PR2: Audience Responses

In this report, I shall be discussing how audiences respond to media texts in their own particular way using at least one of three theories. I will then apply these theories to the 1999 film Fight Club in order to gain an understanding how different people react to the same media text.

The first of the 3 theories is the Hypodermic model. This is where people passively receive the information from a media text and then change their behaviour due to the influence of the media text they were viewing. An example of the hypodermic Model in use is this newspaper article shown on the right here. It is suggesting that there was an attack on a man, the use of the hypodermic model here is that the media text he was shown had influenced him to attack people because of the games violent nature.

The next theory is Encoding and Decoding Model which was created by Stuart Hall. This theory suggests that the producers hide hidden messages within the media text, and the audience have to decode these messages, revealing a hidden meaning and in some cases the ideologies of the producer. This theory shows the relationship between the text and the audience, as this will focus on reception theory. Audiences can have either a Preferred, and Negotiated or Oppositional. The way you can receive these messages can depend on your age, gender, social background, culture, political beliefs and many more things. An example of this is the music video to Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus. This is my reading of the music video. “The representations shown in this video all depends on how the person views the video. It can be taken in both positive and negative connotations. Its viewed as positive as Miley is showing signs of independence as she is the only person in the video. Also, she is naked throughout the video which shows that she is down to her raw emotions. Overall my opinion on this video is Negotiated as it is down to my cultural aspects as I don’t like her music in general. But there is a message embedded in the video so it counters out the negative connotations. Also, the message hidden within the video is positive as she is talking about how she can be independent and also how she’s all grown up”.

The final theory is called Uses and Gratifications theory and this was created by a duo called Blumler and Katz. This duo suggested that a media text can be put into any of these 4 categories:

- Diversion: This can cause an escape from reality with the media texts gripping storyline or just as a distraction form your life.

- Personal Relationships: This is where people can use the media for emotional and other interaction. An example of this is substituting soap operas for family life as they can accurately represent family life for the masses.

- Personal Identity: This is where an audience can find themselves in the media text they are currently viewing. They can learn behaviours and some values from “themselves” in the text they are viewing.

- Surveillance: This is where various information can be found in the media texts. Examples of this include the weather, holiday bargains and sales at retail stores.

An example of Uses and Gratifications in the media in the social media website Facebook. It acts as a distraction from your life by seeing what everyone else is doing, so this is a Diversion from reality. You can speak to distant relatives on Facebook so this is Personal Relationships. You can view your own posts and other people can view your post so you have a Personal Identity. You can also find out various information on Facebook so it can be used for Surveillance.

The reason I have spoken about these theories is because I will apply them to the 1999 blockbuster Fight Club. Fight club is all about an average un-named protagonist who was played by Edward Norton. He lives a boring life and he goes to various meetings in order to “die and then be reborn”. He then meets up with a soap maker called Tyler Durden and these 2 start a fight club in the middle of the street. It then spreads all across America and it turns out that this isn’t a social club, Tyler creates an army which he decides to nickname “Project Mayhem”. There is a big plot twist at the end but I will not reveal what happens. This was directed by David Fincher and it made 100 million dollars in the box office. This movie stars Edward Norton, Brad Pitt and Helen Bonham Carter.

This film can be applied to all 3 theories I have discussed. It can be applied to the Hypodermic Model in the following way, although it is far-fetched, but you could always link this movie to terrorism as he creates an army to destroy the big corporations, as seen in the final scene when all the buildings blow up. It can be applied to the Encoding and Decoding Model also. The messages were hidden throughout this film and the message I received was that you can do anything if you put your mind to it. Although in this movie it has a bad connotation, I have a Preferred reading for this movie as I just loved the storyline and the soundtrack to the movie. This film can be applied to the Uses and Gratifications Theory in the following ways:

- Diversion: This film distracted me from reality as I was interested in the story of Tyler Durden and the un-named protagonist. The up rise of his army kept me engaged throughout the whole movie.

- Personal Relationships: You could substitute any office worker in the place of the un named protagonist as he leads a simple life at the beginning of the film.

