Critical Review of Personal Film Spectatorship - Spectator Position

Spectator Position can be a huge contributing factor to the way we respond to a film text. Spectator position can be seen as a literal thing; so that could be where we are when viewing the film, who we are with and what we are doing. All these things can make a huge difference to how we receive the movie. When I first watched the movie Mean Girls, I was at a friend's house for a sleepover. We wanted to put something on that wasn't too serious and that we could watch and understand without too much concentration as we knew that it was more than likely that we would talk during the movie. Unlike the others who had seen the film several times before, I stayed quiet for most of the film as I didn't have much to say about the characters because I was still learning about them as I watched. However, thanks to my friends, I knew all about the main characters (who was 'good' and who was 'bad') even before the movie had shown it. I would usually have found it quite irritating to have people telling me about the characters rather than allowing me to figure out their personalities for myself but with Mean Girls, the characteristics of each person are so hugely amplified and exaggerated anyway that it was obvious.

We could also look at our spectator position in terms of who we are as individuals and the expectations we already have of the film we are going to watch. For example, I was already a fan of Lindsay Lohan before I viewed Mean Girls because I'd enjoyed her performances in other films (the Parent Trap is one of my favourite movies of all time). So this alone had already enhanced my expectancy as I already had positive ideas about it because of the lead actress. In addition, the fact that I myself was a high school student when I first watched the movie, I feel, made a huge impact on the way I received it. As a year 7 pupil, I had just started high school myself that year so I could relate to the protagonist Cady and her worries about school life. However, at such a young age there were also a number of themes in the movie that I didn't completely understand and therefore a lot of jokes and quips to do with some these topics went straight over my head. The Sex Education scenes for example; now they are some of my favourite scenes, but when I first saw the movie I didn't really understand the humour behind them. This is one example of how age can really contribute or negate your viewing experience as a spectator.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N47aKq7uxa8 (the full scene - slightly longer)


It's 5 years later and I still enjoy Mean Girls every time I watch it just as much as the first time I saw it even though my spectator position has changed. I am older now and I am now more aware of the jokes and hidden meanings behind some of the lines in the text. Sometimes I watch the movie by myself on my iPad when I'm on long journeys and want something humorous to view. American film director David Lynch believes that a spectator cannot experience the entire viewing pleasures of a movie if they do not go and see it in a cinema and instead watch the movie on there phone.

"It's sad that people think they've watched a movie but they haven't" - David Lynch

 I understand his point of view on this topic and I do think that in some cases viewing a movie on a handheld device such as a mobile phone definitely does detract from the viewing experience. For example, films that demand an emotional response or films which rely heavily on graphics or high quality visual effects cannot be viewed properly on such small screens - the necessary atmosphere cannot be created this way. But in the case of a film such as Mean Girls, I disagree. Once you've watched Mean Girls the first time on a big screen (whether that be in the cinema or on a television), I do not think that it is detracting at all from the viewing pleasure of the spectator if they were then to watch it again for a second, third, fourth even fifth time on a smaller screen such as on a mobile phone or iPad. Mean Girls is a comedy and most of the pleasure being received from it comes from the actual script itself; the comical jokes and witty one-liners. The size of the screen is not an issue for me and I don't believe that it would be a huge deterrence for most.

So that's the case for when I am watching the movie alone, but more often than not, I watch the film with my friends and when I do it is usually on a television. Now that we have all seen the movie so many times, most of our pleasure comes from experiencing the film as a group. We quote memorable lines from each scene to each other and sometimes try to match ourselves to different characters by identifying shared traits that some of us have, and therefore showing an active response to the movie. Now that we are all older high school students, we can relate a lot more to some of the themes in the film text, such as bullying, underage drinking and weight issues, that we maybe couldn't really before. My spectator position has changed since the first time I viewed Mean Girls but I feel that this has only increased my viewing experience when watching the film.