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PALGRAVE ANIMATION

DreamWorks
Animation
Intertextuality and
Aesthetics in
Shrek and Beyond

Sam Summers
 Palgrave Animation

Series Editors
Caroline Ruddell
Brunel University London
Uxbridge, UK

Paul Ward
Arts University Bournemouth
Poole, UK
This book series explores animation and conceptual/theoretical issues in
an approachable way. The focus is twofold: on core concepts, theories
and debates in animation that have yet to be dealt with in book-length
format; and on new and innovative research and interdisciplinary work
relating to animation as a field. The purpose of the series is to consolidate
animation research and provide the ‘go to’ monographs and anthologies
for current and future scholars.

More information about this series at

[Link]
 Sam Summers

DreamWorks
Animation
Intertextuality and Aesthetics
in Shrek and Beyond
Sam Summers
University of Sunderland
Sunderland, UK

ISSN 2523-8086 ISSN 2523-8094 (electronic)

Palgrave Animation
ISBN 978-3-030-36850-0 ISBN 978-3-030-36851-7 (eBook)
[Link]

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2020
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher,
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 Acknowledgments

This project began life as a doctoral thesis at the University of Sunder-

land’s Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies, something
which would not have been possible without the continued unwavering
support and input of my supervisor, Susan Smith. Susan nurtured this
idea through every stage of development from literally the second it
popped into my head, before her very eyes, and for this I’ll always
be grateful. Thanks must also go to Julia Knight, then-director of the
Research Centre, for providing me with the opportunities and encour-
agement I needed to develop as a researcher. John Storey provided input
in the early stages which would prove to be crucial down the road, and
Chris Pallant and Martin Shingler both made vital contributions and
suggestions throughout this process. Thanks to Catherine Lester, whose
humble monetary donation made much of this possible. Thanks also
to Noel Brown, a reliable source of friendship, mentorship, inspiration
and, most importantly, income for the duration. Finally I must thank

v
vi Acknowledgments

my parents, Carole and Martin, and my partner, Lydia, for their unques-
tioning moral and financial support, as well as the myriad friends and
loved ones who’ve put up with the Shrek of it all for five long years.
You’re the real All Stars.
 Contents

1 Layered, Like Onions: Introducing DreamWorks’

Intertextuality 1

2 Why Is Shrek Funny?: DreamWorks

and the Intertextual Gag 33

3 ‘All Star’ Soundtracks: DreamWorks and the Pop Song 65

4 Woody Allen in the Anthill: DreamWorks and Star

Performance 91

5 Parody, Pastiche and the Patchwork World:

DreamWorks and Genre 125

6 The Shrekoning: DreamWorks’ Influence Over 2000s

Animation 161

vii
viii Contents

7 Shrek Gets Shreked: DreamWorks’ Online Afterlife 195

Index 223
 List of Tables

Table 1.1 The characteristics of the four kinds of intertextual

relationship 11
Table 2.1 Forms of comedy with examples 35
Table 6.1 The twenty highest grossing animated features of the
2000s domestically. Note that only one hand-drawn
film, The Simpsons Movie at no. 18, makes the list,
illustrating the medium’s commercial recession 184

ix
 1
Layered, Like Onions: Introducing
DreamWorks’ Intertextuality

Following the release of Pixar’s Toy Story (Lasseter 1995), the first-ever
computer-animated feature film, as well as its successors A Bug’s Life
(Lasseter 1998) and Toy Story 2 (Lasseter 1999) in the 1990s, the 2000s
would prove to be the computer-animated feature’s formative decade in
the USA. The number of studios producing mainstream CG (computer-
generated) features increased dramatically in the new millennium, just as
the number of traditionally animated films began to stagnate. By 2006,
CG had all but completely replaced traditional animation on cinema
screens and has remained the dominant form ever since. It’s also during
this period that the modal and aesthetic conventions of the American
computer-animated feature began to crystallise, as the respective house
styles of the emergent studios converged. Visually, the CG films of the
2000s retained the influence of Pixar, but on a narrative and tonal
level, another studio had a more pervasive impact: DreamWorks Anima-
tion, creators of Antz (Darnell and Johnson 1998), the world’s second
computer-animated feature, as well as some of the medium’s biggest
commercial hits.
Between 2000 and 2009, DreamWorks Animation released more
animated films than any other studio. Granted, Pixar’s films were more

