Fiske's Theory
2/17/2013
Audience Theory: Focus = We all create a context for what we are seeing through intertextual referencing John Fiske (born 1939) is a media scholar who published a series of books in the late 1980's and early 1990's examining how cultural meaning is constructed . One of the first scholars to apply "semiotics" in his analysis. (Semiotics being the study of signs, signifiers, metaphor etc).
In essence (and please feel free to read both his work and analysis of his work) Fiske's Theory suggests that people naturally categorise events that take place in their reality in reference to texts they have experienced in the past. This means he is suggesting we all create a context for what we are seeing through intertextual referencing. People tend to believe that genre is based on real life, however, the human mind tends to give real life events context and genre based on those created in texts. This can apply to generally speaking, any genre, for example: the exorcist (ghost films): when something seemingly super natural takes place in real life people may relate it to a text based on ghosts. such as, if an object might randomly fall off a shelf in a supposedly haunted location on a ghost walk, people will witness this in reference to things they have seen in the exorcist or other such films. Crime drama/action: if a person became held up in a hostage situation with thieves attempting to hold them at Ransom or in exchange for their escape, this would be perceived in accordance with crime drama TV shows or films, and to make sense of the situation they would turn it into another text. Horror drama 127 hours : the film 127 hours is based on a real life event in which a man became trapped under a rock for near enough a whole 5 days, before actually cutting off his own arm in order to escape. the fact that this was then made into a film shows just how influential media texts are on how we perceive situations - the events of the situation were so intense for the victim (aron Ralston) that they were described as "something out of a movie", and they were so unbelievable horrific that it was actually turned into a film. Comments are closed.
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