effect is stronger and can allow for comedy or emotional responses. An example of this is when the Simpsons go to Itchy and Scratchy Land. In order that they will be able to find their car again they make a point of parking in the 'Itchy Lot'. The camera then zooms out to reveal what must be millions of cars parked in the huge 'Itchy Lot'. Were it not for this filmic technique the comedy would have been lost as we would have seen them park among a million other cars from the start . These film and televisual techniques lead us on to the intertextual and self references in The Simpsons. The show often makes references to other media in a number of ways. It can parody television programmes or more commonly films by actually taking a piece of a film and turning it into a part of an episode, or by having a show shown on the Simpson's television. To fully understand the cultural relevance of these references we must understand a little about the post-modern concept of intertextuality. Post-modernists take the view of Roland Barthes and reject the concept of a self-contained text. The text cannot be self-regulating and the power lies in the interpreting of the text. Hence the post-modern viewer and the viewer of the post-modern is the most empowered viewer. Post-modernists feel that if we cannot treat a text in isolation we risk missing much of what is being said. Intertextual references are as important as the text itself and are an integral part of the text. Intertextual effects "radiate out from a text and have an impact on all other texts" . Indeed, post-modernists believe that everything in the universe is related and to understand anything one must bear in mind all its references. To illustrate this point they refer to chaos theory: "A butterfly stirring the air today in Peking can transform storm systems next month in New York" . The point is that to fully understand all the cultural messages of The Simpsons we must understand it's in...