© The Author(s) 2020 1

S. Summers, DreamWorks Animation, Palgrave Animation,
[Link]
2 S. Summers

consistently commercially successful individually; only the entries in

DreamWorks’ hugely lucrative Shrek franchise grossed as highly domes-
tically as the average Pixar film.1 However, DreamWorks’ movies grossed
more money in total, owing to the sheer quantity of their releases.
Though Pixar enjoyed greater critical acclaim and brand recognition than
their closest rivals, more money total was spent on tickets for Dream-
Works films than on Pixar’s during the 2000s.2 This allowed Dream-
Works to exert a considerable influence on the content of commercial
American animated features simply by adhering to a distinct style and
saturating the market with their product. Indeed, it is clear from reviews
of CG family films from the latter half of the decade in mainstream
outlets that the computer-animated efforts of multiple studios had come
to be considered generic and formulaic. Whether invoked to criti-
cise a film judged to be unremarkable, or as a point of comparison
against which to measure a more unique movie, usually from Pixar,
the notion of a computer-animation hegemony built on a collection of
worn-out conventions was a popular one in the film press, with some
specific criticisms speaking to DreamWorks’ influence. One convention
in particular stands out as a recurrent target of such criticisms: what
is often labelled the ‘pop culture reference’, but can more accurately
and comprehensively be described as the deliberate and explicit manipu-
lation of intertextuality. For instance, PopMatters’ Bill Gibron accuses
Hollywood of ‘cranking out the CG family films, animated efforts
relying on quirky pop culture riffs’ (Gibron 2009), while TVGuide’s
Maitland McDonagh bemoans the ‘noisy, pop-culture joke-larded norm’
of computer animation’ (McDonagh 2007). Similarly, The Guardian’s
Andrew Pulver critiques Meet the Robinsons (Anderson 2007), one of
Disney’s early attempts at CG, for indulging in ‘the (now very tiresome)
streams of pop culture self-referentiality’ (Pulver 2007), the reviewer’s
fatigue reflecting the apparent prevalence of the technique. By 2008,
Time’s Richard Corliss had gone as far as claiming that ‘ransacking pop
culture is what cartoons [here referring to animated features] do’ (Corliss
2009), which would have been an implausible statement only ten years
prior, in the midst of Disney’s cycle of oft-imitated, self-contained
animated musicals. And yet, this newly developed tendency peculiar
 1 Layered, Like Onions: Introducing DreamWorks’ Intertextuality 3

to the CG feature film was emphatically not the product of the influ-
ence of Pixar, the medium’s most prominent technological innovators.
The National Review, for one, specifically praises Pixar’s Incredibles (Bird
2004) for ‘skip[ping] pop-culture references’ (National Review 2009),
and The Telegraph’s SF Said confidently asserts that ‘Pixar films don’t
indulge in the nudging, winking pop-cultural pastiches one sees in some
other animated films’ (Said 2004).
Not every mention of the aesthetic uniformity of the CG feature,
including its newfound affinity for pop-culture references, attributes the
trend to DreamWorks’ impact, although a 2010 Time piece on the
decade in review does recognise them as the medium’s ‘most influential
studio’ (Corliss 2010). In it, writer Richard Corliss notes that ‘rivals have
followed DreamWorks’ lead—not Pixar’s’ and that ‘the DreamWorks
gestalt—impish, parodic, brimful with pop-culture references—has infil-
trated animated films from Ice Age [Wedge 2002] to Despicable Me
[Coffin and Renaud 2010] and plenty more’ (ibid.). Although this piece’s
open recognition of DreamWorks’ influence is exceptional, its claims
are difficult to deny. Reviewing the history of mainstream American
animated features, it’s clear that DreamWorks’ Shrek (Adamson and
Jenson 2001) utilised pre-existing pop songs and offhanded references
to a wide range of pop-cultural miscellanea to what was at the time an
unprecedented extent. While a select few hand-drawn features—most
famously, Disney’s Aladdin (Musker and Clements 1992)—and even
Pixar’s debut Toy Story had outfitted themselves with explicit intertextual
connections in the recent past, they stopped short of Shrek’s complete
immersion in the cultural touchstones past and present. Meanwhile
Shrek, as a result of its enormous commercial success and its outright
rejection of the earlier Disney paradigm in part through its ostentatious
inclusion of pop-cultural references, ushered in a wave of imitative, inter-
textual CG features from other studios—including Blue Sky’s Robots
(Wedge 2005), Disney’s Chicken Little (Dindal 2005), Nickelodeon’s
Barnyard (Oedekerk 2006), and Sony’s Surf’s Up (Brannon and Buck
2006) to name only a prominent few—and in the process effectively
codified the common perception of how a computer-animated feature
was to behave for at least the remainder of the decade.
4 S. Summers

