How the audience might read our film?

Looking at theories to answer this fundamental question, according to the hypodermic syringe model, which suggest that audiences are passive recipients that are injected with the message, however this theory is largely rejected, due to the lack of detail, for example, in the case of Oliver Stone and his film Natural born killers, Oliver Stone created this film to send out a message that the media glamorises violence, however ironically he portrayed this by showing violence in a glamorised way, so according to the Hypodermic syringe model, which message did the passive recipient have injected, the message that Oliver Stone was trying to portray or the violence and gore of the film? This model also under estimates the intelligence on the audience, as it suggest that audience’s perceptions and experiences doesn’t effect what the audiences take in from the text.

Another theory is the reception theory, which unlike the hypodermic syringe model considers the polysemic meanings. One of the polysemic meanings is the preferred reading, which is understanding and accepting the message that the director intended to portray. The other readings are oppositional reading, which means the audience reject the preferred message totally, negotiated reading, which means the audience accept part of the preferred reading and reject other parts normally depending on an individuals experiences and the last being aberrant reading, which is when an individual completely misinterprets the text and take part in aberrant decoding of the text.

So according to this theory if had made a film, the audience take the preferred meaning which could be that promiscuous and sexually active girls are more likely to get into trouble rather than innocent girl and non sexual active girl are more likely to survive, whereas aberrant meaning, for example, could be that every teenage that is sexual active needs to die. So according to this theory there are different ways that the audience for our film could interpret our film.

The aberrant reading links to another theory called the copycat theory, this when an individuals may act out on what is modelled in the text.

There are case studies that seem to support this theory. Such as, in the case on the film natural born killers, there were many killing cases that seemed to relate to the film.

One of them being the Richardson family killing case; in April 2006 Jeremy Steinke age 23 and his girlfriend age 12, murdered her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Richardson , along with her 8 year old brother. Later according to the friends of the daughter, her parents had punished her for dating Steinke and forbid her from seeing him. Steinke also alleged that he had watched the film natural born killer the night before the killings. He also spoke to friends about going ‘natural born killer on her family’.

This case supports the fact that natural born killers had some sort of affect on Steinke as the case seems to emulate the film, however it is hard to pin point the cause and effects of any action, so therefore no one can know the affect that a certain text has on an individual.