Intertextuality in Music Videos

Busted - Year 3000



There are a lot of intertextual references in Year 3000, most notably is a reference to Back To The Future, with a time machine (a souped up car, ala the DeLorean from the film).

A 'flux capacitor' is mentioned, referencing the film directly, with the neighbour resembling the Professor as well (albeit a child). At the very beginning is a reference to the old Amiga 3000 game console, with the ancient graphics and shooting of pale green aliens (Alien Invader). When showing the 'triple-breasted women', it's both a reference to Total Recall, which features a triple breasted stripper in the bar, as well as the ancient sci-fi show convention of having triple-breasted women as aliens, which is one of the oldest clichés in science fiction.

The location of an underwater city with animated creatures swimming around seems to reference Spongebob Squarepants. The animation style also seems to resemble Futurama (this resemblance is strengthed by the 'Big Dan's Calimari' ship, which looks like the Planet Express ship). It offers an interesting insight into what the future might be like, which is nothing like what old sci-fi novels represent the future as, all robots and machinery.

The lyrics have quite a lot of irony within them, for example, saying that 'not much has changed but they live underwater', which is actually quite a big change. The video is also quite mocking of boy bands in general, for example, the production line of boy bands with a best before date on their boxes, accompanied by the line 'boy bands, and another one, and another one... and another one.' This reflects an occasional belief that boy bands are simply regurgitated versions of each other, with no originality.

Busted are also unafraid of creating irony with themselves, showing a backstage room with a Busted sign and 3 stars on it, containing the extremely aged version of themselves, suggesting that they are an ancient cash cow.