9/02/24- Negotiation, A Grenfell Story

Stuart Hall Reception Theory- where producers encode and audience decodes. The producer will encode their ideology.  

Things that will effect how an audience decodes the producers ideology:

How we negotiate a media product

• Education 
• Peoples opinions (political)
• Interests/Desires
• Your up bringing 
• Experiences
• Age
• Sexuality 

Preferred reading- where the audience agrees and views the media the same as the ideological perspective as the producer.

Oppositional reading- where the audience disagrees with the ideological perspective of the producer.

Negotiated reading- where the audience both agrees and disagrees with the ideology of the producer 

Have you heard Georges podcast?- A Grenfell story 

Initial notes- 

Beginning in a school scene setting. Shows an ethnic minority group girl standing up for her self, but then educated by her teacher and facts are listed by the teacher (in form of a poem) Talks about differences in business owned by ethnic minority groups vs white businesses. Teacher sends out Savannah and George talks about the respect with the teacher. 

Teacher gets a call, unclear what the other person is saying, voices fade away music is louder than voices. Teacher talks about young pregnancy and  how it was good for her and she's just put in the category of a 'another baby mum'. 

Jumps from scene to different scene. A guy talking to the teacher sounds like a meeting about her job then interrupted by fire alarm. Then jumps back to girl talking on the phone to the father of her child. Talking about their child needing civil parents and how she needs consistency from both of them. Then calls George and says she is free. Talking on the phone to George then George goes to call her and she doesn't answer. Hears about fire and panics that it is where this girl lives. Hear shouting of victims and public telling people to get out. Cuts of news stories. Creates a confusing sense. Then goes silent. 

Savannah talking (assuming at her funeral) talking about their original conversation and how she understands what her teacher was saying apologises for doing wrong. Talking to her teacher. Then slow music is played. George speaks quietly and says imagine a cinema screen saying 'based on a true story, directed by George the poet' and carries on in the style of film credentials. 

Negotiated reading of A Grenfell Story 

Dominant ideology: to place the audience to be in the position of the real people who died in the Grenfell fire. Based on a true story George has created a dramatized version of events to affect the audience as much as possible. 

A point is made about many businesses do not survive past their first year. This fraught conversation between teacher and student constructs a realistic and relatable mode of address to both teachers and students, and middle aged people and teacher. We can negotiate this episode differently based on our up bringing.

Different people will be effected differently by facts and events. In particular, audiences who have been directly or indirectly affected by the tragedy will negotiate this episode differently. 

The incident of the fire is overloaded with crisis crossing speech, sound effects and a depressing film like a soundtrack. Audiences can negotiate this scene in a variety of ways. The preferred reading is of course sympathy, confusion and sorrow. However, a negotiated response may involve the audience questioning exactly what actually happened. Audiences may feel confused and even frustrated by the lack of factual accuracy in the episode. 

Some audiences may find the entire episode disrespectful to the people who actually died. The episode presents a dramatized series of events, constructing a dramatic series of events for the purpose of emotional impact. Some audiences may find it distasteful or even wrong that George is using the event for both financial gain and exposure. However, a further negotiation would be that although the narrative is complex and maybe manipulative, ultimately it increases the exposure of a particularly tragic event. While their are very few facts included in this episode, the audience are encouraged to search out facts and meaning themselves. 

Themes of drug trafficking and crime and how they relate to young black people in inner city areas are key to this narrative. One way of negotiating this aspect could be to take offence at the stereotypical and highly leading representation of young black people. However, it also draws attention to a very real issue, that the victims of the Grenfell fire were overwhelmingly people of colour and vulnerable.

A negotiated reading of the opening conversation could be embarrassment at the stereotypical relationship of a student and a teacher.

Audiences may be frustrated that his episode is so different from other episodes of Have you heard Georges Podcast as it takes the form of Drama.  

The ending is sad and emotionally manipulative. George speaks in a croaky quite voice, directly addressing the audience and telling us we are viewing the end credits. This breaking the fourth wall directly addressing the audience. However, some audiences may be frustrated at this 'clever' storytelling technique, that takes them out of the narrative. 

George is essentially a self insert character, and describes how attractive he is, how good at back massages and also what a good poet he is. A negotiated reading of Georges self representation could be he detracts from the impact of the disaster and this is absolutely inappropriate.