Perception and A Challenge
Oct. 23rd, 2003 02:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat(All of the below is a combination of information I got from my Marketing textbook/class and my own perceptions and opinions - it's sort of a silly epiphany I wanted to write down and share.)
Next week I have a mid-term for my Marketing class and to prepare for it, I’ve been hastily reading assigned chapters in a book by Pride and Ferrell called Marketing Concepts and Strategies, which in of itself isn’t really worth posting about in live journal. Who gives a crap about my Marketing class? But chapter 8 deals with Consumer Buying Behavior and smack dab in the middle of a chapter discussing situational factors and other business terms, there’s a nifty little section on Psychological Influences on Buying Decision Process, which in turn discusses Perception. While reading it I was struck by how clearly it explained the differing fan responses that can lead to literal battles over a television show. Why two person can watch exactly the same show on TV yet react so differently to it – to the extent that it’s almost as if they saw two different shows, each believing that their version is the correct one.
The chapter starts with a black and white picture of fish and birds above the ocean. The caption beside the picture asks: Do you see the fish changing into birds or the birds changing into fish? One person may see birds turning into fish. Another fish turning into birds. A third just fish and birds with no change occurring. What each person sees depends on how they view the world, different people perceive the same thing at the same time in different ways.
Perception, according to Pride and Ferrell, is the process of selecting, organizing and interpreting information inputs to produce meaning. Information inputs are sensations received through sight, taste, hearing, smell and touch. And perception is a three-step process. Although we perceive many things at once – only a few reach our awareness. For instance if you are reading this entry, concentrating on it, you may not be aware of the cars buzzing outside, your kids arguing in the background, your co-workers typing or on the phone in the cubicle next to you – even though you are receiving these inputs, they do not reach your awareness until they are pointed out. What our current needs are at a given time – is often what we focus on or what reaches our awareness. If for instance our current need is to walk across the street – our awareness will be focused on what is directly in our path or preventing us from crossing the street. If we are merely wandering around town in no hurry, we may be aware of what is blocking our path across the street, but be more focused on the fact that there is a kid playing with chalk on the sidewalk.
(What follows is lengthy discourse on how we perceive information and why from a marketing/broadcast perspective, includes a silly challenge...read at own risk ;-))
Selective nature of perception can be broken down into/or explained by two conditions:
1. Selective Distortion – this is when we twist the information we see so that it remains consistent with our personal beliefs or feelings. In marketing this occurs when someone perceives a commercial where their favorite brand is depicting doing poorly against an unknown or disliked brand. They may distort what they see to fit their prior views. It also happens when we watch a tv show, if a character we despise is shown in a positive light, we may distort what we perceive in order to maintain the prior view, particularly if we feel passionately about the character. Same thing happens if a character we loved is shown in a negative light. Examples: how viewers responded to Seeing Red and Dead Things. Other examples: how viewers respond to the characters of Angel and Spike. (One viewer will claim their view is the correct one while the other viewers is distorted. But truth is? Both views may be.)
2. Selective Retention – a person remembers information inputs that support personal feelings and beliefs and forgets inputs that do not. Basically we remember what we want to remember.
The next step is how we organize the data that we’ve perceived. When watching a television show or a commercial – the information that comes to our isn’t always organized, it’s received in pieces. We get images, we get sound, we get external sounds and images that have nothing to do with the program, commercial breaks, etc – to produce meaning we mentally organize and integrate the new information with what is already stored. We use different methods to organize data – one method is called “closure” – which occurs when someone mentally fills in missing elements in a pattern or statement. We also sometimes use an internal indexing system – placing situations we see alongside situations we’ve experienced before.
The last step is interpretation – this is where we assign meaning to what we just organized. We base “interpretation of the data” on what we expect or what is familiar.
The following also influence our perceptions:
1. Motive – our activities are based on specific needs : 1) Physiological needs, 2) safety needs, 3) social needs, 4) esteem needs, 5) self-actualization needs.
