Audience Agency Research Articles

Isaiah 56:9–59:21 and the Pursuit of שלום

Abstract Isaiah 56:9–59:21 is a carefully constructed unit with a coherent rhetorical agenda. By reinvigorating traditional prophetic literary materials, it aims to reform some traditional practices, revitalize social structures, and point toward a conception of שלום as the product of Yhwh’s action. The unit serves the larger construction of Isaiah 56–66 as a whole. It may be read as an attempt to reimagine the world without Persian rule while not identifying that rule as a sort of given against which it must define itself. That complex approach to persuasion and audience agency shows a level of creativity not always associated with this text.

Novelty, disappointment, and nostalgia in the cinema-going experience in Saltillo, México during the 1980s

In the 1980s, in Saltillo, Mexico, amid the economic transformations experienced by the city, new cinema halls emerged. These new venues were more functional and commercial, unlike the luxurious palatial theaters of previous decades. Through in-depth interviews, we explored the public’s perception of these cinemas. Our findings revealed that this perception shifted from enthusiasm and nostalgia to disappointment due to the economic and cultural transformation of these venues. It can be concluded that changes in exhibition and management policies led to a reduction in audience agency and freedom in the cinematic experience.

Renegotiating Jia Zhangke’s Contestious Auteurism on Douban

Abstract This article focuses on sixth-generation mainland Chinese auteur Jia Zhangke and examines how his independent filmmaker’s profile is renegotiated and reevaluated on Douban, a China-based platform for cultural commentary. Whereas Douban allows viewers to rate a film, post a review of any length, and comment on other posts, it manifests a self-censoring tendency with sustained state control. Examining in Jia’s contentious auteurism through a “post-independent’ lens, this article recounts how Douban users approach and interpret Jia’s more recent titles such as Ash Is Purest White (2018) and Swimming Out till the Sea Turns Blue (2020) that pose a question of whether Jia’s auteurism is perpetuated. The account extends to the controversies surrounding Jia’s departure from and re-entry to the independently-run, government-supported Pingyao International Film Festival, which took place in 2020 and 2021 and have further perplexed his established brand. Contextualizing Jia’s Douban-represented authorial identity in China’s platform-based cultural production, this analysis unravels the intricate dynamics of market logic, state governance, and audience agency in the rise of the mass media-saturated intertextuality and crossover capitals.

Audience agency in a curious instance of failed securitization: Public resistance to the Singapore government’s eugenics program

Securitization theory posits that security threats are socially constructed. Yet, how audiences influence the failure and success of securitization attempts is still not well understood. In this article, I argue that audiences bring their normative perspectives to bear upon the interpretation of securitization attempts. This theoretical addendum, I hold, permits a fuller appreciation of how audiences express their agency when receiving securitization attempts. I examine the Singaporean context, where the discursive backdrop favours the construction of security threats. While the Singaporean government has successfully securitized many issues, Lee Kuan Yew’s attempt to securitize the country’s declining birth rates failed dramatically. This occurred, I contend, as the Singaporean public was deeply offended by the normative premises of Lee’s eugenicist argument, thus refusing to engage with the issue on the government’s terms. These objections were only fuelled by the eugenics programme the government later introduced, ultimately causing the government to discontinue its pronatalist policies and significantly revise its rhetoric. This article develops the understanding of how securitization unfolds by expanding on the conceptualization of audience behaviour. By examining Singapore, which has failed to inspire many analyses of securitization, it also diversifies securitization theory’s empirical reach, highlighting its intelligibility within non-democratic contexts.

Witnessing distress: Cultural workers’ processing of pandemic experiences on social media platforms

This article examines the ways in which Finnish cultural workers experienced and responded to their colleagues’ and peers’ distress on social media platforms during the prolonged COVID-19 pandemic. The theory of media witnessing as mundane world-witnessing is employed to analyse cultural workers’ modalities of experience as audience-like followers on social media. The data comprise 26 focused interviews conducted via Zoom and over phone in 2021 with cultural workers representing the fields of theatre, television and film industry, literature, music and circus. We argue that various modes of affective and politicised witnessing offered cultural workers the mechanisms to articulate and reflect on their own and others’ experiences of inequality and vulnerability as well as develop a sense of responsibility. In the context of the pandemic, mundane world-witnessing involved engagement and identification with distress, peer support and activism, as witnessed and evaluated by cultural workers on social media. Furthermore, this article theorises a new mode of witnessing prevalent on social media platforms – speculative witnessing – which carries a reflective and hesitant approach to social media ‘bubbles’, obscure algorithmic agency and imagination of absent audiences. In other words, speculative witnessing captures a dimension of metacommunicative scepticism in media witnessing that reflects a specific condition of knowing in the context of social media platforms.

