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The cultural context of media interpretation 331

distant, as opposed to involved (or ‘referential’), of the groups examined – it
was simply not a programme that they watched. Furthermore, it did not fit with
the conventions of Japanese own locally produced ‘doramas’. The Japanese did
appreciate the aesthetic form of the programme – yet it did not appeal to them.
Thus, in terms of an active audience approach, we should expect that the Rus-
sian viewers of The Rich Also Cry would differ in their interpretation of the pro-
gramme in comparison to its original Mexican audience.
An active audience may have different interpretations of a programme but do
they also gain different enjoyment from it? The ‘uses and gratifications approach’
(McQuaill 2001) proposes four reasons for a viewer choosing to watch a televi-
sion programme: a need to find out what is happening around us, as a reference for
our own sense of identity, as a form of relationship (with characters on the televi-
sion), and as entertainment (diversion). Livingstone (1989) in her analysis of
viewers of the British soap opera Coronation Street, found escapist entertainment
was the major reason for watching and that four separate groups of viewers could
be identified through the way they interpreted the characters’ actions and moti-
vations. These were linked to the viewers’ relationships to the characters in the
programme (through their experience of watching the programme) as well as fac-
tors such as age and gender. Livingstone (1990) draws on the proposal by New-
comb and Hirsh (1984) that television provides a ‘cultural forum’ – it is rich and
complex and open to differences in interpretation. Yet the enjoyment of the pro-
gramme can be both from the ‘reality’ of it (we can make references to our own
lives) and the ‘unreality’ of it (it is exciting and glamorous).
In her work on the soap opera Dallas, Ang (1985) examined the written re-
sponses from Dutch viewers of the programme. The enjoyment these women
viewers found in the programme was not its representation of American life as
such but the pleasure in the wealth of the characters, the style of the programme,
the luxury in the clothes, the cars and houses – all as features of melodrama. It
was not the capitalist values that were presented within the programme (which
personally the viewers may have opposed) but the dramatic playing out of the
problems of the rich family at the centre that appealed to the viewers. The pro-
gramme had an appeal as fantasy and as melodrama that led to an emotional en-
joyment of it. Interestingly, her research led her to argue that television pro-
grammes should not be seen as presenting a dominant meaning (as would be
argued from a ‘cultural imperialism’ stand-point) with a possible oppositional
reading by the viewer. For Ang (1985) the ‘effect’ of the programme was much
more ‘local’ and cultural (see also Ang 1990a) and hence more complex.
There has been some debate concerning the nature of the ‘active audience’
in its freedom of choice in constructing meanings (Morley 1993). The power of
the media organizations which produce and distribute the programmes (produc-
ing their dominant meanings) is greater than that of the audience in interpreting
and reinterpreting those messages (Morley 1993; Ang 1990b). Whilst the ‘ac-