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    Intertextuality Losing My Religion

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    Oliver James Cooke
    The document discusses the music video for R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" and how it uses intertextuality. It manipulates and borrows from external media to emphasize the video's internal concepts and lyrics. Specifically, it references religious imagery and mythology through shots inspired by Caravaggio paintings, using dramatic lighting to convey emotion. It also inserts Soviet propaganda alongside religious symbols to criticize the idea that religion depicts itself as being "above" reality and to politicize the producers' viewpoint against organized religion.

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    Intertextuality Losing My Religion

    Uploaded by

    Oliver James Cooke
    302 views3 pages
    The document discusses the music video for R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" and how it uses intertextuality. It manipulates and borrows from external media to emphasize the video's internal concepts and lyrics. Specifically, it references religious imagery and mythology through shots inspired by Caravaggio paintings, using dramatic lighting to convey emotion. It also inserts Soviet propaganda alongside religious symbols to criticize the idea that religion depicts itself as being "above" reality and to politicize the producers' viewpoint against organized religion.

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    Intertextuality Losing My Religion

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    The document discusses the music video for R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" and how it uses intertextuality. It manipulates and borrows from external media to emphasize the video's internal concepts and lyrics. Specifically, it references religious imagery and mythology through shots inspired by Caravaggio paintings, using dramatic lighting to convey emotion. It also inserts Soviet propaganda alongside religious symbols to criticize the idea that religion depicts itself as being "above" reality and to politicize the producers' viewpoint against organized religion.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as ODT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as odt, pdf, or txt
    302 views3 pages

    Intertextuality Losing My Religion

    Uploaded by

    Oliver James Cooke
    The document discusses the music video for R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion" and how it uses intertextuality. It manipulates and borrows from external media to emphasize the video's internal concepts and lyrics. Specifically, it references religious imagery and mythology through shots inspired by Caravaggio paintings, using dramatic lighting to convey emotion. It also inserts Soviet propaganda alongside religious symbols to criticize the idea that religion depicts itself as being "above" reality and to politicize the producers' viewpoint against organized religion.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as ODT, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
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    Introduction

    Intertextuality plays an instrumental part in accentuating the appeal of


    R.E.M.s Losing My Religion Music Video, manipulating and borrowing
    many different forms of external media in order to emphasise the internal
    concepts and feelings present within the visual and lyrical content of the
    piece. Possessing a very clear conceptual structure, the video is clearly
    able to integrate many intertextual themes and visual allegories in
    devising a wider, more complex concept that instantly extracts a sense of
    intrigue from an audience. Particularly, the way in which the video
    montages its concepts with a mix of performance, creates an, almost,
    avant garde style, that instantly evokes more questions that it could even
    begin to answer, and plays with the very clear sense of having a widereaching number of texts that it makes reference to. In the case of this
    video, many religious and mythological links are made to emphasise the
    lyrical repetition of religion as well as to constantly emphasise the lyrics
    themes of anger and loss, deprivation and abandonment.
    1

    By Oliver James Cooke

    The Caravaggio Connection


    One key intertextual reference made throughout the video, is that of
    certain shots taking their cues from paintings of proto-baroque painter
    Caravaggio. This is used in effect as a means to convey a similar sense
    of a human emotional and physicality, through a heavy and dramatic use
    of lighting, giving the actions a sense of mystical importance. Likewise,
    the fact that Caravaggio directly romanticised religion and mythology
    within his paintings, compliments Losing My Religions display of its own
    religious imagery, and the subsequent juxtaposition between that and its
    lyrics; as a way to internally criticise the fact that this type of imagery
    depicts religion as something that is above social realism. In this regard,
    the director is plagiarising these scenes as a means to directly contrast
    the style with the relatively normal realist display of other shots.

    By Oliver James Cooke

    The Propaganda Factor


    Another key intertextual reference throughout the video, is the use of
    Soviet-style propaganda as inserts alongside the aforementioned religious
    symbolism. The heavy use of these is for one key purpose, to directly
    attack religion as being associated with the idea of propaganda and
    manipulation. Likewise, this one aspect helps politicise the producers
    viewpoint against religion.

    By Oliver James Cooke

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