Audience Essay (Timed 30 Mins)

During the summer, me and my group made a horror trailer about the illness of a young teenage girl who in the end becomes her own worst enemy and loses her sanity without her medicine. When looking at the audience theories, there are either two ways in which we can watch the media; passively, or actively. In addition, Stuart Hall stated that there are three types of audiences', those who accept and agree with the reading (The Dominant Reading), those who question the text (The Negotiated Reading) and finally, those who reject the piece, (The Oppositional Reading). When looking at my summer trailer I can discuss the use of the Hypodermic needle/Effect model, even though my trailer does not include an extremely controversial topic, it still addresses the sensitive subject of people dealing with mental health issues. Therefore, if people watch this they can be influenced to believe that all people suffering with mental problems they are mad, crazy psychopaths which is ultimately not true. This is why this model can be so negative on society and is due to why some horror films have been banned in the past. Furthermore, all horror films give audiences uses and gratification that is the main reason we enjoy media texts. Blulmer and Katz discovered five specific pleasures that each viewer can gain when watching any form of media or in this case, any horror film. To link this to my trailer, I believe audiences can gain affective and tension free needs as the relatable young teen suffering from an illness can be used to make our trailer more personal to audiences since they can sympathise with the character and seem themselves in her position. But also, as the film is a horror viewers can use our trailer as a form of an escape from reality, since the props and makeup we used highlight the film is not real. Additionally, the theory of Catharsis created by Aristotle reflects on the idea of using horror film to be able to get out negative emotions that people in the audience may be suffering from, the idea stems around cleansing or almost purging of violent feelings. Even though my trailer partly does this through the fact that our trailer does include many key conventions of the horror genre; which would help achieve this theory successfully, Catharsis is an extremely active movement and their must be a lot of violence and murder or gore present to do this most effectively, therefore next time I will ensure we include these key aspects. Moreover, the Copycat theory can also be discussed when looking at my trailer. This theory talks about the way horror films with excessive amounts of violent scenes and graphic images can influence the younger generations of today as children look up to the media since it is all around them and what drives society to invent new things. When reflecting back on my trailer, the copycat theory cannot be applied, since there is only small amount of blood seen within my trailer and no apparent violence at all, thus highlighting that my film would not be controversial horror or successful in the slightest, since horror trailers and films are meant to push the boundaries and create unrealistic ideas of society. Therefore, next time I am going to make sure we have at least one key scene of live violence to shock audiences. Finally, Mary Cover Jones talks about the ideas of desensitisation which addresses the idea that an over exposure to too much inhumane and gory images/videos can cause some people to become immune to seeing this and therefore it becomes a real life subject. This is extremely controversial as it can lead to some people, especially those easily influenced to believe that this violence is normal, and therefore when exposed to it again, it is not shocking. In my horror trailer the viewers do not become desensitised as there is not an over usage of extreme amounts of blood or torturous behaviour, therefore to have a greater impact next time I will include these elements.