Further Audience Theories Research

To analyse and research into how audiences are targeted by film institutions and how the audience respond to horror movies, we were given the task to study a various number of audience theories.

Propp's Theory:

Vladimir Propp (1969) developed a character theory for studying media texts and productions that indicated that there where 8 broad character types in the 100 tales (fairytales) he analysed, which could be applied to other media such as horror:

1. The villian (who struggles against the hero)
2. The donor (prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object)
3. The (magical) helper (helps the hero in the quest)
4. The princess (the person the hero marries, often sought for during the narrative)
5. Her father
6. The dispatcher (the person who makes the lack known and sends the hero off)
7. The false hero
8. The Hero (who overcomes the villian (defeats it))

The emphasis was on looking at characters not as representing real people, but as functions whose role was to move the narractive forward.

I studied this theory on the Horror/Thriller movie 'Drag Me To Hell' (2009)- which is a pretty recent movie, to compare and analyse this theory within this modern movie's narrative:

Poster-'Drag Me To Hell'

• Hero- Shaun San Dena (A psychic who has a seance to draw out the Lamia to kill it for Christine)
• Villian- Mrs. Sylvia Ganush (An elderly woman who attacks Christine and casts a curse upon her)
• Lamia (The Powerful demon that is sent by Ganush to literally drag Christine to hell)
• Helper/donor-  Rham Jas (A young psychic who informs Christine that she is cursed and introduces her to Shaun San Dena)
• Princess/false hero- Christine Brown (A young bank employee who is cursed by Ganush after refusing an extention on her mortgage)
• Dispatcher- Clayton Dalton (Christines boyfriend, who offers to pay for the seance fee's after she gives up.)

Todorov's Basic Narrative Theory:

Todorov suggested that stories begin with an equilibrium or status quo where any potentially opposing forces are in balance. This is disrupted by some event, setting in chain a series of events. Problems are solved so that order can be restored to the world of the fiction.

Extended Theory:

• Exposition (background info, and into to characters)
• Development (progress of situation)
• Complication (main action)
• Climax (confrontation)
• Resolution (restoration)

Example: 'Scream' (1996)

Poster-'Scream'

• Exposition: 'Casey' is introduced and the audience seem to believe that she is one of the main characters throughout the film, but gets murdered but the masked killer (Who is also introduced and begins the process of the situation). The plot is beginning to outfold, as we realise that the killer uses horror movies as a base for his murders.

• Development: As the entire school are informed that their fellow classmates had been murdered the situtation is all to clear that the ideal is not over. The main character 'Sydney' recognises that the time is very near to the anniversary of her mothers brutal death and begins to wonder if this killer has anything to do with it. As the principle of the school is also murdered we realise that the killer is not planning to stop there.

• Complication: Sydney starts to believe and accuse her boyfriend of being the killer, which complicates things as she does not want to believe this and eventually rules him out as a suspect as he is 'murdered' later on in the film. Furthermore, all the characters end up going against eachother, accusing eachother of being the killer, which then results in most of them dying.

• Climax: The audience (and Sydney) finally realsie who the killer(s) are and the whole plot is revealed, which is suprising to the audience as Sydney's boyfriend is one of them.

• Resolution: The 'good' characters overcome the 'evil' and they kill the killers and the rest of the world goes back to their normal lives.

Paul Wells Research Into Horror Films (2000)

Paul Wells discovered after asking 4 focus groups (16-25, 26-40, 41-55 and 56-80) what was the first and most recent horror film they had watched;

• The relationship to being frightened changes with age and relates to factors affecting emotional responses - e.g. those of 58-80 years old felt that their interest in horror was at their prime during their younger years rather than enduring with age. They were also scared of the configurationof night and dark-reminded them of walking home in the dark as youths in the war (blackout). They had experienced the real horror of WW2.
• That young audiences are harder to shock
• That audiences between 1970's and 1990's are more 'anaesthetised' to explicit special effects.