Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory

 Hell'o, Akhil here!!!

Stuart Hall's Reception Theory explains the way an audience reads and makes sense of a media text. According to the theory, there are three dominant reading positions: dominant-hegemonic, negotiated, and oppositional. These are described as follows:

Dominant-Hegemonic Reading:

In this film opening scene, the audience totally accepts and makes sense of the message intended by the text. They decode the message the way the creator encoded it without any doubt.

For this video, the dominant reading would be to recognize the film as a horror film opening. The viewers would accept the conventions of the genre and what is being set up in the story:

The title "Whispering Nightmare" establishes a horror expectation. The spooky narrator and the history of Ethan Graves are accepted as the truth, setting up a need for the terror that is to come.

The abandoned playground, creepy sound effects, and unsteady camera shots are all properly realized as codes intended to be suspenseful and frightening.

The final jumpscare is interpreted as the promised culmination of the introduction, successfully marking the beginning of the horror story.

The viewer is drawn in and prepared for the remaining film to meet the expectations set by the opening.

Negotiated reading:

A negotiated reading is where the reader receives some aspects of the intended message but alters others using their own experience, belief, or context. They are partially agreeing with the prevailing meaning of the text.

One member of the audience may have a negotiated reading of the video in the following manner:

They may like the frightening parts but dislike that the "teen drama" aspects (such as the friends chatting and playing "truth or dare") are cliche or uncreative.

They may be okay with the setting being creepy but wonder why the characters would so freely visit a "haunted room" when there are obvious warning signs. This does not entirely dismiss the horror concept but adds an element of doubt.

They can find the jumpscare in the ending too predictable, but otherwise enjoy the overall attempt of the film to be tense. The audience recognizes the purpose of the text but has a different interpretation of its execution.

Oppositional Reading:

An oppositional reading is an outright rejection of the intended meaning. The audience recognizes the preferred meaning but decodes it in a completely other or opposite manner, usually based on their own views or critical standpoint.

An oppositional interpretation of the video might be like this:

A member of the audience may view the whole video as a spoof of the horror genre. Rather than being scared by the jumpscare and eerie setting, they may find them hackneyed and unintentionally humorous.

They may discredit the whole setup as unrealistic, since teen-age life would not be like that in real life. 

They may not believe the performances to be sincere, and therefore, the horror itself ineffective.

They may take the message of the movie not as a supernatural horror film but as a warning about the risks of peer pressure and reckless living. The "ghost" is not a ghost, but a symbol of the bad outcome of their actions.

Alternatively, from a more critical viewpoint, an audience member might also charge that the projection of the "haunted boy" as bullied social misfit is a tired and stereotypical convention, and that the story itself is uninspired.