Film and Media Studies Commons^™

10 Movies And Documentaries With An "Inclusion Message", Trang Delos Luu, Tamara Prabhakar

Social Space

Social inclusion ideally involves a multi-targeted approach that addresses a medley of contextual factors including cultural customs and access to resources to ascertain a degree of assimilation. Fostering collaboration between different social identities has the power to catalyse social mobility for marginalised communities through increased participation and access to societal opportunities generally barred by conventional norms. To this end, fi lms have the special ability to draw focus to specifi c circumstances by capturing the engaging stories and experiences of unique characters to offer multitudes of perspective. The following 10 fi lms highlight stories of and by trailblazing outsiders who …

On Guenther Anders, Political Media Theory, And Nuclear Violence, Babette Babich

Articles and Chapters in Academic Book Collections

• Guenther Anders was a philosopher concerned with the political and social implications of power, both as expressed in the media and its tendency to elide the citizenry and thus the very possibility of democracy and the political implications of our participation in our own subjugation in the image of modern social media beginning with radio and television. Anders was particularly concerned with two bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II, and he was just as concerned with the so-called ‘peaceful’ uses of nuclear power, i.e., what he named our apocalypse-blindness and the urgency of violence. To …

China On The Move : Travel, Exile, And Migration In Chinese Literature And Film Of The 20th Century, Stephen Roddy, Frederik H. Green, Wei Menkus

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

During no previous century in China’s long history has society experienced more profound and far-reaching changes than during that nation’s long twentieth century. The contact with Western modernity and institutional change during the late Qing dynasty, the end of dynastic rule and the birth of the Republic, the Pacific War and the Civil War, the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Taiwan’s gradual democratization and finally the era of opening and reform in China under Deng Xiaoping 鄧小平 (1904−97) and the ensuing economic rise are only some of the key historical events that have profoundly transformed Chinese society …

The Diaspora And The Nation : A Cultural Poetics Of Re-Membering In Lai Shengchuan’S Taiwan Trilogy, Jon Eugene Von Kowallis

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

No abstract provided.

Frankenstein’S Migratory Subject : Under The Dome And Formosa Vs. Formosa, Chia-Ju Chang

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

No abstract provided.

Lost At Home : Jia Zhangke’S Journey Toward Modernity, Wei Menkus

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

In this essay, I take a close look at three of Jia’s films that have prominently engaged the topic of home in relation to place, identity, and nation: Still Life 三峽好人 (2006), 24 City 24城記 (2008), and A Touch of Sin 天註定 (2013). Set at the turn of the twenty-first century, these films employ various modes of representation concerning the reality of space. Still Life, a quiet and contemplative cinematic essay on change and obsolescence, tracks two strangers’ separate journeys to the Three Gorges city of Fengjie as they look for their missing spouses in the disappearing land. 24 City …

21st Century Film Criticism: The Evolution Of Film Criticism From Professional Intellectual Analysis To A Democratic Phenomenon, Asher Weiss

CMC Senior Theses

Film criticism has changed since its inception and will continue to change moving forward. The evolution of film criticism has largely been a story of the shift from an elite field of intellectual exploration by a few knowledgeable experts to a democratic phenomenon where expert analysis is aggregated and averaged, and the lines are blurred between true expertise and the random opinions of the masses. This paper will address the transition from the birth of film criticism to its popularization through the 90s, to what it has become today. By exploring the nature of film criticism historically and reviewing the …

A To Z Of Superhero Movies, Jiyeon Kim

CMC Senior Theses

This project explores the question of originality and appropriation in the creative world by using mashup video as a medium. How can old repetitive stories be deconstructed and transformed into something new? I have created alphabetically ordered montages of shots/scenes containing words/letters from superhero films. By doing so, I do not provide a concrete answer to what is really original in today’s world, but rather encourage the audience to actively participate in the viewing experience of the carefully structured ontology and see the infinite possibility of the modern-day mashup culture.

Why Katniss Everdeen Is Our Favorite Feminist – An Analysis Of The Heroine Of The Hunger Games Film Saga And Her Reception By Young Female Spectators, Paula Talero Álvarez

Theses and Dissertations

THROUGH THE FIGURE OF FICTIONAL CHARACTER KATNISS EVERDEEN, THIS DISSERTATION STUDIES HOW THE FILM INDUSTRY SIMULTANEOUSLY ENTRENCHES AND DISRUPTS GENDER, SEXUAL, AND RACIAL NORMATIVITIES. THE PROJECT USES TEXTUAL ANALYSIS AND PARTICIPANT RESEARCH TO ANALYZE HOW THE FILMS AND NOVELS OF THE HUNGER GAMES SAGA ENCAPSULATE BOTH DOMINANT AND ALTERNATIVE CONCEPTIONS RELATED TO FEMININITY, MASCULINITY, WOMANHOOD, AND MOTHERHOOD. IT ALSO EXPLORES IF AND HOW THE FEMALE HEROINE CAN BE READ AS FEMINIST AND PRODUCES A SENSE OF EMPOWERMENT. I CONCLUDE THAT ALTHOUGH THE INDUSTRY IS PRODUCING NEW MODELS OF WOMANHOOD THAT CHALLENGE TRADITIONAL GENDER ROLES, IT STILL PERPETUATES ROMANTIC IDEALS AND …

