Abstract
This ethnographic study explores everyday cultural performance and embodied audiencing practices at a performance-centered midnight screening of the 2003 cult film The Room.
Prior to attending and co-performing the film’s group audiencing ritual, the author explores fan appropriation of the previously obscure film and fan-generated and circulated performance scripts. Drawing on thick description and bodily knowledge gained from attending and performing The Room’s audiencing ritual, the author explores how the ritual’s scripts are embraced, embellished, and deviated from while critiquing problematic aspects of the ritual.
Within these intersections, the author discusses ways in which cultural performance and embodied audiencing practices can teach us about the ways in which audiences interact with and make sense of mediated texts.
Recommended Citation
Foy, Matt
(2012)
"The Performance Cult of The Room: Embodied Audiencing and Movie Riffing as Shared Sense-making,"
Kaleidoscope: A Graduate Journal of Qualitative Communication Research: Vol. 11, Article 2.
Available at:
https://opensiuc.lib.siu.edu/kaleidoscope/vol11/iss1/2