'Its All Been Done'

‘Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can refer to an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another’ - WEB DEFINITION

There’s always one main question, has it really all been done before? Is there no originality and has everything that has been created nowadays just been borrowed from other texts?
I do believe this to some extent. Most people don’t realise (apart from film buffs) how much films and music is written off until they see or hear the original piece. The fact is, most of the original texts are older therefore people don’t realise how much intertexuality is being used.
For example, ‘Psycho’ (1960), a legendary and iconic film by Alfred Hitchcock made horror film history. Most horror films today contain aspects of this film, the music, the shots and even some of the scenes have been copied. Think about how many horror films contain a bloody bathroom scene? This is where it was first created. Psycho was a landmark for most modern horror films, in a way it was the ‘Mother’ of all horror films. Films that followed such as; Homicidal (1961), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Halloween (1978), Motel Hell (1980) and DePalma's Dressed to Kill (1980) all contained aspects and intertexuality from ‘Psycho’.
Massive, iconic and original texts are often used because of the fact they are ground-breaking and new; most producers just want similar success, therefore look to other successful texts as inspiration.

So how original is my text going to be? My first piece of coursework in year 12 was undoubtedly a much borrowed piece of film and contained a lot of intertexuality. However, our aim was to attract a wide audience. It can be argued that film producers want to ‘please’ an audience. For example, happy endings are often cliché, but the film may often be criticised for not having such an ending. By creating a new and unexpected film, you may be going against conventions, which in most cases is what the audience wants. Therefore we went with the conventions, using aspects from films such as Halloween, Friday 13th, Leatherface, The Grudge and more.

Our new piece of coursework may be similar as we feel like inspiration is needed; however we hope to put much more of our original ideas into the film. Our original storyline was to have a film where the main cast is ‘trapped’ in a building because of something lurking in the darkness. However, many films like this have already been done, ‘Quarantine’ and ‘No vacancy’ is an example of this.

It is hard to come up with originality when there has been so much done already. It’s almost like people are waiting around for someone to come up with an idea so they can do a spin-off of it.