Fictionalized Audiences and the Reader's Role

The writer needs only to point to what’s already there, for what the writer wants to tell you about is not the scene, but his feelings. The reader must learn how to be a member of an audience that does not “really” exist. Ong goes on to claim that a speaker’s audience is real and not as far away in space and time as it is for the writer. Despite this, orators also fictionalize their audiences to some degree. They must, just like writers, create or imply a role for their audience to play. While oral storytelling is a two-way street, writing normally calls for some kind withdrawal.

Writers naturally inspire others to play the role they are assigned by the writer. Sometimes, these roles are more forced than other times, such as when one is assigned a reading for work or school. The reader must assimilate to the role the writer makes for them. If the role is not one the reader wishes to play they don’t have to. Those that do choose to engage this way though, enter a “fictionalized” relationship with the writer, where the writer is encharged with guiding the reader into understanding, or, in other cases, entertainment. This trust between reader and writer is one that brings into question whether the reader is his own agent, and furthermore, to what degree the writer is his agent. The definition would suggest that as the reader engages with the writing, the writer is the agent, but if the reader steps away to do his own analysis, he separates himself and thus becomes his own agent.

Ong claims that in the case of a diarist, one’s audience is oneself, and that this is hard because when we engage in journaling we are talking to ourselves, which is difficult to do, but also because when journaling in this way, the writer must pretend he is not there. He claims that the diary fictionalizes the reader “most”. I can see the argument for this, because the writer must ignore his current state and instead write for his future self or for his past self, in that he is writing to extricate the thoughts from himself by writing them down. However, the writer in this case is, in a way, not fictionalizing himself. He knows he is his own audience, and that he will be the one to read his own work later. He may not be exactly sure of how he will read it or how he will have changed when he does read it, but he doesn’t have to “make up” an audience.

“The Girl Effect” set of commercials is the case study that had the clearest ideal audience. It reminded me of what Ong said about how a writer simply points to what is already there, what he wants to tell you about is not the scene, but his feelings. These commercials were effective in that way. The feelings of wanting to help impoverished girls is presented and then transferred onto the audience, which we may not be able to explicitly name but we can visualize and provide a frame of who would be moved to action or discourse by this kind of commercial.