‘I’m no expert, but…’: everyday textual analysis with film audiences in the English regions

This article draws on the film elicitation groups which took place as part of the AHRC funded Beyond the Multiplex Project (2017-21). The article proposes that four categories of ‘everyday textual analysis’ were deployed by the participants, and subsequently draws on these to suggest an alternative to more conventional modes of close reading favoured in academic film studies, and to reveal the potential to develop wider and more diverse audiences for specialised film. Sixteen groups were undertaken in late 2018 and saw participants from a range of backgrounds and regions in England responding to and discussing eight specialised films: I, Daniel Blake (Loach, 2017), Things to Come (Hansen-Løve, 2017), Call Me By Your Name (Guadagnino, 2017), Dark River (Barnard, 2017), God’s Own Country (Lee, 2017), Loveless (Zvyagintsev, 2017), The Eagle Huntress (Bell, 2016), and Happy End (Haneke, 2017). The aim of the groups was to develop insights into the ways in which audiences construct meaning through specialised film, with a particular emphasis on the interpretive resources that audiences draw upon in these encounters. This article traces the narratives that emerged in response to the films above and pays particular attention to the ways that audiences interpret such texts by recognising and reflecting on the formal features and characteristics as key elements of meaning making. While interview methods enable holistic reflection on audience behaviours, the presence of the film text within the elicitation groups represents a specific set of reference points for participants which surfaces and offers insights into the delicate ecologies that lie between the formal characteristics of specialised films and the sites and characteristics of their wider experiences of cinema.