PR2 Audience Theory and Debates

Fight club

Fight club was the released in 1999 and was directed by David Fincher. It stars Edward Norton, Brad Pitt and Helena Bonham Carter. The narrator of this film (Norton) is left unnamed throughout, he suffers from insomnia but his doctor refuses to give him any and advises him to attend a support group. He then goes to a support group for testicular cancer victims, he makes them believe he is a victim and the emotional release helps his insomnia. He becomes addicted to attending support groups and starts attending group’s every day until Marla Singer (Bonham Carter) appears. He then negotiates with her to avoid seeing her at the same groups. The narrator is a travels around for his job and meets Tyler Durden (Pitt) on a plane, after his flight home he finds his apartment destroyed by an explosion. He then rings Tyler (soap salesmen), they meet up and he then invites the narrator to stay at his place, later on (Norton) ends up moving in with Tyler. They leave the bar and Tyler tells the narrator to hit him, this leads to them having a fight. They then have more fights in the same spot, attracting other men. The fights move into the basement of the bar where the group of men form a ‘fight club’. Marla overdoses on pills and calls the narrator for him to help but he ignores her, Tyler then answers the call and saves her. Tyler and Marla become involved with each other sexually, Tyler tells the narrator to never talk about him to Marla. Fight clubs start to form all across the country, they become anti-materialist and anti-corporate and all call Tyler the leader, this becomes an organization called ‘Project Mayhem’. Tyler disappears after the narrator tells him he wants to get more involved. A member of Project Mayhem that the narrator met through the support groups gets killed by the police, the narrator then tries to shut down the project as it is getting out of hand. The narrator goes from city to city trying to find Tyler, one of the members then calls the narrator Tyler, when he gets back to the hotel room he rings Marla and she also knows him as Tyler. Tyler appears in his hotel room and explains that he isn’t real, that the narrator has two personalities in one body. The narrator then realises that Tyler has been controlling him and passes out; when he wakes up he finds a call log that Tyler made while he was passed out. He discovers Tyler plans and contacts the police but soon discovers that they are members of the Project Mayhem so has to try and disarm the bombs himself. Tyler then appears and the narrator gets to a safe building, Tyler holds a gun up to the narrator but the narrator remembers that they share the same body and realises that he is actually holding the gun himself. He shoots himself through the cheek without killing himself but Tyler falls to the floor with a gun shot at the back of his head. The narrator stops seeing and thinking like Tyler, a few members of the project bring Marla to him, still believing him to be Tyler and leave them alone. The bombs in the buildings detonate and the narrator and Marla hold hands watching the buildings collapse.

Hypodermic Needle Model, or theory maintains that the audience of any given media text passively consume the messages in the text and act upon them. This means is someone watches a film and picks up of the certain actions and text in a film that they will go out and do it themselves. For

example the James Bulger case, two young boys kidnapped a toddler from a super market and tortured him. This was blamed on the fact they had watched Childs Play 3 before it happened.

This David Fincher film was submitted to the BBFC in 1999 asking for an 18 classification but it got denied the certificate. The producers got told to make changes or the film could not get the classification. In this film the hypodermic needle theory could be applied throughout. Alexander Walker the veteran critic of London Evening Standard felt very negatively about the film and used the hypodermic needle theory in his review. He said “a toxic experience…an inadmissible assault on personal decency…and on society itself. It resurrects the Fuhrer principle. It promotes pain and suffering as the virtues of the strongest. It tramples every democratic decency underfoot.” In his review he is suggesting that if you watch this film you will accept everything that’s going on within the film. This could influence the audience to copy some of the actions and promote the pain and suffering; just like the Fuhrer principle.

There as a huge debate over this film because of the capitalism, consumerism and the loss of male identity in a feminised society. Excessive violence was a main concern; some people thought that the film could promote bare knuckle fighting because of the scenes that were presented. There was also a concern that the film could promote these acts; terrorism (soap bombs), sex scenes and the self-harm as these are serious and the hypodermic needle could be used. The film became an 18 and the BBFC said there were “concerns under the BBFC Guidelines of the time about the glamorisation of violence and the potential for encouraging an interest in organised bare-fist fighting. Neither the novel nor the film condoned brutal fighting, as the conclusion of the narrative makes clear.”