Despite their clear industrial impact, DreamWorks, their influence

and their use of intertextuality have been underserved in animation
scholarship. Insofar as critical histories of animation describe the 2000s,
and the dramatic increase in the production of CG features, in detail at
all, DreamWorks’ enormous aesthetic contribution is often minimised.
For instance, in Maureen Furniss’ A New History of Animation, the entry
on DreamWorks focusses entirely on their ‘digital advances’ (Furniss
2016, 379–381), while Chris Pallant’s chapter on computer-animation
in Demystifying Disney only cursorily mentions DreamWorks’ influ-
ence on modern Disney (Pallant 2011, 144), understandable given the
book’s focus. Pallant also refers elsewhere to hand-drawn animation
by ‘computer generated Pixar-esque productions’ (ibid., 111 [emphasis
added]), reflecting a wider academic bias towards the creators of the first
CG feature with regard to the codification of the medium’s aesthetic
qualities. This book is therefore positioned as a gentle corrective, a repo-
sitioning of DreamWorks at the centre of the narrative of the medium’s
development in the twenty-first century.
In initiating the widespread use of deliberate intertextual references
in CG movies, DreamWorks triggered a shift away from what had been
the dominant mode of feature animation in America since the form’s
inception with Disney’s Snow White (Hand et al.) in 1937—a mode
characterised by a dedication to realism, sustained as the industry stan-
dard due to Disney’s consistent commercial success. Though retaining
the realistic, three-dimensional visual style introduced by Pixar in Toy
Story, DreamWorks deviate substantially from that paradigm on a non-
visual level. Most significantly, by making substantial use of explicit
references to other texts, DreamWorks and the studios who absorbed
their influence are at the very least eroding the ‘fourth wall’ between the
animated world and the audience, in many cases also importing objects
from our reality into the diegetic reality in ways which can contradict
the latter’s ostensible spatio-temporal setting. This lack of regard for
the self-contained and logically consistent animated diegesis places these
films in the cartoonal mode typified by the like of Warner Bros.’ classic
Looney Tunes shorts. The fact that, post-DreamWorks, these conven-
tions became ubiquitous characteristics of feature animation is therefore
a significant shift for an industry which had largely adhered to realist
 1 Layered, Like Onions: Introducing DreamWorks’ Intertextuality 5

conventions for the preceding six decades. Before embarking on my anal-

ysis of DreamWorks’ implementation of these cartoonal techniques, and
their subsequent industrial impact, however, I must define and rede-
fine a couple of somewhat contentious terms central to this discussion:
‘intertextuality’ and ‘realism’.

