Audience Construction is to Plot as Terministic Screen is to Experience

While I was watching Up the Yangtze, a few of the terms we have discussed in class came to mind and were apparent. If I am being completely honest, a lot of the terms we unpacked this semester were challenging for me in terms of applying them to literature because the readings just attempted to explain rather than show true application. While I was watching this film, I actually found myself applying some of the terms to the movie. I know that some of the others from class who have blogged so far mentioned audience construction, hegemony, alterity, identification and diaspora, but I also kind of had an epiphany about terministic screens and audience construction, which I think these other terms kind of influenced the clarity of. In short, I think that my definition of what "audience construction'" and "terministic screens" are was solidified through my viewing of Up the Yangtze. 

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In terms of audience construction, obviously you could clearly see how audience impacted the movie. The movie itself was created as somewhat of a documentary and it is evident who the movie was intended for and what purposes it is or could be used for. Walter Ong states that “The writer must construct in his imagination, clearly or vaguely, an audience cast in some sort of role” (12). When creating this movie, Chang created an audience in a role to see it and the way in which the "acting" was set up, the interviews, the plot, the scenes, the lighting, the lines, etc. were all set up to appeal to the constructed audience Chang made this movie for. Audience construction, to me, is the plot of a work. It is the "who, what, when, where and why" behind a text, in this case, this movie. It is what the text is about, who it is intended for, when and where it occurs and why it does in the first place. The audience is constructed for a purpose, and how we perceive this purpose and who is supposed to perceive it this way or at all and who is not are all based on society, and the hegemony,  and alterity that is in place as a result of society and how members of society identify with these determined roles. In Up the Yangtze, clearly the hegemony on the boat was the Americans who the Chinese were trying to act like and appease in order to fit in. To the Chinese, specifically Cindy, the dominant, hegemonic group were the Chinese culture of the boat, because she had to adapt to their lifestyle because it was seen as "superior" to her life. There was even a scene when the other Chinese women on the boat were talking about Cindy saying how she wasn't like them. The way that Chang chose to include Cindy and contrast her to the others as well as how they presented her were all strategically decided through society's determined roles and the audience construction. 

In terms of terministic screens, we went into this movie thinking it would be a documentary, so the lens we saw through was one ready to learn through. The point I am trying to make, is that we perceive things based off of how our minds approach them. Knowing this was about displaced Chinese or a boat ride made us think of stereotypes and how things work. I think that life is all about choosing the right terministic screens in order to understand and perceive situations. How we understand something and what we understand about it depends on how we view it and how we view it depends on how society has molded our brains into thinking. What I said in my response to Morgan's blog was this: 

I think that the audience an author chooses is overpowered by the screen in which a viewer or reader sees through while experiencing the text or in this case, the movie. For example, we are English major college students in a rhetorical theory class watching this movie because we had to for this blog post or our final papers. Professor Graban is an intelligent, prestigious, Ph.D professor and scholar who was watching it for our class as well but for different purposes. If you can honestly tell me that either us or Dr. Graban would go to the library and rent this movie for fun, I will be shocked, because obviously this movie was not intended for a fun, movie night audience, but, it could be chosen by accident or recommended or just on one day and be watched for non school purposes, and it would be experienced totally different than how we and Dr. Graban experienced it when we watched it. I guess the point I am trying to make, is that any text or piece of work is full of endless experiences and that is what makes the works so great.

Therefore, audience construction is to plot as terministic screen is to experience, in my opinion.