Television Commons^™

The Buffered Slayer: A Search For Meaning In A Secular Age, Kari Willinger

Masters Theses

Charles Taylor, in A Secular Age, claims that over time, modernity has given way to a new secular age, and with this new era comes cultural shifts in our perception of ourselves and the world. Given Taylor’s notion of a world haunted by transcendence, we can notice this haunting throughout aspects of modernity, especially in literature and entertainment where we can see authors and creators deal with issues of identity and morality from a purely modern perspective. Specifically, Taylor’s concepts connect with Buffy the Vampire Slayer because the characters in Buffy align with Taylor’s understanding of the ...

Labor And Delivery: Television Performances By Pregnant Actresses From 1948-2016, Evleen Michelle Nasir

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Labor and Delivery: Television Actresses’ Pregnant Performances from 1948-2016, examines the labor of six pregnant actresses working on United States television. Mary Kay Stearns, Lucille Ball, Jane Leeves, Kerry Washington, and Katey Sagal all worked through pregnancies while filming their respective television shows. These women exemplify the multitude of actresses who maintained their careers and their pregnancies in the television industry. This is the first study of its kind to examine the labor of an actresses’ pregnant body on film while she performs a role other than herself. Previous examinations of pregnancy in performance are few but have largely focused ...

Is This Black Enough For You? A Comparative Analysis Of African-American Families Portrayed In Black Family Television Comedies Between 1980 And 2000, Joycelyn Jonas-Fowler

Electronic Theses & Dissertations Collection for Atlanta University & Clark Atlanta University

Research shows that black people watch more television than any other race of people, and, given that television is the most influential media tool, the content of what may affect an audience’s behavior and beliefs deserves analysis. This study examines the black family, alleged pathology, strengths that are specifically associated with them, its portrayal on television, and how television is used as a tool for socialization and influence. A content analysis of the top thirty black family shows that appeared on major network television between 1980 and 2000 was conducted to determine if the family framed was portrayed realistically ...

Cultural Imperialism, Tv And Children Spectatorship In Contemporary Ghana., Aba Micah

Master's Theses

A content and discourse analysis of television programs is performed to show that Ghanaians do enjoy their local programs but very little time is allocated for children’s content on both the public and private stations. Instead, foreign content has flooded the TV channels for both adult and children’s programs and this is concerning because culture is being lost amongst the new generation. Also, in an era where representation matters, African children should be represented in the media. This paper centers on cultural and media imperialism and representation of the African child in the media and we find that ...

Creating A Happy Ending For Socially Relevant Television, John Thomas Cunha

Senior Honors Projects

Television is accessible to millions from the comfort of their own homes and shapes the way we view the world. It has the power to bring people together, but often presents diversity with a strong emphasis on labels. Characters are defined by the one trait that, to the majority of viewers, is unrelatable. This maintains the separation of “us” and “them,” isolating those in the minority. Representation is essential for progress, but it’s more than just including diversity. Instead of dwelling on differences and indulging in stereotypes, characters should all treat each other equally.

The focal TV show of ...

Dolls Who Speak: Sex Robots, Cyborgs And The Image Of Woman, Victoria E. Pihl Sorensen

All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis examines the emerging phenomenon of sex robots from a feminist materialist perspective. I explore the current scholarly and popular debates on sex robots, and suggest a reading of sex robots in their machinic, literary and cinematic expressions to move beyond the moral-ethical impasse that seems to dominate sex robot discussions. Employing Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Myth” on a methodological and theoretical level, I argue for an interdisciplinary approach to studying sex robots, which proceeds carefully so as to avoid contributing to sex panic, and which thinks critically about what it might mean to assess sex robots from a ...

Living In The Liminal: Representation Of Transgender And Nonbinary Identity In 'Steven Universe', Mads Bradley

Media and Communication Studies Honors Papers

An analysis of the children’s animated series Steven Universe, this research takes a semiotic approach to explore anti-essentialist messages of gender identity. Atypical within the mainstream media, the cartoon expresses dynamic messages about gender by representing nonbinary characters and gender fluid themes. By contextualizing the American history of cartoon production, queer representation, and audience reception, this analysis provides insight into the importance of inclusive depictions of transgender identity in children’s media. Through close textual analysis and focus group findings with straight cisgender and queer informants, the research examines how the show portrays liminal identities. By combining textual analysis ...

Inside The Mind Of Larry David: Navigating The Border Walls And Bizarre Social Customs Of "Curb Your Enthusiasm", Chris Mcvetta

Ray Browne Conference on Cultural and Critical Studies

Whether real, imagined, or otherwise, there is no denying Larry David lives in a world with and without borders. Whether it is in one of his past (“Seinfeld”) or current (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”) television lives, Larry David inhabits an alternative universe of his own making. From the coffee house to the country club, the world of Hollywood is his playground where he continually builds walls between himself and the rest of “normal” society. And while Larry David is a master of his domain and crossing the proverbial line, he is even more adept at tearing down the walls of traditional ...

Rwu First Amendment Blog: David Logan's Blog: Media Centralization Imperils Marketplace Of Ideas 04-05-2018, David A. Logan

Law School Blogs

No abstract provided.

Not So Bizarre Foods: Exploring The Historical And Cultural Traditions Behind The Foods Of France, Germany, And Italy, Kari Pederson Behrends

Capstone Collection

Not So Bizarre Foods is a summer-term program designed for upper-level Culinary Arts students from Johnson and Wales University, Providence. Unlike other programs serving students in the Culinary Arts, this unique model includes multiple locations and an internship. The proposed program features three month-long modules based in Lyon, France; Munich, Germany; and Naples, Italy allow for comparison across locations. Drawing from the theoretical frameworks of Kolb, Vygotsky, and Mezirow, the experiential, transformative curricular design combines an academic seminar, a practical seminar, and an internship placement, emphasizing the interplay between history, culture, and culinary tradition, a concept inspired by the popular ...

