With multiple pay per view streaming channels popping up and television and film both being on demand and repeated or be downloaded infinitum, the contemporary viewer has never had so much control over the content they can watch. For decades, the vast majority of television viewers were at the mercy of channel schedules. In the case of publicly funded broadcaster, the BBC, they would watch mostly in the knowledge the station was trying to please everyone so a certain degree of compromise was required. Meanwhile commercial broadcasters, arguably more populist and mainstream (some might argue consistently lower browed) crowbarred advert breaks into their schedules so the programmes were shorter and interrupted. Therefore, patience from the viewer was required.
If we look at the television drama genre, serials for instance, the makers knew they had a reasonable amount of artistic freedom. There were time constraints and pre or post watershed rules to live by but otherwise they were able to enjoy latitude.
In his 1967 essay The Death of the Author, French literary critic Roland Barthes argued that the author’s role in producing a text must not overshadow it. To do so, Barthes wrote, was “to impose a limit on that text”. Similarly, Reader Response literary theory – which Barthes also contributed to – focused on the importance of the reader over the author. To summarise, the author’s role is supposedly redundant once the text has been completed.
The film maker’s ability to have autonomy over the process has gone. It arguably had if one subscribes to Reader Response theory, yet the film maker had more control than a writer. A writer can describe a character or a situation; they can lead a reader to a great extent but it is the cognitive process of the reader that fills in the blanks on the page the writer can never quite control. The relationship is almost complementary. But with the different medium of film or television, less blanks exist so the viewer is doing less work. If a writer only briefly describes their protagonist’s appearance, the reader can imagine they have unkempt blonde hair and stubble. If the film maker puts the same character on screen and they are bald, the viewer has no interpretative wriggle room.
While television series and films are formatted differently, the makers have historically been the ring masters for the audience. In television serials, cliff hanger endings are commonplace for dramatic purposes yet also to keep the viewer coming back for more the next week. The manipulation of the audience whereby the “cliff hanger” ending sparks their intrigue about what might come next so that they tune in seven days later.
This suspense has now, in keeping with society in general, become a short-term issue. The viewer can satisfy their intrigue and curiosity almost immediately given that television series are available as a block and accessible in one go. They are now “on demand”. The days of waiting a week to see what unfolds are long gone.
Therefore, the impact has been lessened. There is less time to ponder what an outcome might be, why that is and what the other consequences are. Given these are concerns surrounding Reader Response theory, one might think that it is the audience experience that is changing, not that of the creator. This is true although the opportunity for the creator – the author if you will – has been blunted. They are now no longer able to manipulate their audience because the suspense has been shortened. There is also another aspect to consider.
From a cognitive perspective, when one is left to dwell on information – a plot twist for example – it passes from the short-term memory to the long-term memory thus having a more profound affect. The drama, the text, the characterisation and, in summary, the art resonates more. If the viewer is able to move onto the next episode immediately afterwards, the affect is watered down. As their questions are answered within moments, they move on having consumed the content and disposed of it much faster. It’s a less memorable perhaps even forgotten experience.
One might argue that this removes some pressure from the creator as there is not the build-up nor the hype to live up to. Maybe, but that is to the detriment of the content. Conversely it means the creator cannot manipulate the audience as efficiently. They struggle to get under the proverbial skin.
Similar happens with films. They are gradually, as with Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman, becoming available online for streaming as opposed to being primarily viewed in the traditional surroundings of the cinema. Because they are streamed, the audience now dictates how and at what rate the film is watched. The content is at the mercy of the viewer, their patience and their circumstances.
As with the viewer choosing to binge on television dramas, in the longer film format they might decide to break it up into smaller portions. Films are, of course, not designed for this and the film makers would create it with the expectation it is watched in one sitting. But the power is with the viewer who can watch it however they like. Two-hour long movies are now first watched not in the cinema but in instalments, interrupted and therefore the flow and thread intended by the film maker and editors is disrupted. Nuances might be lost, clues going unnoticed or overlooked.
Worse still, the sheer disposability of new media means that the viewer might not grant the film the time and attention it deserves, even breaking off from watching it for extended periods or not proceeding after one of those instalments. The film maker cannot pre-empt this as a television dramatist would because the content is fluid.
Now one might say that the movie has been in such a position since the home video player – followed by the DVD equivalent – was made widely available but with consumers now watching on the move using tablets and phones, the dynamic is even more weighted in favour of the viewer. They can pause, repeat or fast forward at their leisure thus taking control of the material.
Whereas the film used to be a carefully edited set of scenes projecting the artistic vision of the film maker, it is now footage that the maker must toil with in the sad knowledge that the viewer may never properly comprehend that vision and therefore the perception and evaluation of that work is not something they can influence as they once did. Their role as the ring master is now reduced to merely booking the circus acts and sending them out one by one.
What this threatens is that the film might evolve from a lovingly and patiently made risotto into a pasta tray bake.
Consider the Sam Mendes movie 1917. It unusually but innovatively uses a one-shot technique throughout. This method, used by Orson Welles and beloved by Brian De Palma, is employed to give the viewer an omnipresent feeling while building tension. Such a reaction is lost if interrupted.
Or look at Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction which has a non-lineal structure. If paused or delayed, suddenly it might make less sense. But most of all there is Michael Cimino’s masterpiece The Deer Hunter. It is notoriously a slow burner and one senses the now disposable nature of film streaming would condemn it to rarely being watched all the way through.
One worries that film makers might dispense with patience and subtlety in their craft if they perceive the audience to be impatient or fickle. A brash and heavy-handed style of film making might emerge where the material has to feed the short attention span of the viewer. Ironic given that technology once enabled cinematic drama but now is curtailing it as an art form.
Athon 