Lesson 8: Audience Theory

Presentation notes Here

Age Inappropriate

Tuesday 28 January 2014, 18:21

Mark Kermode

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/markkermode/posts/Age-Inappropriate

Lesson 7 Context

Contextual Analysis of a Text

"A contextual analysis is simply an analysis of a text (in whatever medium, including multi-media) that helps us to assess that text within the context of its historical and cultural setting, but also in terms of its textuality – or the qualities that characterize the text as a text. A contextual analysis combines features of formal analysis with features of “cultural archeology, ” or the systematic study of social, political, economic, philosophical, religious, and aesthetic conditions that were (or can be assumed to have been) in place at the time and place when the text was created. While this may sound complicated, it is in reality deceptively simple: it means “situating” the text within the milieu of its times and assessing the roles of author, readers (intended and actual), and “commentators” (critics, both professional and otherwise) in the reception of the text." University of Nabraska Lincoln, Department of English Spring 2008

University of Nabraska Lincoln, Department of English Spring 2008 (online) Contextual Analysis (Contextual Analysis) http://www.unl.edu/english/sbehrendt/StudyQuestions/ContextualAnalysis.html [Accessed: 04
th Feb 2014]

Elements of Context 

• When the text was produced

Links with Channel owned Films

• What the society was like at the time the text was produced

Huac
Production code
80s Rocky

• What or who influenced the maker of the text

HUAC

• What political or social influences there would have been

Huac
Production code

• What influences there may have been in the genre that may have affected the writer

French new wave un Boule de soufe, borrowed from the soviets and film noir
British 60 Cinema, Saturday night sunday morning

• When the text was produced and when it was set may also have an important part to play in what is produced. 

80s social aspiration 

Social Context Examples

Rocky Montage

Examples Moral Panics in Cinema

Crash

Clockwork Orange

Natural Born Killers

Fear of the new

 

http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/Documents/S4B/sem12.html