Spectatorship: the audience being involved in the film; aligning ourself with the characters

Joseph Anderson: "Making sense of film, is significantly the same as making sense of the world." -  you as a spectator are in the real world, therefore you have a different reaction or interpretation as the other.

Stuart Hall - perception theory; the way the text is received, rather than the text itself. When the text is encoded, certain ideologies are are in dominance -> you then receive the text -> The audience then decodes the message in multiple ways and this is dependant on the cultural background of the person.
Reception theory: response of 3 ways based on their reading of a film:

Preferred reading: taking an intended reading of the film identifying and agreeing with ALL of the messages encoded into the text.

Negotiated reading: the viewer identifies with most of the meanings encoded into the text but does not agree with or take full meaning.

Oppositional reading: the viewer does not identify the meanings encoded into the text and their own personal ideologies or experiences form an alternate meaning within the text


Film is based on desire. It is based on three different types of film:
1. An intellectually demanding film
2. A provocative film (controversial)
3. Throwaway/spectacular/fun

Throwaway/spectacular:
-Hollywood
-Not intellectual
-Stereotypes



Preferred reading: Teen movie, rom-com, comedy
Negotiable reading: slight reading of racism and homophobia
Oppositional reading: Feminist point of view; women only speaking/have an interest around a man - Bechdul test.