Page 350 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories

Notes The third case is that of E.T., when the alien is brought outside in a Halloween disguise and meets
the dwarf coming from The Empire Strikes Back. You remember that E.T. starts and runs to cheer
him (or it). Here nobody can enjoy the scene if he does not share, at least, the following elements
of intertextual competence:
1. He must know where the second character comes from (Spielberg citing Lucas), 19
2. He must know something about the links between the two directors, and
3. He must know that both monsters have been designed by Rambaldi and that, consequently,
they are linked by some form of brotherhood.
The required expertise is not only intercinematic, it is intermedia, in the sense that the addressee
must know not only other movies but all the mass media gossip about movies. This third example
presupposes a ‘Casablanca universe’ in which cult has become the normal way of enjoying movies.
Thus in this case we witness an instance of metacult, or of cult about cult - a Cult Culture.
It would be semiotically uninteresting to look for quotations of archetypes in Raiders or in Indiana
Jones: they were conceived within a metasemiotic culture, and what the semiotician can find in
them is exactly what the directors put there. Spielberg and Lucas are semiotically nourished
authors working for a culture of instinctive semioticians.
With Casablanca the situation is different. So Casablanca explains Raiders, but Raiders does not
explain Casablanca. At most it can explain the new ways in which Casablanca will be received in
the next years.
It will be a sad day when a too smart audience will read Casablanca as conceived by Michael
Curtiz after having read Calvino and Barthes. But that day will come. Perhaps we have been
20
able to discover here, for the last time, the Truth.
Après nous, le deéluge. 21
Self-Assessment
1. Choose the correct option:
(i) Casablanca is an American ............... .
(a) Michael Curtiz (b) Humphrey Bogard
(c) Ingrid Bergman (d) None of these
(ii) Casablanca first published essay in ............... .
(a) 1984 (b) 1981
(c) 1983 (d) 1990
(iii) Deutschland tiber Alles is the theme of ............... .
(a) wise (b) love
(c) Barbarians (d) None of these.
31.3 Summary

• Umberto Eco (b.1932) was born in Allesandra, Italy, and studied at the University of Turin.
He has taught at universities in Turin, Milan, Florence and Bologna, and is a frequent academic
visitor to the United States. In 1981, he achieved international fame with his novel. The
Name of the Rose, which was both a bestseller and a literary success.
• In ‘Casablanca: cult movies and intertextual collage’, he turns his attention on one of the
popular classics of Hollywood cinema, reading off its multiple meaning in a manner

19. ET was made by Stephen Spielberg: the Empire Strikes Back by George Lucas.
20. Italo Calvino (1923–86). Italian experimental novelist.
21. After us, the deluge’ -Proverbial expression variously attributed to Madame la Pompadour and Louis XV of
France.

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