Cinematic sociology: Narrative assessments of the audience practices

Abstract

The relevance of the issue under consideration is determined by at least two circumstances: first, leading representatives of cinematic sociology point to a sharp reduction in the number of empirical studies of films due to the “lack of proper informational and sociological support for the Russian cinema” [3. P. 74; 22. P. 152]; second, the narrative turn continues, “emphasizing the textual nature of all social practices” [24. P. 48] and the temporal characteristics of films. The authors, having conducted surveys of Tyumen moviegoers, which were ordered by the cinema owners in the spring of 2024 (N = 2502), use narrative analysis to explain moviegoers’ practices based on the rhetorical-functionalist theory of narrativity [19] and other relevant scientific approaches. Three groups of respondents were questionned: two target samples structured by gender, age, income and place of residence (582 people in cinemas using personal interviews; 438 people from the cinemas’ customer base using telephone interviews), and 1462 residents of Tyumen, and this sample was stratified by gender and age taking into account the characteristics of the cinemas’ target audience. The comparative historical method of narrative analysis was also used - the collected data were compared with materials on similar issues obtained by E. Altenloh 110 years ago [11; 12]. The article presents some empirical data with the results of analysis which included both formal procedures and those based on systematization of specialized literature and media discourses. The authors make the following conclusions: first, films that refer to famous plots, favorite characters and current narratives become especially popular with the mass audience; second, new interpretations of old stories have become key factors in the development of the contemporary film industry which largely sacrifices the semantic content for new aesthetic technologies.

Keywords

• cinematic sociology
• sociology of film
• narrative analysis
• moviegoer practices
• cinema
• movie