Spectatorship

Spectatorship

1. Identification View

   • Spectators may engage with a film to the extent that they are able to imagine themselves in a characters situation and empathise with them
     • Viewer may imagine themselves living in the Bathtub like Hushpuppy and feel bad for her

2. Assimilation View

   • Real identification is rare and instead viewers tend to just feel bad for the characters, and is an external observer viewing the characters from the outside

3. Asymmetry of Emotion Response

   • Feeling different emotions to those that the characters feel for a different reason
     • Wink's death scene you feel bad for Hushpuppy and her loss, rather than feeling the grief which she feels

4. Emotional Contagion

   • 'The tendency to automatically mimic and synchronise expressions, vocalizations, postures, and movements with those of another person, and, consequently, to converge emotionally

5. Stuart Hall - Reception Theory

   • Some messages in a film are deliberate and the director wants to convey them through the film
   • Some messages are less deliberate due to directors underlying thoughts, beliefs and attitudes
   • Dominant reading, Negotiated reading, and Oppositional reading

6. Christian Metz - Psychoanalytic Theory

   • Said that the reason people enjoy films is because they both recognise and identify with a character in a idealised way - see characters how they would like to see themselves
     • E.G James Bond, viewers relate to him with gender and nationality, but he is a braver, cooler version of the viewers
   • Id, Ego, Super-Ego
   • Assumes audience only has one, fixed response - doesn't consider multiple readings and target adueicnes

7. Laura Mulvey

   • Male gaze
     • The idea that films are made by men, for men - show a patriarchal view of the world where women are portrayed as lacking agency and sexualised whereas males are active, capable protagonists
       • Does not account for female and LGBTQ audiences and how they may respond to the sexual subtext in films

8. Blumler + Katz - Uses and Gratifications

   • Personal Identification
     • People in a different environment, dealing with familiar struggles (money, illness, death, family )
   • Escapism/Entertainment
     • Immersive story allows for viewers to be captured in the world and take their mind off of personal problems
   • Social Interaction
     • Film very effectively allows for discussion afterwards about personal interpretation
   • Education/Information
     • Beasts gives viewers an understanding of lower classes and the ways that other people live, looks past sheltered view

9. Multiple Spectating Selves

   • Social Self
     • Gains satisfaction from having a similar response to other spectators, with similar values
   • Cultural Self
     • Gets references and meanings generated by the memory of other films, TV, news, etc
   • Private Self
     • Generates personal and unique meanings based on personal memories
   • Desiring Self
     • Brings un/conscious energies and responses that have little to do with surface content

10. David Chandler - The Gaze

    • Spectator's Gaze
      • 'The viewpoint of the camera, usually offering voyeuristic pleasure (we are watching someone’s intimate life without them knowing we are watching)'
    • Intra-Diegetic
      • 'The characters look at each other (we empathise with their responses because of use of shot reverse-shot)'
    • Extra-Diegetic
      • 'The characters looks directly at the camera, becoming aware that they are being watched (either by another character or the spectator)'
    • Camera's Gaze
      • 'The film reveals the ‘mechanics of the gaze’, reminding us we are watching a film'
    • Text-within-a-text
      • 'The characters are also watching/making a film, and for a time we watch the film they are also seeing or constructing'