Intertextuality was described by John Stewart as "incorporating, raiding and reconstructing". It causes nostalgia in the viewer, making them instantly like and relate to the video, as well as giving new meanings to the ideas taken from other media.
Music videos will often use some form of intertextuality - borrowing ideas from or parodying other media. Some, such as Shania Twain's Man I Feel Like a Woman borrow ideas from other music videos - in this case, Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love.
Others use intertextuality with films, especially narrative-based videos. Many film directors actually started out directing music videos. David Fincher, for example, is now a film director and has directed films like Se7en, but started out by directing Madonna videos.
Madonna herself also used intertextuality in many of her videos. Material Girl, for example, has heavy intertextuality with the film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. It parodies and takes ideas from the dancing scene in the film and uses very similar costumes and scenes.
Tupac and Dr Dre's California Love also uses intertextuality with films, this time with the Mad Max trilogy. The films were extremely popular because of their unique setting, and the music video borrows heavily from this, creating a dystopian, junk-filled, futuristic desert setting.
Intertextuality can also be with television, like The Beastie Boys' Sabotage, the video for which is a spoof cop show, parodying how overly serious they are. REM's Bad Day also has intertextuality with television, as the whole video looks like the TV news. The presenters all lip-sync the lyrics of the song and the events shown on the news follow the lyrics.
George Michael's Freedom also uses intertextuality, but this time with fashion. The video stars lots of famous models, who will be instantly recognised by most viewers. This helps give the models publicity and add familiarity to the video.
An increasingly common form of intertextuality is with video games. Californication, by The Red Hot Chili Peppers, is an excellent example of this. Most of the video actually looks like a video game in the style of Grand Theft Auto, where the player controls the members of the band. Conventional aspects of video games are mixed with the conventional aspects of music videos and the band's star image motif - their asterisk logo - to draw in their target audience of mainly young men.
Robbie Williams' Let Love Be Your Energy also has intertextuality with video games, because of the 3D animated characters it uses instead of real actors or performers, and the surreal, fantasy narrative and settings it uses.
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