2. Learning – how our behavior may change due to information and experience
3. Attitude – our enduring evaluation of, feeling about and behavioral tendencies towards an object or idea. Attitudes tend to remain more constant – but do not have equal impact at any one time, some attitudes are stronger than others. They are also acquired through experience and interaction. Attitude consists of three major components: cognitive (knowledge about the object), affective (feelings and emotions toward the idea) and behavioral (actions regarding it). For example – if you work in an emergency room and see gun-shot victims on a regular basis and know in depth what guns due to people, this will in turn affect your feelings towards guns in general and behavior towards the concept of gun control. Same thing about violence or torture on TV. If you have personal knowledge or experience with torture, this will affect your feelings towards seeing it portrayed, and in turn how you react to its portrayal.
4. Personality – internal traits and distinct behavioral tendencies that result in consistent patterns of behavior in certain situations. (Self-concept – is the person’s view or perception of themselves).
5. Lifestyle – our pattern of living expressed through activities, interests, and opinions. This includes how we choose to spend our time, the extent we interact with others, and our general outlook on life and living. Lifestyle is affected by demographic factors such as age, education, income, ethnicity, and social class. Also may be determined by geographical factors and personality.
Social class is defined as – an open group of individuals with similar social rank.
6. Reference Group – a group that positively or negatively affects our values, attitudes or behavior.
Each of these factors affect how we watch Television programs such as Angel the Series and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. How we view the commercials that show up during them. What we remember or retain after each viewing as well as our behavior before, during and after each episode.
For example: Some people may want to know if an episode is good before they spend time watching it – they want external reassurance, so they may read a review of the episode or a wildfeed summary. Others may want to ensure that they see the episode fresh, complete with suspense, so they avoid summaries and reviews prior to seeing a movie or watching a tv-show. They want to minimize the outside information affecting their opinion of the show. Some may take notes during the episode, some may just watch it and comment later, some may tape and re-watch several times, while still others may watch, tape and download the shooting script to read.
What our interests are – also affect our viewing:
1. Psychologist, student of psychology or someone with an interest in psychology – may view a movie or show, categorizing everything psychologically. Depending on the type of psychology they studied – they may use words such as sociopath, narcissist, psychopath, victim, etc. Or they may use Jungian terms such as shadow, anima, animus, self-actualization, and so on.
2. Mythologist – may be more interested in using the terms “trickster”, “fool”, “shadow (also works in mythology)”, beast, and be interested in comparing the characters and story to mythological works
3. Catholic? – the catechism, moral views and laws,
5. Lawyer – how the law determines each characters crimes, and the possible defenses
6. An English Literature Professor – comparing it to whatever works they are studying.
(Etc...)
How we organize and interpret data has a lot to do with who we are, our past experiences, how we’ve been taught, and our beliefs. The wonder and frustration of interacting on the internet is we really have no idea, unless someone tells us, what those past experiences, demographics, teachings, beliefs, etc of the person we are communicating with are. But we can safely assume that it is more likely they will “not” share our perceptions of the show and when we both sit down, whether it be weeks apart, hours, countries or in the same room at the same time – we will not perceive the show, movie, book, radio program in the same way or retain the same things from it.
That said, I’ve come up with a little challenge, should anyone choose to take me up on it. If someone does? The forum is Atpo or live journal or just direct me to the board you've chosen to post it on. Can you write an essay or post defending a character or relationship on Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel the Series, which you don’t like, don’t care about, or can’t abide? For example – if you aren’t fond of Fred – your challenge would be to write an essay or post defending the character, defending her attributes, showing how valuable she is to the show and what you believe her story arc may be. Another example – if you can’t abide the B/S or B/A relationships, think they are dead in the water, absolutely hate or don’t care about them – can you write a post or essay supporting the relationship and proving it is not dead and actually was worthwhile? A post that someone who does love that relationship would respond favorably to without thinking you were making fun of them? (That's how you can tell if you succeeded if someone who likes the character or relationship responds favorably.)
