Stuart Hall was a leading 20th century sociological thinker known for his work in cultural studies and media theory. He rejected the idea that a text has a single, inherent meaning, arguing instead that meaning is constructed differently by different audiences based on their social and cultural backgrounds. Hall developed the encoding/decoding model to explain how meaning is encoded into a text by its producer but then decoded and interpreted differently by audiences. The film Kidulthood is used to illustrate how Hall's theories can analyze how different audiences may construct different meanings from the same media text.

1. Stuart Hall
a beginners’ guide
In the latest in her series on key thinkers, Lucy Scott-Galloway
explores the seminal work of cultural critic Stuart Hall, whose
ideas about the ways in which audiences/readers make meaning
from texts have been hugely influential on studies of the audience.
She applies his theories to the recent film Kidulthood.
Essentials Stuart Hall is a leading sociological thinker of the late 20th
and early 21st centuries, whose writings often encompass media
perspectives. Though generally thought of as a sociologist and cultural
studies theorist, he taught media studies in London in the early sixties.
Rather than exploring how texts make meaning, as was the
predominant practice of his analytical forerunners, for Hall, the meaning
of the text is not inherently in the text itself. No amount of analysis can
find the text’s one true ‘meaning’, because different people who
encounter the text will make different interpretations.
On the surface, this certainly seems to make sense. After all, we don’t
all like the same characters in our favourite TV shows or films, or dislike
the same. But we are all seeing the same representations. The
technical and symbolic codes that construct the representations we
perceive are the same – that is, the denotation is the same. But from
there, what the producers want us to think and what we actually think
might be two very different things. This reading, according to Hall,
depends on our social positioning – for example the level of our
education and experience, and what our occupations are.
Reception theory This approach to textual analysis puts most
emphasis on the audience – meaning is made at the moment of
consumption. At that moment, the individual audience member
considers the representations presented to them in the context of their
own values, opinions and experiences. Therefore, people with similar
socio-cultural backgrounds are likely to make similar readings of the
same texts.
It follows then, that if the audience’s values, opinions and experiences
are similar to the producer’s, then they are likely to ‘read’ the meaning
of the text in the way it was intended – or at least very close to it.
Encoding/decoding model Stuart Hall took this new attitude towards
audience consumption, which considered audiences as not only active
but also a group of individuals rather than an undifferentiated ‘mass’,
and developed the encoding/decoding model. This model was based on

2. the view that meaning is the result of a communication process, the
stages of which he called ‘moments’. The first is the ‘moment of
encoding’, the second the ‘moment of the text’ and the third the
‘moment of decoding’.
Moment of encoding – the creation of the text, when forms, structures,
codes and conventions are used to construct a text with an intended
meaning. Moment of the text – the symbolic existence of the text as it is
published or broadcast – the focus of semiotics. Moment of decoding –
when an individual with a unique set of values, attitudes and
experiences encounters the text. Regarded as more the moment of
‘creation’ than the first stage.
Preferred/negotiated/oppositional readings Readings of texts are
dependent on who the audience is, and what their social position is,
because this influences their interpretation of the denotative codes.
However the number of readings isn’t necessarily infinite – Hall
suggested there are limits to the readings that can be made.
When the text is created, the producers encode a meaning, which they
(probably) intend. This is the reading likely to be made by the target
audience, as they would be most likely to share and accept the text’s
ideology
This is the preferred reading.
However, some people whose social position places them outside the
text’s specific target audience, may be more active in questioning the
representations in the text. If they generally accept the preferred
reading, but challenge a few aspects, then this is a negotiated reading.
If their values and attitudes are very different or even in opposition to
the target audience, they are unlikely to accept much – if any – of the
preferred reading, making instead an oppositional reading. For
example, a teenage mum is unlikely to accept the preferred reading of a
documentary that represents teenage mums as careless or unfit
parents.
The difference between what is encoded (the intention of the producer)
and what is decoded (the meaning made by the audience) is known by
Hall as the margin of understanding.
The same person may even read the same text in different ways if they
encounter it in different contexts – do you ‘read’ texts the same in the
classroom as you do at home? You may make a preferred reading
when you are at home, consuming a text for entertainment and pleasure
for example, but challenge the representations and how they are

