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Audience Studies (3P18) Blog Post #2 By K. Dailey

Comm 3p18 blog post 2

The audience experience I will be reflecting on will be watching Red Riding Hood (2011) film in my Issues in Popular Culture: Fairy tales in Popular Narrative, Television and Film class, PCUL 3p96, this year. I will be analyzing it using uses and gratifications theory, reception theory, and audience ratings. Throughout these sections I will also be taking a look at the audience experience through the lens of Sullivan chapter four, which discusses media ratings and target marketing, Sullivan chapter five which discusses Uses and gratifications and Sullivan chapter six, which discusses interpreting and decoding mass media texts.

The premise of the movie Red Riding Hood is that a small village is trying to find out who the wolf terrorizing the village is. It is revealed in the movie, that the wolf in this version of the classic fairy tale story, is actually a werewolf. The film stars Amanda Seyfried who has starred in such movies as “Mean Girls”. It is directed by Catherine Hardwicke who directed the first Twilight saga movie “Twilight”. Miss Seyfried plays the lead role of Red Riding Hood known in this rendition as Valerie. Valerie is being forced into an arranged marriage by her mother. Valerie is to marry Henry who is portrayed to be very well off. However, Valerie does not love him. Her heart belongs to another, a man named Peter. Peter is portrayed as the darker, bad boy with a heart of gold. When a werewolf threatens the village, the townspeople are scared and try to hunt the wolf down themselves unsuccessfully. The help of a priest is brought in. He is portrayed as a van helsing type, more concerned with hunting monsters than protecting the townsfolk. His idea of interrogation slowly drips into torture as he tries desperately to get any and all information of who the werewolf could possibly be. The timing in which the movie takes place is during what is known as a “blood moon”, the priest reveals that during a “blood moon” a man or woman can not only turn into a wolf but also bite another person and turn them into a werewolf as well. Throughout the film it is a constant guessing game on who the werewolf could possibly be. The story leads you in many directions. Is the grandmother the wolf? The mother? The father? Peter? Henry? Or Valerie herself? It is a darker version of red riding hood than most people would be used to in the age of Disney, and is closer to the original tale by the Grimm brothers. Many deaths occur in the movie, the final death being that of the wolf, but not before the wolf was able to infect another with his bite. The wolf ended up being Valerie’s father who had been terrorizing the town as a wolf to get Valerie to run off with him. Before his untimely demise he killed his own mother for figuring out that he was the wolf, and that her husband before him had also been a wolf. Also, before his death he infected the love of Valerie’s life, Peter. Peter in order to protect Valerie then leaves until he can control his new-found wolf self. He then returns to Valerie when he has learned to control it and it is assumed that they live happily ever-after as the movie cuts to the credits after they reunite.

Now if we look at this through the scope of audience studies and consider the setting that this was watched in, lecture hall, we can assume that everyone sitting in the lecture hall had a different experience. This one is mine. In this section of the analysis we will be looking at the audience experience of watching red riding hood through the scope of uses and gratifications theory. Sullivan chapter five states that “Audience members are aware of their own individual needs and motivations in selecting certain media.” [ Sullivan, J. (2013). pg. 113] In this particular case I did not select the film but did know my need was to be entertained and use the movie as a sort of escape from reality. In the article by Sunder and Limperos, it states “Usage implies volitional action, not simply passive reception.” [Sundar, S., & Limperos, A. (2013). Pg. 505] This applies to my audience experience since I myself am never good at simply being a passive audience member or exude any air of passivity throughout my daily life in any way shape or form. That may be a slight exaggeration but the premise of the argument still stands. Passivity is not my strong suit especially being an audience member. While watching this movie, I often made remarks or talked back, under my breath, reacting as if I was with the characters in the scene. I also talked out theories with myself about who the wolf in the movie could be and why I thought that. A lot of this theory talk was going on in my head but my reaction remained non-passive. I did not simply sit and take the film in with little attention. I took in the experience, with every detail, every word that was spoken, and emotion that was felt. Any discrepancies and continuity errors were considered. As for being an active audience member, the article mentions that with the invention of the internet, not only can users take in different content but also create their own. If we look at this experience we can see that I am an active audience member. I not only did a quiz based on my knowledge of the movie, but I am now writing this analysis of the movie as part of an audience experience. My first reactions as an audience member to this film were before the film began and in the opening credits of this film. My professor let the class know that the film we were about to watch was directed by the same woman who had directed the first twilight film which in my opinion could have been done a lot better and done with better actors. In the opening credits hints of the same style of the first twilight film were visible and it made me audibly groan, believing that because of my past experience with the twilight films, that this film was going to be in a similar category of disdain. However, Twilight being released in 2008 and red riding hood being released in 2011 we can see that the director was fresh off the twilight film when starting to direct this feature film and seemed to want to cater to the audience she had attracted with Twilight. “The ability to utilize this massive information source to track and, yes predict consumer behaviour.” [ Sullivan, J. (2013). pg. 77] After seeing the success Twilight had gained it is obvious that the director though that adding similar notes to this film would yield the same results for this film. This, would be under the category of target marketing. Where the director hoped to target those that liked the twilight films and get them to play as an audience member for this new film. I used to like the twilight movies and have a little bit of a soft spot for them as an audience member purely in a nostalgic sense. However, as an active audience member, this information provided made me groan with displeasure. The real-world applications for uses and gratifications theory is to help guide media content creators in targeting their audience, if they know why people watch, they can tailor their content to fit that.

