Exploring Audience Engagement in War Films: How Chennai’s Gen Z Connects with 1917

Abstract

This study investigates the audience engagement in war films, focusing mainly on heroism or emotional narratives have a stronger influence on Gen z viewers in Chennai, with the film reference 1917 as a case study. A total of 100 participants, aged between 16-18, where taken and divided them into 2 teams (50 males and 50 females). Each of them was shown selected sequences emphasizing either heroism or emotional content of the same film. Engagement levels were measured using the structured questionnaire, and the independent sample t-tests were conducted to find the responses and compare between both the conditions with the selected audiences. The analysis clearly revealed that the male participants exposed more to emotional sequences with higher engagement (M = 4.329) than those exposed to heroic sequences (M = 3.326, p = 0.000 <0.05). Female participants showed higher engagement with heroic sequences (M = 3.880) than emotional sequences (M = 3.642, p = 0.000 <0.05). These findings indicate a gender-based preference in war cinema engagement, where males are more influenced by emotional narratives and females by heroism. The results also suggest further discussions can be made how these preferences impact choice of similar trends.