Photography creates a direct copy of real object before the camera. However, in our four particular advertisements we can see one common principle that unites them all that is a use of postmodernism intertextuality. As Barthes stated photographs have connotations. In postmodernism photography everything changes, meanings change and one text can be made up of many different texts. This is what we can notice in ads of Absolute vodka, Marge and Bart Simpson. Intertextuality offers different subject positions and it replaces social reality beyond the text. The abovementioned ads are an example of an explicit intertextuality. In particular advertisement photo was depicted a well-known staircase from the epic movie ‘Battleship Potemkin’. The staircase is a main symbol of Odessa. One of the crucial scene in the movie was when soldiers shoot riots on the stairs. Absolute vodka creative team used the epic scene of ‘Battleship Potemkin’ for interpretation of the brand’s bottle. The people walking down from the stairs construct the form of the bottle of Absolute vodka. , in the advertisement we can see the intertextuality of a photo of the staircase, interpretation of running people from the ‘Battleship Potemkin’ movie who in the end conclude the whole ad into a bottle of Absolute vodka. I think designers wanted to say that the vodka is rebellious and serves to rebel against injustice people. They created the concept of their product with the use of a well-known scene of an epic movie. However, interpretation can vary because texts meaning change according culture, society and level of knowledge considering this particular movie and its historical influence on the name of the staircase. Absolute Psycho.
In this ad we can observe the same pattern as in Absolute Potemkin. The ‘Psycho’ movie is considered one of the best Hitchcock’s films. As Potemkin it is also an outstanding movie in the cinematography. Here as well was used intertextuality between the screenplay (the particular scene in the shower where a girl was killed) and the scratches from a knife hits on a bath curtain in a form of Absolute vodka bottle.
Marge Simpson
Marge Simpson as we know is a character of a popular cartoon “The Simpsons”. Her character has one unique and well-known distinctive feature – blue beehive curved hair where she keeps family savings. The hairstyle and the color of Marge’s hair is the detail that creates Marge as a character and makes it easily recognizable. Dove created an interesting concept of the intertextuality in the ad when intervined the brand’s new product for hair with an iconic character with the iconic but imperfect hair. The ad of Dove Hair cream shows that the use of the product makes even Marge’s hair smooth and shiny. In the end of the ad text Dove invites us to blue heaven – as I mentioned before the color of marge’s hair is an important signifier of a character, or an expression “unstick your style” depicts the change of Marge’s iconic hairstyle and on a picture we can see Marge with pulled down hair.
Bart Simpson
As a Dove ad with Marge, the cover of Nevermind album is a postmodernism art. Intertextuality here expressed between the genres of actual cover of Nirvana’s album Nevermind (photography) and the postmodernist cartoon cover by the artist The Clash. Here in this particular ad the change in the context does not change the meaning though. Bart is a baby boy “following” a dollar as the baby boy on the actual cover of an album. However, c the cartoonlike cover art creates the sense of a less serious cover adopted to a younger generation of people who are maybe not familiar with