Since we are using a Smiths song, our target audience would be similar to that of The Smiths’ – they would have similar tastes in media.
These people all like The Smiths, especially Chris, who happens to be my older brother and who idolizes Johnny Marr. He can definitely be called a fan, as he has formed an emotional attachment with the music he listens to and with the artist (Matthew Hills).
The demographic of our target audience illustrated in the picture is similar in some aspects and varies in others. They are all working-class young people (male and female) between the ages of 18 – 21, but their ethnicity is diverse, from Irish and British to Sri Lankan, French, Black African, Indian and Welsh and because of this their experiences would differ. The way we are really choosing our audience is by following the view of post-modernism.
Post-modernists have said that old meta-narratives (gender, sexuality, ethnicity, feminism and Marxism etc...) do not apply as much to modern day society anymore, as people define themselves now more through the media they consume – the music, books and films they use are part of their self-identities. Of course postmodernism exaggerates the degree of social change – the media does influence people but it is not the only thing, and it ignores the fact that some people can’t access the internet or TV. However, the media a person consumes can tell us something about them as an individual.
Stuart Hall said that there may be a difference in what the producers want us to think about the texts and what we actually think. This depends on our experiences, educations and backgrounds, and what our occupations are. The denotations (surface meanings – mise-en-scène, sound) and connotations (symbolic codes – intertexuality (John Stewart)) that make the representations in the text are the same, but the way audiences perceive them are not. Stuart hall calls this the margin of understanding, and his reception theory puts the emphasis on the audience – as soon as we consume media i.e. read a book, watch a film, listen to music, meaning is made, and the meaning differs according to the person’s values, opinions and experiences, so people with similar belief systems will draw similar meanings from the texts.
The encoding/decoding model talks of “moments”; the moment of encoding: the creation of the text, when the producers (us) decide what forms, structures, codes and conventions are used to construct a text with an intended meaning; the moment of the text: when the text begins to exist symbolically, as it is published or broadcast (or when we posted it on YouTube) – the focus of semiotics; the moment of decoding: when an individual with a set of values, attitudes and experiences encounters the text. This is regarded as more of the moment of “creation” than the first stage.
Hall talked about the preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings when it comes to how audiences read texts.
The preferred reading is when the audience reads encoded meaning of the text as the producers intended them to read it, and the audience shares and accepts the text’s ideology. This is related to Gramsci’s term cultural hegemony, or the dominant ideology of the ruling class that emphasises the fairness and inevitability of capitalism and meritocracy.
There were some people who had nothing but praise for our music video; however, I think they were just shy in giving us their honest opinions.
Some people may accept most of the ideology but challenge some aspects of the text – they may be outside of the target audience and may be more active in questioning the representations – and this is the negotiated reading.
The people whose comments were a mixture of praise and criticisms were inside our target audience, and their negative reviews were about specific things we did purposefully, for example, Kareen, though she liked the concept, the colours and the textures, criticised the lack of a storyline. Our music video was conceptual; there was no narrative to follow.
If the values and beliefs of the individual defer greatly or are in opposition to the target audience then they are unlikely to accept much of encoded meanings within the text, and this makes it an oppositional reading.
There was a comment made by a friend of Hafsah’s – who was outside of our target audience – who made it clear that she did not like our music video, or the song either.
