Film Theories Flashcards
Reception Theory
Stuart Hall - To watch film is a process involving encoding by producers and decoding by audiences.
The preferred reading - the dominant-hegemonic position, where the audience understands and accepts the ideology of the producer.
The negotiated reading - where the ideological implications of producer’s message is agreed with in general, although the message is negotiated or picked apart by the audience, and they may disagree with certain aspects.
The oppositional reading - where the producer’s message is understood, but the audience disagrees with the ideological perspective in every respect.
Gender Performativity
Judith Butler - Identity is a performance, and it is constructed through a series of acts that we perform every day. Gender performativity is not a singular act, but a repetition and a ritual. It is outlined and reinforced through dominant patriarchal ideologies. There is no gender identity behind these expressions of gender
Intersectional Feminism
bell hooks - Race, class and gender all determine the extent to which individuals re exploited and oppressed.
Feminist Theory
Liesbet van Zoonen - Gender is constructed through codes and conventions of media products, and the idea of what is male and what is female changes over time. Women’s bodies are used in media products as a spectacle for heterosexual male audiences, which reinforces patriarchal hegemony.
Pick and Mix Theory
David Gauntlett - Audiences can pick and mix which ideologies suit them, and completely ignore the elements of the product which they do not agree with in a process of negotiation similar to the one suggested by Stuart Hall.
Structuralism
Claude Levi-Strauss - All media products have an underlying structure, and knowledge of this structure helps us to analyse them.
Genre Theory
Steve Neale - Producers rely on audience’s desire to see both repetition and difference of genre conventions: seeking out the familiar, while also seeking something vaguely new and different. Over time, genres change (generic fluidity), combine with one another (generic hybridity) and form entirely new genres and subgenres. Genres are useful for producers from an industrial perspective, as they allow for the precise and specific targeting of certain specific audiences.
Binary Oppositions
Claude Levi-Strauss - a system of mutually exclusive terms which are used to offset one another can create distinctive opposites which draw audience attention.
Narrative Theory
Todorov - Describes that narrative follows the pattern of: equilibrium, disruption, conflict, resolution and new equilibrium.
Semiotics
Roland Barthes - media produces codes that over time become accepted by society (scar means a villain).
