Spectatorship (S4)

• What's an active viewer?

  Audience interacts with text, find deeper meaning, picks up on narrative clues 
• What's a passive viewer?


  Audience consumes media without thinking critically about what they’re seeing, universal appeal
• What's a preferred reading?

  How the media was intended to be interpreted 
• What's a negotiated reading?

  Compromise between above, viewer accepts elements of preferred reading, but has their own views too
• What's an oppositional reading?

  Audience rejects preferred reading and creates their own
• What's Smith's cognitive theory?

  Character identification affects the viewers emotional experience when watching a film, they identify with the character in three ways: recognition, alignment, allegiance
• What's recognition?

  The construction of characters (genre expectations)
• What's alignment?

  Spatio-temporal attachment (visually glued to character through film form), subjective access 
• What's allegiance?

  How viewer sympathises with characters based on their morals 
• What's Stanton's 2+2 theory?

  Making the audience put things together themselves instead of showing it (narrative ellipsis)
• What's a shot of preparation?

  Shows characters’ intentions to increase suspense (motel clerk being there all-night answering phone)
• What's the preferred reading of NCFOM?


  Accept pessimistic world view which critiques capitalism
• What's the negotiated reading of NCFOM?

  Understand ideas created, disappointed in representation of women
• What's the oppositional reading of NCFOM?


  The text has nothing to say about society, senseless violence