3. constructed when you are studying.
Putting it into practice: Kidulthood Hall’s theories are useful to
illustrate how different audiences might make meaning from the 2006
Menhaj Huda film, Kidulthood.
The film is set in West London and recounts a ‘day in the life’ of a group
of school kids the day and the day after a classmate commits suicide
due to bullying. In the DVD’s special features, the writer of the film, Noel
Clarke, responds to the question:
What’s your response [to the claim] that Kidulthood makes
bullying and ‘happy slapping’ cool? ‘I don’t really care to be
honest, because I know that the film’s not promoting or
justifying anything it’s merely ‘there’…it’s just a film that’s out
there. And it is highlighting what happens in society.’
This is an intentional approach to understanding how representation
works. Clarke appears to think that the representations made in the film
mean whatever they were intended to mean. He also suggests that
representations are a ‘window on the world’ that just reflect society. But,
as Media students – and in light of what we have learnt from Hall – we
know otherwise. What has been encoded may be decoded differently by
different audiences.
A quick read of the interactive users’ comments on the International
Movie Database (www.imdb.com) shows that different audiences
viewed the film, especially the extent of its realism, in very different
ways.
I loved this film. I found it very truthful about young urban
people getting into fights and arguments and it spiralling out
of control. It’s kinda cool to show the rest of the world how
scary it can be in England. I’ve grown up on an estate in
Chatham and I can honestly say that what you see in this
film is really what it’s like...apart from they are so much
younger. I found this film a waste of 2 hours and the END
may as well be the BEGINNING as it fails to get my interest
or take me anywhere. I come from E15 (East London) and
the stuff in Kidulthood happens all the time in my area. All
northerners and elsewhere don’t really realise that London is
one of the roughest, crime-ridden places in the world! Damn
you Richard Curtis!
The main factors that appear to influence the way meaning is made
from the film are the ages and locations of the audience members.
Those who live near to where the film is set appear to feel the film is

4. realistic, in terms of its representation of youth and their behaviour. This
therefore supports Hall’s view that the meaning made is influenced by
social positioning. The final respondent above goes further to hint at
his/her understanding of representation – ‘damn you Richard Curtis’
suggests that the audience member feels that director Richard Curtis’s
representations of London in romcom films such as Love Actually
(2003) have given those without first-hand knowledge an inaccurate
view of London.
The opening of Kidulthood merges different modes of representation,
using realist codes in production and MTV-style visual trickery, such as
split and sliding screens and cinemascope, in post-production.
Kidulthood opens with a close-up of feet playing football, covered in
mud and evoking a stereotype of a schoolboy. The diagetic soundtrack;
voices in a playground, reinforce this. The film stock is grainy,
characteristic of British realist films, and the location shooting and
handheld, restless camera jumping from character to character at eye
level and in shallow focus also adds to the sense of realism. Kids chat
to each other, on phones, are smoking in the playground, giving out
invites to a party and play football, in a realist representation of ‘every
day life’. The dialogue is very specific to both region and generation,
language including ‘blud’, ‘bruv’, ‘hug him up’, ‘allow it man’, ‘innit’ and
‘oh my days’ may not be understood by people outside London’s youth
culture.
But this scene is cross-cut with scenes that are more conventional of
the gangster genre. The camera is steady and close up, and the focus
remains shallow, but the subject; Trife drilling (what we later realise is) a
gun, is in contrast to the harmless goings on in the playground. The drill
is shot with key lighting to the left, creating dramatic areas of light and
dark. This juxtaposition of genres continues, as Trife talks to his uncle in
a car. Here we see further iconography of the gangster genre – replica
guns, drugs, and a menacing male figure who dresses in heavy
jewellery and a long black leather coat.
In the 12th-minute of the film, a female character Katie switches on her
stereo, and diagetic music begins, The Streets’ ‘Stay Positive’. The
music bridges to the next scene becoming non-diagetic, and different
characters are shown in split screen rolling from right to left, resembling
a music video. The technique indicates parallel action, as the female
characters are shown taking a pregnancy test and writing a suicide
note, whilst the male characters are shown going for a walk, getting a
hair cut, and playing computer games. The music becomes diagetic
again as Katie’s parents begin calling her to turn it down, and the
montage ends with their discovery of her body, after she has hung
herself.

