Timed Essay Question 4

 

‘Long form television dramas lack originality; no matter which country they are made in, they all use intertextuality in the same way.’

How far do you agree with this statement?

In this essay I will discuss how far I agree with the statement that long form television dramas lack originality no matter which country they are made in, and if they all use intertextuality in the same way. I will refer to Stranger Things and Deutschland 83 in my answer.  

The theorist Baudrillard believes we live in a post-modern society. This suggests we live in an era where nothing is original anymore as everything is a remake, reinvention or extension of a past product. For example, Stranger Things is a sci-fi horror, fans of this genre will actively seek out TV shows and films that have the conventions of this genre such as, aliens, superpowers, low key lighting, isolated locations etc. As the genre of television dramas are recognisable to fans of the set genre it shows that the show itself is not original as we’ve seen it in the past. Stranger Things is set in the 80’s and so there is a lot of iconography of the 80’s used, clothes, music, settings and ideology all reference those that were dominant in the past and therefore lack originality.

Intertextuality is when a text uses, borrows or references another text, the idea of a long form television drama using intertextuality suggests that Baudrillard is correct and no text is original. Some references that appear in the show start in the opening scene, here the boys can be seen playing dungeons and dragons which is a reference to the opening scene of ET where the young group of boys are also playing Dungeons and Dragons. As well as this the pizza Dustin offers to Nancy Wheeler towards the end of the opening scene is the same pizza ordered by the boys in the opening scene of ET. The writers of Stranger Things used the personalities of Mouse and Chunk from the Goonies to create a character, Dustin, a mixture of two personalities to create a new, original one. Another two key references Stranger Things makes are within the title sequence, the font chosen for the title is the exact same font used on classic Stephen King horror novels from the 80’s and the theme song has a heavy synth style which is a refence to 80’s horror film scores. Stranger Things uses intertextuality in a way that uses multiple references to creates something new, it references many things from the 80/90s and pays homage to older texts whilst still being original. The show uses intertextuality to reach a secondary audience, this audience would’ve been alive in the 80s and may pick up on all these homages and references to things they saw or heard growing up. These references are less likely to be picked up by the primary audience as they are younger and may not have watched or heard of the things being referenced.

Deutschland 83 uses intertextuality to reference more historical events due to the show being based on real past events to create a narrative. For example, the start of the show opens with real footage of Ronald Reagan’s speech about the ‘evil empire’ during the cold war in the 80’s. Similar to Stranger Things, Deutschland uses/has the typical codes and conventions of an already existing genre, the espionage, spy, genre is in no way original and has been used many times. The originality in Deutschland comes from the fact the text follows the eastern ideology; this is a new concept as the spy and espionage dramas are almost always from a western point of view as this is the dominant view in a society, for example in the James Bond films the protagonists is always from a western ideology/background. The audience is less likely to have a preferred reading of this text and will rather have an oppositional reading due to having cultivated a western identity growing up. As an audience this text challenges us and what we believe as we have a protagonist from East Germany and will see historical events from the other point of view.

In conclusion how far you agree with the statement ‘Long form television dramas lack originality; no matter which country they are made in, they all use intertextuality in the same way.’ depends on how you define originality. Looking at it from a post-modernist view, these dramas are not original as nothing in this society is, however, if you look deeper you can see that although Stranger Things uses intertextuality, it uses it to create an original text, whereas Deutschland 83 doesn’t rely on intertextuality for its originality, they use the positioning of the text instead.