Audience 6 Miley. Star and celebrity

Learning objective:
To study Miley Cyrus, Music industry with consideration given to Audience Responses and debates.

• Key words: Targeting, Debates, Responses

Audience segmentation.

All media texts must attract an audience. Here is a list of audience theories that are used to target media products at the correct audience.

Construction - This is the where an organisation devises a product that should appeal to a set audience. Use of language and mode of address are important as are values and lifestyles.

Consumption - This is the actual watching, listening or buying of the product.

Mass audience - This is a large audience group that is otherwise known as a mainstream audience; the text will probably appeal to a wide range of different groups.

Niche audience - This is a small audience group that is otherwise known as a minority audience; the text will appeal to a small group of people.

Pleasures of the text - There are a wide range of different pleasures that an audience can gain from watching media texts. Below is a list of possible pleasures, there are more though:
Involvement in continuing story in sequels or prequels.
Enjoyment of scandal in true life stories.
Enjoyment of romance.
Enjoyment of tragedy.
Enjoyment in someone else's pain or downfall (Schadenfreude).
Addiction.
Virtual friends.
Vicarious pleasures (living your life through others - fantasising.
Humour.
Realism.
The text reflects views that we agree with.
Tension and excitement.
We enjoy stereotypes.
They reflect our culture.
We can laugh at people we despise.
Conflict.
Spectacular events. 
We know and like the characters/actors
Makes you feel better; we are not as bad off as we think.
Understanding other parts of the country or the world.

Passive audiences - This theory suggests that audiences willingly accept what the media tell them and watch the content without any particular personal viewpoint and do not fully engage with the material. The text does not tend to offer the audience an opportunity to comment on the text through the Internet or social media.

Active audiences - This theory suggests that audiences will challenge texts that they do not like or agree with as well as those that agree with their values or not. These audiences are eager to choose their own content. The active audience texts tend to offer the audience an opportunity to voice their opinion on the text through social media, forums, Twitter, Facebook etc.

Uses and Gratification Theory

This theory suggests that media texts potentially give audiences four things:

Element of the theory	What it means to an audience
Personal identity	Our lives may be reflected in the text (we may see a storyline or an incident that has happened to us at some point in our lives or at the same time). We choose to identify with the character in the text and model ourselves on them.
Diversion, escapism, entertainment	The text may help us escape from reality for a while. (almost like a safety valve from the frustrations of life.
Personal relationships, Social interaction	We may treat the text as a friend. (The regularity of Eastenders helps audiences build a relationship with the programme). We are interested in the text because our friends or peers are interested in it.
Surveillance, information	A text may give us information about a particular issue or subject. (coping with illness, teenage pregnancy for example). We just need information about the weather for example.

Audience Reception Theory

This theory looks at three ways in which audiences respond to media texts

Audience Response	How the audience responds
Preferred Meaning	The audience accept what the media text is saying about about how the world is and how to think about the topic of the text.
Negotiated Meaning	The audience accept some of the views of the media text but reject other parts and so form a partial opinion of what the media text is saying about how the world is.
Oppositional Meaning	The audience completely reject what the media text is saying about how the world is and do not accept any part of the views expressed in the text.

Fandom Issues
Fandom covers the ways that devoted audiences respond to different media texts. They are normally split into mainstream, alternative and balanced fan groups.

Fan Group	Definition
Mainstream fans	These are fans that tend to become extremely knowledgeable about one particular area of the mainstream media and become devoted to that part of the media at the expense of others. Twi hards for example, fans of Twighlight.
Alternative fans	These fans reject the mainstream as corrupted and boring and focus on the alternative media and usually are very negative about most areas of the media. They do like unusual and rule breaking media that rejects the mainstream. They will support new and innovative trends in the media until they become successful and then they will reject them as mainstream, critiscise them and then move on to other newer, innovative media trends…
Balanced fans	These are fans that have a mixture of mainsteam and alternative likes and dislikes. They enjoy the mainstream but also have alternative tastes. They look for the links between alternative and mainstream texts. They are knowledgeable about how the media works.

Task 1: Note down aspects of the concept of fandom.

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Key terms:

Desensitisation; this suggests that audiences who are exposed regularly to acts of violence through films and video games for example are likely to feel empathy when exposed to violence, bad language or other forms of aggressive behaviour.