‘Chống dịch như chống giặc’ (‘Fighting the pandemic like fighting the invader’): Audience agency and historical resources in Vietnam’s early securitisation of Covid-19

Abstract Vietnam’s initial response to Covid-19 was conspicuous for various reasons, including how its attempt at securitisation drew deeply from historical narratives, symbols, and traditions specific to the Vietnamese experience, as well as how the securitisation project was not simply top-down and state-driven but also featured ground-up participation where the public was mobilised to participate in and actively reiterate securitisation practices. This richly textured empirical case study of the workings of Vietnamese society and politics represents an invitation to explore key debates surrounding securitisation theory. Reflecting on the empirical material of the case, this paper builds on scholarship seeking to highlight the shortcomings of the Copenhagen School’s model of securitisation and from there further explore securitisation theory and its limits. It takes aim at how the audience and its agency is conceptualised in the theory and develops the notions of ‘historical resources’ and ‘activation architecture’ to more adequately explain the processes of securitisation.

Subject playing with flat images: Transmedia spreadability of anime and manga character images

Anime and manga characters are so ubiquitous in Japan that people see them anywhere, regardless of public or private. The two-dimensional flatness of line drawing allows the character images to straddle the boundaries of the worlds of works and media. The analysis of individual artworks needs to be revised to understand the transmedia spreadability of characters and our living conditions. This paper, thus, overviews the preceding discussions of anime and manga scholars on human-character relations and compares them with the theory of subject formation in film studies, whose realist tendency once emphasized the three-dimensional space and time. While psychoanalysis-influenced theories such as suture and male gaze model after one-point perspective and subordinate two-dimensionality, Thomas Lamarre formulates a de-unified perspective in relation to the multilayered image field of Japanese anime. In conjunction with the orientation of cultural and fan studies to emphasize audience agency, this article discusses the de-unified perspective on flat images which has the potential for understanding the complexity of subject formation through the interplay with two-dimensional images.

Crafting Care through Text and Subtitles

This paper investigates the underappreciated, yet integral role of text, subtitles, and intertitles in the realms of interactive films and multimedia storytelling, employing a unique lens of craft, collaboration, and care. Drawing from Gilles Deleuze's notion of the 'speech-act' and The Care Collective's interpretation of care, the study explores the use of written text as a tool that guides the narrative, widens accessibility, and promotes justice and equity in viewing experiences. The complexity of the subtitling process, going beyond mere translation, is highlighted. Delving into Deleuze's concept of 'scriptual', the paper outlines how reading subtitles adds a layer of abstract universality to films, demanding more than passive consumption from viewers. Analyzing the dynamics and impacts of subtitles in interactive films, it underscores their critical role in shaping viewer comprehension and perception. The exploration of five interactive projects – 4Stelle Hotel (2014), Life on Hold (2015), "The Displaced" (2015), Sea Prayer (2018), and Another Dream (2019) – offers concrete illustrations of how subtitles and intertitles contribute to creating sensory, caring, and emotional experiences, facilitating viewer engagement and understanding. By enhancing navigation and narrativity, this paper argues that subtitles and text can nurture a culture of care, aligning with the principles of The Care Manifesto. The conclusion brings focus on the affect and sensation in relation to written text and subtitles. Recognizing viewer agency in interpreting narrative, it emphasizes the potential of text and subtitles to catalyze dialogue, shared experiences, and a sense of care and connection among viewers. The paper further underscores the role of subtitles and intertitles as conduits, amplifying audiences' sensory and emotional experiences and fostering a deeper understanding of characters, cultural nuances, and broader social, cultural, and political realities. The potential of these interactive experiences to stimulate political engagement is also discussed, marking a new benchmark in the cinematic experience. Subtitles have a transformative impact on the audience's agency. They not only serve as linguistic translation tools but also as conduits that imbue the narrative and characters with immediacy, individuality, and complexity. This assists the audience in navigating the intricacies of the story, unlocking hidden layers of meaning, and understanding cultural nuances. This enhanced comprehension grants viewers agency in directing their choices and interpretations, fostering a more profound connection with the story and its characters. In summary, this study underscores the significance of integrating text and subtitles in interactive film projects, accentuating their capacity to foster inclusivity, collaboration, and care within the narrative. It presents a compelling case for filmmakers and media professionals to design text and subtitle systems that enrich the viewing experience, disrupt uncaring societal structures, and, ultimately, contribute to a more empathetic and inclusive world.

