Component 1 Section B:
question 3: Industry
question 4: Audience
Theres always a standardised product.
In what ways are Humans and Les revenants shaped by specialised forms of production, distribution and circulation?
Mise-En-Scene
Representation Stuart Hall Reception
Conglomeration
Convergence
Cultural Industries
Horizontal and Vertical and Multimedia integration
Controversial aspects: Humans: Niska's rape Les Revenants: Lena's sex scene, Murder in the alley.
Scheduling
6.1 million viewers, a 23% share of the audience, for its opening episode.
Specialised products
Budget and funding-
Viral marketing: website for Humans (synthetics)
Misleading trailer for Les Revenants on DVD
Humans shop front
Humans: The return slip print out adds to the hyperreal themes of the TV show. The audience cannot differentiate between reality and fiction.
Uneasy, paranoia
Existential themes for niche audience
Intertextuality to other traditional sci-fi films and tv like Terminator.
Les Revenants are highly atypical
Humans is atypical for sci-fi as the settings were modern and the same to how our lifestyle is today.
Mass audience appeal: both texts feature relatable British/French middle class families.
Channel 4: Humans distributed via 4OD, or by DVD and Blu Ray.
Les Revenants: distributed internationally on Netflix, and on Channel 4 in the UK- demonstrates the subversive ideology of Channel 4.
Move to digital streaming has threatened traditional media.
Humans: 12 million quid
Stephen King is likes Les Revenants
Remake ensures bigger mainstream British audience for Humans. Changes include language, location, the look of the actors, the tone of the show.
Budget for Les revenants: 11.5 million pounds
Exported to the US: fits in to exotic British sci-fi like Dr Who and Sherlock.
Setting: Les Revenants exotic for a British audience
Channel 4 are selling audiences
Channel 4 is an industry motivated by power and profit
Nearest competitors for Humans include Dr Who, Black Mirror, Sherlock
Prestige programming- adds to the prestige of the institution.
Standardised production
Clear, standardised narrative:
Disruption and restoration of equilibrium
A range of clear and identifiable character arcs
A clear serial narrative, with a range of enigmatic hermeneutic codes and cliffhanger.
Reinforces hegemonic norms of attractiveness.
(film industry, newspapers, radio, videogames, magazines)
• 'The media' is controlled by an increasingly small number of companies who are driven by profit and power
• By concentrating media production in to the hands of so few companies, there is an increasing lack of variety, creativity and quality
• We need more socially diverse and democratic patterns of ownership help to create varied and adventurous media productions.
Key work – Power Without Responsibility
(advertising, newspapers, radio, videogames, television, magazines)
• To watch/read/play/listen to/consume a media product is a process involving encoding by producers and decoding by audiences
• There are millions of possible responses that can be affected through factors such as upbringing, cultural capital, ethnicity, age, social class, and so on
• Hall narrowed this down to three ways in which messages and meanings may be decoded:
• The preferred reading - the dominant-hegemonic position, where the audience understands and accepts the ideology of the producer
• The negotiated reading - where the ideological implications of producer’s message is agreed with in general, although the message is negotiated or picked apart by the audience, and they may disagree with certain aspects
• The oppositional reading - where the producer’s message is understood, but the audience disagrees with the ideological perspective in every respect
Key work - Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies
(film industry, newspapers, videogames, television, online media)
• 'Culture' and 'industry' are two terms that are often at odds with one another
• Producers try to minimise risk and maximise audiences through vertical and horizontal integration,
• They also standardise and format their cultural products (e.g. through the use of stars, genres, and serials)
• The largest companies or conglomerates now operate across a number of different cultural industries.
• The radical potential of the internet has been contained to some extent by its partial incorporation into a large, profit-orientated set of cultural industries.
Key work – The Cultural Industries
(film industry, newspapers, radio, videogames, television, magazines, online media)
• 'Regulation' refers to the rules and restrictions that every media industry has to follow. For example the UK film industry must use the BBFC's age certifications, and television must adhere to OFCOM's regulations
• There is a struggle in recent UK regulation policy between the need to further the interests of citizens (by offering protection from harmful or offensive material), and the need to further the interests of consumers (by ensuring choice, value for money, and market competition)
• The increasing power of global media corporations, together with the rise of convergent media technologies and developments in the production, distribution and marketing of digital media have placed traditional approaches to media regulation at risk.
• Online media production, distribution and circulation in particular often allows producers to completely ignore media regulations
Key work - Media Regulation: Governance and the interests of citizens and consumers
(television)
• Todorov's theory of narrative equilibrium is based around a three act structure. Firstly, a state of balance or equilibrium is established. This balance is disrupted or broken in some way, which leads to a liminal period or period of disruption. This second stage typically takes up the majority of a narrative. Finally, a typical narrative will conclude with a partial restoration of the equilibrium or new equilibrium, which will see the world of the narrative return to some sense of normality.
• Therefore, Todorov suggests that narratives move from one state of equilibrium to another, with the majority of a narrative focusing on conflict or imbalance.
• This structure can be summed up as:
• Equilibrium
• Disequilibrium
• Partial restoration of the equilibrium
• All narratives share a basic structure that involves a movement from one state of equilibrium to another
• The idea that these two states of equilibrium are separated by a period of imbalance or disequilibrium
• The way in which narratives are resolved can have particular ideological significance.
Key work – Genres in Discourse
question 3: Industry
question 4: Audience
Theres always a standardised product.
In what ways are Humans and Les revenants shaped by specialised forms of production, distribution and circulation?
