Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Encircling Linearity In Carlos Saura's Peppermint Frappé, Linda M. Willem

Linda M. Willem

Spanish director Carlos Saura is internationally famous for creating films where the past, the present, and the future are fused together and intermixed with reality, fantasy, and dreams. Although this practice is generally recognized by critics as one of Saura's strategies for circumventing the repressive censorship operating during the Franco era, María Delgado points out that Saura's continued reliance on non-linear narratives in his post-Franco work "indicates that his style was determined as much by a desire to interrogate the possibilities of the medium as by censorship" (375). Indeed, in an interview with Antonio Castro, Saura has been quoted as …

Highlighting The Hidden: Visual Representation In Gutiérrez Aragón's Demonios En El Jardín, Linda Willem

Linda M. Willem

According to Spanish film maker Manuel Gutiérrez Aragón, there is an intimate relationship between the family and the state, with the traits of the family mirroring those of the state in which it exists: "la primera célula del Estado es la familia, y si el Estado, por definición, es opresivo, la familia es igualmente opresiva" (García Fernández 331). "Yo utilizo la familia en mis películas porque es muy real, muy testimonial. La familia repite fielmente la estructura social 0 estatal" (Payán and López 27). In Demonios en el jardín (1982) Gutiérrez Aragón uses the metaphor of the family not only …

Text And Intertext: James Whale's Frankenstein In Víctor Erice's El Espíritu De La Colmena, Linda M. Willem

Linda M. Willem

Víctor Erice's use of clips from James Whale's Frankenstein as the basis for actions by his young protagonist, Ana, in El espíritu de la colmena has led critics to speculate on the symbolic meaning of the monster within that Spanish film. For Virginia Higginbotham the monster represents Franco's Spain, a country that has lost both its memory and its moral sense (116-20). For Marvin D'Lugo the monster stands for the mysterious, the unknown, the different, and the deviant, all of which Ana identifies with as she defines herself as an oppositional spirit (2862). Carmen Arocena sees Ana's rebellion as an …

Between Men: A First-Person Documentary Video, Thomas C. Prutisto

Masters Theses

ABSTRACT

BETWEEN

MEN:

A

FIRST

PERSON

DOCUMENTARY

VIDEO

May

2014

THOMAS

C.

PRUTISTO,

B.S.,

ROCHESTER

INSTITUTE

OF

TECHNOLOGY

Directed

by:

Professor

Susan

E.

Jahoda

Heard Or Dreamed About, Priya Nadkarni

Masters Theses

ABSTRACT

HEARD OR DREAMED ABOUT

MAY 2014

PRIYA NADKARNI, B.F.A. RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

M.F.A. UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST

Directed by: Professor Shona Macdonald

The Cable Network In An Era Of Digital Media: Bravo And The Constraints Of Consumer Citizenship, Alison D. Brzenchek

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation takes a historiographical approach to the evolution of cable television over thirty years. Case analysis of archival data is used to trace the trajectory of the Bravo cable network from 1980 through 2010. My dissertation is a vital contribution to critical cultural studies, feminist studies, citizenship studies, and media history because it historicizes the role branding, commodification, and convergence played in Bravo’s evolution from a highbrow arts programmer guided by bourgeois consumer citizenship, to a affluent lifestyle network guided by nouveau riche consumer citizenship. My combination of production studies and political economic analysis gives visibility to the interpenetrating …

Face Value: Beyond The Surface Of Brand Philanthropy And The Cultural Production Of The M.A.C Aids Fund, Andrea Benoit

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This dissertation provides a cultural and business history of M.A.C Cosmetics and its philanthropic arm, the M.A.C AIDS Fund. M.A.C Cosmetics originated in Toronto, Canada in 1981 and its growth coincided with the AIDS epidemic. Since 1994, the M.A.C AIDS Fund has raised more than $315 million for organizations that assist people affected by HIV/AIDS, through the sale of M.A.C’s VIVA GLAM lipstick. While some business scholars have discussed M.A.C’s distinctive use of cause marketing, very few works on the cosmetics industry, as well as cultural and media studies works on cause marketing, have dealt at length with M.A.C. Tracing …

