Fight Club

1. Fight Club Report.
There are 3 relative audience theories that I am going to apply to my questionnaire results
on Fight Club.
The first Theory is the Gratification Theory also known as The Blumler and Katz theory. This
theory is that the audience uses the media to help them fulfil their basic needs. This is
usually to make them happy, for education reasons or for social reasons. This is a way of
diverting or escaping, known as diversion. Diversion is a way of escaping reality for the
audience. For example, people who watch shows such as The Walking Dead have an hour a
week where they can just relax and escape from the rest of the world into this different
universe inside the show. The theory is also that it’s a way of personal relationships, and
Identity. This helps especially in social situation where a group of friends can interact and
talk about the media.
Another theory is the Hypodermic Needle Theory. This is a theory that the media is changing
the way the audience thinks. It does this by “injecting” thoughts and feelings into the
audience’s head. Media can send powerful images and influence a mass amount of people
and make them act a certain way. For example, in the American election, Hillary Clinton
uses Celebrities and news to tell people to vote her. This makes people automatically think
this is the right decision to make.
The third and final theory is the Reception Theory. This is a theory that the media is
encoded by the creators and then decoded by the audience. Audiences have three different
readings of a media depending on their back grounds. These readings are, Preferred,
Negotiated or Oppositional. This all has a lot to do with age and Gender.
The filmFight club is filmdirected by David Finger and released in 1999 Starring Brad Pitt
and Edward Norton. The film got a certificate of 18 after being banned at first for having too
much violence. The filmis about a salesman finding a new form of therapy. This ends up
starting an underground “Fight Club” this then escalated and spiralled out of control.
BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) had opened up a case study on the film. They
were the first people to view the filmas critics will view the filmand give their reviews.
BBFC didn’t ban the film straight away. They made a good point and changed their
guidelines.
"The new BBFC Guidelines established the principle that adults should be free to chose
their own entertainment, within the law, and it was considered that there was nothing in
Fight Club that was in breach of UK law, or felt to be harmful." This basically is saying people
should be free to watch a violent filmif they wanted too. People who don't like it don't have
to watch it. This is big reason to why it got the 18 rated certificate and didn't get banned.
Another famous review of the film is by Alexander Walker where he slated the film. He
mentions how he doesn't like certain aspects of the film. He says he thinks it's a way of
propaganda and goes on about political points and compares it to Hitler and sending the
Jews to their deaths. I think this is more Oppositional reading of the film, and definitely
applies to the Reception Theory. Alexander decoded this film in a bad way, and as he never
once said anything good about this film. I can tell this all applies to the reception theory
because it's a more personal reading, it's all based on how he groups up and his own

2. Fight Club Report.
opinions. His opinions would vary depending on the type of background he grew up in and
the society he was brought up in. As a younger audience from the city maybe would have
had a more preferred reading as they find it more entertaining to see all this violence. I
think his applies a lot to the Hypodermic needle theory. It sounds a lot like he thinks that
the media, in this case Fight Club are injecting these political views into the audience’s head.
I did some research myself. I created a survey for people to fill in and gather information
about their opinions on Fight Club. I'm going to collect these results and apply the 3
audience theories to the answers and explain why it is the theories apply to the answers...
The results I got from my questionnaire shows that the
majority of people were young adults who watched the
film. This connects with two theories’ in my opinion The
Gratification theory and the Reception theory. This is
because I think teenagers or young adults will use this
type of filmto try and diverse away from their lives. I also
think it applies to the Reception Theory because people
will watch it depending on their background and social
class and enjoy it depending on how they grew up. The
age is also going to heavily influence the results of my
survey.
The gender is fairly even; the survey is out of 7 so it was
going to be an odd number anyway. So I’m considering it being an even number the results
would have likely been 50/50. This could prove the film isn’t heavily targeted towards male
audience, though their opinions on the filmcould be different. I think the Gratification
theory applies to these results as it’s a way of personal identity. It’s a personal preference
going to watch the film. But it’s also a lot to do with reception theory because the results
are going to be influenced by the genders.

3. Fight Club Report.
A lot of people found the filmin different ways. This just
shows a variety of different answers which is good. The majority or results are word of
mouth and social media. I think this applies to the Gratification Theory. This is because
people will be talking about it and have a hype around the subject in person and on social
media. This is a way of diversion, a way of getting away from every day things, people are
talking about this subject escaping every day boring duties.
The majority of results are that people have
seen or at least heard about this film before. This can influence my results as people may
already have opinions on it or know a lot about the film.
On average the film got a 7.7/10 it got a lot
of high ratings and I think this is due to the age of the viewers. The age can influence the
results as they were mainly young, open minded and more willing to see violence in films.
They could find this ore thrilling to watch and exciting. This is why I think it applies to the
reception theory.

4. Fight Club Report.
Most people enjoyed the violence of the film, and again I
think this is because of the age and possibly the gender. Usually males are more typically
going to want to see violence so I think the females influenced the results slightly in that
area. As well as the age, younger males would be more typically up for seeing violent films,
which is why I think a lot of people said they enjoyed it. This is why I think it applies to the
reception theory.
A lot of people enjoyed the film, and enjoyed the
storyline/ Narrative of the film. This has a lot to do with the gratification theory in my
opinion. The audience are diverted watching the film whether they know it or not. They get
themselves into this story line.
This shows a lot of people enjoy the
film but also people who enjoyed it understand why people didn’t enjoy film. I know this is
the Reception theory because of the three different readings. I think the three readings
connect back to what I was saying about age. There was one negative response as there
was one result in a different age group.

5. Fight Club Report.
This shows majority of people didn’t feel
diverted by the film. As I said in the others I think people would have done and not realised
as they were too much into the story. But as of the results I think the theory that applies
here would be the reception theory. This is because I think the audience were decoding the
film as they were watching it.
Majority of people here enjoyed the music
and the soundtrack. People enjoyed listening to it and one even went out of their way to
find out the composer and the album. This I think is a bit of diversion as it really gets people
into the music and gets them diverted from everything instead of just watching and not
taking anything from the filmin. Which is why I think it could apply to the Gratification
theory but it could apply to the Reception theory as people might enjoy the music because
of their age and gender.