Curiosity is in our blood. Humans enjoy solving problems and finding solutions. We learned through our readings that media audiences actively construct meaning. In this blog entry I want to take that idea further and develop it. Media producers encode the message they want to send and the audience decodes the message and then constructs meaning. The message they interpret may be intended or unintended by the producers of media. However I believe that good media producers are ones that create and code their message in ways that appeal to our curiosity and are relatively harder to decode.
Take for example one of my favorite movies, 'the Matrix.' The directors Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski did a very good job of encoding their message. The whole idea of an alternate reality controlled by machines is very hard to understand. The first time I saw this movie I just could not figure out the story. However after watching it several times and discussing it withj my friends I finally encoded the message the director and story writer were trying to convey and I just loved it. As a matter of fact I believe one of the main reasons why people like the matrix was because it appeared to be so deep and philosophical.
I know you may all not agree but allow yourself to understand and appreciate my point. I will give you more examples. 'Inception' was another movie which was hard to decode and that's why I believe people loved it.
My argument
can also extend beyond just movies. Think about the riddles or deep statements that people make such as ' the purpose of life is a life of purpose.' think about how you feel when you read that and think about why people like reading or listening to those messages.
I hope my thesis ignites comments and opposing views.
Below is a video of the matrix decoded on youtube. There is a reason why people like that scene.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JmJPjUbwNhk&feature=related
I enjoy movies that exercise the possibilities of our reality, and I like this blog entry. I think that viewers live out their subconscious thoughts vicariously through film. If movies did not allow us to stretch our curiosity for the strange and surreal, there would be no point in watching them. The industry that monetized this concept has done so by selling, in essence, a dream.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post.
ReplyDeleteSo effectively your saying these movies are popular because they are a cold message in a hot medium. Both of these movies are some of the few, which require audience interpretation. According to our readings, most movies leave little untold and explain everything clearly to the audience. I agree with you that one of the nicest things about the matrix is how deeply the message is encoded throughout the movie and entire series.