Case Study: An Imagined Audience and Popular Film

In his essay, “The Writer’s Audience Is Always a Fiction”, Walter Ong argues exactly what the title suggests: When an author writes, he or she “fictionalizes” the audience for whom the work is meant.  Ong describes this situation in a more nuanced manner, saying that a writer does not write for an “audience” but only his or her readers (p. 10).  Essentially, a writer does not personally imagine each and every one of his or her readers when he or she writes.  The reasoning is well grounded when one thinks about the actual logistics of writing.  Ong uses the example of a student writing an essay for his teacher on how he spent his summer vacation.  When he actually writes the essay, there is no audience in front of him.  He gets no immediate reaction or feedback from his teacher.  In this case, the writer has no other choice but to imagine who he is writing for.

When one applies this reasoning in his or her own personal writing, Ong’s notions make complete sense.  Any writer makes sweeping generalizations about his or her audience.  When one thinks “target audience”, the term expands into some overly simplified description like “college aged women” or “people who appreciate a specific kind of humor”.  I will use the case study of various media clips to further apply this analysis.  The media clips consist of clips from Disney movies “Enchanted” and “The Princess and the Frog”, original and remixed clips of “Mary Poppins”, and a remixed clip of “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood”.  In the case of the Disney clips, both of these clips imagine an audience that has general knowledge of fairytale stereotypes.  Both of these films invoke humor and key plot points by subverting the expectations based off of the standard fairytale.  The “Mary Poppins” clips imagine an audience that would find humor in the bending of genres, as the remixed clip humorously portrays “Mary Poppins” as a thriller film.  The “Mister Rogers” remix imagines an audience that is familiar with the show and also desires the nostalgia of seeing it presented in a new, musical manner.

I personally find a point of contention in Ong’s reasoning.  While I do mostly agree that the audience is imagined by the writer, I find a massive amount of complexity in the case of a personal diary.  Ong’s reasoning is that a writer of the diary imagines his or herself when writing a personal diary, but I’m not certain that is entirely possible.  Unless the writer makes a completely conscious effort to do so, you can’t really separate yourself from, well, yourself.  Otherwise, I feel that Ong’s argument falls fully in line with the theory of Reader Response.  When the reader of text plays such a huge role in the meaning of the text, it only makes sense to address the reader when you write.  The “imagining” of the audience simply makes this more practical.