CdL; Analysis of My Bloody Valentine 3D (Lussier, 2009)

With a focus on Media Audiences and Institutional Context

• The target audience for this film is the horror audience, 15-25 year old male viewers
• It is likely that this text will be read as reinforcing masculine ideologies as the protagonist is a typically "macho" American male character who works in a labour intensive job, and his exchange of dialogue with the other male character is aggressive
• It could also be seen to be reinforcing the stereotypical conventions of horror in terms of the use of a jagged, red and black font for the title and the shadows and low key lighting, and the use of sepia tinted newspapers to set up the back story of a suspicious death which forms the background of the narrative
• I feel that my reading of the text would be influenced by the fact I am a girl as this text would be specifically aimed at boys and therefore contains action and typically masculine elements which could make me biased against the characters if there are no strong or interesting female characters included
• My reading of the text is also influenced by the fact that I am a British viewer, while this is a typically American big budget horror film, and set in a mine which is an environment with which I am not familiar or expeienced, so it may not appeal to me

• The protagonist in this film is played by Jensen Ackles who is famous for starring in the CW drama Supernatural which has a wide and varied fan base including the typical horror audience, especially as Supernatural deals with elements of horror, mystery and gore. The fact that Ackles is a household name in America and has such a wide fan base would be beneficial to the film because he would attract his fans, especially female ones, to watch the film even if usually it might not be their favourite genre
• The film is made by Lionsgate, and is part of industrial rather than independent cinema
• The film opening uses zooms and fades on sepia tinted newspaper articles in a quite complicated arrangement of titles which is quite stylized and indicates that it is a high budget film made by an industrial cinema studio