A2 Examination: Q1(b) definitions

What is film language?

"The cinema is quite simply becoming a means of expression..."  "By language, I mean a form in which and by which any artist can express his thoughts..."  (Asturic 1948)

"Film may not have a grammar, but it does have a system of 'codes'.  It does not, strictly speaking, have a vocabulary but it does have a system of signs and codes of a number of other communication systems."  (Monaco 2000)  NB - see Barthes below

• Film language refers to how meaning is created (stories, characters etc.)
• Film language includes: cinematography, mise-en-scene, editing, sound and dialogue, special effects, genre, narrative and representation.
• Film language is a system of signs - Roland Barthes: enigma code (puzzle to be solved); action code (a code from which we expect to see certain consequences based on other similar films we have seen); semantic code (the connotative meaning of characters, objects or settings, such as the villain dressed all in black); symbolic code (oppositions such as good/evil, light/dark, innocent/corrupt); cultural code (the world outside the film that is referred to, such as the world of adolescent young men in The Inbetweeners Movie)
• Film language is not definitive; it depends on the viewer (spectator) and reception (see Stuart Hall's Reception Theory).
• Also see Michael Wohl.

The media audience 

"There is no stable entity which we can isolate and identify as the media audience, no single object that is unproblematically ‘there’ for us to observe and analyze. … It becomes harder to specify exactly where media audiences begin and end. The conditions and boundaries of audiencehood are inherently unstable."  (Shaun Moores)

1 Who would be your target audience?

In North America (US and Canada), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) carries out research into movie audiences.   They classify audiences as:

• frequent moviegoers (once a month or more)
• occasional (less than once a month)
• infrequent (once in 12 months)
• non-moviegoers (no visits in the last 12 months)

(Don't forget that films can be distributed in a number of other ways (e.g. DVD, Netflix, Youtube, film festivals) and your audience might not access the film in the cinema.)

Frequent moviegoers buy 50% of all tickets sold.

In terms of age groups, the MPAA use the following audience segments:

• 2-11
• 12-17
• 18-24
• 25-39
• 40-49
• 50-59
• 60+

The most frequent moviegoers are the 25-39 age group (about a quarter of all tickets sold) with the 18-24 group in second place. Traditionally, the movie industry chased viewers between the ages of 15-24 because they were considered to have the highest disposable income but movie audiences have been getting older. The gender split for moviegoers is almost 50/50.  Action, fantasy and animation dominate the top 20 box office movies.

In the UK, the British Film Institute (BFI) gather statistics on audiences.  They segment age groups as follows:

• 7-14 (14%)
• 15-24 (33%)
• 25-34 (19%)
• 35-44 (16%)
• 45-54 and 55+ (18%)

Percentage of UK cinema admissions for 2014 in brackets.

The BFI note that animations are particularly popular in the 7-14 group and that comedy and action are very popular with 15-24 year olds.  Action is also very popular with the 25-34 group. Animation is also a genre widely viewed by 35-44s (perhaps because many are mothers and fathers, what we call a secondary audience).  Drama is a genre favoured by 45-54 year olds.  Fantasy is universally popular across the 15-54 age range.  Males prefer action, thriller and comedies while females enjoy a broader range of genres.

You might also consider your audience in terms of demographics (age, gender, ethnicity, income, education, family status), geography (residence location, work location, place of birth, choice of recreation area), usage/behaviour  (frequent/infrequent, subscriber/single ticket, plan-ahead/impulse), stated intentions (plan to come more/less/the same, will/will not renew), attitude/belief/opinion (likes/dislikes, preferences, values).

2 How would an audience respond to your product?

• Hypodermic needle theory - this suggests that audiences passively receive the media and rarely use their critical faculties, accepting and absorbing the messages contained within the text.  Theories that argue that audiences are passive are sometimes called manipulative models.
• Theories that argue that audience responses are varied and unpredictable are sometimes called pluralist models.
• Uses and gratifications theory - this suggested that audiences choose their media for a variety of different needs: 1. to escape everyday life; 2. to gain information; 3. because the consumer identifies with characters and/or situations; 4. to interact and discuss what they have consumed with family and friends.  
• Coding and encoding - Stuart Hall argued that audiences readings are determined by their gender, social and ideological positions.  Messages may be encoded with a preferred reading but audiences may have different and alternative interpretations. Hall identified three reception codes: dominant, negotiated and oppositional.  See here for more information: http://www.slideshare.net/dphillips4363/reception-theory-presentation-833299  http://www.mediaknowall.com/as_alevel/alevkeyconcepts/alevelkeycon.php?pageID=audience
• Fandom - some consumers have a very close relationship with a product and a high level of interest and devotion.  These fans develop interpretive communities and often have a participatory culture (see Henry Jenkins); in other words, they are very active.
• Spectatorship - film theory is often concerned with the notion of the spectator. Spectatorship is influenced by: where you watch; when you watch; who you watch with; why you are watching; genre; your previous experience; values; morals; beliefs; your ability to suspend disbelief; how questioning (critical) you are; interaction; emotion; cultural/ethnic background; understanding; technology; mood; distractions; prior knowledge (e.g. reviews); expectations; fandom; interpretive reading; attraction; problem-solving; and the impact of the film after it has ended.  
• Audience positioning - how did you as a film-maker position your viewer?  This is the relationship created between your product and the viewer and how you address and communicate with them via film language.  For example, you might want the viewer to sympathise or identify with a particular character and so you might have privileged that character with more shots, perhaps using close-ups and music that helped to develop your desired emotional response.
• Don't forget about your audience feedback.