Defining Intertextuality
Although, as I shall come to explore, the deliberate use of intertextual
references to convey meaning is far from a new development in the
realm of animation, it is a device which increased in both popularity and
prominence across all media in the postmodern era, continuing into the
present day. Jim Collins argues that ‘the foregrounding of disparate inter-
texts and the all-pervasive hyperconsciousness concerning the history
of both ‘high art’ and popular representation has become one of the
most significant features of contemporary storytelling’ (Collins 2013,
464), demonstrating how integral the phenomenon of intertextuality has
become to today’s media. While texts have always been in conversation
with one another, creators are now more consciously aware of that fact
than ever before, although while it may seem apt to describe this delib-
erate manipulation of cultural references as ‘intertextual’, it would not
be uncontroversial. The use of the term is much disputed, with Graham
Allen conceding that it is ‘not a transparent term and so, despite its confi-
dent utilization by many theorists and critics, cannot be evoked in an
uncomplicated manner’ (Allen 2011, 2). As such, even the most specific
definitions suggested by scholars are too broad for my purposes.
The term ‘intertextuality’ has its origins in poststructuralist theory,
with Julia Kristeva first defining it as ‘the passage from one sign system
to another’ (Kristeva 1986, 111), a process common to all signs, and
by extension all words and all texts. Connections can, and do, exist
between texts of any medium, speaking to the immeasurably vast scale
of the intertextual web as envisioned by Kristeva. This definition of the
term does not distinguish between those connections made consciously
or subconsciously, by the author or by the reader. ‘Any text’, she claims,
‘is constructed as a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and
6 S. Summers

transformation of another’ (Kristeva 1980, 66). Under Kristeva’s defini-

tion, therefore, to speak of an ‘intertextual text’ would be tautological, as
every work necessarily speaks to a potentially infinite number of others.
Such a definition is so broad as to be useless in our context, though; no
matter how apparent it may seem that a film such as Shrek engages more
actively with its intertexts than one such as Disney’s Snow White, this
poststructuralist approach would not register a distinction. As Collins
points out, ‘the accepted theories of intertextuality are woefully inad-
equate in accounting for the active manipulation of those intertextual
relations’ (1989, 43).
Jonathan Gray’s work on intertextuality in The Simpsons goes further
towards making this distinction. He places his focus on ‘texts with inter-
textual intent ’ (Gray 2005, 4) and in doing so illuminates the crucial
difference between works which deliberately engage with other media
and those which do so passively simply by existing as part of the inter-
textual array. The key subcategory he differentiates is that of ‘critical
intertextuality’, in which an intertext is ‘used by others to attack a
text, to subvert its preferred meanings and to propose unofficial and
unsanctioned readings’ (ibid., 37). While Gray succeeds in singling out
intertextual references placed by authors with specific goals in mind,
his subcategory is too narrow for my purposes, excluding authors with
reverent or benign intent. Gérard Genette is more comprehensive in
his structuralist approach, breaking intertextual relationships into several
categories, including ‘hypertextuality’, a ‘relationship uniting a text B
[the hypertext] to an earlier text A [the hypotext] upon which it is
grafted in a manner that is not that of commentary’ (Genette 1997,
5), ‘architextuality’, a relationship of ‘generic quality’ which the ‘text
itself is not supposed to know, and consequently not meant to declare’
(ibid., 4), and—somewhat confusingly—‘intertextuality’, or ‘the actual
presence of one text within another’ (ibid., 2). The latter category, a
relationship of direct quotation, is wholly unambiguous. Along with
acknowledged or self-conscious examples of architextuality, as in the case
of a generic parody like Shrek, and unambiguous examples of hypertex-
tuality—as Genette writes, to allow for inexplicit instances in analysis
‘would be to subsume the whole of universal literature under the field
 1 Layered, Like Onions: Introducing DreamWorks’ Intertextuality 7

