Top Gun

By Hairuo Yuan

‘Join the Navy, the film said. It will be fun, the film said’, discuss how movie ‘Top Gun’ targets its ideal audience

More than a blockbuster

Through the evolution process of the media industry from the early 1950s to 1990s, significant transitions in distributing and exhibiting television programs had been witnessed across western nations, especially in the United States of America. The history of transitions is shaped by multiple culture elements which typically in the USA, have been told either through “macro-political analysis focusing on top-down development in technical, physical, infrastructural and economic terms (Johnson, 2009)”, or through “the study of micro-political struggles with these media focusing, for example, on content analysis, and textual representation or on group or community resistance to particular programming (Johnson, 2009)”. By combining both social-political aspects, two elements can be defined as the major accelerators to media transitions: the development of technical terms and audiences as a positive group or community who has its own taste, even resistance. These changes, not only influenced the standard that producers used to create television program but also promoted the way how television dominate targets audience. This essay, instead of analyzing television transitions, will develop these theories into a different kind of genera: film, to demonstrate and evaluate how a 1980s film applied newly formed television technics which came into prominence in 1990s to attract its own audience in American society.  

Niche: the importance of target audiences

To be specific, after the World War II, in just 40 years, dominate wireless television companies were greatly challenged by a new form of Communication Technology called Cable which though needs to be subscribed, it gives audiences opportunity to choose programs freely. At that time, audiences were rising as a powerful social group by changing their traditional style of participation in the culture industry. In traditional media institution, the communication between media dominant monopoly, or we called hegemony and information consumers seems to be one-way progress, due to the unequal power relationship. Which means without enough participants, the consumers had no other way but to believe what hegemony produced. This type of media progress, also known as the hypodermic needle model, remained its effectiveness until the rise of mass media. However, in the eyes of Rob Cover (2006), in the 1980s, after being exposed to Game Shows scandal and the popularity of reality shows, American audiences tended to be more responsible and more willing to take part in the industry, changed from passive audiences into positive audiences who discuss and question the text. These conditions resulted to a market situation that by the end of the 1980s, dominate companies’ share of the television audiences had plummeted from 90% to 60%, and was continuing to fall (as a form of unconscious resistance, in author’s opinion). To regain their rating, companies had to charge more to research audience segments valuable to advertisers and products for the further understanding of the importance of target audiences. It marks the transition that the broadcasting which distributes ideas via any electronic medium in a one-to-many model (Carey, 1989) to narrowcasting, also known as niche marketing and target marketing. 

Under this transition, in the early of 1990s, media companies in America used specific strategies to produce programs that target certain audiences in cable and created a new form of narrowcasting television genere called Teen Television whose narrow audience group was teens and young adult. Such kind of program used recognizable technics to help targets its ideal audience. However, in the late 1980s, few years before the prominence of teen television, film, as an iconic broadcasting media which shared the same aim with a television channel in attracting audiences, had already applied some similar technics used by television producers. One of these very typical films is Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986).

Teen Television and its ‘half-brother’: teen film

For media to target audiences, the producers of teen television developed a wild range of technics to narrow and satisfy their young audiences, both physically and mentally. As media genera, many of these series adopt characteristics of the previous quality television series, with ensemble casts, sophisticated writing and psychologically complex characters. In the era where “staying young” forms a foundational part of the of audience culture, “youth programming particularly if it has the articulate, liberal, sophisticated edge of ‘quality’ television has a valuable appeal to advertisers and broadcasters (Johnson, 2005)”. 

Although, Top Gun, released on May 16, 1986, had a number of differences in distributing and exhibiting process with teen television. By judging their media content and market environment, the technics they applied to target audiences are, in fact, under the same system. Next part, this essay will demonstrate how Top Gun, as a teen film, target its ideal audiences who are teenagers and young adults between the age of 17 and 26, especially young people who seek for an adventure through military service using the technics of teen television. 

