Eдгар Морен и Бела Балаж – два класически възгледа за филмовата публика
Edgar Morin and Bella Balazs — Two Classic Concepts on the Film Audience

Summary/Abstract: One of the main differences between the film theories from both sides of the Atlantic is the attitude to the audience. While the European theory prioritizes the cinema specifics and the film as text, in America by the end of the 1920s, the mayors created analytical units studying the audience. However, the first systematic concepts for complex examination of film audiences originated by European film scholars – Bella Balazs and Edgar Morin. Based on the achievements of the German sociology from the beginning of the 20th century Balazs in his book “The Spirit of Cinema” (1930) states his concept of putting the viewer in the center of cinematographic creation of reality. Thus he lays down the specifics of cinema in a new way – not by its means of expression, but by the nature of perception. Further improvement of the method for complex analysis of the film audience, which combines sociological and psychological approaches, is carried out by the French film sociology and its brightest representative Edgar Morin. He displays as basic characteristics of the process of creating the film product such key concepts like „standardization“ and „individualization“ dialectically relating not only to the industrial conditions of the cinema but also to the needs of the masses, which are satisfied by this industry. At the same time he is sceptical about the objectivity of the conducted surveys on film audiences and gives priority to so-called weekly box office reports. The main conclusion of the review of these classic concepts on the film audience is that only through their audiences films are contributing to more significant socio-cultural processes.

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