The Perverse Spectator
Although we often talk about movies, we tend to talk about the movies themselves and seldom discuss the act of going to the movies. The ritual of attending films and all of the social practices that go into being a film viewer are seldom consciously addressed in our day-to-day conversations.
So it might be interesting to think about not only our own cultural practices of film viewing but those of other cultures as well. The anthropologist Elizabeth Hahn gives an ethnographic account of a film audience, not in the United States, but in the Polynesian country of Tonga. In her essay The Tongan Tradition of Going to the Movies Hahn looks at the activity of film audiences in a movie theater in the capital of Nuku’alofa. Tongans have a tradition of cinema viewing that dates back to the 1920’s.
Hahn contests the view of “media imperialism” that maintains that the one-way flow of information and images from first world media producers to third world media audiences is a condition strictly of cultural domination. Hahn argues against the media imperialism view that importation of first world media products dominates or destroys indigenous cultures. While not denying the power of first world media systems, Hahn argues for a more nuanced view of global media consumption by looking at the Tongan practice of going to the movies. Hahn reveals how Hollywood films (action films like Rambo reign supreme, but religious films have also been popular) are folded into and experienced within the context of pre-existing Tongan rituals and performance practices. As Hahn notes, “Tongan audiences experience the movies in the larger context of various faiva which are rituals of dance, music, poetry, oratory, and storytelling. Indeed, in the Tongan language, movie entertainment is generally referred to as faiva”.
Until about fifteen years ago “interpreters” or “narrators” were a key figure in Tongan cinema viewing. On one level the “narrator” translated the film’s dialogue and action for the audience. However, his role and performance encompassed much more than that. The narrator also embellished the story of the movie, cracked jokes, and shaped the movie to the local community by relating the film to local people and events. Hahn also observed “narrators” making up their own dialogue for characters. Audience members participated in the “screenings” often talking back to the narrator and with each other. Hahn relates this to the Western practice of movie going which is primarily individualistic and private.
Another way that local Tongan culture affects movie going is the Tongan kinship rule of tapu. Tapu regulates the brother-sister relationship and is one of the most sacred bonds of Tongan kinship. To observe tapu means that brothers and sisters never go to movies together and to do so would mean embarrassment and great disrespect. Tapu is strictly observed in movie going behavior. In fact to strictly follow tapu would mean that a brother and sister could not go to the same theater even separately on the same night. Hahn then describes the changes in these traditions during the mid-80’s; Tongan audiences were beginning to look a little like Western audiences because there is less use of the “narrator”.
If scholars such as Hahn study non-Western modes of cinematic reception and exhibition then it would make sense to apply anthropological methods to U.S. modes of reception and exhibition. Janet Staiger’s Perverse Spectators (2000) contains a series of essays, (“Modes of Reception”, “The Perversity of Spectators: Expanding the History of the Classical Hollywood Cinema” and “Writing the History of American Film Reception”) that radically critiques the textually based theories of cinematic spectatorship and the manner in which it homogenizes the view of film audiences. Staiger’s critique of Screen Theory rests on her practice of historical reception studies and a call for the return to actual audiences in their historical specificity with their diverse modes of reception within varying contexts of exhibition.
Staiger provides an extensive schematization of the practice of film reception. She divides this into, on the one hand, “presumed normative reception activities”, as hypothesized by mainstream cinema studies that include such operations as “identification” (identifying with the protagonist), “focalization” (focusing on the main action within a film) and “narration” (building the plot) and, on the other hand, “beyond normative reception activities” that include “talking to characters” (that is movie characters), “cult involvement” (for example seeing The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) many times in a costume of a character), and “walking out” (an extreme form of aesthetic evaluation that short circuits any conventional notions of identification). Staiger marshals these “extra” cinematic practices to show the limited view of audience reception that Screen theory and mainstream film studies holds.
Staiger’s form of historical reception studies, by directly investigating actual historical audiences, presents all sorts of viewing practices that fall outside the scope of mainstream film studies. Furthermore Staiger asserts the somewhat controversial belief that academic “scholarly” production is similar to intense “fan” production.
Staiger’s main limitation is her focus on the past and her dependence, like most historical reception studies, on historical documentation such as movie reviews, fan letters, and industry writings. Although this research is urgently needed to rewrite the history of cinema and cinematic reception, there must also be a direct investigation of current film audiences using qualitative methods and including some of Staiger’s concepts and insights.
