Winter's Bone Christmas Essay

How far does the knowledge of the production process encourage a constant shift between passive and active spectatorship? (829 Words)

Independent films are very different from the main stream films that we see in day-to-day life. For example, Marvel films would be classified as mainstream as they attract a huge audience from all around the world and are made to create profit, whereas independent films are made to convey certain messages and ideas, ones that people might think are abstract or different from normal life. They often do not have a huge budget to create the film, and will use non-actors because it’s cheaper and can be used to convey a sense of realism within the film.

‘Winter’s Bone’ does just this; because it is an independent film, there are a lot of people within the film who are actually not actors at all, and instead they just live in a community like that, out in the middle of nowhere with no real communication to the rest of the world. The film, made in 2010 by production company ‘Anonymous Content’, seeks realism as it doesn’t want the audience to be drawn into this fantasy land, but instead they show the brutal truth and reality of living in the Ozarks.

An important scene that actually reflects the entire movie is in fact the very opening scene. It immediately establishes the location of where this film is set with an establishing shot, showing a very dark and grey day with a large field and trees with no leaves on them. A soft, non-diegetic soundtrack of a woman singing then begins in the background while it shows the audience more of the location, including the type of houses that these people live in and the forests that surround them. In order to watch a film like ‘Winter’s Bone’, you really have to watch it actively and figure things out for yourself because the film itself will not tell you, but just hint. This ties in with the theory of the ‘Active Spectator’, in which it suggests that we as the audience do not just sit and watch the film, but we encode and decode everything that we see on screen, creating our own ideas and thoughts about the film and then go on to discuss reviews and talk about the film after viewing it. Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory really focuses on this as he says that there are three different readings that an audience can have; preferred, negotiated and oppositional. It can be argued that there is a fourth one, the aberrant reading, in which a person makes a wrong interpretation of a media product whose incoming message was not actually intended by the creator. Overall, however, a lot of people will not like independent films as they do have to be constantly active to understand what is happening, this is why independent films have a niche audience. They almost act as documentaries, especially ‘Winter’s Bone’ as it shows the audience what life is like in the Ozark and how different it is compared to life in a big city. Passive audiences will instead prefer films such as ‘Spiderman’ or ‘The Avengers’ for example, as the messages they give out are very simple and easy to follow; in addition, they also have clear characterisation so you know who is who from the very beginning of the film.

Going back to ‘Winter’s Bone’, the realism really comes from every element of the film. The cinematography and editing is very simple, with no over exaggerated CGI (Computer-generated imagery) or elegant transitions to the next scene. Instead, there is really only very quick cuts from scene to scene, which either show a different situation happening, a different location or both. Another element is that of the mise-en-scene. This plays a huge part in the film as it creates the entire atmosphere, the boundless fields and overwhelming forests shows how isolated the community really is, and so we as the audience also get this sense that we are also isolated from any real communication in the world. The houses, machinery and way of life is also very old-fashioned and so as the rest of the world has progressed and changed, they’ve stayed very much the same. The same could be said about their values, as the men really do run the entire community and the women are essentially there to please the man and have children. It’s an extremely old-fashioned way of thinking.

In conclusion, ‘Winter’s Bone’ really reflects what it is like in the Ozarks and how their way of life is. An active audience will enjoy the film more, whereas a passive audience will not due to the fact that they would have to encode and decode a lot of the film for them to understand it. Those who like Marvel films or any mainstream films for that matter will most likely not understand ‘Winter’s Bone’ and will not be able to appreciate it as much.