Parodies and Satires are against the point of the exercise, so anyone accepting the challenge including myself – is prohibited from doing it that way. The point is to attempt to place myself for a few moments in someone else’s perspective, to try and see something from another, possibly foreign point of view. Yes, it may be impossible. But in a way, by doing it, it helps me see how someone else may view the world which in turn makes it more possible for me to negotiate and interact with them. So I guess my challenge, assuming I find the time what with this marketing plan I have to write, researching licensing companies and firms, studying for a test, reading three books, and applying for jobs, is can I write an essay that defends the Buffy/Angel relationship to nay-sayers and proves that it is not dead in the water and can be and should be resurrected? (A better question is can I find the time to do it?) Hmmm...not sure this is such a hot idea any more seems sort of lame after thinking about it...feel free to ignore, may eventually delete.
Next week I have a mid-term for my Marketing class and to prepare for it, I’ve been hastily reading assigned chapters in a book by Pride and Ferrell called Marketing Concepts and Strategies, which in of itself isn’t really worth posting about in live journal. Who gives a crap about my Marketing class? But chapter 8 deals with Consumer Buying Behavior and smack dab in the middle of a chapter discussing situational factors and other business terms, there’s a nifty little section on Psychological Influences on Buying Decision Process, which in turn discusses Perception. While reading it I was struck by how clearly it explained the differing fan responses that can lead to literal battles over a television show. Why two person can watch exactly the same show on TV yet react so differently to it – to the extent that it’s almost as if they saw two different shows, each believing that their version is the correct one.
The chapter starts with a black and white picture of fish and birds above the ocean. The caption beside the picture asks: Do you see the fish changing into birds or the birds changing into fish? One person may see birds turning into fish. Another fish turning into birds. A third just fish and birds with no change occurring. What each person sees depends on how they view the world, different people perceive the same thing at the same time in different ways.
Perception, according to Pride and Ferrell, is the process of selecting, organizing and interpreting information inputs to produce meaning. Information inputs are sensations received through sight, taste, hearing, smell and touch. And perception is a three-step process. Although we perceive many things at once – only a few reach our awareness. For instance if you are reading this entry, concentrating on it, you may not be aware of the cars buzzing outside, your kids arguing in the background, your co-workers typing or on the phone in the cubicle next to you – even though you are receiving these inputs, they do not reach your awareness until they are pointed out. What our current needs are at a given time – is often what we focus on or what reaches our awareness. If for instance our current need is to walk across the street – our awareness will be focused on what is directly in our path or preventing us from crossing the street. If we are merely wandering around town in no hurry, we may be aware of what is blocking our path across the street, but be more focused on the fact that there is a kid playing with chalk on the sidewalk.
(What follows is lengthy discourse on how we perceive information and why from a marketing/broadcast perspective, includes a silly challenge...read at own risk ;-))
Selective nature of perception can be broken down into/or explained by two conditions:
1. Selective Distortion – this is when we twist the information we see so that it remains consistent with our personal beliefs or feelings. In marketing this occurs when someone perceives a commercial where their favorite brand is depicting doing poorly against an unknown or disliked brand. They may distort what they see to fit their prior views. It also happens when we watch a tv show, if a character we despise is shown in a positive light, we may distort what we perceive in order to maintain the prior view, particularly if we feel passionately about the character. Same thing happens if a character we loved is shown in a negative light. Examples: how viewers responded to Seeing Red and Dead Things. Other examples: how viewers respond to the characters of Angel and Spike. (One viewer will claim their view is the correct one while the other viewers is distorted. But truth is? Both views may be.)
2. Selective Retention – a person remembers information inputs that support personal feelings and beliefs and forgets inputs that do not. Basically we remember what we want to remember.