Audience and the transformation of performance in African theatre through Iredi War and Ekuechi festival

African theatre encompasses theatrical practices that predate European colonization. Using Sam Ukala's play, Iredi War, a modern Nigerian drama infused with folk elements, and the Ekuechi festival of Nigeria's Ebira people, this qualitative study examined audience participation and the transformation of performance in African theatre, with insights from Segun Adefila, a renowned Nigerian theatre practitioner. It employed Sam Ukala’s (1996). Folkism: towards a national aesthetic principle for Nigerian dramaturgy. New Theatre Quarterly, 12 (47), 279–287) theory of ‘Folkism’ as its theoretical framework, and observed that the distinction between the spectator and actor can be clear or fluid, depending on the flow of the performance, with participants exchanging roles and playing space. In this context, audience members may act as spectators, actors, or both, reflecting the communal nature of African theatre. Other elements of African theatre include the festival theatre technique, in which the audience encircles the performance area in traditional performances, and the processional staging technique that involves moving with performers between venues. This immersive experience further engages the participant-audience, emphasizing their active involvement in the theatrical event. Moreover, African theatre serves dual purposes as both ritual and entertainment, and as Adefila argues, the position of the audience in relation to the central playing space, or nucleus, influences the nature of the performance. As spectators move away from the nucleus, the emphasis shifts towards entertainment, whereas proximity to the nucleus transforms the performance into a more ritualistic or worshipful event. While Adefila's audience model serves as a base, it oversimplifies audience experience, overlooks distant audience agency, and focuses on religious performances. Hence, the need for a more nuanced framework for African traditional theatre.

Between defiance and control: wild animal performance in the interwar circus

ABSTRACT This article explores the mishaps during tiger and lion performances at circuses in the interwar period via the concept of losing control. It argues that accidents involving wild animals offer a view behind the scenes in the highly regulated environment of circus performances. This approach allows us to access the agency of performance animals and audiences’ interpretations of these unintended aspects of the show. Animal trainers embody the regulated and rehearsed world of the circus, but their animal performances, and especially the mishaps that occasionally occur, permit us to read wild animals as agents. Through a case study of the trainer Georg Kulovits, better known as Togare, this article analyses how animal behaviour disrupted the emotional dramas of interwar circus performances. In addition, these accidents functioned as a key performative act, as they reminded audiences of the authenticity of the show.

‘Gimme a Hell Yeah!’ Stone Cold Steve Austin and the WWF’s Soundscapes of Rage

In the late 1990s, the Word Wrestling Federation (WWF) reached the height of its global popularity thanks to its “Attitude” re-branding. From 1997 to 2001, the company targeted an audience of teenagers and 18- to 34-year-old men with programming emphasizing adult themes and rebellious anti-heroes. The company’s most popular character at the time was “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, a beer-drinking Texas “redneck” who refused to conform and feuded on screen with a villainous corporate CEO. His iconic entrance music, “Hell Frozen Over,” was closely modeled on Rage Against the Machine’s 1996 hit song “Bulls on Parade” and played a crucial role in establishing the character’s credentials as a blue collar rebel whose actions channeled the desires of the WWF’s core audience of young white men. Highlighting both the specific idiomatic conventions of professional wrestling entrance themes and the numerous similarities between “Bulls on Parade” and Austin’s entrance music, this article argues that Austin’s music leveraged sonic tropes of masculine anti-corporate rebellion that were legible as such in the late 1990s due largely to the soundscapes of rage popularized by RATM and the numerous rap-rock “nü metal” bands they inspired. It shows how Austin’s music and its RATM connection exemplify not only the capacity for popular entertainment to commodify rebellion, but also the agency of audiences in forging meaningful personal and interpersonal relationships with and through mass-mediated entertainment as sonic signifiers become disentangled from specific political movements and made available to a broad range of economic and political projects.

Subject playing with flat images: Transmedia spreadability of anime and manga character images

Anime and manga characters are so ubiquitous in Japan that people see them anywhere, regardless of public or private. The two-dimensional flatness of line drawing allows the character images to straddle the boundaries of the worlds of works and media. The analysis of individual artworks needs to be revised to understand the transmedia spreadability of characters and our living conditions. This paper, thus, overviews the preceding discussions of anime and manga scholars on human-character relations and compares them with the theory of subject formation in film studies, whose realist tendency once emphasized the three-dimensional space and time. While psychoanalysis-influenced theories such as suture and male gaze model after one-point perspective and subordinate two-dimensionality, Thomas Lamarre formulates a de-unified perspective in relation to the multilayered image field of Japanese anime. In conjunction with the orientation of cultural and fan studies to emphasize audience agency, this article discusses the de-unified perspective on flat images which has the potential for understanding the complexity of subject formation through the interplay with two-dimensional images.

