Looking at the Joker, we can start to speculate what the effect of this trailer will have on an audience depending on if we assume the audience is passive or active.
The audience is passive
If we assume that the audience viewing this trailer are passive, then we have three audience effects theories that we can use to support how the audience will react; the Hypodermic Needle model, the Moral Panic theory, and the Cultivation theory.
Looking through the eyes of the hypodermic needle model (the idea that media injects opinions straight into the minds of the audience), the audience may come away from this trailer believing that the joker is a deeply disturbed man that simply count not be helped. The audience may believe this because they are directly shown that he is unstable, through maniacally laughing and the use of shallow depth of field, which signifies the joker’s atmosphere of being separated from society, and stuck in his own mine, as he is visually removed from the world around him.
As well as this, if we look through the lease of the cultivation theory, which suggests that prolonged exposure to certain material will change a viewers perception of reality, they may come away from this trailer thinking that all people who suffer from mental health disorder (eg schizophrenia) are a danger to society. This is because the joker trailer, as well as many other pieces of media, time and time again portray characters seeking help such as therapy (for example in the trailer the joker is seen talking to someone who we assume is a psychiatrist), but inevitably it fails and they become destructive in some way; weather that be to themselves or the world around them.
This then leads onto the 3rd theory that assumes the audience is passive, the Moral Panic Theory. This theory suggests that the media often creates and perpetuates fears an panic within audiences, as they are told something or someone is against their best interests, and it culminates in the public becoming hostile towards certain things, that may have not actually been as drastic as the media presented it to be. For example, from viewing the joker trailer, a moral panic may be formed that all people with mental illnesses are a danger to society (they get this idea from the joker who is shown to be mentally ill committing violent crimes against his community) , which perpetuates the existing stigma against mental illness making it more difficult for people to come forward and receive help.
The audience is active
However thee are other theories that explain how audience may react to media, that assumes the audience is active. For example the Uses and Gratifications theory, that suggests viewers watch media for various different reasons, those being in order to; be entertained/diverted, gain information/education, interact socially, and identify personally with the product. This then implies that the audiences won’t necessarily take away the message that people with mental illness are inherently bad, because in all likelihood they will be watching it for entertainment/diversion purposes and so will recognise that it is a piece of fiction and not something that is going to be 100%.
As well as this, there is also the Reception theory, where everything included within a pice of media has an intended message, but the audience does not necessarily always tale this message on board. There are three ways the consumer will interoperate the intended message; preferred reading, negotiated reading, and oppositional reading. The preferred reading is where the viewer takes the message fully on board, and believes mental illness is a danger to society. The negotiated reading is where the viewer partly agrees, in this case it could be that therapy doesn’t work, but mental illness doesn’t always equate to bursts of violence. And the oppositional reading, were the viewer completely disagrees with the intended message, could be that therapy does work, and it is wrong to portray people suffering from a disorder in this way. This theory therefore backs up the idea that audiences can think for themselves, and just because a media product wants consumers to live something doesn’t mean they always will.
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