My Eyes Due See, Johannes J. Barfield

Theses and Dissertations

My Eyes Due See is a multidimensional examination of the “black experience” in America. The installation is composed of a single-channel video, a music composition that utilizes music samples and live instrumentation, and sculptures made up of car parts and broomsedge grass. Each of these elements arranged in space share a nuanced and complicated view of blackness through the lens of a black man decoding personal history and American history simultaneously. Autonomy is the overarching theme throughout the work as it pertains to race, identity, urban and rural environments, and the relationship between generational trauma and nostalgia.

“After Hollywood And Its Ever-Blue Skies, How Beautiful Paris Looks!”: Jacques Feyder Between France And America, 1928-1934, Barry Nevin

Articles

Although generally relegated by present-day historians to the footnotes of film history, Belgian director Jacques Feyder (1885–1948) strove to elevate the artistic standards of French film production throughout the 1920s and 1930s. His departure for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios on the cusp of the transition to sound in France was viewed as a crisis, and his return was hailed as an event. Drawing on contemporary periodicals, this article answers two fundamental questions: Why did France's leading am bassador leave his adoptive homeland? And what factors motivated his return to France despite the country's notoriously anarchic mode of production? Core concerns include Feyder's …

Dans La Serre: Framing The Greenhouse In Le Jour Se Lève (1939) And La Règle Du Jeu (1939), Barry Nevin

Articles

Beyond the year of their production, their notoriously foreboding references to contemporary national and international politics, and their shared status as canonised classics of French cinema, Marcel Carné’s Le Jour se lève (1939) and Jean Renoir’s La Règle du jeu (1939) both portray the romantic union of two parties within a greenhouse. This article aims to elaborate on these images in two central ways: first, it theorises glass in cinema with reference to the writings of André Bazin and Gilles Deleuze; second, it situates Carné and Renoir’s greenhouses within their respective dramatic, aesthetic and political contexts. In both cases, the …

‘Prochainement: Arizona Jim Contre Cagoulard’: Framing The Future Of The Front Populaire In Jean Renoir’S Le Crime De Monsieur Lange (1936), Barry Nevin

Articles

Gilles Deleuze remarks that Jean Renoir’s entire œuvre displays the most fundamental operation of time, constantly holding the embodied past and the potential creation of a genuinely new future in tension. Although he fails to address Le Crime de Monsieur Lange, the film that cemented Renoir’s association with the Front populaire, Deleuze tantalisingly remarks that this dialectic stems partly from Renoir’s attitude towards the Front populaire. How Deleuze’s framework allows spectators to interpret this film as an expression of Renoir’s own ambivalence regarding the future of the Front populaire has yet to be sufficiently addressed. Drawing on Ida, …

There Will Be Oil: The Celebration And Inevitability Of Petroleum Through Upton Sinclair And Paul Thomas Anderson, Sarah Mae Fleming

Honors Projects

An analysis of the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair and the film There Will Be Blood, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, with a focus on the presence of oil in these texts.

Repackaging The Reach Of Dreams: News Coverage Of Daca Rescindment By Three National Newspapers On Twitter, Megan Pietruszewski

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This thesis examines the frames used by three news organizations to cover the rescindment of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. The rescindment of DACA was a pivotal transition period open to new immigration policy, and frames used in the news coverage of DACA are important as frames influence public opinion and possible future immigration policy. This study uses corpus linguistic methods and Van Gorp’s inductive framing analysis to explore how a complex political decision like DACA rescindment is covered in condensed news stories on Twitter as well as in full-length news articles. The Executive Critique frame, which …

“‘The Most Fabricated Exception’: Islam, Immigration And The White-Saviour Narrative In Laurent Cantet’S The Class.”, Elizabeth Toohey

Publications and Research

This article suggests that the acclaim director Laurent Cantet received for his 2008 award winning film “The Class” obscures the way this film reinforces the very undercurrents in French culture he sets out to critique. Rather than unearthing or mirroring the racial dynamics of twenty-first-century Paris, Cantet brings to the film a set of fascinations and anxieties latent in the French imagination about blackness, Islam and Arab culture. His preoccupations and preconceptions with race, religion and nationality appear first in the portrayal of Muslim immigrants as threatening; next, in his image of a ‘white saviour’ bent on rescuing racial minorities; …

The Cinematic College Professor: Conceptions And Representations, John C. Fitch Iii

Theses and Dissertations--Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation

Depictions of college professors in American films are common, and while a number of studies have investigated various aspects of college life in motion pictures, few have focused exclusively on the cinematic professoriate. In addition to being an indelible part of history, cinematic depictions of college professors are part of the national discourse on the role and function of the faculty and university. An investigation of how college professors have been represented in American films, and how these representations are read and created by real-life college professors and filmmakers may provide a deeper understanding of the relationship between popular culture …

