The document summarizes audience reception theories and provides analysis of a survey about the film Fight Club. It finds that the majority of respondents who saw the film were male and under 20 years old. Most heard about the film through social media rather than advertising. Responses indicated a negotiated view of the film, liking most of it but finding some parts too extreme. Overall, the film was an interesting case study that inspired thinking about how viewers are affected by different genres.

1. James Pearson
PR2: Audience Theory about the film Fight Club
Director: the director of the film is a well renound director who has created many great
films in his career and his name is David Fincher.
Year of Production: The year of production for fight club was the year 1999 when films like
this where unheard off at that time spurring the audience reactions.
Distributer: the distributor for fight club was the well-known 20th century Fox studios.
Certificate: The certificate for the film has always been 18 for either the nature or the
content of the film.
Here are the three audience theories
Hypodermic model: this theory is based on a message that a film such as fight club would
have sent and the word hypodermic comes from the fact that the message is very powerful
and it is injected in the audience keeping the metaphor going it drugs the audience and the
message is received and followed throughout the film, it is one of the most unusual
audience theories.
Uses And Gratifications Model: this theory is not based on the effects model which focusses
on the affection that the film has on the audience of the film such as the violence and the
behaviour but this theory was heavily flawed because of the fact that it was clear that very
little people would take the actions of the filmand make them their own, so a whole new
theory was made “The Uses and Gratifications Theory” which followed the emphasis on the
power of the media text or how and why they use them and when the audience is watching
the film the audience the audience has the free reign to either accept, deny or forget the
text and those who accept this use it to gratify their needs for:
. Diversion
. Escapism
. Information
. Pleasure
. Comparing relationships or lifestyles
. Sexual Stimulation
Reception theory: This theory states that a product can be encoded by the creators as well
as the audience and so the audience is left with three possible reading when they watch the
film and those readings are

2. James Pearson
. Preferred: when a person sees the content that is shown as acceptable and they agree
with everything that they see and they are either on board with the idea or they enjoy the
topic in which the product was trying to express.
. Negotiated: When a person agrees with aspects of the product but has conflictions about
some parts of the product whether they didn’t enjoy them or they found some of the
content to be inappropriate for some viewers.
Oppositional: When you are completely against everything that the product is doing and
you don’t think that anyone should watch it, it is very common these days for the older
generation to be oppositional to what they are doing because it is not the type of material
that they grew up with.
Brief Facts About the Film Fight Club
The movie fight club is based around an ordinary depressed man who never revealed his
name who goes through life looking for stuff to try and maintain his sanity always
wondering what he was going to do to feel unique and feel alive, everything was looking
bad until he came across a man called Tyler Durden who seemed to be everything that he
wanted to be and so event lead to him and his new found friend creating something that
they felt give their lives meaning by the way of fighting each other brutally in order to feel
manly and alive but events in the film lead to the Narrator learning that all this time he
wasn’t just friends with Tyler Durden he was Tyler Durden, which leads to a very unusual
conflict between them and the results are confusing which sums up the ending in one word,
confusing.
Case studies throughout Fight Clubs release state that the movie was certificated 18 but
before it was studied there was much more to the filmleft to the filmto see, this was
because before the film was released to the public it was heavily cut in order for the fil to be
fit for the audience’s eyes, all of this was done because back then when this film was made
a plot such as the fight club plot was un heard of and people were not used to a film with
such as focus on violence so a debate was set in place by the BBFC to have the filmnot
banned but cut. When it was first released it was heavily received by critics and one
noticeable review by a veteran critic names Alexander Walker who’s review was strongly
oppositional to the fil and said that the content that was presented in the film was just
promoting violence and was just going to persuade people to go out and commit violence,
this view was shared at first along with the BBFC but as the fil went along with the release it
was realised that the filmhad something to offer and so it was given a release on condition
that many violent aspects of the film were cut o the final release.
Analysing the results for my Fight Club Survey.

3. James Pearson
As you can see that out of the majority of people who answered the survey the larger
majority of them are under the age of 20 showing that it is vastly popular among the
younger generation who range from 17 to 18 which could have a high influence on the main
outcome of the results for the pinions on the film.

4. James Pearson
As you can see from the results from this question on the survey a greater majority of
people who watched the film were male mainly because the whole premise of the film was
very male orientated due to the character plot or the physical violence.

5. James Pearson
The whole point of this question was to see how popular the filmwas on either social media
and televised adverts with other unpopular options, with this the most popular was social
media due to the fact that it is quite an old filmand adverts for the film have stopped, that
creates an opportunity for the social media to step in and sell to the younger generation a
chance to see a film that was so ahead of its time it needed to be shown now.
when I put this question together it was to see how many people from the class had seen
the film or at least had a bit of knowledge of the film before they saw the filmand as you
can see from the results it was a popular film and people knew about it but fewer people
had seen the filmbefore seeing it in class.

6. James Pearson
This next question was to get a basic idea on what people thought about the filmand as you
can see from the 1 to 10 results a small percentage of the results stated that they didn’t
enjoy the film but a larger percentage of the audience even loved the filmthose whole
question was basically meant to divide the audience with a basic overview for the film
before the detailed analysis begins.

7. James Pearson
The results for this filmwere very interesting because they provide a sort of a negotiated
view on the violence in the filmbecause the main popular answer was that the audience
didn’t like the violence but they thought that it was suited to the films structure and
balance, although a small majority of the results show that they preferred the violence in
the film and they thought that it suited the film well but a zero percentage on oppositional
showing a state of mind that the audience has towards a film like this.

8. James Pearson
Here is the main overview for the film and how the audience viewed the filmand 100
present of the people who answered put negotiated which meant that they liked a large
majority of the filmbut there are some things that they felt were either to extreme or
inappropriate to be added to the filmso it would just miss out on the preferred and the
oppositional views on the main outcome of the film.

9. James Pearson
Here I added a question where I was able to get accurate views on the filmwhether they
liked it or they didn’t or maybe mixed views on both, as you can see from the results it is
very drawn and the percentages are pretty much the same if not for the spike from the view
that the filmwas boring but a result table such as this showing answers like this shows that
this film really inspires you to think more about the things that you watch and what effects
that this type of film has on you as a viewer.

10. James Pearson
This next question was to see if your personal views on films like this had changed and as
you can see in the results a small percentage has decided to say that this filmhas opened
their eyes to new genres but an even bigger percentage of the audience stated that their
views on this type of genre had changed but not by a great amount but just enough to be
open to this genre which is partially what the director of this filmwas looking for when he
released the film.

11. James Pearson
on the last question I wanted to see what the audience thought which aspect of the film
would you use for surveillance and the results were again drawn between all of them except
for the violence and with those results, when it comes to watching these types of films what
would you as a viewer look for in a character and this filmis a prime example due to the
complex characters and plot lines to sum it up and amount it up to the results from Fight
club and see the similarities.
This has been my report on the movie Fight Club and after all the information that I have
read I feel like my view on the filmhas changed but not in a large way I do feel that some
aspects of the filmare extreme but for the most part I really enjoyed the film due to the
compelling nature of the atmosphere and characters that were presented in the filmand I
would recommend watching it to any one of my friends to see their views on the film, my
views overall on the film are negotiated bordering on preferred and as an acting enthusiast I
feel like a filmlike this is a step in the right direction acting wise.