Stardom, Cinephilia, and the Affective Contours of Bollywood's Soft Power in China

ABSTRACT: Given multiple wars and border skirmishes, the India-China relationship has been defined through a lens of conflict with little attention paid to the potential affinities between the two. This article examines the stardom of Aamir Khan in China as an instantiation of stardom, cinematic affect, and audience agency that reveals deep-seated cultural resonances and affinities. Analyzing user comments about Khan on Chinese social media platforms Douban and Mtime, this article explicates the affective underpinnings of Khan's soft power. It illustrates how soft power through individual social actors can exist outside of state-centric media and exceed the boundaries of the nation-state.

Performing extinction stories: exploring creative responses to bee decline

ABSTRACT As extinction becomes one of the most pressing crises of our time, projects that engage with nonhuman lives have emerged as a visible fixture of the creative landscape. This raises the question of what role creative explorations might play in shaping public discourse and action around extinction. In moving towards an answer to this question, this work draws on conversations with performance artists who have engaged with the topic of bee decline. This research establishes the value of performance for inspiring empathy and encouraging questioning, widening participation, and bringing learning into connection with tangible action through developing audience agency.

GROUPTHINK

Live performers often describe "playing to the audience" as shifts in emphasis, timing and even content according to perceived audience reactions. Traditional staging allows the transmission of physiological signals through the audience's eyes, skin, odor, breathing, vocalizations and motions such as dancing, stamping and clapping, some of which are audible. The Internet and other mass media broaden access to live performance, but they efface traditional channels for "liveness," which we specify as physiological feedback loops that bind performers and audience through shared agency. During online events, contemporary performers enjoy text and icon-based feedback, but current technology limits expression of physiological reactions by remote audiences. Looking to a future Internet of Neurons where humans and AI co-create via neurophysiological interfaces, this paper examines the possibility of reestablishing audience agency during live performance by using hemodynamic sensors while exploring the potential of AI as a creative collaborator.

‘Crimea will forever be Russian’: dissenting Norwegian media discourses on Russia’s annexation of Crimea

ABSTRACT The scholarly literature on Russia’s influence in Europe has so far mainly focused on Russia’s influence activities, discussed either as ‘disinformation’ or ‘soft power’. Less attention has been paid to understanding the agency of European audiences receptive to Russian narratives. Through discourse analysis of Norwegian media texts (February 2014 – December 2020) where authors or interviewees accepted or were prone to accept Crimea as part of Russia, this paper investigates into the arguments put forward by these constituencies. Why were commentators, representing various political affiliations, willing to accept Crimea as part of Russia, contrary to Norway’s official position? The paper shows that the Norwegian commentators used many arguments coinciding with the official Russian ones put forward to legitimize the annexation, arguments informed by political realism, pragmatism, sovereignism and in some cases anti-Americanism. However, they also used arguments structured by the socio-political and historical Norwegian context. Constituencies abroad sharing opinions with official Russia may provide Russia with a certain soft power. In this case, the fact that these dissenting discourses in Norway represent fringes of the debate on the annexation rather than a strong united opposition to Norway’s official stand, speaks quite clearly of the limited scope of this soft power.

Dramaturgies of Emergence: Decentralized Collaboration of Participatory Theatre

adrienne maree brown (Emergent Strategy) says that “relationships are everything.” The recent popularity of participatory theatre shows in Canada demonstrates just how true that is. These performances make direct audience interaction an essential feature of their dramaturgical design, with audience actions fundamental to propelling the performance experience. As these dramaturgies proliferate, they have given rise to a specific form of participatory theatre focused on decentralized collaboration and democratic audience agency, which I call dramaturgies of emergence. In emergent participatory performances, relationships manifest as networks of people – audience and artists – working together in a decentralized mode of iterative collaboration. With algorithmic dramaturgies to guide them, this autopoietic participant network generates the aesthetic and experiential aspects of the performance, and distinguishes emergent dramaturgies from other forms. By distributing the act of generating performance, it decentralizes agency over that creative process, distributing it throughout the networked participants to create outcomes no single member could generate alone.
 These dramaturgies of emergence embrace both relational modes of the established scientific process of emergence, and the political values of decentralization, playfulness, adaptability and collective leadership associated with the form by brown and others. By embracing these processes and values as their core mode of making meaning in a social setting, dramaturgies of emergence embrace the fundamental relationality of theatre, and ask us to playfully engage in those relationships. They allow audiences to authentically represent themselves in art while still creating something that is fundamentally collective, and provide a democratic mode of collaborative creation much needed in the often highly individualistic society we find ourselves in today.
 
