Ja Rule feat. Ashanti - Mesmerize (Intertextuality Study)

 

The strong and most evident intertextual reference in which Ashanti and Ja Rule's music video 'Mesmerize' is referring to is a scene from one the most famous musical films of all time Grease. The mise en scene, the costumes and the performance in this music video has been heavily influenced by the carnival scene in Grease, in which Danny and Sandy sang a song called 'We Go Together'.

 Looking at Ashanti's hair and the clothes she is wearing, we can clearly see that they have tried to imitate the look given to Sandy in Grease. Sandy's actions have also been somewhat imitated by Ashanti in some scenes of the music video. At 0:51, I denote Ashanti smoking a cigarette which is what we see Sandy doing in the carnival scene. However, in Ja Rule's music video, they have created a parody out of this small smoking scene by making Ashanti choke on the smoke from the cigarette that she is smoking. This has been added in to create a humourous effect for the audience. Ja Rule's attire has also been influenced by Danny's costume, which consists of a black t shirt and black trousers.

Intertextuality is important because it allows the audience to recognise aspects of one media text that is shown in another media text, which could potentially increase the target audience significantly. I imagine the target audience for Ja Rule's song Mesmerize would be people in between the ages of 16 - 45. The reason I say this is because hip hop, R&B and rap are all genres that are popular amongst younger people, and this song falls into both the hip hop and R&B catergory. A lot of younger people in between the ages of 16 -25 also look up to rappers such as Ja Rule and see them as role models, and are easily influenced by them. Because the music video has used references from the film Grease, I feel that this may attract older people in their 30's/40's because the music video contains content which they may be familiar with.