Digital Commons Network^™

The Imagined Histories And Futures Of The Past: Wwi And The Cultural Imagination, Kelly Aliano

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

In this paper, I look at various modes of imagining the futures incarnated by the First World War, beginning with artists and writers, like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Erich Maria Remarque, who experienced and depicted the war from a firsthand point of view. From here, I expand that framework to include J.R.R. Tolkien, whose masterpiece Lord of the Rings may owe no small debt to his wartime experiences. I consider the Doctor Who episodes, “Human Nature” and “Family of Blood,” as contemporary attempts to reinsert WWI into the cultural consciousness. Finally, I look at the two versions of War Horse …

Peripheral Storytelling: Cinematic Structures And Audience Agency, Carlos Tkacz

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

A cultural phenomenon we are all unfortunately familiar with is terrible movies. By terrible movies I mean the kind that lack any semblance of structure, movies in which the characters are flatly drawn, the storylines are predictable, and the writing is especially bad. More specifically, I am interested in why these movies seem to be breeding without end and are no longer relegated to (maybe they never were) the low budget genre films some of us love to hate. I am talking here about the relatively new phenomena of the high-budget, popular-yet-terrible film.

Specifically, I am interested in applying Structuralism, …

"To Live Deliciously": The Imaginary Father In Robert Eggers' The Witch, Charles Hicks

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

In this essay I re-examine the archetype of the witch, long viewed in scholarship as the antagonist of the Symbolic Order and phallocentric structures of oppression, through an analysis of Robert Eggers’ supernatural horror film, The Witch (2015). Bringing together Julia Kristeva’s work on primary narcissism and identification and Justyna Sempruch’s analysis of the witch as a trace of archaic, semiotic origins, I argue that the witch can be viewed as a representation of the Imaginary Father, the site of maternal desire that assists the child in its transition from the maternal body to the Symbolic. Specifically, this essay analyzes …

"Down To Gehenna Or Up To The Throne": Rudyard Kipling's Poem "The Winners" As The Key To Sam Mendes Film 1917, Richard Logsdon

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

"The Applicability of Rudyard Kipling's Poem 'The Winners' to Sam Mendes' Film 1917.

The key to Mendes 1917 lies in the early recitation of the last couplet of Rudyard Kipling's poem "The Winners": "Down to Gehenna or Up to the Throne,/ He travels fastest who travels alone." The key words are Gehenna and Throne. Gehenna was a valley near Jerusalem where, in ancient times, children were burned alive as sacrifices to the war god Molech. (Outraged by such blatant transgression, God renamed Gehenna "the tvalley of slaughter" where thousands would lose their lives in combat, not only in ancient times …

Selections From Divinatio Diver, Sculptural Antipathia In Atonement Transcendo, And Mechanika Momento: Creatio Forecaster, Antonie Frankie Aquino

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

It is fated inspiration which penetrates the heart, satisfies the collective soul, and offers its spirit to the vastness of ceremonial vision. Vision becomes sound and sound forms a poetic voice displaced— this displacement radiates a mythologized poetic voice serving as a lyrical object, theogonic lyre, and the genealogical muse. Selected poems from Divinatio Diver, Sculptural Antipathia: In Atonement Transcendo and Mechanika Momento: Creatio Forerunner, the collected poems orchestrate a tryptic voice that dismantles the outward magnitude of the self by subverting the antithetical self through spiritual and organic sensualness.This mythopoeic tripartism simultaneously interconnects with religion, theology, and metaphysics which …

The Rhetoric Of Spirituality, Gender, And The Environment In The Wicker Man (1973) And Midsommar (2019), Emma Frances Bloomfield

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

The Wicker Man (1973) and Midsommar (2019) are horror films that address dominant ideologies including the patriarchy, anthropocentrism, and Christianity. Both films have a nature-connected cult that sacrifices for the community and performs rituals informed by pagan eco-spirituality. I perform an ecofeminist rhetorical criticism to analyze how, despite these shared themes, spiritual, gender, and environmental messages differ between the two films. In The Wicker Man, the audience is invited to sympathize with Neil’s character, his Christianity, and his individualistic masculinity as he is sacrificed in the cult’s harvest ritual. Alternatively, the main character in Midsommar, Dani, gets revenge …

