viewer to viewer relationship within a cinematic experience was something that I had not refelcted upon, though I had definitely been affected by it before.
I remember when I watched parasite with my mom at the movie theater when it first came out. I had definitely felt a level of awe by entering the room full of American (mostly white), when it was a Korean movie being aired. As two Koreans in Indiana, watching a a Korean movie get aired in an American theater + watching a Korean movie with American people felt very shocking, where as this would’ve been normal if we were watching the Movie in Korea. I felt like a part of this group, yet I also felt ailenated (which was a weird feeling, since I was watching a Korean movie, and I largely identify myself as Korean) because we were visibly the only East Asian viewers in the theater. I had felt a sense of stress and uneasiness in this situation. I had kept asking myself, “would these people understand the cultural, historical, societal context of this Korean movie? How would the language barrier work?”
I definitely feel like I would’ve experienced the movie differently if I was in Korea, watching the movie with a large group of Koreans born in Korea.
As the movie went on, the sex scene definitely felt a little weird to watch with my mom. In our family (and largely in our culture), sexual topics were almost taboo and were not openly discussed. Therefore, watching a sex scene with my mom made me focus more on my mom, not the movie. I kept thinking to myself, ‘is mom as uncomfortable as I am?’
Reading this chapter helped me isolate the different types of variables of the viewers that might contribute to the Audience Effect:
- race
- history
- culture
- relationships within the audiences – strangers, friends, family, significant others, etc..
- space (where you are located within the movie theater — front, middle or back?)
- gender
though this list is by no means a complete list of attributes, these points were interesting to reflect upon.
Furthermore, I really thought the concept of “anonymous others” (page 20) was an interesting concept: some examples of anonymous others is when one watches a film “in (semi-)public spaces such as trains, buses, or airplanes. These co-present otherse hae effects on the film expereince as well.”
The inclusion of “anonymous others” in the definition of audience definitely widened my perspective on what may count as a ‘movie theater’ and who counts as being part of a cinematic experience. I now see that the person next to me in the train who is watching my screen very obviously mayt be part of the ‘audience’ to my cinematic experience. I had always percieved this person as an intruder of my experience, but upon the realization that there is the ‘anonymous others,’ I seem to be more welcoming of this person to my experience.
Lastly, I was slightly confused on the difference between “an epistemic and ontological” definition of the word “subjective” that was explained on page 15.