- Personal Identity: I could see myself as a bit like the un named protagonist because I always have to question everything, so I can relate to this character.

- Surveillance: I really liked the soundtrack to this movie and I have listened to it recently.

At first, the BBFC did not give this film a certificate and was banned for a few reasons, but shortly after the ban was lifted and it was given the 18 certificate. In my opinion, it was banned because of the terrorist themes used within the movie. During the movie, Durden seems like a natural leader, but after he initiated project Mayhem, he became more of an extremist leader as he bombed building as well as creating secret armies and plotting against America. It was a very creepy coincidence that only 2 years after this movie was released, America suffered the worst terrorist attack seen in the US in their history when Al-Qaeda crashed 2 planes into the World trade Centre. Also, the fighting scenes during the movie are very violent and physical, a lot more gruesome then ever imagined. So do to the extreme violence and the extremist behavior, this movie was banned.

After the ban was lifted, a respected film critic called Alexander Walker wrote this review of Fight club:"A toxic experience ... an inadmissible assault on personal decency ... and on society itself. It resurrects the Führer principle. It promotes pain and suffering as the virtues of the strongest. It tramples every democratic decency underfoot."Using the Encoding and Decoding Model, we can see that Alexander Walker had a very oppositional view of this movie. The main message in this movie was to destroy democracy by blowing up building in America, as Walker had far right political views, he strongly opposed these ideologies and his adds to the oppositional hatred of this movie.

After our class watched this film, I created a survey to see how the people in my class reacted to this movie. The first question I asked was age. Everyone I survey was between the ages of 16-24 which was the target audience for this movie. I then asked about gender. As the action genre is stereotypically favored by men, I asked this to see if the movie followed this stereotype. As you can see, just over 70% of the people who answered my survey are male, so the movie Fight Club has hit their target audience.

I then asked the people how they first heard of the movie. 5 people replied with the phrase “word of mouth” or a phrase which is similar to that. This makes sense at this movie came out in 1999, so social media was not a big thing then. So the only way for this movie to spread is that if people talked about it. Also with the movie being quite controversial, it helped a lot with the word of mouth and the film became well known.

I then asked how many stars would you rate this movie out of 5. The average of all the results was exactly 4 stars after 4 people put 4 stars, one person put 3 stars and one person put 5 stars. So it is clear that this film is a hit amongst the target audience of the movie. I then asked for initial thoughts on the film, to get an understanding as to why people put as many stars as they did. All of the answers contain the word “good” or words which connotate to “good”. The only negative thing which was said id that there was too much violence.

I then asked about the violence in the film as this was a major reason that this movie was banned. 4 out of 6 people said it was bearable for the nature of the movie. 1 person said the film was too extreme, this supports the ideologies of the BBFC as they initially wanted it banned for the violence reasons. And one person said that the film didn’t have enough violence. Me personally, I disagree with that one person and I said that the violence was bearable for the subject matter.

I

then asked what readings people gained from this film, to see if people applied the Encoding and decoding Model, over 65% of the people surveyed said they gained a preferred reading from this movie, and the rest said that they had a negotiated reading of the movie. A follow up question which I asked was why did you have such a reading to the movie? Some of the people enjoyed the actors within the film and how well they played their characters. One person said they liked the film, but went too far on the terrorist themes, which is one of the reasons this movie was banned, so it does show that even though the movie was un banned, they still had elements which people found very uncomfortable.

People were then asked if they felt diverted away from reality within this film in order to try and apply the Uses and Gratifications Theory. The results show a 50/50 split for this answer, suggesting that it only diverted the people who has a preferred reading to this media text. The final question I asked about the film was why did/did not feel diverted away from reality whilst watching this movie. One person put it made them feel immersed, this suggests that they had a preferred reading to this movie. Another person said they wasn’t diverted away from the movie as terrorism and insomnia are real things, but the happy ending was too much. This suggests that this person had an negotiated film as they thought the happy ending was too much, but the issues which made this film are very real.