 Works Cited
 Aarseth, Espen J. Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature. Baltimore: John Hopkins
 University Press, 1997.
 Apter, Michael J. Danger: Our Quest for Excitement. Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 2007.
 Bennett, Jane. Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things. Durham: Duke University Press,
 2010.
 brown, adrienne maree. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds. Chico: AK
 Press, 2017.
 Fischer-Lichte, Erika. The Transformative Power of Performance: A New Aesthetics. Translated
 by Saskya Iris Jain. Abingdon: Routledge, 2008.
 Kuling, Peter. “Tilted Dramaturgy: Combined Spectatorship, Playwriting and Role-Playing in
 Bully-Pulpit’s Fiasco.” Canadian Theatre Review 178 (Spring 2019): 44-47.
 DOI: 10.3138/ctr.178.008.
 Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor Network Theory. Oxford:
 Oxford University Press, 2005.
 “Lost Together.” Unspun Theatre. Updated 2021.
 http://www.unspuntheatre.com/index#/lost-together.
 “Necessary Dream.” Up In the Air Theatre. Updated May 2021.
 https://www.upintheairtheatre.com/necessary-dream.
 Owen, David. “Performing the Game: Demystifying Live-Action Role-Play.” Canadian Theatre
 Review 178 (Spring 2019): 32-37. DOI: 10.3138/ctr.178.006.
 “Roll Models.” Play/PLAY: Dramaturgies of Participation. Updated September 2021.
 https://www.dramaturgiesofparticipation.com/roll-models.html.
 Salen, Katie and Eric Zimmerman. Rules of Play: Game Design Fundamentals. Cambridge: MIT
 Press, 2004.
 Sicart, Miguel. Play Matters. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2014.
 “Worktable.” SPIN. Updated July 2021. https://spinspin.be/kate-mcintosh/worktable/.

Narratives of the future: immersive stories / indigenous roots

The way we tell stories shapes what we are: it articulates the way we position ourselves in relation to the world. This article explores how immersive practices, as used in virtual reality and intermedial performance, provoke novel dynamics between artist and audience that no longer fit within Western traditions of aesthetic exchange and furthermore challenge our understanding of narrative production and reception. It proposes that new ways of reasoning are needed to allow audience agency and the evolving role of the artist to be explored more fully than is currently possible in mainstream theatre scholarship. One source that can provide a model for considering the dynamics between audience and performer in immersive performance is the Indigenous story systems of Australia. There is a significant synergy between the structure and operation of First Nation songlines and contemporary immersive performance. This is explored with reference to the work of contemporary anthropologists and Indigenous scholars and to recent immersive work from the companies Kaleider and Theatre Conspiracy. The article considers how both ancient narratives and contemporary immersive practices require people to engage with data/ physical space in a specific manner in order for stories to be realised. Furthermore, both bestow creative responsibility and the role of custodian on the user, through whose actions narrative is manifested. Immersive performance challenges assumptions about how information is generated, processed, and passed on, and the power structures involved in such exchanges. This research explores how non-traditional narrative practices can assist the debate about the future of storytelling.

Adversarial Argument, Belief Change, and Vulnerability.

When people argue, they are vulnerable to unwanted and costly changes in their beliefs. This vulnerability motivates the position that belief involuntarism makes argument inherently adversarial (Casey, Informal Log 40:77–108, 2020), as well as the development of alternatives to adversarial argumentation such as “invitational rhetoric” (Foss and Griffin, Commun Monogr 62:2–18, 1995). The emphasis on involuntary belief change in such accounts, in our perspective, neglects three dimensions of arguing: the diversity of arguer intentions, audience agency, and the benefits of belief change. The complex impact of arguments on both audiences and arguers involves vulnerabilities related to various forces of argument, not just the intellectual force of premise-conclusion complexes. Shifting emphasis from adversariality to vulnerability, we propose a more holistic understanding of argument, in which vulnerability reveals various sources of strength and opportunity in addition to risk.

Mondays with Merce: A Mercist Project of Space, Time, and Screen

In the Mondays with Merce video series, Nancy Dalva curates interviews with Merce Cunningham and his community filmed in the two years before his death. In editing the interviews for presentation, Dalva creates a “Mercist” archive—a collection of materials that mirrors Cunningham’s own artistic priorities of process, multi-vocality, and audience agency. Exploring how the series creates this Mercist perspective, I show that Dalva’s choices, and Cunningham’s, create a legacy that remains radically human, even as it draws new audiences to Cunningham’s life and work.