Intertextuality in Community

“Modern Warfare” is the 23rd episode of the first season of Community, the comedy series that follows the misadventures of a community college study group. This episode epitomizes one of the core characteristics of Community - intertextuality. The main storyline of the episode follows the campus-wide competition to win a last-person-standing paintball match, the winner of which wins priority course registration for the following semester. The storyline is punctuated with references to several action movies, including 28 Days Later, Terminator, The Warriors, and more. The majority of movie references can be categorized as implicit intertextuality: subtle references made via allusive mise-en-scene and dialogue. The subplot focuses on Britta and Jeff - two members of the study group who spend the episode annoying the rest of the group by arguing with each other until they eventually hook-up, thereby relieving their sexual tension. Character dialogue addresses this clichéd sitcom trope through explicit intertextuality, which allows the viewer to quickly understand the context of Britta and Jeff’s dynamic. Throughout the episode, intertextuality plays an important role in identifying and characterizing interpersonal dynamics and in simultaneously paying homage to and poking fun at various narrative tropes.

The storyline concerning Britta and Jeff’s sexual tension begins in the study room, where the rest of the study group complains that the pair’s constant bickering is annoying and unhealthy for the group. Abed makes an explicit intertextual reference to Ross and Rachel, two characters in Friends who experience similar tension, and Shirley responds to Abed’s allusion with a reference to Sam and Diane from Cheers: “Aw, like Sam and Diane. I hated Sam and Diane.” These clearcut, direct allusions quickly characterize the nature of Jeff and Britta’s relationship by explicitly referring to similar, well-known interpersonal dynamics featured in widely-watched sitcoms. Shirley’s reference not only characterizes but also criticizes this familiar sitcom formula. After the discussion of Jeff and Britta’s tension, Dean Pelton informs the group of the upcoming paintball match and Jeff leaves the study room to take a nap in his car.

An hour later Jeff is awoken from his nap by the sound of paintball guns and distant screams to discover a campus covered in paint. The mise-en-scene of this sequence implicitly refers to 28 Days Later, an action movie that follows a coma patient, Jim, who wakes up 28 days after the start of a zombie apocalypse. In one of the fist sequences of the movie Jim walks through the streets of London, which are trashed and devoid of life. Most of this sequence features wide shots that capture the smallness of Jim relative to the huge, empty city of London. When Jeff wakes up in his car, the camera slowly zooms out from a close-up of Jeff through his car window to a wide shot of Jeff walking through the destruction alone. Before the sequence begins, “1 hour later” flashes across the screen. The text coupled with the wide shot of Jeff walking through the paint covered, debris-strewn campus is the first of many implicit intertextual references. Immediately after this sequence, Abed saves Jeff from another student and says, “Come with me if you don’t want paint on your clothes” - an easily recognizable implicit reference to Kyle Reese’s famous line from the Terminator franchise: “Come with me if you want to live.” These implicit references don’t serve a critical purpose to the plot, nor are they intended to frame the events of the episode in a familiar context, as the references to Cheers and Friends are. Rather, the intertextual references to action movies are intended to be humorous. It is funny and ironic that dramatic, violent action movies concerned with high stakes, life-or-death situations are quoted in reference to a relatively low stakes game of paintball. In this comedic light, it is clear that the majority of the implicit intertextuality is intended as parodic homage. At one point in the episode the roller skating group challenges the study group with a line from The Warriors: “ Study group, come out to play,” and later on Jeff says, “No bullet Hans?” when Britta tries to shoot him with an empty paintball gun, referring to a scene from Die Hard in which one character tries to shoot another with an unloaded gun. Altogether, these references function differently than the explicit references to Cheers and Friends.

Before Britta tries to shoot Jeff, they hook up. At the end of the episode, Abed, who possesses uncanny observational skills coupled with social dysfunction, says he senses something different about the group. The difference in the interpersonal dynamic between Jeff and Britta brought about by their hookup is thus confirmed, which solidifies the importance of the earlier references to Cheers and Friends. The explicit intertextual references to Sam and Diane and Ross and Rachel provided a quick and easily understood context for the nature of Jeff and Britta’s dynamic, which could best be described as sexual tension. The relief of the tension becomes a more important plot point with this context in mind.

Intertextuality is an important narrative and comedic device in Community, as exemplified by “Modern Warfare.” The implicit references to action movies and the explicit references to sitcoms play important roles in creating comedic, sometimes ironic context for events and relationships that must be quickly developed and resolved over the course of a half-hour episode.