The document discusses interviews with the author's stepfather and mother about how their backgrounds affect their perceptions of on-screen violence. The stepfather, who is religious, sees violence as generally opposed but accepts it as normalized in films. The mother is not bothered much by mild violence in films and sees her exposure to television as providing background experience to perceive violence. The author argues the stepfather has a negotiated reception influenced by his religion, while the mother has a dominant reception not affected by her background.

1. Do audience members background affect how they
perceive on screen violence?
My methodology to answer this
question will be one to one
interviews with family members.

2. Step father
• I asked my step father how he felt about seing violence on
screen particularly mild violence such as gun fights in films
such as ‘James Bond’.
• He responed with; ‘Well I am religious so traditionally I cannot
condone any kind of violence but growing up with films such
as westerns and general crime films I have almost got used to
it’
• I then asked ‘Would you go as far as to say it was a ‘Viewing
pleasure’
• He responded with; ‘well I wouldn’t say a pleasure, but its
part of the story. The good guy has to kill the bad guy.
Without that there is no story’

3. Negotiated reception.
• I would take his reading as negotiated he
receipted the idea of onscreen violence as
something he generally opposes however accepts
due the ‘normalization’ of it.
• The back ground of the interviewer I would argue
has had an effect on how he looks at
texts, because straight away he mentioned his
religious beliefs. So I can argue that when texts
are polysemic the consumer comes to the texts
with their own perceptions.

4. Mother
• I asked my mother the same question I put to my step father
in regards to violence in films such as James Bond or Mild
action films.
• She responded with: “To be honest violence doesn’t bother
me all that much in films where its just somebody getting shot
or someone falling over or off of something. There is not a lot
to be directly affected by’
• I then asked so do you think anything about your background
has made a difference to how you perceive violence?
• Her response was “well I think if you watch television
generally it gives you a background of experience in anything
that’s on be it violence or anything else”

5. Dominant reception
I am going to argue that my mothers response is
dominant simply because it did not seem as if her back
ground affected how she perceived violence in films.
However what I did find interesting was that her idea of
background was simply what she had already seen
before. Could the intertextuality of violence be what is
at cause for how people perceive it in films and
television?

6. • I do want you to be aware that this
presentation is not ten minutes long as I did
not work in a group.