[week 5] forum+reflection - what story attracts what type of spectator?

Q: In the reading both Shelley Stamp and Richard Abel demonstrate the ways that spectatorship changes cinema and vice versa. How did series like Les Vampires and The Perils of Pauline challenge gender roles? How did they help establish narrative conventions and codes? 

Unlike the beginning of the cinema which audiences and directors focus more on the "cinema of attraction" when they make films. With the better developing of technique and cinema language and expression. When directors like Louis J. Gasnier start to use cinema as a media to really tell a complicated story, the hook and suspension factors in the early narrative film become very important.

First of all, what people want to see in “nickelodeon” must be something unique and interesting after more and more people figuring out how the media of film works. They will start aiming more intriguing screenplay rather than simple one shot films. As Ben Singer concludes in his article "manhattan nickelodeons", the spectatorship for cinema is closely related to the population density and social class, as well as ethnic identity (130, G&K). The public's daily life inspire the filmmakers and thus reflects on the cinema form and go back big projector screen for the public audience to view. With Amy's background information about Les Vampires on powerpoint, the story of criminal syndicates is inspired by the social situation in France that people are worried about street crime and the Les Apaches. Even though people find the gangs dangerous in real life, when situation is under control and all being set up on stage, they tend to enjoy and study about the tension violent on big screen with security insurance. 

In both Les Vampires and The Perils of Pauline, the famine characters play a relatively special roles in the stories. In Les Vampires, a group of magical thieves disguise themselves as vampires and intrude into people's personal places to steal treasures. The sexy unknown "bat lady" shows her special skills on shooting like climbing on the roof. This type of actions cannot normally being seen in daily life. The character with such a brave and cool personality might intrigue the famine audience to rethink their possibility in real life. Since cinema is such a powerful tool for information spreading and informing. Relating the fiction story into personal life for the spectator must be something that they imagine in spare time. Not to mention at the beginning of the narrative film era, the most popular genre is fairytale. 

My personal favorite film on this week's film list is The Perils of Pauline. Before discuss about how this film attracts the famine spectators from the old time, I can discuss about how this film attract me, this new era modern girl spectator. Firstly, the topic of "lady adventure" can never be old, as I mentioned in zoom meeting, if I need to choose to stay and hide at home or go for an adventure, I will must choose the adventure, because in that way, I will be able to see all the things I never see, meet all the people I never meet. Even though I might feel insecure, I might encounter with bad accidents(like fly away with fire ballon, or being burn down in wood house). But everything seems so fun isn't it? 

Go back to the topic about how did The Perils of Pauline series challenge gender roles. Due to the social construction, female are always the housekeeper rather than adventurer. However, Gasnier decided to show the possibility of woman on big screen, the The Perils of Pauline series brings all the female spectator into a brave journey, which break the imagination and social rules. In the reading "an awful struggle between love and ambition, serial heroines, serial stars and their female fans", Shelley Stamp states that "Serials must always be read against the intertextual field in which they circulated, for such extratextual discourse is fundamental to understanding their address to female audiences encouraged to translate breath-taking screen exploits into characteristics of strong femininity that they might introduce into their own lives" (223, G&K). It is never bad to introduce a different way of living into people's life. The female in real life can decide to also take a trip to travel around the world or get married and stay with the significant partner happily by themselves. If they never know there are other opposability, they won't have a choice. Maybe after they travel for a year, they will actually realized their love to their partner and come back to embrace the happiness anyway!