Intertextuality in music videos

The term intertextuality refers to the process of creating references to any kind of media text via another media text. In other words intertextuality essentially means for a type of media (in this case music) to pay homage to another media text.

Katy Perry's "Last Friday Night" music video includes inter-textual references with there being credits in the start and end of the video and outtakes creating a film like effect.

The characters are all wearing clothes that were typically worn in the 80's and also Katy is seen scrolling through a social media networking site called 'friend place, this is acting as your typical social media site such as Facebook.

 The colour scheme is also very fitting for a 80's styled concept, with bright, extravagant and block colours, mostly pink and yellows. This is a typical colour associated with pop music videos.

The director of "Last Friday Night" said that the video was inspired by "Sixteen Candies" and other 80s coming of age films and teen movies. Also the ending was inspired by the ending of "Cannonball Run"

I also believe it makes some references to many 2000s teen movies one being "Mean Girls"  this is because in "Last Friday Night", Katy is given a makeover by a "popular girl" and in the end Katy turns into a "popular girl" herself. This is similar to "Mean Girls" because that's simply the whole narrative of the film, where the girl is changed from  "nobody" into a "somebody".

"Last Friday Night" also has similar narrative to "John Tucker Must Die", because in the music video we see Katy likes one of the "jocks" who doesn't seem to notice her, and one of the "nerds" likes her, but she doesn't notice, similarly in the film the main girl likes one of the "jocks" and the jocks brother likes the girl, who once again doesn't notice.

The video also features two "Glee" stars, "Glee" is a very popular show with some teenagers who are apart of Katy's target audience. This would widen her audience because even those that aren't fans of her music could watch the music video just for the appearance of the "Glee" casts.