How do media texts POSITION audiences?

Through technical codes employed by the text. 

Camera shots and angles are used to place the audience in a particular position.

For example the use of a close up at an emotional time in the text will position the audience to feel sympathy with a character.

A point of view shot positions the audience as the character allowing them to experience what the character feels.

This may enhance audience pleasure.

Positioning through camera angles can also be uncomfortable for the audience.

For example taking the audience where they do not want to go in a horror film or an extreme close up in a tense moment.

Through language and mode of address.

the use of colloquial or chatty language in a text aimed at teens will position the intended audience as part of the world of the text.

The audience can feel involved through the use of a direct and informal mode of address and the use of subject specific lexis.

The formal language used by broadsheet newspapers positions the audience differently, in a position of superiority.

Making them feel valued as a reader with the expectation that they understand the text and want to be informed.

Through the construction of the text using imperatives. The reader of a particular magazine for example is told by the text how to live their lives and what should be important to them.

Audience RESPONSES to positioning

As we have discussed, audiences do not all respond to texts in the same way (as suggested by the Hypodermic Needle model). They may accept or challenge the messages encoded in the text as they decode the text in one of three ways (Stuart Hall Reception Theory).

Preferred reading, negotiated reading and oppositional reading.

key terms to remember here are passive and active audiences.

What affects the way in which an audience RESPONDS to a media text?

An audience is not a mass all behaving in the same way. It is made of individuals who respond differently according to a range of factors.

Gender: Different genders respond to media texts differently.

It is suggested for example that women will enjoy and take pleasure from the themes and narratives of soap operas because they deal with domestic narratives and human relationships which are in the experiences of most women on a daily basis. (It is important not to generalise but you should talk about a primary and secondary audience).

Age: Again be careful generalising but different audiences respond to and decode texts differently. Older audiences may be uncomfortable with bad language or sexually explicit material.

However a younger audience amy have been desensitised to this sort of content and will be more comfortable consuming these types of text.

Ethnicity: groups from different cultural backgrounds will respond to texts differently because of their ideas, beliefs and heritage. For example nudity in a music video may elicit a different response according to the ethnic make up of the audience.

Different ethnic groups may also have strong responses to how they themselves have been represented in a text.

Cultural competence: This relates to audiences taking particular pleasure from a media text depending on their own experience and a shared knowledge. For example the audience who engage with the rules of Call of Duty will understand the control aspects of the game and the online sharing techniques because they are computer literate.

Situated culture: This is literally to do with where the audience is. The communal viewing of a film in a cinema, in the dark produces a different response to sitting and watching tv in a well lit room where you can be distracted or interrupted. Who you watch the text with will impact on the response. For example, watching a music video containing nudity with an older person may produce a more uncomfortable experience for the teenager.

Task 2: 
Watch the video 'Party in the USA' and write an essay considering aspects of;

• Audience positioning
• Audience responses. Stuart Hall response theories; how can they be applied?

Write up in your orange books.
Bullet points are fine for this.

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Representation of Stars

How celebrity coverage relates to some crucial areas of modern media: Stardom, Marketing and news.

Celebrity is now more widespread and commonly encountered than ever before. They blend into news and current affairs often in an attempt to boost ratings via human interest and glamour.

It is easy to link celebrities and their lives to news coverage.

George Clooney got married.

Commercial advertisers are keen that we associate these figures with their products and brands.
This is to do with ideology and notions of strong family values.

Jennifer Anniston/Smart Water.

Health bodies use celebrity to raise awareness of disease and improvements in dealing with it.
Marketing find it easy to associate Jennifer with health as an aspirational tool. 

Kylie/breast cancer.

The difference between celebrities and stars:

Celebrities are famous beyond a single area of achievement.

Many celebrities are also stars; but all stars do not necessarily seek or achieve celebrity status

(‘Opera Star’ or ‘a Star Chef’)

Definition of celebrity: = A person ‘whose image circulates without being attached to their initial

professional role (whether this be actor, presenter, criminal, politician, and so on)’

 To what extent are celebrities created by the media?

Max Weber: a celebrity has ‘an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men’ (quoted in Dyer [1979], p. 35)

Jessica Evans: ‘individuals do not become celebrities as a result of [any] innately alluring or magnetic qualities’; they are the result of a ‘mediated persona’.

