Pride - Audience responses

Pride uses many filmic ways to manipulate the audience into laughing and crying through the genre of the film. The film is a comedy/drama and are displayed perfectly through narrative and generic codes of conventions, one scene that is particularly emotional is the bread and roses scene as after Mark has delivered a speech the whole mining community begin to sing, it starts with just one voice and builds to more and more up to a crescendo. This scene is particularly emotional as it shows that even though the miners are struggling and finding it hard to cope with everyday life they will not let that kill their spirit they are strong and they are even better when they unite as a group. This scene shows unity and determination with is very emotional for the audience to see as they know the events that lead to this are all real.  However this is juxtaposed by flippant humour throughout the film such as Gwen asking the lesbians when they arrive "are all lesbians vegetarians?". This makes the audience laugh out loud as they do not expect a little old lady to ask such provocative questions, it also adds a light hearted feel to such a hard hitting and political film.  

The film being based on a true story means that the audience are more intrigued in what will happen throughout. To reinforce this the audience are constantly positioned within the film, we are part of the crowd which emerges us in the emotion and feelings of the character who are not really characters but actual people.  

This film aims to raise discussion about the issues at the time and the issues surrounding not only for the miners struggle but also for the gay community and other communities as well. The film also highlights the contrast between the society we live in today and 1980's Britain, "feel good movie. Makes you feel a little better about the world - about our capacity to set aside differences" - Mara MacDonald, Rotten Tomatoes this shows that the preferred reading was taken and it did have an impact on the audience members that were watching the film. However there are still audience members that take the negotiated or an oppositional reading of the film. "Guilty of sanitising the struggles to which it pays its respects" - Lewis Portecus, Rotten Tomatoes this shows the oppositional reading as it is clear that they understood the intentions of the film and what it was showing however they felt as if the issues were only slightly touched upon rather than going into detail about the gritty real life events of the time.  

Overall it is clear that Pride attracted and appealed to audience which lead to the preferred reading being taken as the film was nominated for a Golden Globe and won a BAFTA showing that not only did audience like it but critics took the preferred reading which boosted the popularity and publicity of the film resulting in a domestic gross of $1.4 million.