey P. Jones and Ethan Thompson, The State of Satire, the Satire of State, parody and satire inherently rely on intertextuality, because parody is the comical imitation of a cultural product and imitation requires a referent.

Gray’s assertion that intertextuality prepares viewers for the text, becoming a site around which the production of meaning occurs. Fully understanding the meaning to the text as a parody requires the intertextual knowledge of the referents of “Gentle and Soft”, primarily, The History of the Eagles and other music documentaries, as well as with the soft rock of the 1970s, the other televisual and parodic work of the creators, and even their musical backgrounds and skills.

Thus, the way the viewers consume text intertextually always bringing previous textual knowledge and experience to every text consumed and comparing it to those like it is particularly significant in the parody genre which in which all meaning established by the text is created in relation to the viewer’s previous media consumption. Furthermore, according to Mittell, not only is the viewer’s understanding of the text determined by intertextuality, but the construction of the genre, which he insists is fluid, is based on intertextuality.

In his work, A Cultural Approach to Television Genre Theory, he suggests that genres are an industry and audience practice meant to organize fan practices, viewing practices, and everyday conversations. It is a way to sort television’s vast array of textual options. As such, genre is a culturally constructed textual category, not a textual component. Genres emerge from intertextual relations between multiple texts and through cultural practices.

Thus, as a show defined and labeled as member of the parody genre, Documentary Now! is culturally recognized and defined as an explicitly intertextual televisual text, which is particularly significant because each genre has its own common sense rules that viewers internalize to make sense of future texts, ultimately having a direct effect on how the texts are consumed and understoon..

However, Mittell’s insistence of genre as fluid and based on cultural context and intertextual knowledge, also allows other generic categories to define Documentary Now!. For example, if a viewer is unfamiliar with the intertextual referents of “Gentle and Soft” they my categorize the program as simply a documentary is they if they are unfamiliar with the actors or the soft rock genre, which indicate that the program is ot a genuine documentary, or as a comedy if they are familiar with some of the text’s referents, such as soft rock, and thus find humor in moments of the program like the stereotypically melodramatic fallout of the fake band The Blue Jean Committee or the feminine voice of Clark the band’s lead singer. Any text is subject to constant shifts as new texts transform and reorganized the whole system of relationships between the texts.

As is clear in the intertextual definition of Documentary Now! s a parody, there exist power relation in the definition and understanding of the text as a parodic text. Furthermore, as stated by Mittell, parody is critical intertextuality, it does not just imitate a cultural product, it states a position about that product, and thus there are power dynamics at work. This is also suggested by Gray in the four models of intertextuality employed in television, which he outlines in Intertextuality and the Study of Texts: the hierarchical model, the working together model, the divided responsibility model, and the fully interactive model.

The power dynamics in the hierarchical model are most explicit. In this model, intertextuality is a vertical chronological flow in which older texts feed into the next text and, thus, the earlier texts have the greatest power because the texts do not work together, newer texts are powerless to the influence of older texts, also denying the agency of the viewer agency in interpreting the text. The working model is intertextuality in which each text is a team member engaged in the same task as all other members and the object of study is their combined work.

The fully interactive model in which texts work on each other’s ground and work through and against each other. However, “Gentle and Soft” does not quite fit these first three models, but rather, as a parody reliant in the viewer’s overall media knowledge, particularly regarding the program’s intertextual referent, The History of the Eagles, other music documentaries, 1970s soft rock, and the other televisual texts of the program’s creators, the episode “Gentle and Soft” of Documentary Now! employs the divide responsibility model of intertextuality. This model divides different responsibilities and roles between different team members in media which fulfill multiple functions within each text, but media is not consumed equally. Instead, to understand a text we must place it in the context of the reader overall media consumption and ask what role it performs.

This is the clear fit for “Gentle and Soft” and Documentary Now! s a series because it provides the viewers the agency necessary to make the various intertextual connections, and thus readings, of the text as possible based on their varied experiences with the program’s referents. The intertextuality of “Gentle and Soft” lies in the individual contexts in which each viewer of the episode consumes it; however, as stated by Newcomb and Hirsch, media is not consumed equally which is evident in the way that texts can mean multiple things at once, meaning that a text can mean one thing in and of itself and the intertext add other meanings.

For example, the context in which one viewer may consume “Gentle and Soft” may differ from the context of another viewer if they do not consume the media explicitly intertextually referenced by the episode or if they are unfamiliar with the intertextually constructed generic literacies, created by previous interactions with texts, which lead to different reading strategies and intertextual relations to the text.

In short, as a parody, Documentary Now! , and its episode “Gentle and Soft”, in particular, employs an overt form of intertextuality that is essential to its categorization as a parody and, subsequently, in the ways it is to be understood by its viewers according to the collaborative manner in which it interacts with other texts and in the way it gives the viewers the agency to divine such varied meanings of the text..