The Types of Response
Negotiated: A negotiated response is with the audience will talk with one another and come to an agreement or disagreement with certain parts of a media product.
This can mean the way that you view a film, like if you have to emphasis with a character that you don't like, and yet you seem to be able to enjoy watching the film, this basically boils down to your viewpoint.
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| Oz The Great and Powerful Poster |
That was my view and both my Mother and Brother agreed with me however my Father said he didn't like it, for the simple reason that it wasn't the MGM film, he said that he grew-up on "The Wizard of Oz" and to him there was no other Oz film that came close to it, he also said that he did not care much about "Return to Oz", even when I said that you could not really compare the MGM film to either "Return" or "The Great and Powerful" he was still persistent about it, and I can't argue with that.
Long story short, after discussing the film, my father wouldn't change his mind.
Preferred: This is when the audience saw the media product the way that the creator intended it.
This example is not about a film but about a book: my favourite book: George Orwell's Animal Farm.
Orwell wrote the book in response to the rise of Stalin as the leader of the Soviet Union, the book talks about a group of farm animals that drive the ruthless and rather dictatorial farmer out and decide to run the farm by themselves, eventually a pig named Napoleon becomes the leader of the farm and the way he runs the farm he and the other pig seemingly turn into the humans that the animals hated so much.
It is obvious that the character of Napoleon is Orwell's interpretation of Stalin and the Stalinist regime. Other obvious comparisons that Orwell created, the farmer Mister Jones is the Tsar, the character of Old Major is Lenin, the person who started the revolution and the character of Snowball (Napoleon main reveal and the main advocate for Old Major's words) is Trotsky.
Now Orwell did like the revolution for dethroning the Tsar, which is why he wrote Jones as a cruel man who spent his money on drink, like how the Tsar had absolute power and spent his vast wealth on the finest objects in life. But he hated Stalin and the abuse of his power he did over Russia, so this was why he wrote Napoleon as much more of a cruel dictator than Jones and had Snowball as a benevolent leader and would have lead the farm to prosperity and democracy.
Almost everyone, myself included could tell the intention, being that I know the history of the Soviet Union. However something that I have come to understand is the authorial intent is not important, what is important is what the audience understands and interprets from the product.
Oppositional: This is when the audience finds themselves in opposition to the product due to their views.
E.g. the majority of the audience reaction to the Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, the majority of those who watched the prequels found themselves hating the films due to the massive amounts of CGI, the boring political jargon, the annoying characters and performances, and the changes to the story that the original trilogy established.
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| The Star Wars Prequel Trilogy Posters. |
George Lucas's intentions was to expand the story of the Star Wars universe and explain the events that lead up to the original trilogy, but while "A New Hope" was the only film in the original trilogy that Lucas directed and written, the other films have other director and writer working a basic story idea that Lucas created, all of the Prequels were written and directed by Lucas, in the time between the release of "Return of the Jedi" and "The Phantom Menace" Lucas seemed to have lost the plot so the speak and made numerous changes and additions to the plot which caused the Star Wars fans and others alike to become outraged and act in opposition to the prequels.
Personally, while I understand the changes and hate the annoying characters the prequels do not get under my skin as much as other changes to franchises that I hold dearly and hate being destroyed. Personally what I hate the most as a media product is Hit Entertainment's run of Thomas and Friends this is due to me being a long time fan of the show and the characters and I see how changes and additions similar to this affect that long time fans of Star Wars, I can't hate the prequels as much as them because I am not a fan of Star Wars.
Coldplay's The Scientist
I watched the music video for a deconstruction for my one first college production. The video sees the story played backwards, the narrative is that the singer has walked away from a car crash that killed his girlfriend. In my view the started of the video itself, is the point when the man wants to reverse time wishing to forgive her and wanting to live in the time before this happened.
According to what director says "I had this idea that I wanted to do a story that's tragic but starts off happy and ends happy, and the video is about rewinding to that happy ending" well in context to the video it ends happy, but the story it starts happy. Personally I don't why the story ends happy, the man will never be able to see his girlfriend alive.
While I do agree on the tragic story I don't understand the part of the "starts off happy", so my view is Preferred even if I don't agree on some points, with that said you could say it is negotiated.
7/05/13 update
Participatory: This is when the audience has the ability of interacting with the product. Like commenting on a blog or a Youtube video.
In the case of a music video, the artist Professor Green in a collaboration with the food company Doritos created a music video with a panoramic effect. Using a special camera that films five points at the same time the video points were put together, so the user of the video can control the view of the video.
Cultural Competence: This is the ability to understand different cultures.
Different cultures will look at a media product in different ways. In the film "Vantage Point" the way the different people were portrayed shows the way the culture that produced the movie sees the other cultures, how the American with the camera on holiday was a heroic person for saving the girl and how activists were portrayed as the antagonists and terroristic in their actions. This shows how the American creator view that type of culture, and shows they are not fully competent. However the sub-plot that a good cop was apart of the group adds to the idea that it is not the culture that is bad it is just the people.
Media products will take cultures and portray them in different ways.
Being culturally competent can allow one to understand the cultrure and those get along with the people of those cultures.
Fan Culture: Fan Culture is when the fans of a certain media product can cause changes to the media product.
The Culture itself could be a certain group that our devoted fans to a certain franchise e.g. the Trekies or the Bronies.
An example of how fans can effect a media product, remembering the fan-backlash against the prequels have lead Disney to keep George Lucas from having any major position in the production of the new Sequel trilogy to Star Wars, having him only be a creative consultant.
In this modern era when people are better connected to each other we can act more pro-active to the media products and the fan culture that we enjoy adding to it and allowing us to take a stand when something in that media product is wrong.
Information from:
http://brianair.wordpress.com/film-theory/audience-responses/
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1472164/lens-recap-coldplays-scientist.jhtml
http://www.creativereview.co.uk/cr-blog/2010/october/doritos-professor-green-chris-cairns
Well written piece, the points you went over were explained perfectly and made it easy for me to understand what you were talking about. The only downside to this piece is the fact that it has way to much information in my opinion. All in all good piece :).
ReplyDeleteIf possible where you have the definition of the word you could put it into a simpler sentence, I know you have done this for one of them but the other two have small paragraphs explaining the definition and they're slightly more confusing with the explanation as it says many different things. You have included the sources. The examples are relevant as they're about Media. I think this post has enough detail to reach the grade criteria.
ReplyDeleteYou have explained each audience response with lots of details, this is very good because it informs the viewer. however with all this information it may become hard to process and therefore seems that there might be a bit too much information. For myself I understand each term that was used, however for people who don't know what these terms are it might be useful to add a glossary at the bottom of the post.
ReplyDeleteWith the negotiated response it seems for me that you were talking about your family and yourself a little bit too much. This can be good to get peoples opinions, however it seemed that you were discussing which oz film was the best, and how they compared to the new one, rather than what the term meant and how it was interpreted with the film.
The little bit about the music video of Coldplay's "The Scientist" was interesting. I haven't seen that music video in a year but it seems that the director was showing time being erased and that the car crash never happened therefore the girlfriend is still alive which is the happy ending.
Overall this post is well worth a distinction. WELL DONE!!! :)
This discussion is excellent William and shows you clearly understand the different readings within media. If you build on the media theories post you will be able to hit the distinction level for GC3.
ReplyDelete