Active Audiences (Question 1)

Reading up on Active Audiences was really eye-opening for me, and actually made Chapter 8 my favorite chapter to read so far. I read the prompt for this blog post before I read the chapter and I was like “…I definitely don’t consider myself active when I’m watching television,” because I was picturing those people who like get up and lift weights during commercial breaks and stuff. Honestly, more power to you if you do that. The only action involved when I’m watching TV is usually my hand lifting Doritos to my mouth. But then I read the chapter and realized that you don’t actually have to sweat (or even, like, move at all) to be considered an “active” audience member.

We all engage in interpretive audience activity (textbook definition: part of the process whereby media messages come to mean something to us… how we derive pleasure, comfort, excitement, or a wide range of intellectual or emotional stimulation) with every form of media that we consume, usually without realizing it. You watch TV and you laugh to your favorite sitcom, you play a video game and get really stoked when you make it to the next level, you listen to the radio when you’re stuck in a traffic jam on I-85 and when “7 Years” by Lukas Graham comes on you end up crying in your car and the guy on the motorcycle next to you stops to make sure you’re okay. (Just me? Oh.) Point is, we have some sort of emotional or psychological reaction to every piece of media we consume, which makes us “active” audience members. No gym membership necessary.

Another point I wanted to make in this post was in reference to audiences that are collectively active (textbook definition: when [audiences] organize collectively to make formal demands on media producers or regulators). I’ve been seeing a great (and ongoing) example of this all over my social media lately in regards to the show The 100. I have never seen this show. I haven’t even the slightest idea what it’s about. But the people that I follow in social media have been up in arms over the death of an LGBT character on the show, calling out the writers and producers for isolating and cutting off their LGBT viewers. The fact that I know so much about it and had never even heard of the show prior to the episode in question says enough about how intense the audience reaction was. I’ve never seen anything like it. The closest thing I can remember is the general outcry of despair over the death of a main character on the last season of Grey’s Anatomy, and that was nowhere near as politically charged as this. This article goes more into detail about the intense fan reaction and backlash, and also touches on the stigma surrounding LGBT deaths on daytime television (but beware of spoilers before you click it). It’s an interesting read, and it made me think that while media does have an effect on us, as active audiences, we can also have quite a profound effect on media.