Encoding & Decoding Comedy Central

Drawing on Stuart Hall’s theory of encoding and decoding, I'm trying to provide a dominant, negotiated and opposition readings of a news story on YouTube. Moreover, this article will do its best to explain why particular audiences might make these readings.

The news which I have chosen for this task on Youtube is from an American TV show called ‘The Daily News’ on a channel called Comedy Central, presented by Trevor Noah. The programme approaches delicate matters taken place around the world and present them in a rather amusing format.

Although the language used by the presenter and directors is quite colloquial, the jokes presented are intelligent and nearly always targeting politics across the globe and most frequently the current American president Donald Trump.
For this particular task, I have chosen an episode where Noah brings up a case in America where a baker refused to produce a wedding cake for a same-sex couple based on the couple’s sexual orientation. This short essay will focus on the audience’s reaction and interpretation of the show rather than the case itself.

The viewers of the channel are modern Americans who appreciate the intelligent humour. However, a conservative audience could find the subject in this episode rather uncomfortable. Moreover, in order for the episode to be produced in a format which would highlight the humour behind such story, the producers and the presenter had to produce an episode which would amuse its audience without offending its audience at the same time. It is important to mention that some people from the audience might interpret the message differently due to personal experience or a personal relation with particular audience targeted within the text (Comedy Central, 2017).

The cake episode’s example, Noah shows an audience rather unimpressed with the story, leading the views to feel modern and disconnected with some parts of America. The show also implies that the case is strong enough to be taken to the supreme court. Furthermore, although the Youtube viewers and the American audience are in agreement with the case, in this case, completely against the baker. It also highlights how America is divided.

Dominant-hegemonic: The message repeated is that refusing to serve a customer based on the customer’s sexual orientation might be an issue from the past according to the viewers however it is still very present in today’s society.
Negotiated: One might argue that the baker’s argument is powerful when it intends to protect his freedom of speech and freedom to be able to refuse to participate in an event which goes against his beliefs and morals. In addition to that, the baker brings up an argument based on the American constitution where he could be saved if he treats his cake as a piece of art, therefore, not obliged to amend his style due to a customer’s requests.

Oppositional: The message from Noah can be rather contradictory, as at some stage in the episode he makes a comparison between the couple and a former racist group based in America. Although his aim is to ridicule the baker, some viewers could argue that such argument is rather unnecessary in order to emphasise Noah’s view.

Stuart Hall writes extensively about the complexity of coding and decoding the messages presented by television programmes and gives great emphasis to the cultural factor sometimes ignored in the discussion (Hall,1993).

Furthermore, it is easy to understand Hall’s work and how the Comedy Central’s audience can culturally relate to each other.

Bibliography:

Hall, S. (1993). Encoding, decoding. In: During, S. (ed.) The cultural studies reader. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 507-517.

Noah, T. (2017). Comedy Central. The Daily Show. YouTube. Available from:

[Accessed 09 December 2017].