Discuss the audience appeal of your three main texts
Knee jerk reaction - texts offer audiences sophisticated appeal apart from Jeremy Kyle
Plan
Uses and grats
Walrus scene
Dog scene
Pick and mix (David Gauntlett)
Anthropomorphisation
Verimilitude
Codes and conventions
Ideologies
Dominant readings (reception theory, Stuart Hall)
Opening scene
Transgression
Generic hybridity
Escapism
Education
Madonna/whore complex
Polysemy
Introduction
(Definition) Audience refers to the viewers or users of a media product. In order to target specific audiences, producers will use a variety of techniques for the product to appeal to them. (argument) I shall argue that the texts I have studied offer an increasingly sophisticated audience a sophisticated range of appeals, with one notable exception. However, I shall also argue that audience appeal is essentially yet another way in which the producer can manipulate the ideology of the target audience. (Context) in order to explore this argument, I will use the examples of Blue Planet II (2017), a BBC nature documentary target a middle class family audience, Westworld (2016), a HBO produced scifi/western hybrid that targets middle class males aged 20 - 35, and The Jeremy Kyle Show, aired on 15th March 2018, a reality/talk show hybrid broadcast on ITV1.
Blue Planet II walrus mother scene
- Personal relationship - positioning techniques such as close ups and the sympathetic voiceover position the audience with the walrus mother. Additionally with polar bears ("what is a mother to do", accompanied with MS of mother and baby, emphasising isolation). Process of anthropomorphisation. Manipulation of the emotions of the audience.
- Educational aspect - Outline's Darwin's theory, survival of the fittest. David Attenburough's confident voice, middle class accent, and sophisticated lexis
- Offers audience an exciting and compelling narrative through the use of enigma codes. Example: "what is a mother to do", a mystery. Will the walrus mother survive? C/U shots and high key lighting emphasises their importance, achieved through colour grading.
- Escapism - grand and remote setting far removed from the lives of the target audience. Assumes target audience leads a boring an routine life.
- Genre conventions - repetition and difference. Many generic conventions including the characterisation of animals, the use of Attenburough as narrator and the use of exciting and exotic locations. Blue planet II offers audiences little differences, such as the making of documentary, and the extremely high production values.
- Uses and gratifications - How the audience uses and takes pleasure from a media product.
- Reception theory - the different ways in which an audience responds to a media product , preferred, oppositional and negotiated
- Preferred reading - to feel sympathy and guilt. Negotiated reading - sympathy for animals, yet annoyed by environmental message, overly manipulative
Westworld - The sex scene/the river
- Westworld - deeply polysemic show, providing audiences with a range of gratifications. Excellent example of Guantlett's pick and mix theory, where audiences pick and dismiss aspects of the text they prefer or dislike in a sophisticated manner.
- Complex and contradictory representations of women. Women are sexualised and objectified in the sex scene. Absence of costume, a stereotypically ideal body is presented, cultivating a negative representation of women and reinforcing the idea of a male gaze. Discomfort for audience, as women, by being relegated to the background in brief mid shots are sexualised and objectified.
- Transgressive imagery of fly crawling across eye as characters discuss casual murder. Audience are further anchored through the use of suspenseful non-diegetic sound. Creates a powerful binary opposition with next scene.
- Primary appeal - a challenging show for adult audiences. An adult mode of address is adopted throughout. Full frontal nudity is casually presented throughout the series, themes of death and violence. Deeply philosophical throughout.
- Appeal of sexual gratification primarily targeting the heterosexual male target audience.
- Narrative and enigmas - Dolores and her character arc
Thanks to R block for these responses.