Reception Developed in Contemporary Film Studies - Essay Example

Reception Developed in Contemporary Film Studies The Reception Developed In Contemporary Film Studies With That Of Audience And Reception The concept of development of modern day film studies and audience behavior that has influenced it cannot be studied without going a few decades back and study the researches done previously. The concepts developed before have been modified and amended for coping with the present requirements. The main idea is that audiences’ behavior is continuously changing, and so the film studies as they try to study the behavior of the audience as an entity and predict the future steps they are gong to take. There are a few generalizations such as the genre of adventurous films appreciated by audiences of all places. But the most short fallen movies are the ones which have culturally specific backbone, as audiences of different location follow different customs and traditions and cannot just accept some other ways over their own. Concept of Reception Developed in Contemporary Film Studies with that of Audience and Reception Isaac Newton states that every action has an equal but opposite reaction and this law holds good for many everyday life tasks, some customary and some exclusive ones (Sadler, 1996,p.49). The law of reaction applies to the film studies to a greater extent. Media research has transmuted over the decades into a compound of different researches going on simultaneously. Towards the end of the twentieth century it was largely practiced as plainly researching the media that was quite concordant to content analysis. However, contemporarily audience research has become an integrated part of the subject, and many people refer to it while relating to media research (cited in Glossary of research methods). One inference devised through the contemporary film studies is that, what is famous in one place would not necessarily be popular in other place, that is, the films which are adored at one corner of the world, may not ineluctably get the same appreciation elsewhere. For instance, a film like Speed was among the thirteen most affluent Hollywood movies in Hong Kong in the whole twentieth century that was actually the eight most successful movies in the U.S. in 1994. In contrast, the most popular movie in America in 1994 was Forrest Gump, which was not particularly popular after it traveled across to Asia (cited in untitled document). It is not hard to comprehend rather tempting to look at, that the movie audience around the globe was mesmerized to enjoy the thrills and excitement of Speed and other contemporary Hollywood blockbusters without it being mandatory for them to have some background knowledge or culturally specific insight of the matter! But about Forrest Gump, there were some keen-eyed people in Hong Kong who could understand the political, vested interests behind the movie. There is a very straightforward assumption about the performance of movies in the international sphere: the more close the movie is towards culture related aspects, the harder would it be for it to travel from one culture to other, and the same tribulation would be faced by the receivers who would find it difficult to accept the moral values and social norms if they deviated from their own. The media economists have instigated a concept relevant to the hypothesis discussed above and that concept is known as cultural discount. The concept refers to the loss in value that media and products presumably would suffer when they move across culture. Why the media products of certain countries (especially the U.S., of course) tend to be dominating the world market? This concept is an important component of a micro-economic theory, in media economics. Although, the concept holds well with the above-discussed hypothesis, the main emphasis was that what is in demand at one place might not get the same reception at the other; there have been cases about particular products that have not done good business in the domestic market but were appreciated in the international. Therefore, the term cross-culture performance predictability is used through which the functioning of the set of media products in the domestic market can be monitored to predict performance of the set of media products in the foreign market. Cultural discount and cross-culture performance predictability are related yet distinct issues and so our earlier observation may be transmogrified into a modified version, that is movies subject to greater extent of cultural discount and lower degree of cross-culture performance predictability contain more of culturally focusing contents. For instance, a research constituting of about 480 Hollywood movie shown in Hong Kong between 1989 and 2004 and different movie genres were used to represent properties of movie contents. The analysis and findings were presented in an article published in the Journal of Media Economics in 2006 (Vol. 19, No. 4) and comedies were protuberant as the quintessentially culturally specific movie genre. In contrast, action movies and science fictions had relatively low levels of cultural discount. Science fiction movies also had a higher level of performance predictability to a much higher magnitude. Cultural Imperialism was a fear in the minds of the critical political economists because of the dominance of American media products around the world, which fell sharply towards the end of the twentieth century due to the rise of reception analysis. Apart from that, the reception studies examined audience’s reception of specific media texts at a given point of time and did not advanced to study it over the time. And the main question that arises between cultural imperialism and reception studies is, whether the cultural differences will converge or diverge over time? Another analysis conducted with the same data to test this concluded that audience taste diverge over time and these were published in an article published in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly (Vol. 83, No. 4). To consider the reception towards the development done in the movies through better film studies and efforts, and to see the deductions made vary from place to place, data of Hollywood movies’ box office performance in several East Asian countries from certain online databases, in summer 2007, was collected (cited in Hollywood movies). The question still is what amount of cross-cultural performance and cultural discount is received from audiences over different places. Evidently, US comedies did not prove to do more business but adventure appeared to be the most likely universal genre. All the attempts to investigate prove few points that audience is subjected to change; change of taste of movies. But a few like adventure have so much variety to give that it does not bore the audience. The reaction developed in the contemporary film studies with that of audience reaction is more towards positive and optimistic side. The new methodologies devised, are applied to allure the audiences, to get them engrossed into the movie. But the refashion of the studies is inevitably because of the dynamic nature and likeness of audiences. Different genres like romance or horror might vary from audience to audience but the film studies devises, which audience is to be satisfied and how, the studies have enabled to plan out plots that can be having higher cross-cultural performance possibility along with higher cultural-discount. The film studies also make use of the “psychoanalytical theory” (McGowan, p.xii) to analyze what the audience wants, when it wants and to what degree; they make adjustments or mold their whole work in the shape of pots, enthralling the audiences. The reception in audience towards films and as a direct result of which, the reception in contemporary film studies has allowed the knowledge to spread and enhance itself, different doors of psychology have been knocked for answers to questions and this all has arrantly changed the scene from tunnel visions to birds eye view. Audiences and critics both see the reception in different perspective but which are healthy and foregoing. A reiteration of the conclusion is necessary that is, the mobile nature of audiences still follow some patterns or rules, perhaps in their sub-conscious but these have caused the reception in the development of modern day film studies, it has enabled it to search for fresh techniques and ways that have not been explored before and this all has proved vital for the growth of industry. References Sadler, A.J., Thorning, D.W.S. (1996). Understanding Mechanics. New Delhi: Ram Chend. Audience Dialogue. (2006, August 4). Glossary of research methods. Retrieved July26, 2008, from http://www.audiencedialogue.net/gloss-meth.html#mediares Lee, Francis L. F. (2006a). Cultural discount and cross-culture predictability: Examining U.S. movies’ box office in Hong Kong. Journal of Media Economics, 19(4), 259-278. Lee, Francis L. F. (2006b). Audience taste divergence over time: Box office of Hollywood movies in Hong Kong, 1989-2004. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 83(4), 883-900. Lee, Francis L. F. (2007). Hollywood movies in East Asia: Examining cultural discount and performance predictability at the box office. Untitled Document. Retrieved July26, 2008, from http://enweb.cityu.edu.hk/ccr/Reseach_FL.htm McGowan, T., Kunkle, S.(2004). Lacan and Contemporary Film. Other Press, LLC.   Read More