Diana George and Diane Shoos: "Dropping Bread Crumbs in the Intertextual Forest: Critical Literacy in a Postmodern Age" (6)
In their response to the articles of this section, Diana George and Diane Shoos examine intertextuality and its effect on the visual, verbal, and electronic by comparing examples of contemporary cultures, namely, the publicity poster for the British film Trainspotting and a print ad for a Calvin Klein cologne. The heroin-chic air in both publications suggests a cultural identity, one with which the public can supposedly identify, sparking their interest and persuading them to go see the movie or buy the cologne. George and Shoos liken this consumer self-identification to the demands of literacy on the reader--just as the consumer makes the connection between the movie posters and the cologne ads, when a reader reads, he or she is called upon to make similar connections between what he or she is reading and what he or she has experienced personally (perhaps comparative to Sarah Sloane's medial hauntings). Literacy, the authors argue, has to become more critical with the possibility of "digital fraud" (121), such as Forrest Gump's on-screen meeting with President John F. Kennedy, and the manipulation of historical events, such as the Dark Skies episode in which three civil rights workers in 1960s Mississippi were murdered, not by racist protestors but by space aliens. Just as, in Douglas Hesse's view, the reader gains more responsibility of interpretation in intertextual situations, the reader must also become more critical of what he or she is reading in hypertext, for as the World Wide Web opens up so many avenues for expression and information-gathering, it also presents a world of opportunity for "digital fraud."
What George and Shoos never specifically mention, however, is that while it is the reader's responsibility to be critical of hypertexts, it is also the reader's right and ability to decide what links to follow, giving the reader control over the text. So with that responsibility comes freedom, and, conversely, with that freedom comes responsibility. Perhaps what we have on our hands is a continuous cycle of literacy, one from which we cannot (or do not want to) escape.
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