“The meanings that are encoded into a text are not always decoded in the same way. Audiences may adopt a preferred, negotiated, or oppositional reading, reflecting their social and cultural backgrounds.”
As a classic Chinese period drama, Empresses in the Palace has garnered widespread attention and affection since its premiere in 2011. In recent years, this representative TV series has gained popularity again on various social platforms in China, but with a different interpretation. I believe that we can analyze these changes using Hall’s encoding and decoding model to understand this phenomenon.
The encoding stage: During the production process, the creative team was influenced by the cultural environment, historical background, and market demand at the time. They may have referenced historical anecdotes from the Qing Dynasty, palace intrigue stories, and incorporated modern audiences’ expectations and aesthetic preferences for palace intrigue dramas. The character personalities, the design of power struggles scenes, etc. were all encoded based on the market’s preference for palace intrigue topics.
In the encoding process, the production team hoped to convey the survival wisdom, complexity of human nature, and brutality of power struggles in the palace by constructing complex power struggles and emotional entanglements.
The decoding process: When it was first broadcast in early 2011, audiences were more focused on the palace intrigue elements and the dramatic plot of the show. At that time, China was experiencing a period of rapid economic development, and audiences were more interested in power struggles, female wisdom, and other surface-level elements. However, as people grew up, in recent years, many bloggers have begun to reinterpret the details of the show on social media platforms, and people have applied these elements to similar scenarios in their daily lives with a comedic twist. In addition, some classic lines and scenes from the show have been remixed into meme-like emoticons and used in various social contexts. This shows that people of the same era but from different backgrounds have very different ways of decoding the same product.
All cultural products, including Empresses in the Palace, will be constantly reinterpreted over time, in response to changes in social context and the audience’s knowledge framework. The creator builds the meaning structure during the encoding stage, but the audience interprets it differently in different decoding stages based on their background and cognition. This diversified interpretation process is a typical representation of the interaction between cultural products and audiences.
References:
https://images.app.goo.gl/9KGAHL1kRk2mcKkh9
https://images.app.goo.gl/GP98rN17izEL2TWWA
Stuart Hall’s discussion of encoding and decoding in media studies is detailed in his essay “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse” (1973)
I like the example of Empresses in the Palace very much, because I have seen this TV before, and the theme of encoding and decoding is very relevant to me. Under different social and cultural backgrounds, people will have different decoding processes and results. Hall’s Stuart encoding and decoding model emphasizes that audience’s ability to interpret is dependent on individual cultural literacy, knowledge reserve and other aspects. This example explains this purpose very well, and I strongly agree with and like it.