Yes, its Miley Cyrus.
I believe that Cyrus is a great example of Stuart Hall’s audience reception theory. As active users, Hall believed that the audience attempts to read, interpret and make sense of the media in three different readings.
1)Preferred- the audience enjoys and produce a positive impression on the text.
2)Oppositional - the audience disagrees, rejects the ideas and shows negative opinions.
3)Negotiated - the user has mixed views; understands the good and bad the text highlights.
Similarly, Miley Cyrus in her recent music videos ‘We Cant Stop’ and ‘Wrecking ball’ that reached number 1 in UK charts; has caused huge controversy because of the sheer content within the videos. The video and song ‘Wrecking Ball’ has been taken literally by the video having Miley swinging on a wrecking ball, naked.This raised huge debates on how a video of such content could be created and exhibited to the public, especially with there being no age restrictions.(Watson, 2013)
- Preferred reading:
Some audience will believe that the song and video Miley made is an excellent and genius piece of Pop Art. She grew up in the music industry and became successful; she earned her success and deserves to be number one.
- Oppositional :
Other users will perceive Miley’s music as a rubbish and auto tuned pop. The only reason she became famous and reached number one was because of her explicit and ridiculous music videos and new appearance.
- Negotiated reading:
The audience members will share both arguments. For example, some people honestly admitted that when they heard the music on the radio(the audio attached); they enjoyed it and believed that it was good Pop music . However, the release of the music video created a change in opinions, because it contained inappropriate content without age restrictions.
To conclude, Hall reception theory narrows the active audience model. It presents a respectful version of a reader’s response to mass media.