Uses and gratification Theory is an audience theory. In 1973-74 Blumler and Katz joined to begin the research of how people saw the mass media. This theory suggests that individuals may decide to react to the text for these reasons:

Diversion helps escape from everyday problems and routines, for example how we buy things we don’t really need just like the narrator (Norton) does in this film. He buys lots of different things from Ikea which helps him forgot about his day to day problems.

Personal relationships use a media text for emotional and other interactions. For example soap operas are quite realistic and when people watch them they could interact with the situations and relate to the characters in an emotional way.

Personal identity means finding yourself reflected in texts, learning behaviour and values from texts. Watching this film could possibly influence people to become the characters in the film and copy their behaviour. This is also connected to the hypodermic needle theory.

Surveillance uses information which could be useful for living. Being a media student and learning about the production of films opens your eyes to how things are done when watching films. The way the clips are edited and how the whole film is put together influenced me to use some of the techniques used in the film.

Juno

Juno is a Jason Reitman film starring Ellen Page and Michael Cera, which was released in 2007. The genres of this film are Comedy, drama and romance. The film is told over the 4 seasons starting from autumn, the character Juno discoverers that she is pregnant and tells Paulie (known as Bleeker) he is the dad. Juno then goes to an abortion clinic but doesn’t go through with it and decides that she will have the baby then give it up to an adoptive couple (Mark and Vanessa). Juno visits the Mark a few times; he shares the same music and film taste. During the pregnancy Juno struggles with the emotions towards the baby’s father (Paulie) who is in love with Juno. At the time Juno has a different attitude towards it but then she finds out he asked another girl to prom. She is heartbroken and confronts him about it but he reminds her that it was her choice to distant herself. Towards the end of the pregnancy Juno visits Mark again and their interaction becomes emotional, Mark then tells her he wants to leave Vanessa. Juno is distraught and rushes to get out of the house but the Vanessa gets home. Juno drives half way home then turns round and leaves a note at the door for Vanessa. After an emotional few months Juno admits she is in love with Paulie and goes to tell him, not long after she is rushed into labour and gives birth to a baby boy. She didn’t tell Paulie because of his running competition but he soon realises she isn’t there and rushes to the hospital himself. He chooses not to see the baby to make the adoption less hard, he comforts Juno as she cries. Vanessa then appears at the hospital and holds her baby for the first time. A few weeks later there is a scene from the baby’s room with a framed note that Juno left at the door saying “Vanessa if you’re still in, I’m still in – Juno” At the end of the film Juno gets on her bike and rides to Paulie’s with her guitar, they sit at his front garden, play guitar and sing together.

The director requested a PG certificate for the film Juno but was denied. This is because of the strong language, moderate sex references and a short clip of a gory scene. Strong language is not permitted at PG but infrequent uses are allowed at a 12A. The sex references are quite frequent; there is a scene that takes place in a sex clinic where Juno goes contemplating an abortion. There are also discussions between teenagers that could make people take offense. This was felt to mitigate any offence. The sex references were also considered to ‘reflect what is likely to be familiar to most adolescents’. Juno was passed as a 12A, the theme and horror moment were mentioned in the expanded version. The DVD version was passed at 15 in 2008.

Reception Theory is a theory provides an understanding on how these texts are read by audiences. This is done through people’s age, gender, ethnicity, and social class. Stuart Hall believes that two completely different people have different views and opinions on a certain film. Textual factors define an audience’s response but the contextual factors help each audience member view it differently. Stuart Hall identified three types of audiences, Preferred which is about what the

producer wants to hear from the people and agreeing. Negotiated is when you are unsure about the film, biased because of why and why you don’t like it. Oppositional is when the audience completely disagrees.

I am quite negotiated, I like the character that Michael Cera plays in this film, how awkward he is and the sense of humour he has. I didn’t like the love story between the characters Juno and Paulie because it just seems really unrealistic. This is because of my social class and because of where and how I was brought up. My interpretation of this film is also to do with my age and gender because I am old enough to understand what is happening in the film. I know that this storyline is more like a fairy-tale.

These are the results from my survey, as you can see I got mixed answers. The answers I got relates to the reception theory because of their age, gender, ethnicity and social class. For example 60% of the audience for my survey were males and only 20% of the responses I got for question 5 ‘Did you enjoy the film?’ were positive. This is a great example of the reception theory because the answers have varied because of the gender, ages and social class people.