Critical Context

Audience

Audience perspective is looking at how an audience consumes media, how they are affected by it, and how they effect it.

A major part of it is the difference between a Passive and Active audience. A Passive audience don't think about the media outside of the immediate consumption. For them the Film is contained to the Film, the Game is contained to the Game, and the Advert is contained to the Advert. They don't actively try to talk or find out about the media after consuming it. They're happy to just sit and watch or interact with the media without doing anything more. An Active Audience is the opposite of this. Once they've seen a piece of media they attempt to gain more from it outside of it. They talk to other fans, collect merchandise, discuss lore and theories, and possibly create their own content relating to if such as fan videos and fanfiction. In recent years active audiences have been more desired as they have far more retention and are easier to make money out from their commitment. This in turn has given the audience more power over the media, able to request changes and push for certain things to be included. This can be positive, with an audience helping the development or preservation of a show, or negative as the changes they request only reflecting a small and loud percentage of the fan-base and driving people away (Personal example: Star Wars, the entire sequel trilogy)

A more widespread example of Active Audience is Music Bands, particularly with One Direction and Justin Bieber in the 2010's, with a large percentage of fans actively buying merchandise and paying for tours and concerts. It became almost a joke about the typical teenage girl fantasising about One Direction's members or Justin Bieber, a joke made due to the catering to this Active Audience the bands did.

Another part of Audience is Desensitisation, which is where an audience sees a certain type of media so much that the effect of it wears off. This is most common in the horror genre, where fans of it see so much horror that the fear wears off. This is what forces the genre to evolve or die, and creates various sub-genres such as Slasher and Psychological with different takes to try and keep the audience scared. This also happens with other overly emotional media products too, such as ones that evoke Sadness or Excitement. This can happen to both Passive and Active audiences, but generally takes effect faster in Active audiences due to their constant connection with the product and more exposure to the emotion it tries to evoke.

Auteur

Auteur theory is that certain well known and unique directors have more influence on a film than the writer or other people working on it, and are thus more attributed to it. This is because said director has a very specific style that is present in most, if not all, films they work on. Major examples of this are Tim Burton with his Dark Gothic tones and frequent use of Johnny Depp, Quentin Tarantino with his non-chronological stories and self insertion, and Alfred Hitchcock with his use of human-like camera movement and heavy use of suspense. Each of these Auteurs have a personal style and stamp that people can recognise when watching their films.

Gender and Representation

Gender theory is about the differing ways males and females view media. It primarily focuses on how males often view media for action, high stakes, and attractive female characters while females view media for emotional investment, story, and attractive male characters. Due male directors, producers, and cast being more predominant the male gaze is pushed far more. Recently however there's been a break in this trend with female protagonists being shown more similar to male ones, such as Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel. An example of this done well is Black Widow who's personality, thoughts, and story is built up over several moves alongside the rest of the Avengers. However due to it's popularity most recent ones feel forced, often being simply gender-swapped versions of the overdone typical male protagonist, or outright gender-swapped versions of originally male characters to appease the audience (Doctor Who and Ghost Busters being recent examples). This has lead to more longstanding active audiences hating the "Strong Woman" trope as it's simply pandering with no benefits most of the time.

In short Gender Theory is about looking at your target audience's gender and making decisions for the product based on that. While it can be important to look at it should be looked at alongside other theories so not to make bland pandering characters and stories that lack any substance.

Representation theory on the other hand looks at how any topic is shown and represented in media. Common things that are focused on are Current Issues, Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Religion, and Sexuality. These can all be shown in positive or negative lights depending on how the product represents them. For instance American News often represents African Americans as the most likely to do crime, which is only true due to the perpetuation of fear and low employment this representation creates. Another example is how it can be bad is when in fiction a character is only defined by what he represents. The Gay is just the Gay, the Black Guy is just the Black Guy, the Jew is just the Jew, and so on. Better examples are where a character is more than what they represent, for instance MCU's Nick Fury and The Simpson's Apu.