การพัฒนาทักษะการแสดงเพื่อสร้างตัวละครผู้หญิงจีน ในการแสดงเรื่อง รายละเอียด ไม่ได้ ร่างกาย อยาก ของชิน วุน ปิง ตามหลักการแสดงของไมเคิล เชคอฟ, กุนทรา ไชยชาญ

Chulalongkorn University Theses and Dissertations (Chula ETD)

งานวิจัยชิ้นนี้มีจุดประสงค์เพื่อศึกษาและสังเคราะห์การนำหลักการแสดงของไมเคิล เชคอฟมาใช้เพื่อสร้างตัวละคร ผู้หญิงจีนในการแสดงเรื่อง รายละเอียด ไม่ได้ ร่างกาย อยาก โดยมุ่งเน้นไปที่การค้นหาและสร้างความเข้มข้นทางความรู้สึกภายในที่ มีลักษณะซับซ้อน เนื่องจากการหล่อหลอมอัตลักษณ์ทางวัฒนธรรมที่มีความแตกต่างจากตัวผู้แสดง ผู้วิจัยเริ่มต้นจากการทำงานศึกษาบทละครเพื่อนำมาประกอบการสร้างตัวละคร หลังจากนั้นใช้หลักการแสดงของไมเคิล เชคอฟเป็นหลักในการค้นหา พัฒนาและสร้างสรรค์ตัวละครระหว่างการฝึกซ้อมจนกระทั่งถึงวันนำเสนอผลงาน โดยเก็บรวบรวม ข้อมูลเพื่อนำมาประเมินผลจากการจดบันทึก บันทึกวีดีโอ แบบสอบถาม การเสวนาและบทสัมภาษณ์ผู้ชมและผู้เชี่ยวชาญด้าน ศิลปะการแสดงในวันนำเสนอผลงาน ระหว่างการดำเนินงานผู้วิจัยค้นพบว่าหลักการแสดงของไมเคิล เชคอฟเป็นหลักการแสดงที่ช่วยพัฒนาทักษะการแสดง ของนักแสดงและทำให้นักแสดงตระหนักถึงพลังแห่งจินตนาการ นำไปสู่การทำงานกับตัวละครอย่างสร้างสรรค์และไร้ขีดจำกัด ช่วย ให้นักแสดงสามารถก้าวข้ามข้อจำกัดของตนเองไปสู่การสร้างตัวละครอย่างสร้างสรรค์ จากการประเมินผลการวิจัย ผู้วิจัยพบว่าหลักสำคัญของนักแสดงในการทำงานกับตัวละครที่มีความแตกต่างทาง วัฒนธรรมกับนักแสดง คือ การศึกษาบทละครเพื่อทำความเข้าใจบริบททางสังคม การเมืองและวัฒนธรรมเพื่อสร้างตัวละครให้มี ความสมจริงน่าเชื่อถือ และการศึกษาเทคนิคการแสดงที่เหมาะสมกับนักแสดงและตัวละครเพื่อช่วยให้นักแสดงสามารถเข้าถึง บทบาทของตัวละครได้อย่างสมบูรณ์ สิ่งเหล่านี้จะสามารถทำให้นักแสดงเชื่อมโยงการทำงานกับตัวละครได้อย่างมีประสิทธิภาพ ส่งผลให้ลักษณะตัวละครที่ แสดงออกมีความน่าสนใจ มีลักษณะเฉพาะ และทำให้ผู้ชมสามารถเข้าถึงตัวละครได้ง่าย สามารถสร้างตัวละครได้สอดคล้องกับบท ละครได้อย่างน่าเชื่อถือและสมจริง

A Tropic Understanding Of Street Art As Political And Social Advocacy, Lindsay K. Kosel

Honors Theses and Capstones

Graffiti and street art has been prevalent in the past few decades taking stances toward social and political adversity, but there lacks discussion about how dialogue is provoked within street artwork. Through the detailed analysis of the visual display created by JR on the West Bank Wall, these paper places focus on the rhetorical function of how street artist utilize images as means for political and social advocacy. The display shifts the focus from trauma, dislocation, and victimhood to that of comedic relief in our “humanness”. The identification of tropes within a street art display indicates that they are in …

Deconstruction Of The Romantic Comedy In Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Mary E. Crivelli

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This research seeks to unpack the narrative of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend using semiotics, particularly through Roland Barthes' work in Mythologies and A Lover's Discourse. The goal of this research is to demonstrate long-form storytelling's ability to interrogate and revisit criticism through consideration of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend's role as an ongoing satire of romantic comedies. This research culminated in a thesis discussing the semiotic myths that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend interrogates, and the process of deconstruction that occurs within the text. The thesis applied the "fragments" identified in Barthes' A Lover’s Discourse to corresponding scenes in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, with a focus on the …