Referring to your own detailed examples, discuss how different media texts can appeal to audiences.

Jack Scott

Referring to your own detailed examples, discuss how different media texts can appeal to audiences.

Different medias can appeal to different audiences depending on their appeals and the audience’s responses, for example the video game ‘Skyrim’ is appealing to the explorer audience type due to its own unique reasons.

The main appeal of the game ‘Skyrim’ is the sense of escapism it offers the audience by transporting them into a World very different to our own. Instead into a fantastical World of Dragons and wizards.

The game allows the audience to work their way through a narrative, however the game is set in an Open World (or sandbox) meaning that the audience are free to roam where they choose and participate in the narrative when they choose, this challenges narrative conventions and may appeal to the audience’s need to explore and discover.

The choosing of narrative links to another key appeal of ‘Skyrim’, this appeal is interactivity as the audience has control over their own character and makes their own decisions. The interactivity the audience can have with other characters in the game provides the player with choices of what to say, this provides the player with autonomy over the game which mat be an appeal.

However the film ‘Stand By Me’ has different appeals, the main appeal of the film is the sense of nostalgia you get from watching it. The films itself is from a childhood memory from the writer when he and a three other friends went on a journey to find a dead boys missing body, the plot of the film is not the appealing part it is the sense of nostalgia that is gained from watching four friends going on a journey together, this is because the audience in their childhood would have friends of their own, so this film is a link back to the audience’s childhood past.

This links to another appeal, which is to personally identify with the text, the audience would be able to personally identify with the characters as from the very beginning of the film they follow a small set of characters.

The film may also be appealing due to how it follows Todorov’s theory of narrative; this is from the equilibrium being the four boys on a normal day, the disruption being the boy dying, the recognition being the boys going to find the body and the final step the reinstated equilibrium is the boys returning home after choosing not to take the body with them. This simple following of narrative would reach the audiences expectations, however the entire film doesn’t follow these conventions, as the very end of the film is a flash-forward to the main character when they’ve grown up and they’re reflecting on the story of the film, this therefore challenges the audience’s expectations which may also be an appeal.

The final text is the ‘Time to change  - Schizo movie advert’, this advertisement challenges audience’s expectations as it follows the conventions of the horror movie genre but challenges them to reveal the hidden meaning of the advertisement, for example the advert builds tension through the same way horror films do with low key lighting and fast pace non diegetic orchestral music. The advert however challenges the audiences expectation when the door is opened to reveal a ordinary looking man with high key lighting and no sound.

The message of the advert is that people who suffer from schizophrenia are not psychopathic killers that are the film schizo, but instead regular people like everyone else.