The [Ftaires!] To Remembrance: Language, Memory, And Visual Rhetoric In Chaucer's House Of Fame And Danielewski's House Of Leaves, Shannon Danae Kilgore

Honors Program Theses

Geoffrey Chaucer's dream poem The House of Fame explores virtual technologies of memory and reading, which are similar to the themes explored in Danielewski's House of Leaves. "[ftaires!]", apart from referencing the anecdotal (and humorous) misspelling of "stairs" in House of Leaves, is one such linguistically and visually informed phenomenon that speaks directly to how we think about, and give remembrance to, our own digital and textual culture. This paper posits that graphic design, illustrations, and other textual cues (such as the [ftaires!] mispelling in House of Leaves] have a subtle yet powerful psychological influence on our reading and …

Labours Of Love: Affect, Fan Labour, And The Monetization Of Fandom, Jennifer Spence

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Fans who launch campaigns to “save our show” or protest storytelling decisions typically see their efforts as standard fannish practices, but these “labours of love” must also be considered, as the name suggests, as labour. Using affect theory, I argue that fan activities and activism are motivated by affect, which in turn drives the affective, immaterial, and digital labour that makes up fandom. While fandom operates on a gift economy, the world of media production is fundamentally capitalist, and as fan labour becomes increasingly visible to producers, it also becomes increasingly susceptible to co-option and monetization. Through analyses of fan …

Turning To See Otherwise, Jennifer L. Martin

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis dossier, in combination with an exhibition at the McIntosh Gallery, considers whether an archival collection can generate an alternative narrative other than that which may already exist in the original film and photographic documents. Rather than represent a singular truth, I seek to articulate the transformative realities of collective memory by re-orienting the material for broader viewer identification. I have mined photographic and filmic materials from a personal family archive to focus fragments that specifically record the gesture of the turning face—the turning towards the observer. This “turn” then includes both the turn towards the initial film-maker embedded …

Evangelizing The ‘Gallery Of The Future’: A Critical Analysis Of The Google Art Project Narrative And Its Political, Cultural And Technological Stakes, Alanna Bayer

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This thesis explores the digitization initiative Google Art Project and the ways in which the Project negotiates its place between rapidly developing Web technologies and the often-contradictory fine art tradition. Through the Project’s marketing and website design, Google constructs a narrative that emphasizes the democratization of culture, universal accessibility and a new progressive future for the art world while obscuring more complex political, social and cultural questions. Bringing together scholarship from various disciplines including library studies, digital studies, art history, and cultural studies this thesis highlights how the Project might open up a space to talk about art publics and …

Attitudes Towards Latino Immigrants Expressed In The Online Media, Jordan Mcclain

Honors Theses

The language used towards Latino immigrants expressed in the online media is a prevalent occurrence that warrants a more detailed analysis. I used a total of fifty-four articles from Fox New, CNN, MSNBC, Southern Poverty Law Center, National Immigration Law Center, Immigration Advocates, Networks Liberty News, Minuteman Project, and American Immigration Control Council. I analyzed the wording used by each source when they referred to Latino immigrants. I analyzed my data further by distinguishing it into five categories: Affirmative language, negative language, avoidance language, the use of linguistic devices, and a category dedicated to the special circumstances around the recent …

Fantasizing Disability: Representation Of Loss And Limitation In Popular Television And Film, Jeffrey M. Preston

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Most media texts currently being developed with disabled characters are crafted by individuals who are nondisabled and, as such, are based on what the nondisabled think it would be like to be disabled—a perception that is informed by the fantasy of disability. The fantasy of disability is a net of ideas, created by no single individual but perpetuated and circulated between subjects and which seeks to contain the danger of limitation, to subject it to a set of societal preconceived notions about what it means to be disabled and how a person is expected to act and react to the …

The Adversity Pop Culture Has Posed, Darel Joseph

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

I am a collage artist working with multiple mediums such as paint, photography, video, audio, and performance. As a New Orleans’ native, I have a unique history that is unflattering, for my history echoes that of America’s historical misdeeds. I make sociopolitical art because I am of a historically oppressed people. I make art that celebrates my diverse culture that is a collage of Native American, African, and New Orleans’ French Creole.

