Films every day thousands of people watch films, but how are they consuming the media? How are they interpreting what they are seeing?

There are two types of consumer the passive consumer and the active consumer. when someone watches a film like saw they can either watch the film and except what they see making them a passive consumer or they can choose to question the drives and reasoning behind the mad “correctional” methods of Jigsaw.

By conducting some research into the audience of the saw films I can see that based on the people I asked most of them are active consumers choosing to actively question the meaning and methods of both the “good” and “bad” characters but one of the biggest factors of being an active or passive consumer is your location and upbringing for example someone who lives in a London would have different life experiences than someone who lives in Manchester just because off the different people and local individual traits.

Another of the key factors that effects someone consuming media is there social upbringing for example for me the police symbol stands for authority, security and law. This is due to the way I have been brought up by my parents and the experiences I have had with the police. On the other hand for someone else the police symbol could stands for oppression, bullying and violence. This is due to their personal experiences with the police and the experiences of their idols and parents.

Once media producers understood that there audience they started to discover that they could use specific techniques on a different consumer for example for passive consumer they could use the hypodermic needle module. The hypodermic needed module is an audience theory focusing on the idea that you can make a passive consumer feel or think what you want for example the media company can make the viewer side  with a character even if their methods are questionable.

 Something else that can sway the opinion and views of the viewer is the fan culture, in the example of the Thor films Loki is a bad guy but the fan culture and “fandom” for Loki makes the viewer change their opinion to side with a character even though what they are doing is deemed wrong.   


Even when questioning a fan of the Thor films and Loki they openly admit that Loki is a bad guy they still choose to side with him, this demonstrates the true power the media producer that they can manipulate the alignment of the audience just by casting the right actor and developing the character in a certain way.