What fascinates me about modern media is that we can have referentiality with neither reference nor referent.
We've developed this elaborate set of stylistic and presentational markers which can be used to signal to the audience that a pop culture reference has just been made. No reference, no matter how obscure, need pass unremarked-upon; the audience may not immediately grasp WHAT has been referenced, but they'll always know THAT it's been referenced.
The trick is, there's nothing inherent to these markers that demands they be attached to an actual reference. As authors, we're perfectly free to attach them to something we've just pulled out of our arses, thereby achieving all the effect of having made an obscure pop culture reference with no attendant risk of anyone catching it. We can be referential without referring to anything in particular: in essence, we can make a null reference. For example:
Of course, it doesn't stop there. While we can make a null reference, we can also fail to make a null reference. Whether through cryptoamnesic plagiarism or sheer coincidence, sometimes we'll try to be referential without reference, and end up with something that's actually a perfect pop culture reference to something amazingly apropos. It's thus possible to refer by accident. In such cases, can we truly disclaim the result? After all, we deliberately marked it as a reference, and a reference was, in fact, made: does the intended lie outweigh the accidental truth?
And does it really matter?
