LIT CRIT

Readers of this blog will, I think, agree that I am an enthusiastic fan of the more sophisticated reaches of literary criticism. Among the many terms that I have taken from that field is “intertextuality,” which is to say, a reference in one work of literature to another work of literature. Google tells us that “the term was coined in the late 1960s by Julia Kristeva, who combined ideas from Bakhtin on the social context of language with Saussure's positing of the systematic features of language.”  

For example, Mary Shelley’s famous novel, Frankenstein, or a Modern Prometheus, is in its title and also in its content an intertextual reference to a classic figure of Greek mythology. James Joyce’s most famous novel, Ulysses, is even more directly an intertextual reference to Homer’s great work. One finds intertextuality in many places, of course, including the movies. One of my favorite examples is the 1993 movie Sleepless in Seattle in which Meg Ryan and Rosie O’Donnell watch again and again the great old romantic movie An Affair to Remember from 1957, starring Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. The ending of the Meg Ryan movie revisits and revises the scene in the earlier film in which Deborah Kerr, rushing to meet Cary Grant at the top of the Empire State building, is struck by a car and crippled.

My very favorite example of intertextuality, surprising as this may be, comes from a quite different field of creative effort, namely television commercials. As I am sure you will know, the Geico ads featuring a talking gecko were such a great hit that other insurance companies felt it necessary to up their game. Progressive Insurance hired an actress, Stephanie Courtney, to play a Progressive saleswoman, Flo. Flo’s great success led Progressive to branch out and hire a young male actor named Jim Cashman to play an eager, rather nerdy salesman named Jamie. In one of the Progressive ads featuring Jamie, he is seen training a group of Progressive salespeople to sing a sales jingle. Jamie is cruelly demanding and insistent, interrupting them in mid phrase to criticize them and demand that they sing the ditty more precisely. When I saw that ad, I was stunned. It was, I thought, the most brilliant piece of intertextuality I had ever encountered. A little back explanation is required here.

One of Progressive Insurance’s competitors, Farmers Insurance, hired a well-known character actor named J. K. Simmons, casting him as the director of a museum of famous and odd Farmers cases. The series of ads with Simmons all have the same tagline: “We know a thing or two because we’ve seen a thing or two.” What possible connection can this have to the Progressive ad?

Well, J. K. Simmons won an Oscar as best supporting actor for the movie Whiplash, in which he plays a sadistic and demanding musical conductor who drives the main character, a young aspiring drummer, to more precise performance. The Progressive ad was a graceful and witty homage not to the Farmers advertisement but to the actor who performed in it.

I do not think James Joyce or Mary Shelley could have done better.