Megan Hughes

GWL7 Me & My Movies

The use of genre and an audiences understanding of a film is highly important when looking at the relationship between films and their audiences. Genres are an essential factor of film in the way that they persuade certain audiences to watch a film by letting them know what to expect in terms of storyline, narrative and sometimes even characters. Certain types of audiences have preferences when it comes to particular genres and react to a film in a specific way due to their fondness for the genre; this can be referred to as an active audience. Contextual factors such as the gender and age of an audience member also plays part in why audiences react the way they do to certain films. For example, the genre of Chick Flicks would be what middle aged males might find boring or disinteresting, however a teenage female audience would love this type of film genre and connect to it making it a more pleasurable film experience. This shows a form of active spectatorship as the audience are actually able to pick what type of film they prefer to watch and enjoy it.

I have chosen to look at the genre of comedy in order to discuss how a specific audience can engage with a particular genre of film. The first film I will be looking at is Tammy (Ben Falcone, 2014) alongside my second choice film, Identity Thief (Seth Gordon, 2013).

The Tammy Movie (Falcone, 2014) is the story of a middle aged woman named Tammy, played by famous actress Melissa McCarthy, who was recently fired from her job at Topper Jack's fast food restaurant. She returns home from her unfortunate day only to find her husband enjoying a romantic meal with the neighbour enforcing her to quickly pack her necessities, and travels down three houses to her parent's home. Upon denied use of her mom's car to drive to Niagara Falls, she quickly resorts to an "ailing" grandmother, who also lives in the home...Only instead of traveling alone, Grandma Pearl wants in on the road trip. After realising Grandma Pearl has the funds, Tammy and her hit the road to begin an adventure. Throughout the film, Pearl soon proves to be quite the alcoholic despite her diabetes, and Tammy quickly turns into the "baby-sitter." The film was produced by New Line Cinema with a rough budget of $19,000,000 and was distributed by Warner Bros Pictures.

Identity Thief (Gordon, 2013) also features actor Melissa McCarthy as the lead role alongside American actor Jason Bateman. The film tells a story about a Florida resident, Diana (Melissa McCarthy) who has a luxurious lifestyle as the queen of retail, buying whatever strikes her fancy -- and it's all free, thanks to Sandy Patterson (Jason Bateman), a guy from Denver whose identity she stole. With just one week to track down Diana before his world implodes, the real Sandy heads south to confront the unapologetic con artist and bring her back to Denver so that he can clear his name with the Police and FBI and restore his shattered credit rating. The film was produced and distributed worldwide by Universal Pictures in 2013 with an estimated budget of $35,000,000.

I will apply Reception Theory, Uses and Gratifications Theory and Lacey’s repertoire of elements to my chosen films in order to gain a better understanding of the relationship between audiences and films.

Megan Hughes

The Reception Theory was created by Stuart Hall who focused on encoding and decoding media’s texts. He looked at the relationship between text and audience; the text is encoded by the producers and decoded by the reader within the audience but he discovered there are huge contrasts between the two different readings of the same code. Stuart Hall’s aim was to show that produced media texts are not passively accepted by the audience but instead that the reading of the text is a case of individual circumstances that affect the audience’s way of reading. In relation to film, his theory is able to affect an audiences reading of a film whether it be preferred, oppositional or negotiated by the use of contextual factors such as class, gender, age and ethnicity. In the case of the two films I have studied, Tammy and Identity Thief, I watched them both with a preferred reading as I found both of them very comical and entertaining which is what was intended by the producers with them coming under the genre of comedy. Contextual factors can impact the way an audience reads a film; for example how I found these two films funny as a teenage female, an elder female around 60 years of age might not relate to the sense of humour that the characters have because they don’t have fandom for the current comical aspects shown in todays films and they might not understand it very well.

The Uses and Gratifications theory was suggested by Blumler and Katz who had an intention to show that there are four main pleasures that audiences gain from films; these are diversion, personal relationships, personal identity and surveillance. Diversion allows audiences to be distracted and offers them escapism from their everyday life and is the most common reason we watch films. Personal relationships within a film can relate to any member of audience whether it’s a loving relationship or just a relationship between friends as everyone experiences being in these positions at some point within their life. Similar to personal identity, this is when a member of audience can relate to a film by seeing themselves in the position of one of the characters and sharing similarities with their lifestyle or person. Lastly surveillance is an element within a film which gives the audience useful information for living or teaches them something throughout. Each of these four things impact audiences in the way that they feel a connection/relation between themselves and the film. In terms of comedy, audiences are usually attracted to watch this genre film as they know it’ll provide comical entertainment which can result in the audience feeling happy and being in a good mood due to impact from the film.