of hypertextuality, which would make the study of it somewhat unman-

ageable’ (ibid., 9)—it makes three subcategories which accurately and
exclusively account for the kinds of explicit intertextual connections I
will be discussing in relation to DreamWorks’ output.
In order to stress the distinction between intertextuality as I shall be
applying it going forward and the term as it is generally understood in
the poststructuralist context, then, I shall here introduce a new term,
‘authorial intertextuality’. This denotes a reference consciously made by
one text to another which is both deliberate and explicit, meant to be
perceived and understood by a section of readers and interpreted in a
certain way, and contains Genette’s intertextuality, explicit hypertextu-
ality and acknowledgements of architextuality. This is not a new form
or subcategory of the concept introduced by Kristeva, it is something
else altogether: an aesthetic tool deployed by authors to create a specific
meaning, to encourage a certain reading and to engage an audience.
Like a metaphor, an authorial intertextual reference is deployed by an
author with the assumption that it will be understood by all or some
of their audience, and with the intention of it being interpreted in a
certain way. This is not to say that this approach to analysis necessarily
privileges authorial intent, any more than any close reading of a text
might. Interpretation remains key; audiences and scholars alike are free
to interpret authorial intertextual devices as they see fit, and certainly,
this volume does not preoccupy itself with guessing at the filmmakers’
desired interpretations. As Julie Sanders puts it when writing on adap-
tation, ‘open structuralis[t]’ (Genette 1997, ix) approaches such as this
are ‘invested not in proving a text’s closure to alternatives, but in cele-
brating its ongoing interaction with other texts’ (Sanders 2006, 18). As
such, authorial intertextuality has more in common with metaphor and
other rhetorical devices than it does with the postructuralist notion of
an intertextual web connecting all texts, and to compare it directly to
the latter would be a category mistake. Rather, authorial intertextuality
manipulates this web and purposefully positions the hypertext within it;
it is dependent on a poststructuralist understanding of intertextuality,
yes, but not analogous to it.
Even this conception of authorial intertextuality, however, cannot
account for the nuances present in the different ways it is employed
by the likes of DreamWorks, and the resultant effects. For example,
8 S. Summers

both Kung Fu Panda (Osborne and Stevenson 2008) and Shark Tale
(Jenson et al., 2004) feature contemporary pop songs, star performances,
explicit engagements with genre and references to specific hypotexts,
partaking in every facet of authorial intertextuality. Yet, they each do so
in palpably different ways, a distinction which the subcategories drawn
from Genette’s taxonomy fail to register. In light of this, I have devel-
oped a new system of categorising intertextual relationships, built around
diegetic consistency, or the degree to which a work’s intertextual refer-
ences can be reconciled logically with the fictional ‘reality’ it presents.
To return to my two contrasting examples, the intertextual references
in Shark Tale necessitate a complete break from logic and reality, as
almost all of its humour depends on the inherently cartoonal conceit
that the undersea world is an analogue of our own, including ‘fishified’
versions of our music, celebrities and brands. Meanwhile, Kung Fu Panda
endeavours to keep its specific intertextual connections to a minimum,
refraining from anachronistic cultural references and restricting its sole
pop song to the end credits, with director John Stevenson maintaining
that they wanted to create a ‘self-contained universe and a timeless story’
(Osborne and Stevenson 2008). This internal consistency, I have found,
is the clearest difference between the ways in which various modern
animated films have employed intertextuality. For instance, as I have
discussed elsewhere (Summers 2018), in Toy Story, the use of real-life toys
serves to reinforce the notion that the film takes place in an analogue of
our own world. In Shrek 2 (Adamson et al. 2004), meanwhile, appear-
ances from recognisable brands have the opposite effect; we know that
Versace and Starbucks are features of the present, and not of the medieval
fairy-tale world as we typically understand it. The diegesis, then, is
taken to be illogical and absurd, completely removed from any notion
of an internally consistent, self-contained reality. To account for this
crucial difference, essentially the difference between a cartoonal applica-
tion of authorial intertextuality and a realist one, I have outlined a new
taxonomy, one which categorises connections based on the relationship
between the intertext, or the intertextual site, and the diegetic world in
which the film takes place.
By cataloguing the explicit intertextual references in DreamWorks’
canon of computer-animated features, and the diverse forms which they
 1 Layered, Like Onions: Introducing DreamWorks’ Intertextuality 9

