The Walking Dead - Reception Theory

The Walking Dead Reception Theory

The Walking Dead is a TV Series following a group of people who are trying to survive in the zombie apocalypse and how they adjust to their new world. The target audience for The Walking Dead is older teens and adults. Probably mostly men because there is a lot of gore. The Walking Dead would appeal to the Explorer because it is challenging and requires discovery.

The encoders of this TV series wants the audience to relate to characters and sympathise with them as they try to survive in the new hard world they live in. They want the show to appeal to people who love gore, action, drama and zombies. Some ideologies that are encoded are that if you stick together then you can accomplish anything. Also, that when people need to, they can ignore peoples race, ethnicity and who they were in the past and can work together to complete their goals because we all share the same goal. Another ideology is karma, usually when a character does something wrong or makes the wrong choice that character will probably die later on because of karma. The text celebrates that even in the worst times, people can make a good life for themselves and still find love and make friends no matter how bad the situation they are in is. An underlying message of The Walking Dead is that people have to work together so that they accomplish common goals, if not you could die. The text tells us that life is short, precious and that you should cherish every moment of life because one day you will die and it could be really painful and painful to those around you. Also, to get to be happy and keep the ones you love safe you will need to do some things that make you uncomfortable and question your morals.

Some ideologies that are rejected by this TV show is that not all characters get what they deserve. Sometimes a character doing the right thing will get killed off or a character that does wrong survives and gets away with whatever they did. People who don't like gore won't find this show appealing. They might have been raised that violence and murder is wrong so they stay way from this kind of show. Another ideology that can be rejected is with the message if working together to accomplish goals, someone might disagree with that and feel that it is better to work alone. They might have grown up shy or grown to dislike other people so they prefer to work alone. Another ideology that gets rejected is that who you are and where you're from doesn't matter, some people think that it does matter and wouldn't like to work with or be around someone who isn't from the same background as them. They might feel this because of how they were brought up, maybe it was their parents or their friends that convinced them that they shouldn't work with people from somewhere else.

A situation where the audience might take a negotiated reading of this text is they don't have a lot of free time and they need something that is short and without continuous stories so they can pick it up wherever. This is because The Walking Dead has long episodes and there are many episodes in one season which means they wouldn't be able to watch them all, also there are a lot of episodes were nothing happens so the person watching could get bored easily and start watching something else. Another situation is you might be at home with a younger brother or sister and you wouldn't be able to watch it as much because they're too young and it would scare them, so then they would have to try and watch it when they're not there like when they go to bed or when they're in school.

The audience that is targeted using the Uses and Gratifications model are people who would watch it for social interaction. They could watch it because their friends are watching it and feel left out of conversations or whenever they see the weekly episode they want to talk to their friends about what happened. Another type of audience targeted using the Uses and Gratification model is people who watch it for entertainment, all though many episodes are boring with not much going on in them there are many episodes were a lot does happen and it is very interesting and you'll want to know what is going to happen next. Another audience that is targeted by the Uses and Gratifications model is people who want to watch it for personal identity because there are many different types of people on the show form all different backgrounds so they might appeal to people who are from the same background.