Knee jerk:
Both set texts are fundamentally shaped by their contexts of production, distribution and circulation at a technical, narrative and representational level.Plan:
Production valuesMise-En-Scene
Representation Stuart Hall Reception
Conglomeration
Convergence
Cultural Industries
Horizontal and Vertical and Multimedia integration
Controversial aspects: Humans: Niska's rape Les Revenants: Lena's sex scene, Murder in the alley.
Scheduling
6.1 million viewers, a 23% share of the audience, for its opening episode.
Specialised products
Budget and funding-
Viral marketing: website for Humans (synthetics)
Misleading trailer for Les Revenants on DVD
Humans shop front
Humans: The return slip print out adds to the hyperreal themes of the TV show. The audience cannot differentiate between reality and fiction.
Uneasy, paranoia
Existential themes for niche audience
Intertextuality to other traditional sci-fi films and tv like Terminator.
Les Revenants are highly atypical
Humans is atypical for sci-fi as the settings were modern and the same to how our lifestyle is today.
Mass audience appeal: both texts feature relatable British/French middle class families.
Channel 4: Humans distributed via 4OD, or by DVD and Blu Ray.
Les Revenants: distributed internationally on Netflix, and on Channel 4 in the UK- demonstrates the subversive ideology of Channel 4.
Move to digital streaming has threatened traditional media.
Humans: 12 million quid
Stephen King is likes Les Revenants
Remake ensures bigger mainstream British audience for Humans. Changes include language, location, the look of the actors, the tone of the show.
Budget for Les revenants: 11.5 million pounds
Exported to the US: fits in to exotic British sci-fi like Dr Who and Sherlock.
Setting: Les Revenants exotic for a British audience
Channel 4 are selling audiences
Channel 4 is an industry motivated by power and profit
Nearest competitors for Humans include Dr Who, Black Mirror, Sherlock
Prestige programming- adds to the prestige of the institution.
Standardised production
Clear, standardised narrative:
Disruption and restoration of equilibrium
A range of clear and identifiable character arcs
A clear serial narrative, with a range of enigmatic hermeneutic codes and cliffhanger.
Reinforces hegemonic norms of attractiveness.
12 - Power and media industries - Curran and Seaton
(film industry, newspapers, radio, videogames, magazines)
• 'The media' is controlled by an increasingly small number of companies who are driven by profit and power
• By concentrating media production in to the hands of so few companies, there is an increasing lack of variety, creativity and quality
• We need more socially diverse and democratic patterns of ownership help to create varied and adventurous media productions.
Key work – Power Without Responsibility
17 - Reception theory - Stuart Hall
(advertising, newspapers, radio, videogames, television, magazines)
• To watch/read/play/listen to/consume a media product is a process involving encoding by producers and decoding by audiences
• There are millions of possible responses that can be affected through factors such as upbringing, cultural capital, ethnicity, age, social class, and so on
• Hall narrowed this down to three ways in which messages and meanings may be decoded:
• The preferred reading - the dominant-hegemonic position, where the audience understands and accepts the ideology of the producer
• The negotiated reading - where the ideological implications of producer’s message is agreed with in general, although the message is negotiated or picked apart by the audience, and they may disagree with certain aspects
• The oppositional reading - where the producer’s message is understood, but the audience disagrees with the ideological perspective in every respect
Key work - Stuart Hall: Critical Dialogues in Cultural Studies
14 - Cultural industries - David Hesmondhalgh
(film industry, newspapers, videogames, television, online media)
• 'Culture' and 'industry' are two terms that are often at odds with one another
• Producers try to minimise risk and maximise audiences through vertical and horizontal integration,
• They also standardise and format their cultural products (e.g. through the use of stars, genres, and serials)
• The largest companies or conglomerates now operate across a number of different cultural industries.
• The radical potential of the internet has been contained to some extent by its partial incorporation into a large, profit-orientated set of cultural industries.
Key work – The Cultural Industries
13 - Regulation - Sonia Livingstone and Peter Lunt
(film industry, newspapers, radio, videogames, television, magazines, online media)
• 'Regulation' refers to the rules and restrictions that every media industry has to follow. For example the UK film industry must use the BBFC's age certifications, and television must adhere to OFCOM's regulations
• There is a struggle in recent UK regulation policy between the need to further the interests of citizens (by offering protection from harmful or offensive material), and the need to further the interests of consumers (by ensuring choice, value for money, and market competition)
• The increasing power of global media corporations, together with the rise of convergent media technologies and developments in the production, distribution and marketing of digital media have placed traditional approaches to media regulation at risk.
• Online media production, distribution and circulation in particular often allows producers to completely ignore media regulations
Key work - Media Regulation: Governance and the interests of citizens and consumers
2 - Narratology - Tzvetan Todorov
(television)
• Todorov's theory of narrative equilibrium is based around a three act structure. Firstly, a state of balance or equilibrium is established. This balance is disrupted or broken in some way, which leads to a liminal period or period of disruption. This second stage typically takes up the majority of a narrative. Finally, a typical narrative will conclude with a partial restoration of the equilibrium or new equilibrium, which will see the world of the narrative return to some sense of normality.
• Therefore, Todorov suggests that narratives move from one state of equilibrium to another, with the majority of a narrative focusing on conflict or imbalance.
• This structure can be summed up as:
• Equilibrium
• Disequilibrium
• Partial restoration of the equilibrium
• All narratives share a basic structure that involves a movement from one state of equilibrium to another
• The idea that these two states of equilibrium are separated by a period of imbalance or disequilibrium
• The way in which narratives are resolved can have particular ideological significance.
Key work – Genres in Discourse
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