take, I have identified four ways in which these intertexts can exist in
relation to the diegesis. The first, and simplest, category is that of Extra-
Diegetic Intertexts. These are intertexts which are not referenced in the
diegesis of the film, but through non-diegetic elements. This includes
non-diegetic music, such as Smash Mouth’s ‘All Star’ as it is used in the
opening sequence of Shrek. The casting of celebrity voice actors, like
Antonio Banderas as Shrek 2’s Puss In Boots, also falls into this category,
provided they are not playing themselves, as they are able to imbue their
characters with their extratextual associations without forming part of the
diegesis themselves. Because they do not incur onto the fictional world
of the film, existing as they do outside of its narrative, these intertexts
cannot be considered anachronistic or otherwise anomalous, regardless
of the setting of the film or the nature of the hypotext in question.
The remaining three categories all concern intertextual references
whose sites exist within the diegesis, but they differ in the diegetic
status of the intertexts themselves. The second category is Diegetic Inter-
texts, references which can conceivably be reconciled with their ostensible
context. Essentially, this means pop-culture references which are contem-
porary and native to the film’s setting. This occurs most often in films
set in the period in which they were made, such as the Madagascar
series. When we see Coca-Cola advertisements as the animal protagonists
wander through New York, this creates links between our contempo-
rary world and that of the characters. The third category, meanwhile,
consists of Contra-Diegetic Intertexts, which are shown to exist within the
diegesis but cannot be reconciled with the ostensible setting of the story.
This could be because they are explicitly anachronistic, like the range
of modern songs performed by Donkey throughout the Shrek series,
or because they shown to exist in contexts entirely removed from the
human world, like underwater city of Shark Tale. As with Madagascar ’s
(Darnell and McGrath 2005) New York, the reef in Shark Tale is covered
in advertisements for existing products (here with an undersea twist, i.e.
‘Coral Cola’ instead of Coca-Cola). Rather than blending into the back-
ground as part of what we know to be the landscape of New York, these
advertisements stand out as incongruous and mark the reef as wholly
constructed environment. Contra-diegetic intertexts therefore have the
10 S. Summers

opposite effect to fully diegetic ones, serving to distance the diegesis from
any sense of a plausible reality and creating gaps in logic and consistency.
The final category is Tele-Diegetic Intertexts, referring to references
for which the site of the connection is diegetic, but the actual inter-
text is not shown to exist within the diegesis. In this way, a historically
set film can refer to a contemporary text without necessarily compro-
mising the integrity of the setting. This could, for instance, include
characters or settings which are themselves inspired by or directly lifted
from other texts. For instance, Megamind ’s (McGrath 2010) Metroman
is clearly based on Superman, but the latter doesn’t exist as a fictional
character within the film’s world. Metroman is unaware of Superman as
a text, but the audience can make this connection for themselves. The
site of the connection—Metroman—is diegetic, but the intertext itself —
Superman—is not. If a character was shown reading a Superman comic
then the site of the connection would itself be a text, and the inter-
text would thus be diegetic. Scenes in which characters unconsciously
re-enact or quote earlier texts can also fall into this category, such as
the sequence in Madagascar in which Alex mourns the destruction of
a model Statue of Liberty, clearly recalling the final scene of Planet
of the Apes (Schaffner 1968). While tele-diegetic intertextual references
can occur without breaking from a realistic mode, in many cases these
coincidences are so contrived as to nonetheless create a suggestion of
cartoonalism, as the notion that events within the onscreen reality can
so closely mirror those of popular cultural texts requires a particularly
high degree of suspension of disbelief. These four types of intertextual
reference are collected in Table 1.1.
One issue that arises for an avenue of analysis such as this is the diffi-
culty of accurately identifying and quantifying intertextual references,
giving the ubiquity of the intertextual array as proposed by Kristeva.
As Umberto Eco writes, ‘no text is read independently of the reader’s
experience of other texts’ (Eco 1984, 21), leading Collins to acknowl-
edge that the ‘virtually infinite number’ of frames of reference this would
involve fails to account for explicit manipulation of an intertextual arena’
(Collins 1989, 48). Collins seeks to answer the question of ‘when does a
reference to another text become an intertext? What degree of presence
justifies the use of the term?’, but only succeeds in ‘neutralising’ it by
 1 Layered, Like Onions: Introducing DreamWorks’ Intertextuality 11

