Explore how TV shows can target and attract a niche or specialised audience. Make reference to both the Black Mirror episode San Junipero and The Returned to support your answer [30]
Who are the actual audiences for Les Revenants?
1 - fans of the zombie genre
2 - educated, middle class audiences
3 - fans of Mogwai
4 - foreign media fans
5 - moody teenagers
6 - AND MORE
Casting - thinking about Julie
By selecting a hegemonically ‘average’ woman, the producers position the audience in a more relatable mode of address
Audience positioning - how the audience are placed by the producer of a media product
Examples of positioning
Key scene - Victor and Julie
How are we positioned in this scene? How can audiences negotiate this scene? Who are we positioned with? How is positioning used both typically and atypically?
Take one
Les Revenants addresses a number of niche audiences through it’s highly atypical mode of address. An excellent example of this appealing to niche audiences can be seen in the character Julie. Even the casting of the actor who plays her is fascinating and atypical: Julie is hegemonically average looking, which is surprising to see in a mainstream, mid budget TV show, and the MES of her heavy set eyes and sickly demeanour allows the producer to construct a relatable mode of address. This is further anchored and emphasised through the striking scene where Julie returns home. In the establishing shot of this troubling montage, the audience is positioned in a distantly and even ghostly manner, as we follow Julie to her workplace. The use of the extreme long shot here positions the audience in a voyeuristic mode address, and hermeneutically asks the niche target audience to relate to Julies experience of helplessness. However, Julie’s slouched posture and bored facial expression form a binary opposition to the potentially terrifying experience of being isolated and alone at night. We cut to an interior mid shot of Julie on the Bus. Far from seeming scared or relieved, Julie once more is distant, bored and exhausted. This is anchored through the MES of her messy hair and her prominent eyebags, which symbolically demonstrate the difficulty of her job. The camera angle, however, positions the audience uncomfortably close to Julie, and through it’s proximity, the out of focus Victor in the background. This shallow depth of field emphasises Julie, even though she averts her gaze from the camera. Julie’s thrown together look subverts Van Zoonen's argument that women function as a spectacle for a heterosexual audience, which allows the show to target a niche audience of feminists who will take delight in seeing the representation of a woman who subverts stereotypical assumptions.
- Positioning shifts from Julie to Victor to a voyeuristic onlooker
- Themes of depression are emphasised through being closely positioned with Julie, without ever explicitly being asked to identify with her
- Julie’s representation is realistic and relatable through her unglamorous construction
- A realistic and relatable mode of address that rejects hyperreal representations of caregivers and women
- Julie rejects stereotypical representations of women as automatic caregivers, which is highly relatable to certain niche audiences
- Through her contradictions and flaws, Julie has a rich personality and character which can be negotiated by the target audience
Take two
An excellent example of how niche audiences are targeted in Les Revenants can be found in it’s atypical and complicated use of audience positioning, particularly through the character Julie. While Julie is clearly attractive, she is ‘TV ugly’, and hegemonically less attractive than several other characters in the show and therefore perhaps more relatable to the target audience. The actor was clearly cast due to her striking looks: Julie looks pale, tired, haunted, and has clearly had a traumatic past. This anchors an effective positioning of Julie to a niche and perhaps marginalised audience.
In the scene where Victor stalks Julie home, we as an audience are simultaneously positioned as both Julie and Victor. This choice of positioning is deliberately confusing, and it’s atypical use positions the audience in an anxiety inducing mode of address. Audiences may simultaneous feel sympathy for the vulnerable Victor, and also concern for Julie, travelling home at night, while being stalked by a terrifying child. A child walking by himself in the middle of the night is a terrifying binary opposition, and a deliberate intertextual relay to the horror genre. Victor’s blank expression reminds the target audience of a zombie or demon, and therefore will appeal to niche fans of the horror genre. However, Julie is also exaggeratedly indifferent to her situation, and despite being situated in the terrifying MES and setting of an isolated bus stop in the middle of the night, shows no visible emotion. This representation of women is highly atypical, challenged stereotypes, which again appeals to niche audiences of the horror film through creating a stressful and atypical mode of address to the audience. Simply put, Julies’ representation is highly atypical.
Julie is clearly not a typical damsel in distress. Her character and her features are both harsh, and she seems detached from the world. A survivor of a previous attack, Julie is totally desensitised to the world, and therefore challenges the stereotype of whether the vulnerable woman, or the incapable abuse survivor. An excellent example of this can be found through the masterful use of a high angle POV extreme long shot, that positions the audience with Julie in her flat looking down at the frightening MES of the lonely victor in the garden. However, contradicting stereotypical representations, Julies simply mutters ;what is he doing? This contradicts and challenges stereotypical representations of young women as being nurturing and maternal, and instead constructs a challenging yet perhaps relatable mode of address to a niche audience
Stuart Hall - audiences negotiate the dominant ideological perspective encoded by the producer
What is the dominant ideological perspective of Les Revenants? What is this show ‘all about?’
- Possibilities
- Reality and falsehood
- Depersonalisation, anxiety, and depression
- Trauma
- The dead coming back to life
- Suicide
- Questioning the existence of god and heaven
- Themes of depression
- Victor is often in the background, and is incapable of interacting with the world
- Simón is unable to return home, and the world has changed completely around him. He is alienated.
- The soundtrack is bassy and anxiety inducing, and sounds like a panic attack
- Themes of trauma, rehabilitation and self help
- The colours are bleached, dark and muted, as if optimism has been washed away
- Something is not right
- Past traumas and recovers
- Be careful what you wish for!
- The rules of nature have been discarded…
- Depression and the flattening of emotions
- Love and families
- Zombies and the dead walking the earth
- Sex and death
- Religion, and questioning the existence of heaven