The next step is how we organize the data that we’ve perceived. When watching a television show or a commercial – the information that comes to our isn’t always organized, it’s received in pieces. We get images, we get sound, we get external sounds and images that have nothing to do with the program, commercial breaks, etc – to produce meaning we mentally organize and integrate the new information with what is already stored. We use different methods to organize data – one method is called “closure” – which occurs when someone mentally fills in missing elements in a pattern or statement. We also sometimes use an internal indexing system – placing situations we see alongside situations we’ve experienced before.
The last step is interpretation – this is where we assign meaning to what we just organized. We base “interpretation of the data” on what we expect or what is familiar.
The following also influence our perceptions:
1. Motive – our activities are based on specific needs : 1) Physiological needs, 2) safety needs, 3) social needs, 4) esteem needs, 5) self-actualization needs.
2. Learning – how our behavior may change due to information and experience
3. Attitude – our enduring evaluation of, feeling about and behavioral tendencies towards an object or idea. Attitudes tend to remain more constant – but do not have equal impact at any one time, some attitudes are stronger than others. They are also acquired through experience and interaction. Attitude consists of three major components: cognitive (knowledge about the object), affective (feelings and emotions toward the idea) and behavioral (actions regarding it). For example – if you work in an emergency room and see gun-shot victims on a regular basis and know in depth what guns due to people, this will in turn affect your feelings towards guns in general and behavior towards the concept of gun control. Same thing about violence or torture on TV. If you have personal knowledge or experience with torture, this will affect your feelings towards seeing it portrayed, and in turn how you react to its portrayal.
4. Personality – internal traits and distinct behavioral tendencies that result in consistent patterns of behavior in certain situations. (Self-concept – is the person’s view or perception of themselves).
5. Lifestyle – our pattern of living expressed through activities, interests, and opinions. This includes how we choose to spend our time, the extent we interact with others, and our general outlook on life and living. Lifestyle is affected by demographic factors such as age, education, income, ethnicity, and social class. Also may be determined by geographical factors and personality.
Social class is defined as – an open group of individuals with similar social rank.
6. Reference Group – a group that positively or negatively affects our values, attitudes or behavior.
Each of these factors affect how we watch Television programs such as Angel the Series and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. How we view the commercials that show up during them. What we remember or retain after each viewing as well as our behavior before, during and after each episode.
For example: Some people may want to know if an episode is good before they spend time watching it – they want external reassurance, so they may read a review of the episode or a wildfeed summary. Others may want to ensure that they see the episode fresh, complete with suspense, so they avoid summaries and reviews prior to seeing a movie or watching a tv-show. They want to minimize the outside information affecting their opinion of the show. Some may take notes during the episode, some may just watch it and comment later, some may tape and re-watch several times, while still others may watch, tape and download the shooting script to read.
What our interests are – also affect our viewing:
1. Psychologist, student of psychology or someone with an interest in psychology – may view a movie or show, categorizing everything psychologically. Depending on the type of psychology they studied – they may use words such as sociopath, narcissist, psychopath, victim, etc. Or they may use Jungian terms such as shadow, anima, animus, self-actualization, and so on.
2. Mythologist – may be more interested in using the terms “trickster”, “fool”, “shadow (also works in mythology)”, beast, and be interested in comparing the characters and story to mythological works
3. Catholic? – the catechism, moral views and laws,
5. Lawyer – how the law determines each characters crimes, and the possible defenses
6. An English Literature Professor – comparing it to whatever works they are studying.
(Etc...)
How we organize and interpret data has a lot to do with who we are, our past experiences, how we’ve been taught, and our beliefs. The wonder and frustration of interacting on the internet is we really have no idea, unless someone tells us, what those past experiences, demographics, teachings, beliefs, etc of the person we are communicating with are. But we can safely assume that it is more likely they will “not” share our perceptions of the show and when we both sit down, whether it be weeks apart, hours, countries or in the same room at the same time – we will not perceive the show, movie, book, radio program in the same way or retain the same things from it.
