LOST - Audience targeting

I believe that the intended audience for this ABC's Lost is a wide, mainstream audience. The text is written by JJ Abrams and is produced to target both, a passive and active audience by it's conventions. The American TV series first aired in September 2004 and concluded in May 2010. The series is based on a aeroplane crash causing a group of survivors to be stranded on a deserted tropical island and they must find a way to escape.

The first convention present that makes me believe that this is a mainstream text is the use of a non-diegetic score as the young boy is walking through the jungle to find his dog. We see a tracking shot of the boy walking, while the composer (Michael Giacchino) builds the timbre to create an eerie atmosphere and to create suspense and paranoia. The use of a score allows the audience to feel the character's emotions, this could suggest that the audience is passive as they put themselves into the character's emotions and believe what they are watching to be real. This is a common feature within many mainstream texts as it doesn't require the audience to decode the texts and work out characters' emotions as they are highlighted by the score.

Another convention that suggests that the intended audience for this text is mainstream is the repeated use of enigma codes. The technical conventions shows a close up shot of a pair of handcuffs lying on the ground in the jungle. This could imply that the intended audience is active so that they then question who's handcuffs are they? This shot is constructed to be shown before an advert break, so that the audience is enticed to continue watching in order to have the answers revealed. This will cause curiosity and therefore an active audience will want answers and therefore the producer achieves their aim of convincing an audience to continue watching the programme.

The text uses narrative conventions of Binary Opposition to emphasise the different lifestyles of Kate and Sun. Kate is a Western Woman, shown liberated, as a mid shot shows her dressed in just her underwear exposing her body. This is then compared to Sun, a timid Asian woman, who appears very reserved to the audience as we see a scene where she is forced, by her husband, to do up the top button of her cardigan. This is a common feature of the a mainstream text and allows the audience to be passive as they do not need to define character types as they are given to the audience and are exaggerated by positioning them next to their opposites to make them more obvious to the audience.