Media Audiences

Most slasher films have young target audience as the older population might not be able to handle the horrific scenes shown. The main target for all slasher films are young people aged 16-25 who mostly belong to E, D and C2 socio- economic group. On the other hand the secondary audience of the film would be the older proportion of the audience who are interested in this particular genre of film. The audience expectations are fulfilled as there is a lot of thrill and psychopathic scenes.

The scheduling, positioning and the certificate given to the text are a good indicator to what target audience the text is being aimed at. Now looking at Texas chainsaw massacre-the beginning it came out in October 2006 and was declared a box office hit in America hence the movie made a lot of money which also indicates that a lot of the younger audience enjoyed the film and it is also possible that the secondary audience which was the older proportion of the population would have seen the film. After being a success in the cinemas the film was released on DVD and TV channels to broaden the viewer ship of the movie and increase the total turnover made by the movie. Although the film could have been even more popular amongst the audience in the UK if it was bought by a national channel to show such as BBC, Channel 4, Channel 5 or ITV. It would be very difficult to measure the exact viewer ship of the film although I have mentioned earlier the turnover made by the movie in US dollars.

There being masses of audience who follow the horror genre, there are bound to be different views hence there will be a number of oppositional and preferred readings of the text and they are likely to be on women. Most arguments linked with this topic will be that women are still being portrayed as sex objects and they have passive roles, this is because in TCM women are shown to be crying and asking for mercy whereas the male characters being in the same position are trying to fight back. The women are portrayed as sex objects and an example of that is shown at the beginning where a character is shown in lingerie.

I personally have seen a lot of slasher films and me being an active audience member I believe that the role of women within this film genre is changing as they are becoming more active and challenging although it could be argued that women have not completely developed as active characters in this genre as there are still some slasher films where women are portrayed as sex objects. My age and the society I live in has a major part to play in my opinion as the media portrays women as sex objects hence the saying “Sex sells”.