A Comparability Between The Nationwide Audience (1980) And Watching Dallas Soap Opera And The Melodramic (1985)

By John Tan 

The Nationwide Audience (1980) by Professor David Morley is a research project that focuses on studying the encoding/decoding model theory devised by Stuart Hall. (2005, p. 69)  Whereas Ien Ang’s study, Watching Dallas Soap Opera and the Melodramic (1985) analyses the reception of the popular soap opera, Dallas to understand the politics of pleasure. (2007, p. 2). The rationality behind choosing these two research is due to its relevance to this day. However, since both studies were conducted at different times, this essay will explore the similarities and differences found in both studies in the aspect of the methodologies, theories, and findings. Ultimately, a verdict will be made to conclude which study provides the most valuable finding.  

Methodology

As mentioned above, Morley’s project intends to study the encoding/decoding model theory developed by Hall, which explores the ways how definitions of media texts can change according to their circumstances of production and consumption. (2005, p. 69). Thus, Morley conducted a study at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, University of Birmingham which consists of two stages. The first stage involved Morley analysing Nationwide’s (a popular BBC news programme) method of approaching its audience and its forms of textual organization. The second stage involved him exploring how individuals from different social backgrounds interpret a programmed material. (2005, p. 69) Morley’s main concern for this study was “with the extent to which individual interpretation of programmes could be shown to vary according to socio-cultural background” (1981, p 56).

Therefore, Morley gathered 29 small groups of individuals from various social backgrounds, ranging from students, bankers to print management trainees and grouped them according to their socio-background. He also interviewed them regarding their interpretation of two Nationwide’s programme that was shown to them. The interview lasted for 30 minutes and their responses were then transcribed to act as the basic data for the analysis. (2005, p 84). 

                                         The cast of the popular show opera, Dallas 

Ang, on the other hand, was interested in understanding the fascination people had with popular soap opera, Dallas. She was also interested in intervening in the then debate about the ‘cultural imperialism’ of American television shows as well as take a stand against the often denigrating views of popular cultures and its users. (2007, p 2-4) Hence, Ang carried out the research by initiating a survey, placing an advertisement in a Dutch women’s magazine, Viva asking readers to answer the following question:

“I like watching Dallas, but often get odd reactions to it. Would anyone like to write and tell me why you like watching it too, or dislike it? I would like to assimilate these reactions in my university thesis.” In return, Ang received 42 replies that included responses from 3 men and 39 women. (1985, p 10) 

The similarities are obvious in both studies. Both studies focus on popular culture and are political. In Nationwide, Morley broadcast two programmes from BBC (a popular news programme) while in Watching Dallas, Ang analyses the popular soap opera, Dallas. In spite of the programme creators’ self- belittling comments, Morley still chose Nationwide as his research focus because he believed that it plays an important ideological role in the process of communication. (2005, p. 75) Whereas, Ang chose Watching Dallas due to its popularity, issues regarding pleasure and vicissitudes, its relations with ideology and cultural politics. (1985, viii) Both are deemed political because the responses regarding the texts shown are influenced by factors such as ethnicity, gender, political views and working class. The response pattern varies based on the factors mentioned. For instance, in Nationwide, Bank Managers who were white males and had predominantly ‘traditional’ conservative political views, hardly commented on the programme’s content.

They found it transparent and uncontroversial as if they shared the assumptions of Nationwide. (2005, p. 104) In contrast to the Black Further Education Students from inner city working- class, found no sense of identification with the programme. Instead rejected the ‘descriptions’ of their life portrayed by Nationwide. The idea of family life is inappropriate to them as that offered in a ‘Peter and Jane’ reading scheme. (2005, p. 107) While in Watching Dallas, the factor of gender plays a role in determining their responses. Even though most of the subjects were females, Ang highlights that most females loved the show due to its intense plot. (2007, p.5)

As for the differences, Morley reached out to his subjects directly by interviewing and observing them. Whereas Ang, used a local magazine as a medium to reach her subjects. Besides that, Morley worked with groups rather than individuals because he believed “much individually based interview research is flawed by a focus on individuals as social atoms divorced from their social context”. (1980, p. 33) Ang worked with individuals on a more personal and interactive (dialogic) approach, in tune with ethnographic work. 

Theories

According to Moores (2005, p. 109), Morley utilized Stuart Hall’s points on as the premise for the project. This means the premises on which this approach is based are:

(a)   The same event can be encoded in more than one way

(b)   The message always contains more than one potential ‘reading’. Messages propose and prefer certain readings over others, but they can never become wholly closed around one reading: they remain polysemic.