Table 1.1 The characteristics of the four kinds of intertextual relationship

Does the
Does the site Does the existence of
of the intertext the intertext
connection itself exist contradict
exist within within the the setting
the story? story? of the story? Examples
Extra-diegetic No No N/A Non-diegetic
music,
casting,
camera
angles
Diegetic Yes Yes No Diegetic
music, texts
mentioned
by
characters,
texts seen
onscreen,
deliberate
quotes (on
the part of
the
character)
Contra-diegetic Yes Yes Yes Diegetic
music, texts
mentioned
by
characters,
texts seen
onscreen,
deliberate
quotes (on
the part of
the
character)
Tele-diegetic Yes No N/A Settings,
characters,
narrative
events,
incidental
quotes (on
the part of
the
character)
12 S. Summers

accepting into his definition ‘anything that activates one text’s relations to
another’ (ibid., 49), a stance that proves unsatisfactory for our purposes,
as we have seen. Mikhail Iampolski suggests a solution, privileging the
textual literacy of the reader in determining authorial references. ‘Because
every “normative” narrative text possesses a certain internal logic’, he
writes, ‘if a fragment cannot find a weighty enough motivation for its
existence from the logic of the text, it becomes an anomaly’, which
in turn ‘impel[s] us toward an intertextual reading’ (Iampolski 1998,
30). The specificity and contextual irrelevance of the pop songs sung
by Donkey in Shrek, for instance, mark them as having originated from
outside the text, even for viewers who haven’t heard them before.
To illustrate the reverse of this, Iampolski uses an obscure allusion
from Jean-Luc Godard’s Breathless (1960) to the film Forty Guns (Fuller
1957). Though the director himself has commented on the allusion, for
Iampolski, Godard does not sufficiently signpost the reference as such
on a textual level. It is ‘so organically embedded into the film’s narra-
tive, so transparent a part of the film’s mimetic structure’, he claims, that
‘prior to Godard’s commentary, this episode, paradoxically enough, was
not a quote’ (ibid., 32). Such an absolute position is difficult to extend to
every analogous situation, however. Though Godard’s allusion seems to
Iampolski impossibly vague and tenuous, a scene like the one in Shrek
in which the dragons eye peering through a window mimics a shot of
the T-Rex in Jurassic Park (Spielberg 1993) will register as intertextual
for many despite not appearing particularly anonymous, owing to the
immense popularity of the hypotext. It must be assumed that if a refer-
ence has been deliberate encoded , it can feasibly be decoded by potential
viewers, no matter how few. Iampolski’s theory of anomalousness is a
useful tool, but perhaps too prescriptive. And yet, it’s essential that our
analysis distinguishes between those references which are authorial—i.e.,
explicit and deliberate—and those which are not, as to ignore these qual-
ifiers would be to revert to the poststructuralist notion of an infinite web
of intertexts, impossible to navigate and quantify. Rather than deal in
absolutes, then, it is more useful for our purposes to acknowledge the
importance of deliberateness and explicitness, but to view them as fluid
and relative values as opposed to fully knowable criteria which a reference
either does or does not possess. Using these simple criteria to narrow
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 Engineering - Term Paper
Second 2022 - Research Center

