Page 115 - Cultural Change and Ordinary Life

106 Cultural change and ordinary life

have been drawn on in the spectacle/performance paradigm). Defining her
topic in a broad way, Staiger uses the terms ‘spectator, reader, viewer and audi-
ence interchangeably’ (p. 3). While there are a number of specific theories
that ‘reception’ research draws on, Staiger identifies three broad lines of psy-
chological work: behaviourism, psychoanalysis and cognitive psychology
(pp. 4–6). Behaviourism has been influential on the earlier days of audience
research (see the discussion in Audiences), but its models of direct media effects
on individuals are now little discussed in academic research. Psychoanalytical
forms of research have been of particular influence in the study of film and
cinema, where discussions of the construction or interpellation of the spec-
tator by filmic texts have been much explored. Cognitive and more social
forms of psychology have been of influence on more contemporary audience
research, for example, on work on British continuous serials (Livingstone
1990). An emphasis in this kind of work is on how ‘individuals develop sche-
mata (mental scripts, frameworks, prototypes, templates) from social experi-
ence’ (p. 6). Staiger identifies two broad types of social theory: functionalism
and conflict theory. The differences between these social theories are well
known. The former concentrates on issues of integration and the function of
particular phenomena in contributing to forms of consensus; the latter on
conflict and dispute. Somewhat paradoxically, both can end up with a focus
on how the media influence audiences towards a form of consensus, either
‘real’ or ‘imposed’ in some sense.
Staiger’s account of fandom draws heavily on Henry Jenkins (1992).
Jenkins identified five processes of fan activity (see Abercrombie and Longhurst
1998: 126), which can be summarized in the ideas that fans are ‘skilled or
competent in different mode of production and consumption; active in their
interaction with texts and in their production of new texts; and communal in
that they construct different communities based on their links to the pro-
grammes they like’ (Abercrombie and Longhurst 1998: 127). To this approach,
Staiger adds a point that is of significance for the argument of this book. This is
that fans’ ‘partialities’ are extended into ‘everyday living’. These might involve
collecting, naming children after favourite characters, visiting spaces and
places associated with the object of fan investment, and so on.
The sorts of theory that are identified by Staiger as of general importance
to audiences are applicable to fans. However, as she argues, explanations often
draw on several different streams of explanation. This is important as:
The variety of explanations for fan behavior is exciting, for the variety
of behaviors is also wide. Fans display interpretations and effects (activ-
ities) in their most observable form. While the phenomenon of fan-
dom exceeds the typical, likely it points toward the more silent spectator
– although probably almost everyone has been a fan in some way.
(Staiger 2005: 114)
These ideas can be further explored through a concrete example. At the
end of Audiences (Abercrombie and Longhurst 1998), we conducted a brief
examination of how contemporary football could be explored in the context
of the idea of the diffused audience and the SPP. Aspects of this analysis have
impacted on subsequent and far more detailed and sophisticated analyses of