Component 1 - Section B - AMERICAN FILM SINCE 2005

AMERICAN FILM

SPECTATORSHIP

- How the spectator has been conceived both as 'passive' and 'active' in the act of film viewing.
- How the spectator is in dynamic interaction with film narrative and film features designed to generate response.
- Reasons for the uniformity or diversity of response by different spectators.
- The impact of different viewing conditions on spectator response.
- The analysis of narrative, visual, musical, performance, genre and auteur cues in relation to spectator response.
- The possibility or preferred, negotiated, oppositional and aberrant 'readings' of film.


SPECTATOR VS AUDIENCE
Film studies distinguishes between the response of social groups, collectives of people - an audience - and the response of the individual - a spectator.

- Spectatorship is concerned primarily with the way the individual is positioned between projector and screen in a darkened space.
- The audience ceases to exist for the individual spectator for the duration of the film.
- Although the spectator is singular, a figure alone before the screen, spectatorship tries to generalise about how all spectators behave.


WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT FACTORS AT PLAY WHEN DETERMINING THE IMPACT A FILM HAS ON THE SPECTATOR?

- Message that the director wants to show.
- The context behind why the film is made.



STUART HALL

Preferred
The spectator derives the meaning from a film that the filmmaker intended; these spectators are relatively passive.

Negotiated
The spectator negotiates the film's messages, accepting some whilst disagreeing with others.

Oppositional
The spectator understands the film's messages but rejects them.

Aberrant
The spectator derives unintentional or atypical messages from a film.