Les Revenants

"It is essential for a TV programme to simultaneously target both mass and specialized audiences"

Explore this statement regarding Les Revenants

Notes:

Mass audience -

Specialised audience -

- use Mogwai - helps target a cult audience

- polysemy, different scenes received in different ways

however, it is mostly 

reception theory - doesn't have a preferred reading however that could widen the audience

it is not essential

using th

Television 

• Genre codes and conventions 
• Genre theory 
• Genre fluidity
• Camera work - framing and composition shot types, angle, position, movement 
• Lighting and colour
• Editing – pace, type of edits, continuity
• Narrative construction, related to narrative theory
• Sound – dialogue, music
• Mise-en-scene – setting and location, props, costume/dress, hair/make-up 

The way it encodes grief helps reach a mass audience by demonstrating ways in which 

shot reverse shot

lowkey lighting

mundane conversation suddenly reacts 

Answer:

Although Les Revenants is a cult followed show mostly, in which they use such actions as using a subversive but also cult followed band Mogwai in order to target a more niche audience, the way in which the show encodes grief also demonstrates the way in which it is essential to also target mass audiences, that way combating any ideas of preferred reading. Stuart Hall's reception theory gave the idea that every product would have a preferred, oppositional and negotiated reading with every consumption of a media product. However, to target both cult and mass audience, Les Revenant deliberately doesn't follow this pattern to show the differences in readings of grief and the way in which people deal with it.

In one pivotal scene, there are a group of people at what we assume is a meeting, a place where in which people who have lost someone meet and discuss how they are or are not coping. The dark costume of all the characters reflects the atmosphere, accompanied by a low key lighting that made it clear that this was not a happy enviroment. the mis scen cen shows us a bare room with only chairs and the people sat in them. However, when the father of Camille recieves a phone call, there is a shot reverse shot of the mother telling him to come over, surprising the father as he leaves the bland and miserable setting of the room in order to foreshadow how he won't need that grief meeting as his child has returned. 

This shows that although the show relys on a cult audience to understand the complexities of the zombie aspects as well as the other supernatural relationships, that the allegory of the zombies is of grief and how different people deals with it, something that a mass audience can relate to if only at a bare understanding of the concept. What this shows about the lack of preffered reading is that because eveybody reacts to grief and the idea of the return of a loved one differently, there is not a possible idea of what a preffered reading would be as the fundamental theme reflects something that doesn't have a 'preffered' method or a natural way to react. For example, the mass audience may see a man who's struggling to deal with the death of his child and sympathise but also somebody may believe him to be a rude and selfish man who is reacting to other member's grief with spite. This lack of relation to Stuart Hall's theory shows that it subverts classical presentation of media and helps form a cult audience that can appreiocate the complexities of the show that a mass audience couldn't through ideologies.

In another key scene, when Camille's mother goes to the bathroom and Camille asks her for a towel, the disconnect between her and her duaghter is not only symbolic but also presented through the shut door. The mother waits outside, and when Camille opens the door she reacts in shock as if she had just seen a zombie, which fundamentallty she is. When she goes to get her a towel, the mother runs away in panic, but not in the convential way but only to hide the grief she once had for her daughter. Instead of questioning it, she instead hides the memorial and the idea that her daughter has passed away. A mass audience may see a woman who is hiding her death and is trying to just accept her back and is struggling to react, however a more niche audience may believe that the use of the entrapment of the small hall way the mother stumbles towards symbolises the suffocation she feels as she's all alone with someone she hasn't seen in 4 years and the tracking shot not entering the room deomstrates that she has secluded this room to a memory that has now reapeared. 

Using the allegory that the zombies or 'the returned' is a true example of how people deal with grief differently and how the idea of family members coming back would affect the grief that remains there forever creates the idea that although targeting a niche audience is an essential element to present an intellectual reading but also creating an obvious display of human emotion, an emotion that every person experiences intrigues mass aduiences that help subvert the classic perceptions of what preffered readings are.