
A Brief Translation of Stuart Hall’s Reception Theory
Advertising or images attempt to win some sort of identification. You get something out of an image if you position yourself within the message. In the production of meaning it is in relation to looking at the image as a spectator and having involvement with the image(s). If we can stand outside of them and just allow them to be there it is because they constantly construct us in our fantasy image. We are caught and invested in the meaning which is being taken from us. Therefore, images have no fixed meaning. Meaning, in the end, is interpretation, always contextual. Not all meanings are just floating around simply and everything has different meanings, the meaning can be fixed only for a short while. Power and ideologies try to fix the meaning of images and language, trying to stop the flow of meanings. Meaning can always be changed because it cannot be fixed. However, stereotyping fixes the meanings of images and language, a powerful way of circulating a limited range of definition of a group of people(s), producing knowledge of the world by the way it is represented. This is very important, it is the politics of an image. There is a negative field of stereotypes which is a problem when we try to reverse it in a positive light because you can maintain a positive regime of representation instead of stereotyping. It is almost impossible to fix positive or negative representation. Though the producer has the power to create the meaning of an image, its reception can be interpreted completely different by the viewer, thus creating another meaning.
This is how the reception of an image creates meaning, through constant unfixed representations drawn upon by each viewer.