Genre

Genre is a way of classifying a text based on certain expectations and conventions. For instance Sci-Fi is known for themes of space, high technology, and abnormal creatures. Meanwhile Horror is defined by unsettling and creepy locations, high tension, and scaring the audience. However most media products that fit in a genre don't perfectly follow that genres list of codes and conventions. This is to keep the audience interested. Some may borrow elements of other genres to enhance the product, some may be a combination of 2 genres becoming a hybrid genre such as Rom Com movies and Survival Horror games, and some may change the way they use their conventions to archive different but similar effects creating sub-genres such as Slashers, Psychological Horrors, and Meta Horrors.

Narrative

Narrative is split into 3 theories which can universally be applied to most stories. Sometimes one fits more than the other two, but at least parts of all 3 fit within almost all story based media products.

Starting with Todorov's theory of Equilibrium, the basic principle is that the story starts in a state of equilibrium where there are no major problems, but then something happens that disrupts that equilibrium creating disequilibrium, and then the characters of the story work to fix the original equilibrium or create a new one. This is mostly seen in Superhero and Fantasy Adventure genres, where a great evil or villain comes about and causes disequilibrium, and the heroes work to stop the villain and fix the equilibrium they disrupted.

Next is Propp's theory of Character Types, in which there are around 8 character types that recur throughout narratives. Main character types include Heroes, False Heroes, Villains, Helpers, Dispatchers, and Princesses. There are multiple versions of these character types with some alternations and changes, such as False Villains. Sometimes characters are multiple character types such a Princess who is also a Helper like Shrek's Fiona, or a False Hero who's also a Villain like Frozen's Hans.

Finally is Strauss' theory of Binary Opposites, which explains there are opposite forces working against each other within a story which the narrative is based around. Common opposites are Good vs Evil, Hate vs Love, Humans vs Monsters, Humans vs Aliens, Humans vs Zombies, Dark vs Light, New vs Old, and Protagonist vs Antagonist. Often multiple of these will be present throughout the narrative, often denoting different story lines. While most of the time these are stuck to, they're sometimes used to make the audience question said opposites, such as using Humans vs Monsters/Aliens/Ect to make the audience question the Humans' violence against something shown to be peaceful or undeserving of the treatment they get. This can sometimes be done as an analogy to real world problems at the time of the media production, especially with problems of alienation between peoples.

Academic Sources

An Academic Source is a Source that is linked in some way to an Academic Institution, be it published by or affiliated with them or written by someone who has Academic Education themselves. This connection needs to be relevant to the Source in question, such as a Journal on Media being written by a Media Professional. There are key ways to identify an Academic Source. Firstly the author's credentials need to be present and the author needs to have a relevant degree or affiliation with a scholarly organisation. Then there needs to be a Reference List or Bibliography of the Sources they used for their information. Finally the Publisher needs to be a professional association, a university, or a known academic publisher.

Source Examples

Books: Some advantages of books are they are a wide but thorough overview of a topic, and while some can be specific these are more general in their information. They normally have a pool of references that you can also use which might be more specific depending on what you're researching, and are well researched in general. They're quality checked by the publisher, so the information is likely to be correct and fairly easily understandable. And finally due to their size they're decently portable. The downsides however is the author can possibly be bias about certain topics they write about and the book can easily be out of date and so you need to put the information you read about into that context.

Academic Journals: Some advantages of journals are they're far more likely to be up to date and have relevant and recent information on much more specific topics. They're quality checked during the peer review process and include a good list of references similar to books. A few downsides are that its much more specific and could completely miss what you're trying to research. Also they aren't as easily portable as books and can be harder to find.

Magazines: Some advantages of magazines are that they're far more up to date than Journals and Books and provide opinions and overviews on whats currently of professional interest. They're a mix of news and opinions, meaning you can get an idea of what's new and what people think of that. Also if you get older copies then you can find out what was relevant and though about at that specific time. The main downside is that there's no where near as much quality control on them, and far more bias due to that.

Websites: Some advantages of websites are that it can be easier to find information you need due to the vast amount of websites there are. Also they're easily kept up to date and have some of the most relevant information. Downsides are they're easily bias due to the lack of filtering and quality check and less likelihood to be academic. Also it can be difficult to sift through the number of search results you can get to find something relevant to what you want.