Hall’s theory of encoding and decoding argues that audiences do not simply accept the message encoded in a media product, but are involved in a negotiation with the producer in order to create meaning.
How valid is Hall’s theory in explaining the relationship between the producer and the audience of TV programmes?
You should refer to both of your television Close Study Products to support your answer: Witnesses and The Missing
Stuart Hall suggests that media producers encode meanings and values into the products for the audience to decode. They will include conventions and ideologies in order to target, attract, reach, address and construct audiences.
However, the theory argues that audiences are active and not passive, in which they are capable of creating their own readings of the product that may not be in the way the producers intended. Different audiences will have different interpretations which reflect their age, gender, social, cultural and historical circumstances.
There are three ways of decoding a media text: dominant, oppositional and negotiated readings. This theory could be applied to television CSPs regarding the relationship between the encoder and decoder.
Witnesses and The Missing offer genre and narrative codes which contain social, cultural, historical and ideological messages that are within audiences’ field of knowledge and open to interpretation depending on their perspectives of society.
Both
Nordic Noir, postmodern aesthetic that reflect cultural contexts, allowing audiences to interpret in multiple ways since there are no obvious or dominant encoded messages within the products.
Witnesses
The main characters include a female detective who subverts gender stereotypes but also a male detective with traditional gender and generic tropes. Thus, female audiences or people with a progressive mindset will have a different reception compared to male audiences, or people with traditional views.
Binary oppositions in the crime drama, especially the good versus evil trope, might be ambiguous and encourage different responses as audiences have a different understanding of what is good and what is evil.
Representations of immigrants may result in a variety of interpretations depending on viewers’ cultural background and political views – national or conservative (right-wing) audiences might respond negatively while international or liberal (left-wing) audiences might empathise.
The preferred reading could be the audience enjoying the subverted stereotype of women’s roles in a family and the protagonist’s complex character.
The oppositional reading could be the audience rejecting the product as they prefer traditional, ideological representations of a patriarchal family.
The negotiated reading could be the audience appreciating the subverted representations, but disliking how the protagonist is stereotyped as a role of mother.
The Missing
Every character has their own narrative but the male detective is the stereotypical hero in the story, which may evoke varied readings from opposite genders.
It offers the common tension and ambiguity in a crime drama series – the world is either cruel and random or controlled by forces of law and order.
As part of the genre codes, the focus is the missing child who was kidnapped in a foreign country and the damaged middle-class family, which could evoke different responses based on the audience’s social and cultural contexts. For instance, UK audiences who are middle-class or have a family may react more vigorously than international or lower-middle-class audiences.
The audience's knowledge of societal groups and institutions (the soldiers and army) with its strict codes and internal hierarchies will affect their positioning.
Historical contexts of the setting in Iraqi Kurdistan and references to the Iraq war indicate that the audience’s political views are a factor in interpretation.
The dominant reading could be the audience enjoying the suspense and enigma codes delivered by the product.
The oppositional reading could be the audience rejecting the stereotyped male protagonist and cliché representations.
The negotiated reading would be a compromise between those two positions.
Therefore, Hall’s theory is extremely useful and valid in deducting the relationship between the producer and the audience of TV programmes.
No comments:
Post a Comment