TRANSTEXTUAL CONNECTIONS IN THE ANIMATED CHRISTIAN FILM “THE KING OF KINGS” (2025): INTERMEDIAL AND MULTIMODAL DIMENSIONS
Abstract
The article explores intermedial and multimodal manifestations of transtextuality in the contemporary English-language animated Christian film “The King of Kings” (2025). It has been determined that animation is a complex hybrid phenomenon that reflects a deep and comprehensive textual dialogue in combination with intermedial syncretism of the arts and captivating multimodal design: textual, visual, aural, gestural, spatial, olfactory, and gustatory. It has been highlighted that intermedial references and medial transpositions as subtypes of intermediality (according to I. Rajewsky’s classification) are the key features in the analysed animated video. It has been found that the animated film The King of Kings (2025) is both a result and a process of combining different media and medial forms. The article proves that the explicit and implicit coexistence of texts in animation constitutes a form of transtextuality or textual transcendence (according to G. Genette), which is highlighted in the form of: 1) intertextual direct citation, i.e. quotation-word, quotation-phrase, quotation-sentence, quotationfragment of the text; intertextual indirect citation, i.e. paraphrase, intertextretelling, reminiscence, allusion; 2) paratextual relation that connects the animated film with its structural parts: title, epigraph, preface, foregrounding, afterword, epilogue, postscript, notes, illustrations, advertising; 3) metatextual commentary, explanation, edification, interpretation, assumption, question / answer, addition and expansion of information; 4) hypertextual comprehensive transformation, modification, translation, adaptation, expansion of the new hypertext at the expense of the previous hypotext; 5) architextual genre dialogue and the connection of homogeneous and heterogeneous texts. A promising area of further research is a study of manifestations of interdiscursivity, intericonicity and related concepts in contemporary Englishlanguage Christian animation.
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