James Pearson

PR2: Audience Responses

Director: the director of the film is a well renound director who has created many great films in his career and his name is David Fincher.

Year of Production: The year of production for Fight Club was the year 1999 when films like this were unheard off at that time spurring the audience reactions.

Distributer: the distributor for fight club was the well-known 20th century Fox studios.

Certificate: The certificate for the film has always been 18 for either the nature or the content of the film.

Here are the three audience theories

Hypodermic model: Hypodermic Model theory is based around the perception that every audience member views the film the same way, it doesn’t take into account the individuality of the audience. The word hypodermic comes from the fact that the message is very powerful and it is injected in the audience, keeping the metaphor going it drugs the audience and the message is received and followed throughout the film, it is one of the most unusual audience theories.

Uses And Gratifications Model: This theory is not based on the effects model which focusses on the affection that the film has on the audience of the film such as the violence and the behaviour but this theory was heavily flawed because of the fact that it was clear that very little people would take the actions of the film and make them their own, so a whole new theory was made “The Uses and Gratifications Theory” which followed the emphasis on the power of the media text or how and why they use them and when the audience is watching the film the audience the audience has the free reign to either accept, deny or forget the text and those who accept this use it to gratify their needs for: . Diversion

. Escapism

. Information

. Pleasure

. Comparing relationships or lifestyles

. Sexual Stimulation

Reception theory: This theory states that a product can be encoded by the creators as well as the audience decodes it when they watch the film through, so the audience is left with three possible reading when they watch the film and those readings are

James Pearson

. Preferred: When a person sees the content that is shown as acceptable and they agree with everything that they see and they are either on board with the idea or they enjoy the topic in which the product was trying to express.

. Negotiated: When a person agrees with aspects of the product but has conflictions about some parts of the product whether they didn’t enjoy them or they found some of the content to be inappropriate for some viewers.

Oppositional: When you are completely against everything that the product is doing and you don’t think that anyone should watch it, it is very common these days for the older generation to be oppositional to what they are doing because it is not the type of material that they grew up with. Halls Theory:Another part of the theory is within many aspects of a person’s individuality such as their age, gender, culture or even the social background, the categories can even fall into a person’s political views or even a group of people who watched a film based on the circumstancing of exhibition which can completely change the overall outlook on a film.

Brief Facts About the Film Fight Club

The movie fight club is based around an ordinary depressed man who never revealed his name who goes through life looking for stuff to try and maintain his sanity always wondering what he was going to do to feel unique and feel alive, everything was looking bad until he came across a man called Tyler Durden who seemed to be everything that he wanted to be and so event lead to him and his new found friend creating something that they felt give their lives meaning by the way of fighting each other brutally in order to feel manly and alive but events in the film lead to the Narrator learning that all this time he wasn’t just friends with Tyler Durden he was Tyler Durden, which leads to a very unusual conflict between them and the results are confusing which sums up the ending in one word, confusing.

Case studies throughout Fight Clubs release state that the movie was certificated 18 but before it was studied there was much more to the film left to the film to see, this was because before the film was released to the public it was heavily cut in order for the fil to be fit for the audience’s eyes, all of this was done because back then when this film was made a plot such as the fight club plot was un heard of and people were not used to a film with such as focus on violence so a debate was set in place by the BBFC to have the film not banned but cut. When it was first released it was heavily received by critics and one noticeable review by a veteran critic names Alexander Walker who’s review was strongly oppositional to the fil and said that the content that was presented in the film was just promoting violence and was just going to persuade people to go out and commit acts of violence the second they saw film and going and creating cults that follow in the footsteps like a film such as fight club, this view was shared at first along with the BBFC but as the fil went along with the release it was realised that the film had something to offer and so it was given a release on condition that many violent aspects of the film were cut o the final release.

Analysing the results for my Fight Club Survey.

James Pearson

As you can see that out of the majority of people who answered the survey the larger majority of them are under the age of 20 showing that it is vastly popular among the younger generation who range from 17 to 18 which could have a high influence on the main outcome of the results for the opinions on the film. This question is a clear link to halls theory that an audiences individuality can be based around the age group that they may be a part of and who might like the film like Fight Club.