Crossing Borders: Fatih Akin's Transnational Purpose, Drew Nelson

Journal of Undergraduate Research at Minnesota State University, Mankato

To be, is to be mobile. At least, that's what Turkish-German director Fatih Akin would like the world to see. His acclaimed films have nursed a genre of this own - transnational cinema - which imagines our society's desire to freely cross cultural, national, and traditional borders of self-identification, then wrenches it away. The implication of this perspective is that the statue quo isn't there yet, giving rise to intolerance and tragedy in Akin's contemporary society. Regardless of how developed our nations are and how intelligent the human race is, we can't overcome our differences until we overcome ourselves. This …

Dust In The Wind: A Definitive Hou/New Cinema Work, James N. Udden

Interdisciplinary Studies Faculty Publications

Book Summary: For younger critics and audiences, Taiwanese cinema enjoys a special status, comparable with that of Italian Neorealism and the French New Wave for earlier generations, a cinema that was and is in the midst of introducing an innovative sensibility and a fresh perspective. Hou Hsiao-hsien is the most important Taiwanese filmmaker working today, and his sensuous, richly nuanced films reflect everything that is vigorous and genuine in contemporary film culture. By combining multiple forms of tradition with a uniquely cinematic approach to space and time, Hou has created a body of work that, through its stylistic originality and …

Silver Hair On The Silver Screen: Adaptations Of Jane Austen's Older Women, Hilary Richards

All Theses

Three adaptations of Jane Austen novels were produced between 1995 and 1999. These late 90s films represented a set of romantic comedies created in the style of heritage cinema. In adapting Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Mansfield Park, filmmakers reshaped the older women supporting characters in order to better fit the generic conventions of romantic comedies. Romantic comedies of the 1990s relied on a narrow view of the marriage plot whereby the focus in wholly on the courtship process of a predominately affluent, white, heterosexual couple. By excising the roles of the older women, Mrs. Jennings, Miss Bates, and Mrs. …

Getting Sandy: Creating Collapsing Sand Effects For An Ode To Love, Pisut Wisessing

All Theses

This thesis presents an artistic approach of creating collapsing sand effects in Brown Bag Films' animated short, An Ode To Love, directed by Matthew Darragh. A combination of rigid body simulation and fluid simulation tools, which are available in Houdini 3D animation software version 13, was used to successfully complete the task. A detailed design and implementation process to achieve the effects is documented in this work.

Transmission: Premium Television Characters Outside Of The Gender Binary, Daniel L. Ketchum

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Five fictional characters have emerged on the U.S. premium-pay-cable channels that blur the traditional male-or-female gender divide. The basics of queer theory (sex, gender, orientation, and transgender) and critical/cultural studies (encoding, decoding, and reading a text) are explained as a basis for the analysis of the characters, which seeks to answer the research question: does the premium-pay-cable television format offer truly empathetic non-binary transgender characters that challenge the dominant American ideologies about gender identity and expression? If so, how? If not, why not?

Shane McCutcheon from Showtime’s lesbian melodrama The L Word (2004- 2010), Lafayette Reynolds from HBO’s supernatural drama-comedy …

An Examination Of University Speech Codes’ Constitutionality And Their Impact On High-Level Discourse, Benjamin Welch

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

The First Amendment – which guarantees the right to freedom of religion, of the press, to assemble, and petition to the government for redress of grievances – is under attack at institutions of higher learning in the United States of America. Beginning in the late 1980s, universities have crafted “speech codes” or “codes of conduct” that prohibit on campus certain forms of expression that would otherwise be constitutionally guaranteed. Examples of such polices could include prohibiting “telling a joke that conveys sexism,” or “content that may negatively affect an individual’s self-esteem.” Despite the alarming number of institutions that employ such …