Perverse Spectators

Film and television have never been as prevalent or watched than they are now, yet we still have little understanding of how people process and make use of what they see. Though we acknowledge the enormous role the media plays in our culture, we only have a vague sense of how it actually influences our attitudes and desires. In this work, Janet Staiger argues that studying the interpretative methods of spectators within their historical contexts is both possible and necessary to understand the role the media plays in culture and in our personal lives. This analytical approach is applied to topics such as depictions of violence, the role of ratings codes, the horror and suspense genre, historical accuracy in film, and sexual identities, and then demonstrated through works like JFK, The Silence of the Lambs, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, Psycho and A Clockwork Orange. Each chapter shows a different approach to reconstructing audience responses to films, finding traces of what would otherwise appear to be unrecoverable information. Using examples, charting key concepts, and offering syntheses of long-standing debates, this work constitutes a compelling case for a reconsideration of the assumptions about film reception which underlie contemporary scholarship in media studies.