Ensemble and attractive young casts

In Top Gun, there are well-known actors and actresses with superb acting recognized by media scholars, such as Val Kilmer and Anthony Edwards. However, at that time, audiences were not highly concerned about their performing. Instead, their attention was fully attached to the main actor: Tom Cruise and the main actress: Kelly McGillis. Tom Cruise was a young promising actor first appeared in a bit part in the 1981 film Endless Love and was part of the ensemble cast of The Outsiders in 1983 (Rotten Tomato, 2012). As for, Kelly McGillis., although received Golden Globe and BAFTA award nominations for her performing in 1985 film Witness (New York Daily News, 2017), both she and Cruise lacked the experience to be a leading main performer. At first glance, it seems unwise and casual for director Tony Scott to choose them as principal roles of a film with a $15 million budget. As a matter fact, for producers with the aim of attracting the young, the acting skills wasn’t the priority, it’s the appearance and the social characteristic that made them decide to put Cruise and McGillis in the centre.

Noticeably, both Cruise and McGilis had an attractive figure at that time. New York Post (2016) described Cruise as the standard-bearer of male beauty in Hollywood. In 1986, he was a handsome young man who had a well-shaped body and an identical “sharp jawline”. He acted like wild oats and devoted all himself into adventures, however, sometimes he changed his role into a polite and naïve ‘farm boy’ who used his sweet smile to grab innumerable girls’ heart. Same for McGilis, in 1986, she got “Cruise’s heart racing in “Top Gun” — and audiences fell for her just as fast. A classic blonde bombshell, McGillis was known for her thick, wavy hair and sultry smirk (Kline, 2017)”. From these descriptions, an intension for Scott to first choose casts with attractive figures for the satisfaction of target audiences can be easily identified.

Another reason that makes Cruise attractive to the audience is that for these young people, they are idols that marked a different future of Generation X. Generation X refers to the people who born between the early 1966 and late 1980 who, according to Douglas Coupland (1991), lacked the self-identity and faced an unclear future, even abominable future. However, these teenagers saw possibility in Cruise who were also Generation X and was different from prediction, he earned his career and future in his own style. In this case, choose Cruise would be more easily to gain support from the target audience (Rotten Tomato, 2012).

 Sophisticated storyline with psychologically complex characters

The storyline of Top Gun is a classic V shape causal linear narrative structure which interacts with audiences mentally through the attractive plot and emotional characters. Simply, the story is about friendship, love and the regain of self-confidence happened around the United States Naval Aviator Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (acted by Tom Cruise). 

In the film, at the very beginning, Maverick performs an exciting dog fight to prove he is skilful in flying and loyal to his friends, but audiences would also see him doing reckless manoeuvre and treating everything, even his commander casually like a cool high school young boy. Although Maverick is obviously overconfident in himself, his squadron commander has no choice but to send him and his best friend, Radar Intercept Officer Nick “Goose” Bradshaw to attend the Top Gun school. In training school, Maverick still acts wildly: he falls in love with his instructor (acted by Kelly McGillis); he aims to be the best aviator with Goose, and just as expected, Maverick meets his strongest competitor, his rival in love, Iceman. However, everything changes after Goose died in an accident, the plot comes to a plunge. Maverick is overcome by guilt and loses his aggressiveness when flying and his confidence is broken down, the optimistic high school boy is nowhere to be seen. With the help of his girl and friends, Maverick manages to push himself back to the sky, but when Iceman is engaged by bogeys, he loses confidence again and decided to break off. The breath of audiences is firmly grabbed by plot under a tense atmosphere, in a few seconds, they see Maverick’s struggle to put himself together and the moment that lost in his eyes is replaced by determination, with an aggressive manoeuvre, Maverick decided to reengage, audiences will surely burst into cheers.

Although it’s a military background film, Top Gun has a plot that teenagers familiar with high school like romantic and youth story with an emotional character who maybe strike down by challenges, but he will rejuvenate himself dramatically, also he will become a successful young man. Although the plot and characters are complex but traditional, such film will always catch the eye and heart of teenagers.

How ‘really’ Top Gun targets audiences

Think further, all these technics mentioned above are plainly strategies which serve for a deeper meaning. This leads an explanation to the original aspect that the way how the media product targets audiences are through making a compromise with target audiences’ ideology. The ideology which can be defined as a system of beliefs or assumptions that are given by social power, society takes as natural (Martin 2003), in another word, both media industries and audiences have their own ideology in communication progress. These social formed characteristics are closely related to consumers’ personal ideology. Through consumerism, the experience of self and the way how we signify who we are, is highlighted by the product we consumed. To put it simply, consumers are consuming the meaning in products to reinforce their certain stereotypical expectations (Dunn, 2008). Because audiences as consumers, they believed in the meaning and ideology told in products they bought, they use them to make their social stance (identity) clear, these are reasons why a certain group of young people will choose to watch Top Gun. However, according to Althusser (1971), ideology as a false conscious and imaginary relationship given by hegemony, it is accepted by people and keeps existing in history, makes the structure stable. The producers of Top Gun make their adjustment on its media content, not just aims to achieve box office, but also to create an ideology, an imaginary conscious, where target audiences can find their identity and develop an imaginary sense of preference to the product. The relationship between Top Gun and target audiences which based on ideology makes it easier for niche casting: the consumers have already had their own taste, producers only need to create a text that fits both hegemony’s and narrow groups’ ideology and uses media technics which are clear enough for audiences to decode and initiatively drag themselves into the system.

