Intertexuality

Intertexuality in media is the when a film refers to other media or a certain part of a film that will be recognised by the audience. Intertexuality is the defining of a work's meaning through the understanding of other texts. An example of this is a Stepfather and The Simpsons.
The famous scene in Psycho where the aspects are taken and used for Stepfather.



Both of these still images are men holding a knife in the same stabbing position threatening to kill the their victim.
However in 'psycho', the character's identity is hidden where as in stepfather, the killer is fully revealed. This clarifies two different ways of how to make the scenes scary. In stepfather we are able to see the killer's fierce aggression where as in psycho the killer remains anonymous to put the audience in the victims position, unexpecting what will happen.




The images above show that the originial and the replicated 'shower' scene. The famous shower scene is also used in many other thriller films and is said to be one of the best-known scenes of all time.