James Pearson

As you can see from the results from this question on the survey a greater majority of people who watched the film were male mainly because the whole premise of the film was very male orientated due to the character plot or the physical violence. This sort of result can be linked to diversion within the uses and gratification theory which highlights that a larger majority of males use this film as a diversion from every day routines which is part of what this film wanted to represent.

James Pearson

The whole point of this question was to see how popular the film was on either social media and televised adverts with other unpopular options, with this the most popular was social media due to the fact that it is quite an old film and adverts for the film have stopped, that creates an opportunity for the social media to step in and sell to the younger generation a chance to see a film that was so ahead of its time it needed to be shown now. With all the pre conceived motions of this film this question can be linked to Halls theory of circumstancing of exhibition, through the fact that they heard through word of mouth.

James Pearson

when I put this question together it was to see how many people from the class had seen the film or at least had a bit of knowledge of the film before they saw the film and as you can see from the results it was a popular film and people knew about it but fewer people had seen the film before seeing it in class. This question, the same as the last question could be linked to the circumstancing of expedition theory through the fact that people such as students and even teachers know about it and you are able to have a pre conceived idea about the film and you feel compelled to see it even though you may not like the film it is the theory that brings you closer, it is almost a form of advertisement though word of mouth from your friends.

James Pearson

This next question was to get a basic idea on what people thought about the film and as you can see from the 1 to 10 results a small percentage of the results stated that they didn’t enjoy the film but a larger percentage of the audience even loved the film those whole question was basically meant to divide the audience with a basic overview for the film before the detailed analysis begins. A theory that defines this is through diversion through either liking the film or hating the film and as you can see from the results it is drawn either way and it shows that the film does have an impact on people but it sometimes has the opposite impact intended by the film showing the theory can go both ways.

James Pearson

The results for this film were very interesting because they provide a sort of a negotiated view on the violence in the film because the main popular answer was that the audience didn’t like the violence but they thought that it was suited to the films structure and balance, although a small majority of the results show that they preferred the violence in the film and they thought that it suited the film well but a zero percentage on oppositional showing a state of mind that the audience has towards a film like this.

James Pearson

Here is the main overview for the film and how the audience viewed the film and 100 present of the people who answered put negotiated which meant that they liked a large majority of the film but there are some things that they felt were either to extreme or inappropriate to be added to the film so it would just miss out on the preferred and the oppositional views on the main outcome of the film, each one of these two question can be clearly linked to the reception theory through the division who thought the film was flawless and the people who thought that the film was good but aspects of the film they either didn’t like or hated.

James Pearson

Here I added a question where I was able to get accurate views on the film whether they liked it or they didn’t or maybe mixed views on both, as you can see from the results it is very drawn and the percentages are pretty much the same if not for the spike from the view that the film was boring but a result table such as this showing answers like this shows that this film really inspires you to think more about the things that you watch and what effects that this type of film has on you as a viewer. This could be swayed towards the diversion theory in Uses and Gratifications because of the fact that people either liked or disliked the film either way they they were diverted by the film in either a good way or a bad way.

James Pearson

This next question was to see if your personal views on films like this had changed and as you can see in the results a small percentage has decided to say that this film has opened their eyes to new genres but an even bigger percentage of the audience stated that their views on this type of genre had changed but not by a great amount but just enough to be open to this genre which is partially what the director of this film was looking for when he released the film. This entire question was made in a direct link to uses and gratification theory which follows the fact that people want this kind of film because they like the aspects that it presents, or you see it as a problem and it has diverted you in a bad way drawing you away from either this film or the entire genre itself.

James Pearson

On the last question I wanted to see what the audience thought which aspect of the film would you use for surveillance and the results were again drawn between all of them except for the violence and with those results, when it comes to watching these types of films what would you as a viewer look for in a character and this film is a prime example due to the complex characters and plot lines to sum it up and amount it up to the results from Fight club and see the similarities.

This has been my report on the movie Fight Club and after all the information that I have read I feel like my view on the film has changed but not in a large way I do feel that some aspects of the film are extreme but for the most part I really enjoyed the film due to the compelling nature of the atmosphere and characters that were presented in the film and I would recommend watching it to any one of my friends to see their views on the film, my views overall on the film are negotiated bordering on preferred and as an acting enthusiast I feel like a film like this is a step in the right direction acting and directing.