That said, I’ve come up with a little challenge, should anyone choose to take me up on it. If someone does? The forum is Atpo or live journal or just direct me to the board you've chosen to post it on. Can you write an essay or post defending a character or relationship on Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel the Series, which you don’t like, don’t care about, or can’t abide? For example – if you aren’t fond of Fred – your challenge would be to write an essay or post defending the character, defending her attributes, showing how valuable she is to the show and what you believe her story arc may be. Another example – if you can’t abide the B/S or B/A relationships, think they are dead in the water, absolutely hate or don’t care about them – can you write a post or essay supporting the relationship and proving it is not dead and actually was worthwhile? A post that someone who does love that relationship would respond favorably to without thinking you were making fun of them? (That's how you can tell if you succeeded if someone who likes the character or relationship responds favorably.)
Parodies and Satires are against the point of the exercise, so anyone accepting the challenge including myself – is prohibited from doing it that way. The point is to attempt to place myself for a few moments in someone else’s perspective, to try and see something from another, possibly foreign point of view. Yes, it may be impossible. But in a way, by doing it, it helps me see how someone else may view the world which in turn makes it more possible for me to negotiate and interact with them. So I guess my challenge, assuming I find the time what with this marketing plan I have to write, researching licensing companies and firms, studying for a test, reading three books, and applying for jobs, is can I write an essay that defends the Buffy/Angel relationship to nay-sayers and proves that it is not dead in the water and can be and should be resurrected? (A better question is can I find the time to do it?) Hmmm...not sure this is such a hot idea any more seems sort of lame after thinking about it...feel free to ignore, may eventually delete.
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Repost Part 2
Date: 2003-10-25 08:16 am (UTC)The highest pitch of this Romantic ideal can be found in Keats who wrote wonderful, ecstatic poetry and died when he was 25. Having nursed his younger brother throughout his terminal illness, he was obsessed with the ideas of death and mortality, ideas which seem very relevant in viewing Vampires, as walking graves. They have eternal life, but as Adam points out in Season 4, this just makes their fear of death even more potent.
Keat's, and his brother died of consumption, which, famously involves the coughing up of blood, and consumption is a very Romantic illness, and is 'all about the blood'. The heroine of La Traviata dies of consumption. The imagery of blood which signifies both life, and death and mortality in the round is highly potent - this why Vampires are such a powerful metaphor, and why these creatures of death in the Buffyverse seem so potent, and so alive - they drink of the very stuff of life and death.
The Vampire, as has been noted by many posters here, notably Age and Rufus, are arrested teenagers, adolescents, always on the brink of high emotion.
In Ode to a Grecian Urn, Keat's celebration of the immortality of art, he says, talking of the scenes depicted on the vase:
"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone,
Fair youth beneath the trees, thou cans't not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never can'st thou kiss
Though winning near the goal - yet do not grieve
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love and she be fair!"
The two lovers of the Grecian urn are stuck, in their passionate, frozen love, reminding me of James and Elizabeth in Hearthrob. Where an unchanging, frozen love is prized above a changing, human, mortal one.
But Vampires exist in a world, Sunnydale, where things are in constant flux, whether it be Gods or Keys, or just plain mortal death, love, marriage, life. Nothing around them stands still, but themselves. So they become casualties of Buffy who seems to represent the force of life itself. Both her relationships with Vampires was shown to be highly passionate, but doomed. Her affair with Angel could never be consummated without danger - they are forced to stand apart. Her affair with Spike disturbed dangerous emotions in both.
Significantly this season, Angel has 'grown up' become an adult in the fullest sense by having a son. Though ironically, he's stuck motionless at the bottom of the ocean this summer. Spike entered the Crucible of change and has come out, who knows what?
So there appears to be three options for a vampires, in the world of Sunnydale - forever frozen, to turn back into the ashes and dust of death (I will show you fear in a handful of dust) or to truly change and grow up.