Prepared by: Associate Prof. Brown

Date: July 28, 2025

Module 1: Practical applications and examples

Learning Objective 1: Study tips and learning strategies
• Learning outcomes and objectives
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 1: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Learning Objective 2: Fundamental concepts and principles
• Case studies and real-world applications
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 2: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Learning Objective 3: Case studies and real-world applications
• Experimental procedures and results
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Learning Objective 4: Assessment criteria and rubrics
• Research findings and conclusions
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Learning Objective 5: Ethical considerations and implications
• Practical applications and examples
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Example 5: Critical analysis and evaluation
• Historical development and evolution
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Example 6: Critical analysis and evaluation
• Statistical analysis and interpretation
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Important: Experimental procedures and results
• Learning outcomes and objectives
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Important: Research findings and conclusions
• Experimental procedures and results
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Note: Statistical analysis and interpretation
• Assessment criteria and rubrics
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Summary 2: Theoretical framework and methodology
Important: Historical development and evolution
• Current trends and future directions
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
[Figure 11: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Note: Assessment criteria and rubrics
• Practical applications and examples
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Key Concept: Case studies and real-world applications
• Fundamental concepts and principles
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Important: Fundamental concepts and principles
• Research findings and conclusions
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
[Figure 14: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Note: Ethical considerations and implications
• Theoretical framework and methodology
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Remember: Interdisciplinary approaches
• Study tips and learning strategies
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Example 16: Problem-solving strategies and techniques
• Practical applications and examples
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Key Concept: Practical applications and examples
• Interdisciplinary approaches
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Important: Critical analysis and evaluation
• Key terms and definitions
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Key Concept: Case studies and real-world applications
• Practical applications and examples
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Discussion 3: Best practices and recommendations
Note: Interdisciplinary approaches
• Experimental procedures and results
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Definition: Learning outcomes and objectives
• Fundamental concepts and principles
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Key Concept: Interdisciplinary approaches
• Key terms and definitions
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Remember: Historical development and evolution
• Interdisciplinary approaches
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 24: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Remember: Practical applications and examples
• Theoretical framework and methodology
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Definition: Key terms and definitions
• Assessment criteria and rubrics
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Important: Assessment criteria and rubrics
• Fundamental concepts and principles
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Important: Experimental procedures and results
• Practical applications and examples
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
[Figure 28: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Example 28: Critical analysis and evaluation
• Practical applications and examples
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Practice Problem 29: Literature review and discussion
• Problem-solving strategies and techniques
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Introduction 4: Study tips and learning strategies
Important: Statistical analysis and interpretation
• Best practices and recommendations
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Remember: Key terms and definitions
• Comparative analysis and synthesis
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Note: Fundamental concepts and principles
• Literature review and discussion
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Important: Practical applications and examples
• Problem-solving strategies and techniques
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Definition: Key terms and definitions
• Best practices and recommendations
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Practice Problem 35: Comparative analysis and synthesis
• Fundamental concepts and principles
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Key Concept: Interdisciplinary approaches
• Experimental procedures and results
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Example 37: Learning outcomes and objectives
• Case studies and real-world applications
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Key Concept: Assessment criteria and rubrics
• Learning outcomes and objectives
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Important: Experimental procedures and results
• Research findings and conclusions
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Conclusion 5: Case studies and real-world applications
Key Concept: Best practices and recommendations
• Interdisciplinary approaches
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Definition: Statistical analysis and interpretation
• Key terms and definitions
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Note: Ethical considerations and implications
• Comparative analysis and synthesis
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Remember: Experimental procedures and results
• Case studies and real-world applications
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Note: Case studies and real-world applications
• Learning outcomes and objectives
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Key Concept: Historical development and evolution
• Ethical considerations and implications
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Remember: Statistical analysis and interpretation
• Experimental procedures and results
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Example 47: Fundamental concepts and principles
• Statistical analysis and interpretation
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
[Figure 48: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Practice Problem 48: Critical analysis and evaluation
• Statistical analysis and interpretation
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Practice Problem 49: Critical analysis and evaluation
• Current trends and future directions
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Background 6: Study tips and learning strategies
Key Concept: Literature review and discussion
• Assessment criteria and rubrics
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Note: Best practices and recommendations
• Experimental procedures and results
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Remember: Learning outcomes and objectives
• Problem-solving strategies and techniques
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 53: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Example 53: Interdisciplinary approaches
• Problem-solving strategies and techniques
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Practice Problem 54: Literature review and discussion
• Key terms and definitions
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Important: Theoretical framework and methodology
• Case studies and real-world applications
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Important: Fundamental concepts and principles
• Practical applications and examples
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Definition: Fundamental concepts and principles
• Fundamental concepts and principles
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
[Figure 58: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Note: Statistical analysis and interpretation
• Learning outcomes and objectives
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Example 59: Statistical analysis and interpretation
• Best practices and recommendations
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
[Figure 60: Diagram/Chart/Graph]
Summary 7: Best practices and recommendations
Definition: Statistical analysis and interpretation
• Literature review and discussion
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
Formula: [Mathematical expression or equation]
Definition: Comparative analysis and synthesis
• Research findings and conclusions
- Sub-point: Additional details and explanations
- Example: Practical application scenario
- Note: Important consideration
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