Audience

1. Audience

2. Target Audience (think about age, class, gender, education, interests, ethnic background…) • Mode of address - (how the text speaks to the intended audience) • Differential Decoding: – Preferred reading (reading that producer hopes the audience will accept) • Negotiated position – partly agree • Oppositional position (reading that sits in conrast to preferred reading)

3. Who would the Target Audience be? • Older viewers (at 25-55) due to the nature of the disturbing and graphic violence. • Aimed at viewers well past adolescence due to how dark the tale is and since they wouldn’t have much awareness of the film’s historical context. Also no escapist ending that appeases the dark subject matter that a younger viewer would look for and come to expect from more conventional fairytales. • Fans who enjoy the horror elements of Del Toro’s previous work such as; ‘Hellboy’, ‘Mimic’ ‘Blade’ etc. • Probably middle class group of intelligent film-goers who enjoy the cultural and historical backdrop and foreign films. • Art-house type of audience as this would have been screened originally in independent film houses, such as The Glasgow Film Theatre rather the large, big budget co-operations such as ‘Cineworld’ as it is not a box-office blockbuster. (This links to institution)

4. Implications? • Restricted audience. • Profit

5. Making it even more astounding that the film received such success. • Received 22 minutes of applause at Cannes Film Festival

6. Mode of address • Voiceovers by omniscient narrator in places to create feeling that audience are being read a fairytale themselves. • Seen from Ofelia’s point of view therefore audience feel more empathy for young character. • Subtitles.

7. Preferred reading – that fascism is dangerous and oppressive. • Negotiated reading – • Oppositional reading – if someone holds right-wing/ extremist views they may view Vidal as this anti-hero of the text and sympathise with his fate.

8. Encoding and Decoding • We understand the technical codes used by different media because we have learned to read them. • Meaning is ENCODED by the producer of the film and as the audience we DECODE the cultural and technical codes.

9. Problems?

10. Del Toro • Directors establish a fan-base who are attracted to their type of films as they expect them to share similar attributes .

11. War • The backdrop of civil war as the context to the fairytale. • Who do you feel that this would be most likely to attract? • Violence depicted is at times extremely graphic reflecting the fearful circumstances and repression of Franco Spain and in addition the subtext of this complex, historical period would most likely attract a more ‘art-house’ audience.

12. Ofelia • Character of Ofelia – would likely attract women in the age group of 18-35 years who can empathise with her personal struggle on the cusp of puberty and womanhood. • I suppose it is in a sense a coming of age type film.

13. Genre • Audience expectations based upon genre.

14. Complex and daring subtext • Unsettling at times, • Foreign subtitles, • Complex backdrop