If we look at this audience experience through the lens of reception theory and the article by Granelli and Zenor, Decoding “The Code”: Reception theory and moral judgment of Dexter. [Granelli, S., & Zenor, J. (2016) Decoding “The Code”: Reception theory and moral judgment of Dexter. International Journal of Communication, 10, 5056-5078]. We can see a few characters that can be viewed as morally ambiguous in how the audience receives them. Reception theory in its most basic form is a theory that gages how an audience reacts to things in the media. In the study in the article it was used to look at how audiences reacted to morally ambiguous characters in the tv show Dexter. The morally ambiguous character in my audience experience of watching Red Riding Hood was the father of Valerie who ended up being the wolf. In the movie, Valerie’s father in wolf form can speak with those who share his blood, and any other who do not share the same blood cannot hear him. In the movie he wishes to run away from the small town with his two daughters. He forges a letter to his eldest daughter Lucy, making her think that her crush had sent it. When he tries to communicate with her she screams, but does not hear him. In this moment the father realizes that because Lucy did not hear him speaking to her, she must not be of his own blood, and that his wife had had an affair with another man, Lucy was not his child. He then loses control of himself and kills her. This fact is not revealed until approximately the end of the film. It is revealed in the middle of the film by Valerie’s mother to Valerie that the reason Lucy was not the one she had arranged to marry Henry was because Lucy was Henry’s half sister and was not in fact her father’s daughter. The father in his wolf form, killed many people and can be considered morally ambiguous as he was only trying to take his daughters out of their village presumably for a better life somewhere else. If we look at my reaction we can see that I felt sympathy for the morally ambiguous character and understanding for him as well without condoning his actions. In the study conducted in the article I would be placed in the category of factor 2: Psychological puzzle. [Granelli, S., & Zenor, J. (2016) pg. 5068-5069.] I believe, he should not kill but I understand that there is a deep-seated reason for his actions and it is hard to justify his actions but also hard to not justify them at the same time. So, for this audience experience we can see how I react to morally ambiguous characters and how I react to psychological puzzles, by finding that there is no black nor is their white but varying shades of grey. The real-world applications for something such as reception theory is to help content creators target their specific market. For example, fans of the Twilight might translate into fans of Red Riding Hood.

Now, I will analyse my audience experience through the article by K. Buzzard, “The rise of market information regimes and the historical development of audience ratings.” [Buzzard, K. (2015). The rise of market information regimes and the historical development of audience ratings. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 35(3), 511–517.] I will also pay attention to Sullivan chapter six. [ Sullivan, J. (2013)., pg.133-158] In the article it states “In particular, advertisers sought to quantify audiences in order to assure the success of their advertising efforts” [Buzzard, K. (2015). pg.513] How this relates to my audience experience is in its directing style. As the movie has similarities to twilight in directing, editing, and production, the producers and other people involved with the film must have quantified the numbers of those who like twilight, and with the same director must have focused their efforts on advertising to reflect it to look like the same style movie as twilight.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM8V3cHdSC4

In Sullivan chapter six, we visit Stuart Hall’s work on decoding mass media. Semiotics is the study of signs and is relevant in this audience experience. “We use signs to help us achieve understanding with one another” [Sullivan, J. (2013). pg.136] In this audience experience I was desperately trying to find out the wolf’s true identity using the signs the characters were exhibiting. For example, Peter was emotionally darker, wore dark clothing and had sort of the lone-wolf personality. The real-world applications of semiotics are all around us everyday. In lecture we see how signs help us to decode mass media but we also see signs about the other people we are taking the lecture with. If the professor clears her throat, I know she is most likely going to begin, if someone yawns, you can tell they are bored.

In conclusion, we can analyse my audience experience through uses and gratifications theory, by looking at why I watched it, hoping for a little entertainment to cut through the stress of daily life. We can also see how I react to morally ambiguous characters and receive media text. Most media with a morally ambiguous character I tend to lean more to the side of understanding but believe they are mostly a psychological puzzle and deserve to be studied more in depth before judging their actions. Finally, in order to develop audience ratings and mold advertising, the advertisers of this movie seemed to have gone with what had worked previously. Looking at semiotics in decoding mass media, we use signs and quite often stereotypes in order to figure out and decode the actions of the characters in the media we watch but also to decode the actions of those around us in order to cope with our daily lives.

Bibliography:

Buzzard, K. (2015). The rise of market information regimes and the historical development of audience ratings. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 35(3), 511–517.,

C. (2010, November 17). Retrieved November 01, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM8V3cHdSC4

Granelli, S., & Zenor, J. (2016) Decoding “The Code”: Reception theory and moral judgment of Dexter. International Journal of Communication, 10, 5056-5078

Hardwicke, C. (Director), Killoran, J. D., DiCaprio, L., & Yorn, J. (Producers), & Johnson, D. L. (Writer). (2011). Red Riding Hood [Motion picture on DVD]. United States: Warner Bros.

Hardwicke, C. (Director). (n.d.). Twilight[Video file].

Sullivan, J. (2013). Media Audiences: Effects, users, institutions and power. Sage Publications Inc., New York, NY.

Sundar, S., & Limperos, A. (2013). Uses and grats 2.0: New gratifications for new media. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 57(4), 504-25.

Waters, M. (Director). (n.d.). Mean girls [Video file].

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