One film I have chosen to discuss in relation to this is Identity Thief (Gordon, 2013) which I was attracted to watch this purely because of the narrative and my love for comedies. However, the sense of personal relationships within the storyline allowed me to enjoy the film more as we see main character Diana, played by Melissa McCarthy, form a strong friendship with Sandy Paterson, played by Jason Bateman, after stealing his identity and attempting to ruin his life which was bizarre making it a surprisingly comical narrative because it was so unexpected. Another reason I related to this film was the sense of diversion which is the most common reason people watch films allowing audiences to escape everyday life and be somebody different. When watching comedy films such as this one, I personally find myself in the shoes of the main character and find it more comical applying what’s happening to them to yourself because it’s usually overly humorous and exaggerated purposely to make the audience laugh as appose to being subtle comedy.

The film Tammy (Falcone, 2014) also involves a storyline about personal relationships which can be relatable for all members of the public making it more pleasurable, especially females as they tend to be more into romance related storylines more than males do. Tammy movie

Megan Hughes

first of all shows a loving relationship between main star, Tammy, and her husband however as their relationship deteriorates, we see Tammy build a much more substantial relationship with her Grandma Pearl. Males members of the audience that have gone to watch the comedy film could relate to this as it’s common most young men have a special bond with their grandma making the film more enjoyable and personal to them. On the other hand, I personally was attracted to this film through personal identity as Melissa McCarthy’s character, Tammy, reflected on me as a person in the way of her lifestyle choices throughout the film. As well as this, after previously watching Identity Thief the year before and finding her character highly amusing, I expected the same in Tammy which was a successful experience. Surveillance is also part of the uses and gratifications theory which is when the audience relate to the film by taking away knowledge and being inspired by the film. This occurred for me in both films. Firstly in Identity Thief as it taught the audience a lesson about stealing people’s identities and the consequences of fraud but also showed them you shouldn’t ever want to be anyone but yourself making it a learning experience but still allowing them to laugh. Then in the film Tammy as it made a clear statement to the audience that you can do whatever you want, be whoever you want and go anywhere you want to go which could be seen as inspiration, especially to young members of the audience like myself.

Another way we can analyse films is through Nick Lacey’s repertoire of elements which is based on why audiences watch a particular genre of film and how you can identity a specific genre. Lacey’s theory states that there are five different categories to consider when watching a film and you determine its genre by comparing it with other similar genre films. The five categories are:

Character: A generic or common character found in this genre film

Narrative: A distinct story structure for the genre

Setting: A familiar location often seen in this genre film

Iconography: Expected costume, props, themes within the film based on its genre

Technical and Audio Codes: Distinctive sound and instruments or stylistic camera shots and angles for this genre

The characters are the most important part within a comedy film as they’re the ones that generate the humour. In a typical comedy film, there are stereotypical characters that’re idiotic, silly and accident prone purposely to make the audience laugh and define the genre as a comedy. Within films Identity Thief (Gordon, 2013) and Tammy (Falcone, 2014), Melissa McCarthy, American actress and comedian is known for her bubbly personality and outgoing sense of humour which would not only attract her fans but also audiences that are looking to laugh and smile. Using characters like her in the public eye helps the audience to form a relationship with the film if they’re noticing a familiar face. Her character in both films is very sarcastic and makes stupid mistakes to fit the genre and allow the audience to laugh and express their emotion more freely.

Both films also hold unusual but comical narratives in order to make the film stand out. Comedy films are usually quite easy to understand as more often than not they’re displayed as a linear narrative in chronological order, especially in this case as the subtle film titles tell

Megan Hughes

us everything about the film before it even begins. Identity thief involves a person’s identity being stolen and Tammy is based on a day in the life of Tammy. Most narratives of comedy films are completely random as the humour is generated purely from the characters and visual elements so the storyline is easy enough to initiate. Typical themes in a comedy consist of love, alcohol and drugs and crime in which both occur in the two films I have studied. Each of the films show elements of love to express personal relationships and help the audience connect with the film, also in the films we see Melissa McCarthy, as the main character, drunk and making idiotic, comical mistakes. Identity Thief (Gordon, 2013) in particular shows elements of crime as the storyline is based on fraud.

