Spectatorship: Popular Film and Emotional Response

Cinema and Emotional Response explores spectatorship in relation to popular mainstream films, particularly ones constructed in such a way as to illicit very strong emotional responses. Why do we laugh, cry, scream?
You may wish to centre your study on a particular genre – such as horror or melodrama or thriller. This is perfectly acceptable and indeed adopting a mixed genre approach might produce too diffuse a study.
There is also an ideological dimension – which better students will almost certainly raise. This concerns manipulation and the pleasure of ‘surrendering’ to the film experience.
A popular film is one that sets out to reach a broad mainstream audience using what can broadly be described as a conventional stylistic approach and employing tried-and-tested film techniques to provide audience pleasure. In doing so, it is likely to be identifiable by its adherence to classical narrative and to generic features. In addition, it may play on the particular screen persona of one or more stars. A popular film need not be an English Language film and it need not be contemporary.

• How does the film work to generate emotion, and here the emphasis may be on relatively straight forward issues like the use of mise-en-scene, staging and music or more complex issues of identification and spectator alignment with particular characters?

• How far does the spectator feel consciously manipulated by the film and, by contrast, how far does the emotional power of the film derive from a combination of elements which are difficult to pin down?

• How far does the emotional affect of the film derive from contextual knowledge, – in this case, our ability to respond to the film in the gap between fictional representation and historical fact?

You may take a genre approach – or identify auteurs whose cinematic approach lends itself particularly well to the study of emotion and spectatorship. You could select from the following but don’t have to…
Sports films
Coming of age films
Transgression films
Holocaust films
Animated films
Struggle against adversity films
Social realism films
Shock films
Childhood films
Miscarriage of Justice films
Action films
Horror films

Emotional Response and Theory

You may know all about the films you've studied... you may even be able to discuss key scenes in detail and refer to the director's intentions and the audience reactions. If you really want to stand out from the crowd though, you should aim to refer to some theoretical approaches which are detailed below. These are NOT a substitute for actually knowing about the films though... that should happen first.

List of Films Studied - Essential Reading/Viewing

•American History X (Tony Kaye, 1998)
•Four Lions (Chris Morris, 2010)
•Funny Games (Michael Haneke, 2008)
•The Departed (Martin Scorsese, 2009)
•Drive (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2011)
•The ear scene from Reservoir Dogs (Quentin Tarantino, 1992)
•The eye scene from Un Chien Andalou (Luis Bunuel, 1929)
•The Big Shave (Martin Scorsese, 1967)

List of Films - Extra Reading/Viewing

It is worth looking at the history of films which have caused adverse reactions from the public in the past.
A Clockwork Orange (Stanley Kubrick, 1971) is a film which caused outrage from the public, but also spawned copycat killings similar to the rape and murder in the film. For this reason, Kubrick banned the film in Britain during his lifetime, and it was only made available in this country (legally) after his death. It was possible to see it in Germany though, curiously.
Taxi Driver (Martin Scorsese, 1976) is a film which proved shocking because of the graphic and unsettling depiction of violence and life in New York City in the mid-1970s. It is also famous for Jodie Foster's depiction as a teenage prostitute (she was 13 at the time the film was made).
Monty Python's Life of Brian (Terry Jones, 1979) is a film which provoked outrage because of its supposed mockery of the life of Jesus Christ. In the film, depictions of a baby born in a stable to a single mother, as well as scenes directly involving Biblical episodes such as the Sermon on the Mount, were seen to be blasphemous, and scores of town councils refused the film a certificate, meaning it was not shown. Ironically, it was possible to see this film in Sweden, but not Norway (they banned it).
Natural Born Killers (Oliver Stone, 1994) is a film which has only just been given a BBFC certificate (18, and it passed uncut) after having been refused a certificate on VHS or DVD release for almost 10 years. The film details the love between two victims of traumatic childhoods, who are also psychopathic serial killers.

Laura Mulvey's Theory of the Male Gaze

Laura Mulvey postulates, in brief, that the camera occupies a male gaze; in other words, women are objectified by the camera (and are usually acted upon in films, rather than being the main protagonists). In Horror films, for example, you often see women as victims, and there is a sense of pleasure at watching them be devoured by some horrendous monster.
A discussion of the article 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' can be found here.
If you would like to reference any ideas from Laura Mulvey's theory of Male Gaze, you should write:
(Mulvey, 1975)
after the idea in your exam essay.

Resources for Emotional Response - Extra Reading

The online archive of Jump Cut magazine contains a detailed essay discussing types of audience response.
Most of the time audience response is closely allied with the work of the BBFC - the British Board of Film Classification. It is worth looking at their website because there are case studies of films which have been cut or censored, altering the response of the viewing public.


Audience Theories - Beyond the Mark Scheme

If you want to make your answer really stand out from the crowd, you can integrate some theoretical approaches into your answer. This is not essential, but extra information. You should only talk about it if you are confident in your films and want to show off a little to an examiner. In order to understand emotional response, you need a grounding in the basic theories of audience reactions.

Firstly, there is the hypodermic, or syringe, model. This dictates that watching films 'injects' ideas directly into the audience, which would suggest not only that films are dangerous but also that the people watching them have absolutely no control over how a film affects them. This was used as justification for a crackdown on film certification and supply in the wake of the James Bulger case.

Secondly, there is the uses and gratifications theory, Simply, this states that people watch films for a particular reason - and therefore take away from it whatever they want. On the surface this could be seen as the opposite of the hypodermic model, in that it allows the viewer the chance to reject a film's message. However, this also allows for viewers to choose to be influenced by a film's ideals.

Finally, there is the ethnographic model. This states that different styles of film are better decoded by different social groups - for example, a romcom is enjoyed by women because they possess the social and emotional skills necessary to decode its meaning, while a film like Fast and Furious is better understood by men because it caters to their interests and contains traits that they seem to be able to work out better than women.

Obviously, none of these theories should be taken in isolation, but is useful when you are looking at the different films in this module. And for the record, you shouldn't attempt to understand every detail of the theory. The above is literally all you need to know (believe me, reading these theories is more confusing than this, and you should therefore stick to the basics, unless of course you want to wade through psychology textbooks as thick as a brick. If you do, knock yourself out).

Popular film and emotional response from Rachel Jones

Overview of topic

A2 Film A-Level Film Studies FM4 Spectatorship Revision from Ian Moreno-Melgar