(c)    Understanding the message is also a problematic practice, however transparent and ‘natural’ it may seem. Messages encoded one way can always be read in a different way

In addition to that, Morley expanded Frank Parkin’s theory on how members of a different social class within a society inhabit a different ‘meaning-systems’ or ideological frameworks. (Parkin, 1971) Parkin categories are:

1.      The dominant value system

“The social source of which is the major institutional order; this is a moral framework which promotes the endorsement of existing inequality, in deferential terms”

2.      The subordinate value system

“The social source or generating milieu of which is the local working-class community; this framework promotes accommodative responses to the facts of inequality and low status”

3.      The radical value-system

“The radical value-system, the source of which is the mass political party based on the working class; this framework promotes an oppositional interpretation of class inequalities.”

His purpose of using this theory was to explain how members of different class decode media messages. Hence, he expanded this theory and applied it in the aspect of audience research by outlining three hypo ethical positions that the readers will occupy which are Dominant, Negotiated and Oppositional reading. (2005, p. 86)

1.      Dominant reading

The reader fully accepts the decoded meaning of the text.

2.      Negotiated reading

The reader shares the programme’s code and broadly accepts the preferred reading but modifies it according to their interests/position.

3.      Oppositional reading

The reader objects the preferred reading and offers an alternate interpretation.

Gilroy (2015) pointed out that Ang also used Hall’s points on the Encoding/Decoding model into her project. Since Ang thought the notion that audiences are active and are able to construct different meanings from soap operas has since been understood, she focused on investigating precisely how audiences make sense of the soap operas they were watching, in which contexts, and with what kinds of social and cultural implications. (2007, p. 4-5) Henceforward, Ang starts the research with a sense of association with her subjects and an openness to what loving or hating Dallas meant to them. 

Findings

By the end of Morley’s research, he learned that decoding cannot be reduced to social determinism. He figured that it was too simplistic to describe the audience’s response to media within the prescribed categories of dominant, negotiated and oppositional readings. This is because even within the same readings, there were differences in interpreting contexts and materials.  Therefore, he concludes by stating the need to expand Parkin’s schema of meaning-systems to develop a more refined model of the audience before it can provide a solid framework for accommodating all the related sub-divisions and differentiation within the basic code patterns.  (2005, p. 110)

Ang, on the other hand, discovered the pleasures viewers obtained while/after watching Dallas. She asserted that despite its unrealistic nature, viewers had a ‘more or less unique relationship to the programme’. One type of viewer loved the show due to its emotional realism which articulated concerns and emotional states experienced by them, albeit in a melodramatic form. Another type of viewer reported they gained pleasure from an ironic viewing of the programme, distancing themselves from the text and any supposed ideological content. (2007, p. 5)  

Conclusion

Ang’s Watching Dallas played a crucial role in feminism by portraying women at that time in a better light as women who enjoyed the show were ridiculed as stupid masses and feminised. As a result of this, most of the women felt guilty of their own viewing pleasure and had an uneasy awareness that in the dominant social hierarchy of value theirs was a lowly pleasure. Hence, Ang’s findings criticised the ideological work of distinction that supported this social hierarchy by emphasising the multiplicity of methods in which the show was given meaning by different viewers. (2007, p. 4)

Having said that, it is fair to conclude this essay by acknowledging Morley’s Nationwide research as a better study as it offers a more valuable finding that applies to both genders and individuals of all ages. This is because Morley’s findings helped paved the way forward for qualitative audience research by introducing a new approach, audience ethnography that seeks to “study media and audience relationship within an integrative framework of discourses through which media and audiences are formed.”

It employs the method of ‘interpretative content analysis’ which is carried out by reader-response theories within cultural studies traditions and then compares it with the empirical data regarding the audiences which are done through in-depth interviews and participants observations. Eventually, this approach helped prompt the feminist movement because many of these studies focused on women’s readings of popular texts as their object of study. Media texts that were considered less of worth for example romance novels (Radway, 1987), teen magazines (McRobbie, 1982) and soap operas (Modleski, 1984; Geraghty, 1991) were then taken seriously within an academic study. The focus of these studies was not about the content but about how and why the audience read it. (Brooker and Jermyn, 2003, p. 213).

References

Ang, Ien (1985) Watching Dallas Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination. London and New York.

Ang, Ien (2007) Television Fictions Around the World: Melodrama and Irony in Global Perspective. University of Western Sydney

CHAPTER-II Media Studies and Audience Research: A Review [Online] Available from: http://shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in/bitstream/10603/26088/10/10_chapter%202.pdf

Chapter 3: Understanding Audiences [Online] Available from http://www.artlab.org.uk/fatimah-awan-04.pdf [accessed 23/11/2017]

Gilroy, Amanda (2015) Watching Dallas again 1: Doing retro audience research. University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands

Moores, S. (2005) Media/Theory: Thinking about Media and Communications. Milton: Taylor & Francis. 

Morley, David (2005) Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies. London Routledge

Morley, David (1980): The 'Nationwide' Audience: Structure and Decoding. London: BFI

Morley, D. (1981) Interpreting Television. In Popular Culture and Everyday Life, Milton Keynes: Open University Press