PR2

1. There are three main different types of Audience Theory’s which I am going to explain, the
Hypodermic Model, Stuart Hall’s theory and Uses & Gratifications Theory.
The Hypodermic Model theory was created in the 1920s and it was the first attempt to
explain how mass audiences react to mass media, this theory suggests that audiences
passively receive the information transmitted through media text. This theory also suggests
that as an audience we are manipulated by media creators and that the manipulation could
easily change our behaviour and mind-set.
Stuart Hall’s theory was created in the 1970s and his theory was that all media products are
encoded and decoded, this means the media producer encodes the text which they want
their media product to produce and the audience decodes that text. Stuart Hall said that the
audience interprets the meanings of any media text based on their individual cultural
background and life experiences, Hall also suggested that producers could encode a
preferred meaning to the audience he is targeting, there was three readings that might be
decoded by an audience depending on their individual cultural background and life
experiences, those three readings are Preferred, Negotiated and Oppositional.
Uses & Gratifications Theory was published in 1974 by two researchers named Blumler and
Katz there are four different categories or uses & gratifications which are; Diversion,
Personal Relationships, Personal Identity, Surveillance each of these have different
meanings, Diversion meant you would use a media text to escape from everyday problems
and routine, personal relationships meant you would use the media text for emotional and
other interaction, Personal Identity means reflecting the media on yourself and Surveillance
means using the media to find information which could be useful for living.
Fight club was produced in the 1999’s by director David Fincher with the two main actors as
Edward Norton and Brad Pitt in the opening weekend of Fight Clubs release it produced
$11,035,485 in USA.
Before Fight Club was released in the Cinemas they had to cut 6-7
seconds out of two cut scenes, both of these scenes was extremely
violent and extremely gory, there were concerns under the BBFC
Guidelines of the time about the “glamorisation of violence and
the potential for encouraging an interest in organized bare-fist
fighting.”
The two scenes which was cut was the scene where Lou fights
Tyler Durden in the basement of his club, they had to “reduce the
heavy and explicit punches to the head that end the fight”, and
they also cut the scene where the narrator fights a blond man who
he is jealous of, they cut “sights of blows to the face at the end of
the fight” these two cuts made the movie Fight club got a 18 certificate and was able to be
released to the cinemas. In 2005 a new set of Guidelines was in place and the BBFC had a
new director, with these changes Fight Club was released as an uncut DVD with an 18
certificate. The initial audience response was extremely negative, people thought that
because there was so much heavy violence in the film that it was going to encourage
younger people to go out and perform acts of violence, this ties in with the Hypodermic
Model as they thought all audience was going to consume this product and then go out and
do acts of violence. I did a survey on Fight Club using the Stuart Hall theory to see how
people felt about the movie, if they were diverted by it, if they had a Preferred, Negotiated
or Oppositional and if there were any elements of the movie they might use as surveillance.
From the results I got I found out 83% of the people I ask were 18-24 and 66% of those who

2. I asked was male, also 83% of the people I asked had heard about Fight Club before working
on it in class, I also found out that 83% of the people I asked would recommend this filmto
other people. Using Hall’s theory, I asked if peoples readings of the film was Preferred,
Negotiated or Oppositional, I got mixed results to this question, my answers was split
between 33.33% for each answer, also I asked if there were elements of the film that they
might use for surveillance, from this question I found out most people used the music or
fashion from the film.