The setting of a comedy film as well as the narrative is dependent on the type of comedy; however it’s noticeable that most Hollywood blockbuster comedies are set in large American cities. Teen comedies are usually set in high schools, social comedies are usually set in homes or bars but in generic they’re typically set in well populated areas that’re quite bright and lively to help it appeal to the audience and appear more attractive. The films Tammy and Identity Thief were set in California, Florida and in the case of Tammy a popular landmark between the American and Canadian border, Niagara Falls. This type of setting will attract all kinds of audiences however in specific those who’re attracted to these big cities and beautiful monuments. Members of the audience could relate to the film if they’ve previously been to or perhaps dream about visiting these locations.

Iconography in comedies can be random and unexpected. For example, the props are never the same. In Tammy (Falcone, 2014) they use folded paper bags as guns which while making the audience laugh, is also an unusual thing to see. I think the fact that the props and other visual elements are so unplanned helps the audience to laugh as it’s comical to see what unexpected things the producers come up with. In a typical comedy and the case of films Tammy and Identity Thief, the audience expect to meet a series of humorous characters that endure in comical experiences and are quite clown like. Most comedy films like the two I’ve studied also entail characters taking the mick out of one another which could be classed as an icon as it’s what the audience are expecting. There are many different types of comedy such as dark comedy, slapstick comedy and practical comedy which occur in this genre of film but in particular generic comedy that frequently takes place in Tammy and Identity Thief as we see various jokes being made, sarcasm and visual humour but it’s done within a subtle manor. Typical comedy films are also usually shot in daytime to allow best coverage for visuals and to keep the mood happy and enthusiastic.

In terms of technical codes, camera shots within comedy films are usually quite straightforward and naturalistic to allow the audience to understand the film more easily. Close up shots are popular within comedy films to allow the facial expressions of the characters to be shown more clearly when they’re making jokes, this lets the audience to laugh and enjoy the humour more substantially. The audio within comedy a film is extremely important to ensure the audience are able to understand the humour the characters are delivering but also to ensure the music and instruments keep in tone with the mood of the film. All diegetic sound, (e.g. the characters talking) needs to be heard clearly so that they can understand the humour and laugh at it. However, non-diegetic sound is also important (e.g. the sound edited on) to help emphasise and exaggerate the visual comedy making it more pleasurable for the audience. High pitched instruments and upbeat music helps to enhance the audience’s mood positively and give them a boost in order to keep them hyped about the film.

Megan Hughes

To help understand the relationship between audiences and films I have gained media literacy on my chosen films by gaining the ability to analyse and evaluate them using a wide variety of media modes and formats such as film review websites like IMDB. Film websites enhance on an audiences pre and post viewing experience first of all by giving the audience an idea of what the film will be like on terms of storyline and narrative, also seeing what rating it’s received and afterwards by allowing the audience to leave a review and talk in forums to compare their film experience with others. I first went to see Identity Thief (Gordon, 2013) after hearing about it through word of mouth and finding out that it was pleasurable, humorous film experience for a friend. The year after when I saw Tammy advertised online, I checked IMDB and although the rating was only 4.9 I still went to watch it as I knew from past experience that I personally enjoyed comedies with Melissa McCarthy as a main star and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Fandom plays a large part in forming a relationship between the film and a member of audience as it creates a community of people that support forums and message boards to help show their opinion and feelings towards the film, this could be seen as active spectatorship. Many fan pages have been made based on these two films and after being released 2/3 years ago, they still show up to date images of the cast and let the audience know what they’re up to in order to prolong the film experience. Social networking has also allowed me to gain media literacy on my chosen films by sharing information on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram about release dates for the film in cinema and on DVD to ensure me, as a member of audience is interactive with the film and remain interested in it by following and sharing the posts online. Here are two examples of active Facebook pages with posts about Identity Thief which give you the ability to build a relationship with the film:

Megan Hughes

Megan Hughes

This is an example of an unofficial twitter page for the movie Tammy which was presumably created by a fan. It also allows the audience to interact with the film by hash tagging and retweeting the film title. This is a good example of interactivity as it’s allowing the audience to communicate with one another as well as the filmmakers.

To conclude the theories which I have studied within this unit have given me a better understanding of the relationship between film and their audiences.