Spectatorship Flashcards
___________________ is how the audience is positioned to sympathise with a character via proximity
Alignment
___________________ is how the audience is positioned to sympathise with a character via shared values & beliefs
Allegiance
Identify four specific techniques a filmmaker can use to create alignment
Close ups
POV shots
Close Mic
Internal monologue as VO
What are the two models of spectatorship?
Active and passive
Name one theoretical model of passive spectatorship
Hypodermic Syringe theory
Name the institution associated with the Hypodermic Syringe model of spectatorship
The Frankfurt School
What was the Frankfurt School’s theorists concerns regarding the rising mass media, and film especially?
The power of film, with its huge screen and viewing conditions to manipulate audiences’ emotions en masse, especially how it could be used as propaganda.
The Frankfurt School theorists were especially concerned with the ‘illusion of proximity’. What is this and why were they worried
The close proximity of audience to screen and therefore characters, created through the use of medium shots and close ups and the relative size of the screen could create emotional connections which could then be manipulated.
VF Perkins: we need to understand the ______ of our ____________ with films in order to be able to properly _________them ________
nature; engagement; discuss; critically
Baudry: mainstream cinema is a powerful ‘________ __________’ designed to bring out ____________
fantasy machine; emotions
Identify six sources of spectator pleasure
orientation & discovery,
visceral (‘bodily’) experience,
empathy & character identification/alignment,
narrative
reflexive criticism.
Explain what is meant by a visceral experience or response.
Visceral experiences in film are dependent on sensory stimulation from events such as chases and pursuits, jumping, fighting, falling, high-speed travel, explosions, extreme violence, nudity and voyeurism, spectacle, representations of the disgusting and repulsive, shocks and surprises. The presentations of these, including the use of camera angle and movement, pace of editing and use of sound can enhance the experience for the spectator.
According to Blulmer and Katz, spectators can make use of media etxts including films for their own purposes (Gratifications). List these 4 purposes.
Education/Surveillance
Entertainment/Escapism
Social interaction
Personal identity
According to Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory, filmmakers __________ messages and idea in their films via cinematic codes and ___________. However, spectators are able to ___________these for themselves, making ___________ of their own. This is an example of an ____________ audience model.
encode; narrative; decode; readings; active.
Identify the three categories of reading within Hall’s Reception Theory
Preferred (or dominant)
Negotiated
Oppositional
What factors, according to Hall, might affect how an individual spectator reads or interprets a film?
Demographics; cultural background; cultural capital; situated culture.
Psychoanalytic film theorists take their cue from the _____________ who believed that cinema (with its techniques to distort reality) was the closest art form to ____________ because we are able to immerse ourselves in the sensory world.
Surrealists; dreaming
Christian Metz said the reason people enjoy films is because they can _________ with a character on the screen as a _________ image… but that this is also an ___________, impossible character.
identify; mirror; idealised.
Film Stars’ appeal is arguably (by Richard Dyer) dependent on this duality of relatability and idealisation.
Name the hugely influential essay by Laura Mulvey which introduced the concept of the ‘male gaze’
Visual Pleasure & Narrative Cinema (1974)
In VP&NC, Mulvey discusses the voyeuristic privacy which alleviates the guilt of taking pleasure (scopophilia) in watching. This sometimes known as ___________ _____ phenomenon
Peeping Tom - don’t forget the story of Lady Godiva!
And while you’re about it, check out Michael Powell’s hugely controversial Peeping Tom (1960)!
Mulvey proposed the idea of the ‘male gaze’, where male characters are ________, capable protagonists, whilst women are portrayed as ________, incapable, and sexually available. Male gaze theory also extends to the assumption of a (straight, white cis-gender ) male director and audience, giving us potentially _______ male gazes.
active; passive; straight, white cis-gender; three
Identify the three ‘looks’ of the male gaze
The director, the audience and male characters within the frame.
Female characters are said by Mulvey to have a quality of……what?
‘to-be-looked-at-ness’
What is segmentation?
The separation off of body parts (usually female, often erogenous zones such as breasts, legs, buttocks etc) for the purpose of the male gaze. The effect is to remove the sense of the whole women/person (de-humanise) in order for the body part in question to be fetishised without guilt. This is usually achieved through framing and the use of POV shots.
List the additional cinematic ‘gazes’ (identified by Daniel Chandler) which may help to create identification
● Spectator’s Gaze - the viewpoint of the camera
● Intra-Diegetic - the characters look at each other
● Extra-diegetic - the characters looks directly at the camera, becomes aware they are
being watched
● 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.