La Adaptación Afro-Futurística Y El Placer Como Supervivencia En "Los Pueblos Silenciosos" De Elena Palacios Ramé, Samuel Ginsburg

Alambique: Revista académica de ciencia ficción y fantasia / Jornal acadêmico de ficção científica e fantasía

In “The Silent Towns,” from the 1950 collection The Martian Chronicles, Ray Bradbury tells the story of the last man and woman left on Mars. While Walter has romanticized visions of a perfect match, he is ultimately disappointed by Genevieve’s and chooses to live out his life alone. Sixty years later, director Elena Palacios Ramé revived this science fiction classic to ask a simple question with a complex answer: What happens if you move the story to Havana? In the short film Los pueblos silenciosos (2010), Palacios replaces Mars with an abandoned Cuban capital, matching Walter with an extravagant ...

Disoriented Nationalist Discourse Of The Wenxuan Group Amidst Manchukuo’S Anti-Modern Chorus, Chao Liu

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Disoriented Nationalist Discourse of the Wenxuan Group amidst Manchukuo's Anti-Modern Chorus" Chao Liu analyzes the proposal of "native-land literature" made by left-wing Chinese writers in occupied northeast China. As it turns out, inheriting the nationalist discourse of the May Fourth Movement and further radicalizing it via a "new romanticism," those writers over-emphasized the socio-political function of literary production and took native-land literature as the most effective tool for nationalist mobilization. Accordingly, they repelled modern civilization as it was associated with the colonists, relying instead on natural wilderness and primitive force and thus adopting subject matters as ...

Influence Of Stereotyping And Prejudices On Perceptions Of Superheroes, Emily A. Sanchez

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Fictional superheroes possess characteristics that can be identified with on a human level (e.g., gender and race); however, their superhuman nature may lead them be evaluated as a distinct outgroup. The current study attempted to assess how racial and gender attitudes may affect perceptions of superheroes and how other participant characteristics may impact ratings. The current study found that gender and race influenced evaluations of perceived attributes of superhero drawings. Figures depicted with an unnatural skin tone were rated less favorably. Although, there were no differences between ratings of Black and White heroes, Black heroes were consistently rated higher ...

Pantheism And Escapism In Abu Madi's 'Enigmas' And 'The Evening' From English Romanticism Perspectives, Yasser K. R. Aman

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Pantheism and Escapism in Abu Madi's 'Enigmas' and 'The Evening' From English Romanticism Perspectives" Yasser K. R. Aman investigates and analyses the possibilities of pantheism's encirclement of escapism in Elia Abu Madi's two poems from English Romanticism perspective. The article compares Abu Madi's fluctuating attitude towards escapism and pantheism to William Wordsworth's "Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour July 13, 1798," Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ode to the West ...

Pacing Your Fears: Narrative Adaptation In The Age Of Binge Culture, Samantha Richards

Scripps Senior Theses

Entertainment is an ever-changing medium, and television specifically has gone through many technological innovations since its bright beginnings. These innovations have consistently changed the way stories are told. Stylistic shifts in key elements ranging from shot format to the way shows are constructed can be seen especially clearly in horror which does not have the same narrative constraints as many other genres, and therefore more room to experiment. By tracking changes in the narrative formats of serialized and anthology horror shows, I define a new era of television brought about by the prevalence of streaming, and the rise of binge ...

Good Game, Greyory Blake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis and its corresponding art installation, Lessons from Ziggy, attempts to deconstruct the variables prevalent within several complex systems, analyze their transformations, and propose a methodology for reasserting the soap box within the display pedestal. In this text, there are several key and specific examples of the transformation of various signifiers (i.e. media-bred fear’s transformation into a political tactic of surveillance, contemporary freneticism’s transformation into complacency, and community’s transformation into nationalism as a state weapon). In this essay, all of these concepts are contextualized within the exponential growth of new technologies. That is to say ...

No Laughing Matter: Failures Of Satire During The 2016 Presidential Election, Jamie Noelle Smith

Honors Theses and Capstones

The 2016 presidential election was so full of unusual characters and unprecedented scandals, that media outlets, from the nightly news to late-night, had to adjust to this new normal in politics. Indeed, not even the jokesters on the handful of political satire shows on television were immune to the necessary changes that all the media had to take in covering Donald Trump. Given how many people tuned into to these shows each week, it is no surprise that the role that political satire television may have played in the election results was fodder for those giving post-election hot takes. Many ...

Looking At Damon Lindelof And The Television Auteur, Emily Woscoboinik

Scripps Senior Theses

In this paper I investigate why people define Lindelof’s shows so much by their creator and why they are so linked to one another. I ask if Lindelof’s case is an example of auteurism in television, and if so, what the implications of this are for television as a whole.

Always Gay, Never Queer: An Analysis Of Will & Grace’S Strategy For Mainstream Success, Bethany Keupp

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper explores the context in which Will & Grace aired and why it was successful. Through investigating the types of LGBT+ representation of the time, I discovered and important distinction between shows with LGBT+ characters and those containing queer content—the latter of which was all but completely kept from mainstream television. This also allowed an exploration of tropes which made LGBT+ characters acceptable or successful on this platform. An in-depth examination into the sitcom Ellen’s failure revealed just how much the featuring of LGBT+ characters in lead roles could ruin a show’s chances at mainstream success. However ...

Work/Death, Of Each In Their Own, Micah H. Weber

Theses and Dissertations

Writings in support of my visual thesis, including some background, and bibliographic information: Oregon/Death/Animation/Vocation and the artist as an agent of potential.