spectatorship

• spectatorship

  The study of how individuals view and respond to films, and includes an examination of how the film positions members of the audience
• Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model (1973)

  • preferred reading = the spectator accepts the films intended meaning/message of the film - the ’dominant‘ reading, the majority response
  • Negotiated reading = spectator partly accepts and partly rejects the intended meaning/message
  • Oppositional reading = spectator resists and rejects the intended meaning/message
• Active spectatorship

  • engage with film
  • interpret it, question it, challenge it
  • remain critically alert
  • audience made up of spectators who determine own responses
• Passive spectatorship

  • surrender to the film
  • completely absorbed
  • consume the film in an “unthinking“ way
  • accept preferred meaning
  • audiences are a homogenous mass who all respond identically
• Spectator pleasures

  1. Affective (empathy/ identification with characters or situations. enjoy intense conversation emotion)
  2. Sensory (pleasures of looking spectacle. appeal to other senses and sensations. adrenaline rushes/kinetic/ thrills)
  3. Cognitive (enjoyment of plot/genre/theme. anticipating plot development. satisfaction of our expectations or pleasure in twists/ unexpected)