The reception of The Hobbit: A world project [project completed]

Promoters of the overall project

Martin Barker (Aberystwyth University, UK), Matt Hills (Aberystwyth University, UK), Ernest Mathijs (University of British Columbia, Canada)

PReCoM promoter

Geoffroy Patriarche

Researchers

Geoffroy Patriarche

Collaborator

Jean-Pierre Delchambre (USL-B/CASPER), Nicolas Marquis (USL-B/CASPER)

Project duration

2013-2015

Keywords

Audience research, world audiences, film studies, fantasy, The Hobbit

Funding

The website for the online survey was funded by the British Academy (United Kingdom). PReCoM’s participation is self-funded.

Description

The World Hobbit Project aims to gather and analyse audience responses to the films of The Hobbit. Through this, the project intends to make substantial contributions at many levels: (1) understanding the reception of this story and this film itself; (2) adding to our understanding of cinema audiences more broadly; (3) understanding the place and role of fantasy in people’s lives; (4) contributing to broader debates about, among other things, transnational media, Hollywood and national cultures; and (5) comparing the strengths and weaknesses of various methodological and analytic models. The Hobbit project involves 46 countries over the world and is a follow-up on the 2003-4 Lord of the Rings research project.

For more information, see (in French) Du Brulle, C., «Le Hobbit: L’Université Saint-Louis mène l’enquête», Daily Science, 14 janvier 2015, http://dailyscience.be/2015/01/14/le-hobbit-luniversite-saint-louis-mene-lenquete/

So far PReCoM has mainly contributed to the production of the questionnaire (including the translation in French) and the dissemination of the survey on social media and in movie theaters, thereby reaching out to 518 Belgian respondents (incl. 408 French-speaking Belgians) and 1044 French respondents.

The World Hobbit network has published a themed section in Participations: Journal of Audience and Reception Studies, including a paper comparing the responses to The Hobbit in Belgium, France and The Netherlands.