Media theorists realised that audiences made decisions about how they would watch film and television. There were a number of reasons that audience's watch a piece of media, and this was expanded upon by researches Blulmer and Katz in 1974. They said that there were five different categories that audience's consumed a media for: diversion, entertainment, personal relationships, personal identity and surveillance. Diversion, also referred to as escapism, stated that an audience sometimes watch films to escape from their everyday life. Entertainment is obviously just where an audience watch a film to simply have fun and enjoy themselves. Personal relationships are formed between the audience and certain characters and this is a reason for them to watch a film. Personal identity is where an audience choose to consume films as a source of personal identity. The audience will like the beliefs and values that this character has. Finally there is surveillance, which is where an audience watch a film in order to gain information. This could simply be just watching a weather report or the news to watching a full documentary film.
An example of how this theory could be applied is in a soap opera, such as Coronation Street. The audiences will watch a film for diversion, personal relationships or even personal identity. It could be diversion because as you're watching the soap you are escaping from your everyday life and watching as if you're part of the cast. It could be personal relationships because as you continue to watch is regularly you feel like you come to know the different characters more personally. Also it could be considered as personal identity because as you watch you may like the different self values and beliefs of a certain character and aspire to be more like them. This is for a television soap opera, however everything can be transferred over to film quite easily.
Reception Theory
Stuart Hall developed an idea of audience positioning - he claimed that the media representations had 3 possible responses from the audience:
- Preferred (Dominant) Reading
- Audiences respond to the way the narrative is constructed and adopt the points of view implied.
- Oppositional Reading
- Audiences reject the way the narrative is constructed and challenge the points implied.
- Negotiated Readings
- Audiences partially accept the way the narrative is constructed but can see both points of view - dominant and oppositional.
An example of how this could be implied to a film is in the opening scene of Spectre. The preferred/dominant reading of where Bond shoots at his targets will be positive and with good connotations. However an oppositional reading could be that he has just caused a huge mess and his work has not been efficient.
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