Week 7 - Super Mario Brothers

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Stuart Hall’s 1973 academic work ‘Encoding/Decoding’ focuses and distinguishes three models that are applied to understanding how people read and interpret texts such as Television and Video Games. This Blog will define and discuss Hall’s three readings, these being the dominant-hegemonic reading/preferred reading, the negotiated reading and the oppositional reading. Throughout I will relate each reading to Gender representation in the Video Game ‘Super Mario Brothers’.

The first reading defined by Hall is the dominant-hegemonic reading/preferred reading. Hall (1973, p. 59) states “When the viewer takes the connoted meaning from, say, a television newscast or current affairs programme full and straight, and decodes the message in terms of the reference code in which it has been encoded, we might say that the viewer is operating inside the dominate code.” In reference to video games this means that the player openly accepts or believes the message or representation of characters the video game is portraying. An example of this reading in reference to ‘Super Mario Brothers’ is the Princess Toadstool (the only female character) who is reliant on a male to rescue her. This view is reflective of the dominant society of the time so it isn’t challenged and seems normal as it is prevalent in our lives, or the idea is prevalent in our lives. (This is not my view and is starting to change but at the time this game was in production this view was evident and is reflected in the game).

The second reading by Hall is the Negotiated reading. Hall (1973, p. 60) comments “Decoding within the negotiated version contains a mixture of adaptive and oppositional elements: it acknowledges the legitimacy of the hegemonic definitions to make the grand significations (abstract), while, at a more restricted, situational (situated) level, it makes its own ground rules – it operates with exceptions to the rule.” In relation to Super Mario Brothers this can be seen at the time of its creation/publication that the views of society are reflected in the gender representation of the characters. The player knows that the representation reflects societal views yet don’t necessarily conform and take it on board. Just because the Princess requires Mario and Luigi to rescue her doesn’t mean that the player has to conform to this view of gender representation, the player can rather understand why there is this gender representation.

The third and final reading by Hall is the Oppositional reading. Hall (1973, p. 61) presents “it is possible for a viewer perfectly to understand both the literal and the connotative inflection given by a discourse but to decode the message in a globally contrary way. He/she detotalizes the message in the preferred code in order to retotalize the message within some alternative framework of reference.” This reading is the view the player ignores or disagrees what is being represented. In relation to Super Mario Brothers the oppositional view and the one I agree with is that women aren’t objects, there is no need for a women to rely on men to be rescued or saved.

Reference List:

-Hall, S 1973, ‘Encoding/Decoding’, in S Hall, D Hobson, A Lowe and P Willis (eds), Culture, Media, Language, Hutchinson, London, pp. 51-61.

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