A successful way of targeting audience: analyze through advisers

In film history, after the 1950s, advertisers have developed a closer relationship with film. Advertisers functioned as a sponsor to support the making of films, and by inserting its own products and branding into film content, they hoped to attract film’s audience group who are the most valuable to their product. Analyzing how successfully advisers achieve this goal will provide, in my opinion, an indirect way to study how successfully film targets its audience instead of talking of box office simply.

In Top Gun, there are two types of advertisers: one provides actual product, another one provides the ideological product. The first type is Ray-Ban sunglass company which expanded its business from military use to civilian market after WW2. In years of development, Ray-Ban’s branding was always considered for people from high class and wealthy middle class, teenager group hadn’t wildly accepted it yet. Ray-Ban determined to change this misunderstanding by exposing their sunglass in teen film. What needs to be mentioned is that product placement in films wasn’t exactly a novel idea at this time, but the 80’s was the beginning of massive brands making appearances in big-budget movies (Ferreira, 2016). In Top Gun, they let Cruise wears their most classic product: RB3025, the update version Ray-Ban, Aviator. Handsome Tom Cruise did the publicity aiming to attract teenagers more than too good, after the release of the film, the sales of Aviator series increased 40% and more than half of the newly buyer belonged to the age group from 19 to 26 (Ferreira, 2016). 

Another advertiser who sells the ideological product is US Naval Airforce. During the shoot of the film, the military gave Tony Scott a shocking degree of support: Pentagon offered him the chance to take a close shot of USS Enterprise, two fighter Squadrons equipped the most advanced Naval fighter in the world: F-14A Tomcat and a license in filming inside the Top Gun school. These military assets can be seen as investment from a sponsor named Naval Airforce. The product is an ideological idea that: Join the Navy, it will be fun. You can use all these kinds of fantasy equipment and as a boy, you can be like Tom Cruise, have an adventure, be a hero, meet a beautiful girl; as a girl, you can be like Kelly McGillis and meet the handsome boy. The effectiveness of this is remarkable: as defined by the movie’s producer, Robb David (2004), “Top Gun was a recruiting video for the Navy, that people saw the movie and said, ‘Wow! I want to be a pilot (pp.181).’” After the film’s release, the US Navy stated that the number of young men and women who joined, wanting to be Naval Aviators went up by 500 per cent (Robb, 2004).

From the statistics, it can be seen that instead of simply listing Top Gun’s $356.8 million box office, analyzing the success in launching advertisement campaign to reach potential consumers can also be a side-proof of the success of media in targeting certain audience when these two different institutions share the same target consumer group, in Top Gun’s case, is young adults between the age of 17 and 26, especially young people who seek for an adventure through military service.

Although there is a critical response to this kind of consumer-specific film, such as Top Gun. Roger Ebert (1986) put that the biggest defect for Top Gun is that this film won’t able to have a long effect on its audience and is hard to review for the good parts are so good and the bad parts are so relentless. The specifically designed scenes are absolutely the best for teenagers, “But look out for the scenes where the people talk to one another”.

Apart from these critics, the narrowcasting which focuses on the taste of certain audiences is the mainstream in media institution and in the author’s point of view, the Top Gun is a good adaptation to this transition.

Conclusion

By tracking the history of television development, this essay first identified an important transition that media distribution was changing from broadcasting to narrowcasting, which also marked the importance of target audiences and the birth of teen television. Then, the essay applies the technics used in teen television and the theory of ideology to demonstrate how Top Gun targets its audiences. After studying the relationship between advertisers and the film, an alternative way in proving Top Gun’s success in niche marketing is proposed. The film itself is a famous media text which received response mixed with praise and critics all across America, it’s still a good case study to research the interaction between media and its consumers.