3 How might content influence who might be able to see your film?

• themes
• offensive language
• violence
• imitable techniques
• horror
• drugs

See the BBFC's guidelines http://www.bbfc.co.uk/what-classification/guidelines

What is genre?

http://www.mediaknowall.com/as_alevel/alevel.php?pageID=filmgenre
http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/intgenre/chandler_genre_theory.pdf
http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/intgenre/
http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/intgenre/intgenre5.html

What is narrative?
A narrative is some kind of retelling of something that happened (a story). The narrative is not the story itself but rather the telling of the story. While a story is just a sequence of events, a narrative recounts those events, perhaps leaving some occurrences out because they are from some perspective insignificant, and perhaps emphasizing others. In a series of events, a car crash takes a split second. A narrative account, however, might be almost entirely about the crash itself and the few seconds leading up to it. 

David Bordwell  in his essay, Three Dimensions of Narrative, splits the 'narrative' into three areas:

1. "...the story world: its agents, circumstances and surroundings..."
2. "...plot structure, the arrangement of the parts of the narrative..."
3. "...narration, the moment-by-moment flow of information about the story world."

http://www.mediaknowall.com/as_alevel/alevkeyconcepts/alevelkeycon.php?pageID=narrative
http://www.slideshare.net/petefrasers/narrative-theory-hand-out-copy
http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2014/01/12/understanding-film-narrative-the-trailer/

What is representation?
"The meaning of an event...does not exist until it has been represented...We’re talking about the fact that it has no fixed meaning, no real meaning in the obvious sense, until it has been represented. And the representations – since they’re likely to be very different as you move from one person to another, one group or another, one part of society or another, one historical moment and another – just as those forms of representation will change, so the meaning of the event will change."  (Stuart Hall)

http://www.mediaknowall.com/as_alevel/alevkeyconcepts/alevelkeycon.php?pageID=represent

• Karl Marx and Antonio Gramsci – Marxist perspectives

Karl Marx was interested in power.  He did a lot of work thinking about how societies are structured and how they are unfair.  His main idea was that the masses (he called them the proletariat) were controlled or dominated by the elite (the bourgeoisie).  The powerful elite (bourgeoisie) own the means of production and therefore they have power over the workers (proletariat).  This unfair social dominance serves the elite but it is exploitative of the workers and society is kept like this because it suits those at the top.  The main way this is done is through the superstructure of society (the way people are influenced) namely religion, education, law, politics.  He called all this stuff the ‘ideological state apparatus’.  If this didn’t work, then the bourgeoisie would crush their working classes using the military state apparatus like the army and the police.

Although print and cinema were around when Marx was writing, the media was less prolific than it is now and lifestyle advertising was not in full swing – he doesn’t focus on the media all that much although he does consider propaganda.  Gramsci took his ideas on in the 1920s and the Birmingham School (Hall and Williams) took them on again in the 70s and 80s… These Marxist media theorists applied some of Marx’s key ideas to the mass media – especially ideas about ideological influence (HEGEMONY).

This idea of Hegemony is very important to representation theory because the way people and groups are represented and the messages and ideology we receive as the mass audience could influence public opinion.  For example, in some right wing news media (such as the daily mail) we often see pretty negative representations of immigrants… Shows like ’24’ produced by Fox (part of News Corp International) often depict asian and muslim people as potential terrorists.  It is important to interrogate how such ideologies serve the elite and influence the masses.

Let’s have a look at Top Boy (produced for Channel 4).  What do we know about Channel 4?  In what what can a Marxist reading of this text help us understand it in a fuller and enriched way?

• The Male Gaze – Laura Mulvey – Feminist Theory – Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema – Written in 1975

The cinema apparatus of Hollywood cinema puts the audience in a masculine subject position with the woman on the screen seen as an object of desire. Film and cinematography are structures upon ideas. Protagonists tended to be men. Mulvey suggests two distinct modes of male gaze – “voueuristic (women as whores) and fetishistic – women as unreachable madonnas”.  (Also narcissistic – women watching film see themselves reflected on the screen).  (Film texts:  Alien, Jackie Brown vs Foxy Brown…).