5. Kidulthood therefore uses codes of realism to construct a representation
of youth in west London. It is important to be aware that this
representation is as constructed as any other, as choosing to represent
youth in London in this way encodes a particular ideological
perspective.
The codes of realism used include:
• On location shooting • Point of View shots • Low resolution
film stock • Naturalistic lighting • Handheld camera • Eye
level camera angles
Although some decisions may have been made for economic reasons
(low resolution film stock is far cheaper than the alternative options
often favoured by Hollywood, location shooting means not having to pay
for and prepare a studio), the overall effect is that the representation
looks more like ‘real life’, and as a result, the preferred reading is that
these young people are representative of ‘the youth of today’ growing
up in west London. The representations of young people are somewhat
stereotypical; themes of sex, drugs and violence are prevalent,
juxtaposed to scenes of poor parenting or youths not being understood
by adults.
The target audience for the film, young people growing up in urban
environments, are likely to find these themes familiar, even if a little
exaggerated for narrative purposes. They may therefore identify with
some of the characters in the film, most likely Trife, who stands out as
the protagonist in the opening scenes when he is the only one to stand
up to the bully. However, if somebody from outside the target audience
were to watch the film, they would do so from the perspective of their
own social position.
What if the people watching the film were your parents, or even
grandparents? Would they think the same as you? What if the people
watching the film were conservatives living in rural environments a long
way from a city? Would they find these characters and events
believable? These are the people who might make negotiated, or in
some cases, oppositional readings. Whilst the preferred reading is that
this is a realistic film, some may think the representations of youth are
exaggerated or sensationalised, or made up altogether. Whilst bullying
happens with unfortunate regularity and underage smoking and sex
occurs also, it is rare for a young person to drill guns for their gangster
uncle or for a pupil to commit suicide. The codes of social-realism and
gangster are merged to such an extent that for some, the film loses its
realist edge. Whilst the writer of the film, Noel Clarke, refutes the claims
of sensationalism in the DVD’s special features, I think he fails to give
enough credit to his own imagination:

6. Some people have said that this [film] will influence society
and influence young people. Whereas my thing is that it’s
the opposite way round. Society influenced the film. This film
couldn’t exist if these things weren’t happening already.
Furthermore, some may think that the film glamorises teenage
pregnancy – the only characters who are really likeable are Trife and
Alisa. The climax to the narrative is at Blake’s party, when Trife and
Alisa decide to have the baby together, and the emotional response of
the audience is to feel pleasure in their union, and hope for their future.
Some of the sorrow the audience feels when Trife dies is because he
and Alisa will never have their happy family unit.
Criticisms of Hall How can a preferred reading be identified? How do
we know if we have found it, and we are not making a personal,
negotiated reading, unless the producers tell us what it is? Would they
tell us the truth? David Morley (a theorist in audience studies) has
suggested that the preferred reading is the:
reading which the analyst is predicting that most members
of the audience will produce.
For example, when analysing this film with my class, we discussed the
costumes of the characters in the opening scene. Most are in school
uniforms, with connotations of control and conformity, reinforcing
dominant ideological values of formal education. Sam, however, is
dressed in a blue hoodie with the hood up – and following recent moral
panics around teens and hoodies, the costume carries connotations of
trouble. This, we suggested, signifies that Sam is an antagonist. The
reading appears to be obvious and transparent – but how do we know?
Maybe, when Sam’s costume was decided, it was chosen only because
a hoodie is a casual item that signifies nothing more than the
suggestion that Sam is not a pupil at the school where the scene is set.
Perhaps we are bringing our own socio-cultural experience to the
reading, to imagine that the hoodie signifies any more than that. So how
do we know when we are making a preferred reading, and when it is
negotiated?
Lucy Scott-Galloway
This article first appeared in MediaMagazine 20.
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