• Rise of the image in the twentieth century changed our perceptions of fame.
• ‘Graphic Revolution’ = The rise in mass-produced images. Magazine circulation for example.
• ‘Pseudo-Events’ = Events staged for the main purpose of media coverage. 

A news conference is often held when an organization has an announcement and wants members of the press to get the announcement simultaneously. The in-person events may include interviews, questioning, and show-and-tell.Award ceremonies, red carpet events and celebrity photo opportunities.

Sex tapes when created with the intention of being 'leaked'

Modern celebrity is fabricated; it is a fiction.

Why do celebrities appeal to us?

Through celebrities we can assess what we are permitted to do or have vs. what we desire. 

Celebrities appear to have more access to what is desirable.

Is the image of any star just a representation, rather than a reality, that the media have constructed?

The only things we ‘know’ about any celebrity are mediated by the media.

Richard Dyer proposes that:

A star is an image not a real person.
That is constructed (as any other aspect of fiction is) out of a range of materials (eg advertising, magazines, pseudo events etc as well as films and videos).

3. Why is the public attracted to celebrities?

There are at least three differing components to any celebrity’s persona:

1) The ‘real person’ - the personal identity that pre-exists the public’s perception of that celebrity.

2) The ‘screen presence’ – this is based on the characters or roles that the celebrity plays on screen (action hero, romantic comedian, girl-next-door)

3) The ‘public persona’ - what we come to know about a star or celebrity through newspapers, magazines, etc.

Example: Three Faces of Victoria Beckham

Cause for concern or neurotic wife

Glamorous, Sexy Partner

Happily Expectant Mother

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Task 1: 
Write a short, illustrated essay on the differing components of Miley Cyrus' persona.
Consider:
Miley’s changing appearance and behaviour.
Debates surrounding the role of pop stars and their influence on young people.

See these links.

Jameela Jamil interview

Miley Cyrus Twerking at The MTV VMA's

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Miley Cyrus: Miley Cyrus is known for one genre - Pop, although if we study her work carefully, we discover that she plays and experiments with genre in different and interesting ways. 
New, emerging artists are often pigeonholed into clear, identifiable genres as these are safer to sell to audiences (who can recognise the genre codes to match with their preferences). 
Record labels are less likely to back more experimental artists as they are more of a commercial risk. 

• Cyrus remained fixed in this genre for a while e.g. with 7 Things

• The Climb features lots of country iconography, from the style of her guitar and the shot of her on a horse alongside a man in a cowboy hat. Her appearance had shorn the ‘Barbie’ look and she now appeared more worn and ‘lived in’ – again attempting to fit into the country scene and an older audience, following her Father. 

Cyrus was signed to Hollywood Records (a subsidiary of the Disney Corporation – for whom she had a television contract for performing as Hannah Montana). It was important, therefore, that she have a ‘wholesome’ image that were in line with Disney’s core values. However, when she turned 18, she was able to be marketed as a more adult version of pop. 

• Can’t Be Tamed appeared to feature more dance-beats and the video was more akin to a Beyonce release (including bondage clothing and sexualised dance moves – including pole-dancing on the bars of her cage) than an episode from Hannah Montana. The lyrics were also more adult. a clear move into the adult pop genre. 

Cyrus then took a few years out of the music scene. When she re-emerged, she was keen to shed the Disney image that had dominated her previous career. 

• Her image in videos such as We Can’t Stop and Wrecking Ball show a change in direction for Cyrus’s image. Perhaps because, by this point, she already had an established fan-base, she was able to play with genre codes.

Videos became controversially sexualised – lack of clothing and highly suggestive dance moves and actions (e.g. licking the head of a sledgehammer in Wrecking Ball). Less choreographed dance moves replaced with images of rebellion (e.g. outrageous parties in We Can’t Stop and the punk hairstyle that dominated the cover images on the Bangerz album.

In some ways, her experiments with genre represent what is in vogue at the time and are a form of identifying with rapidly changing fads and styles. It is critical to each record company to continuously find new talents since the life of a 'hit' record is only from 60 to 120 days.

Her move to the image of a more ‘soulful’ musician came complete with an intertextual reference to Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2U music video, where she is shown crying in a close-up (referenced in Wrecking Ball).