Here are some clips from a variety of media texts. Try applying Mulvey’s theory to these clips…

People who criticise her ideas say that she is ignoring the fact that all genders – male and female want to feel dominated and overwhelmed by the cinema experience.  Also, she ignores the fact that men are capable of ‘metaphoric transvestism’ whereby they are able to view the film from the perspective of a woman. (Thelma and Louise, The Piano, Knocked Up, Brick Lane).

• Lacan – Psychoanalysis and ‘The Mirror’

Lacan’s theory of ‘the mirror’ is an idea around the idea of identity.  He considers the point at which a person develops a sense of self and conscious identity.  He considers the point at which a child recognises their own reflection and begin to consider how others peceive them, modifying their appearence to satisfy their perceptions of how others see them.  Mulvey extends this idea when she writes about ‘the silver screen’ which she suggest operates like a metaphorical mirror; reflecting back to the female viewer representations of female identity, but these representations are not genuine reflections of the viewer but rather male perceptions of idealised femininity.

• Queer Theory – Judith Butler

Emerging out of field of Gender studies (the study of males and female roles historically, politically, socially etc).  Queer theory challenges the idea that gender – being male or female – is part of the essential self, that it is fixed, immovable – in other words Queer theory suggest that our male or female gender does not control all aspects of our identity or how we perceive other peoples identity.  In other other words gender, particularly as it is represented in performance – on TV, Film etc, is fluid, flexible depending on the context in which it is seen.   For example an audience can see Tom Cruise playing a “straight” pilot in The Right Stuff and interpret his gender, although male, as having very “queer” or “gay” attributes.   The theory developed as a way of combating negative representations of gay sexuality in the Media.  It combats the idea that people should be divided and categorised, indeed marginalised, due to their sexual orientation or practice and that a persons identity should not be limited to their sexual preference.  It asks us to consider how the media constructs gay representation. (Apply to representation of gay sexuality in Knocked up…any others? What about Graham Norton? Alan Carr? Does Post Modern Irony regarding representation of gay characters relieve the audience of burden of moral responsibility regarding evolving attitudes a more flexible idea of gender?)

• Subculture – Representation of Groups – Dick Hebdidge

In his book, Subculture and The Meaning of Style, Dick Hebdidge said that a subculture is a group pf like minded individuals who feel neglected by societal standards and who develop a sense of identity which differs to the dominant on to which they belong.  Ken Gelder lists 6 ways in which a subculture can be recognised: 1) Often have negative relationship to work 2) Negative or ambivalent relationship to class 3) Through their associuations with territory ( The street, the hood, the club) rather than property  4) Through their stylistic ties to excess 5) Through their movement out of home into non-domestic forms of belonging (social groups as opposed to family)  6) Through their refusal to engage with they might see as the ‘banalities’ of life.
Other ways of recognising a subculture might be symbolism attached to clothes, music, visual affectations  like tattoos etc.  (Examples – Ben and his friends in Knocked up representing a subculture some of the values of which Alison and as such the America she initially represents might benefit from).   Subcultural values often associated with being ‘cool’.

• Anthony Giddens – Traditionalist vs Post Traditionalist views of society

Media representations of society can be seen as traditional or post traditionalist.  Traditional societies are ones in which individual choice was limited by its dominant customs and traditions.  Whereas post traditionalist societies are one where the ideas set by previous generations are less important that those of individuals.  Post traditional societies are no longer feel so depenwere limited to time and place.  Giddens says, we are living in a post traditional society where we are much less concerned with precedents sest by previous generations and that our options are only limited by what the  law and public opinion allows.  We have replaced seen/discreet systems  with remote ‘expert’ systems, institutions and corporations.

• Bell Hooks:  Interconnectivity of race, class and gender.

Pen name of Gloria Jean Watkins.  First major work “Ain’t I a woman? Lack, women and feminity” written in 1981.  Focused on the perpetuation of systems of oppression and domination in the media paying particular attention to the devaluation of black womanhood. The idea of ‘lack’ or ‘otherness’ refers to the way that women and ethnic minorities are usually represented as ‘other’.  Their primary purpose is simply to be other than the norm (usually a white male hero).  They are therefore known more by the context of lack than by a realised or complex identity.  This theory can be linked to ideas of the monstrous feminine found in feminist analysis of literature and art.

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Representation of youth and teenagers

Considering Quadrophenia.

This film is great for thinking about subculture. The film looks and mods and their ‘interaction’ with the rockers. Think about how fashion, music, language, drugs and sex are used symbolically to make meaning and represent values like rebellion , anger and disillusion. Dick Hebdige said that subcultures use style to represent their resistance to the dominant ideologies of a corrupt society. They take symbols like the smart clothes or mopeds and modify or customise them to show their alternative values. Watch the film again and see if you can identify these symbols and what they represent.

Can this theory be applied to more recent films depicting youth? Watch 8Mile and think about the urban music / hip hop rap subculture. Can the symbols of this subculture be analysed in a similar way to Quadrophenia?