![]() My roommates and I have a tradition - we pick a show to watch together and spend at least one evening per week enjoying it. This aligns closely with the uses and gratification theory which states that people consciously consume media for their own goals, processing its messages in ways that fit their lives. Further, the theory views media as a way to escape reality, get information and build interpersonal relationships. Those are the goals of our movie/TV show nights as well. They help us relax after a busy week, give us topics and information to analyze and discuss and provide a pleasant bonding activity. This week I will look into the latest show we started – Wanda Vision, which is currently streaming on Disney+. It is a show that is happening in the Marvel universe, as a continuation of Avengers: End Game. The general premise of the story is that Wanda and Vision are a couple with supernatural abilities that is trying to fit as a “normal” couple in their new suburban life. The different episodes are snapshots of their everyday life and the strange, yet very comical situations they have to face. It is a show that easily lends itself to a number of critical analysis lens, but today I’ll explore how reception analysis can be applied to it. Reception analysis incorporates a number of theories that maintain that the source of the meaning of a message is the audience and their interpretation of it. There is a very strong emphasis on the concept of active audience that applies their categories, social systems and experiences to the media content they consume. This is easily seen in Wanda Vision. As a part of the grander Avengers plotline, it’s a show that has an established fan base, an audience that has certain understandings and categories when it comes to the franchise. This means that the audience already has specific categories in mind when interpreting the show. Something that, in my case led to a number of times when we had to pause the show to either ask one another what is happening or to share our “Eureka” moments when we managed to figure out where the story was going. Those factors, combined with the clever agenda setting and framing of the episodes, make Wanda Vision an easily bingeable program. Because of the prior expectations the audience has when starting the show, the way the first few episodes were framed (as typical sitcoms from the 50s, the 60s and the 70s) seemed incongruent with the typical interpretation of the story line. This promoted further viewing to receive more information that could help us (the audience) fit the messages to our understandings. Then, once we got to episode four, the agenda-setting of the makers shone through – the previous episodes had very long credits in a style that was inconsistent with the content shown. While the show was old-fashioned, romantic comedy in black and white, the credits were very colorful, showing advanced technology and hinting of action. Once we got to episode four, however, we managed to figure out that the credits were a way to set up the reveal of the main storyline of the show – the creators crafted an ambiguous message through those credits, getting the audience to think about the general premise of what the Avengers are, while letting the viewers come to their own conclusions about what that message means.
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AuthorMaggie Zlatanova Archives
May 2021
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