Lost & Found: Samuel Fuller’S Tigrero And Accidental Ethnography, Andrew Howe

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

In 1954, Darryl Zanuck commissioned Samuel Fuller to journey to the Amazon and shoot footage of the Karaja tribe, around which the director would construct a screenplay based upon the life of Sasha Siemel, a big game hunter of note. Zanuck had optioned Siemel’s best-selling autobiography, Tigrero. Although John Wayne and Ava Gardner were soon attached to the project, executives at Fox would not sanction a shoot in such a dangerous location. The project was set aside and forgotten.

Nearly 40 years after his visit to Brazil, Fuller would return to the Karaja tribe. Out of this experience came …

Cli-­Fi Cinema: An Epideictic Rhetoric Of Blame, Chloe Louise Powell

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

This thesis identifies and explains the mechanisms within two cli­-fi films, The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008), and Interstellar (2014), to offer an account of: (1) their purpose in helping us to understand and cope with climate change, and (2) their use in the transmission of values and ideologies in order to build and strengthen community. Because cli­-fi films begin from a dystopic vision of a possible future, it fulfills the "blame" function of epideictic in order to provoke the "ecological imagination." Through this provocation we are then provided the possibility of hope and redemption through the adoption of …

Long May She Reign: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Gender Expectations In Disney’S Tangled And Disney/Pixar’S Brave, Caitlin J. Saladino

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

This project addresses messages about gender expectations in Disney princess narratives. The two films included in my project are Tangled (2010) and Brave (2012), which feature the most recently inducted princesses to the marketed Disney Princess line (Rapunzel and Merida, respectively). Using genre as an organizing principle, I argue that Rapunzel and Merida are different from the past Disney princesses (Snow White, Cinderella, Ariel, Jasmine, etc.) because their narratives reflect new ideas about gender expectations in modern society. The central tension appearing in both films is the opposition between the image of woman as traditional, domestic, and dependent and woman …

Walt Disney And The Propaganda Complex: Government Funded Animation And Hollywood Complicity During Wwii, Amanda Cunningham

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

Walt Disney’s work as an animator during World War II had a measurable impact on culture and in the development of government produced messages. It is important to examine this understudied area of Disney’s life and his studio’s efforts to produce wartime training and propaganda films during WWII. Government agencies, including the U.S. Treasury, contracted Disney to produce 32 animated shorts between 1941 and 1945 (Gabler, 2007).

Employing a semiotic approach of cinema, this study focuses on the cartoons The New Spirit (1942), Der Fuehrer’s Face (1943) and Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi (1943). While American wartime …

Gilded Age Visual Media As The Impetus For Social Change: Jacob Riis’S Reform Photography And The Antecedents Of Documentary Film, Denitsa Yotova

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

This study examines the birth and evolution of the social documentary genre in visual media. It suggests that a mixture of ideology, technology, and social awareness are necessary for a successful social reform. It finds that despite the limitations of technology during the nineteenth century, social documentaries were produced long before they were part of the genres of photography and film. By focusing on the work of Danish photographer Jacob Riis and tracing the emergence of film, this study demonstrates a connection between documentary film and Riis’s social documentary photography and public slide exhibitions. The study concludes that in order …

Media Bias Through Facial Expressions On Local Las Vegas Television News, Jessica Zimmerman

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

Trust in news media has been considered an important base for social order and cohesion in society and is a crucial variable for evaluating news media. Media credibility has been questioned by the audience for some time and the audience’s trust in the media has been slowly diminishing over the years. When a news broadcaster communicates a story on local television news, it is possible for his own opinions and beliefs to leak through nonverbal communication, specifically facial expressions. This presentation explores the four main local Las Vegas television news stations’ anchors and reporters to visually analyze whether facial characteristics …

Does Movie Viewing Cultivate Unrealistic Expectations About Love And Marriage?, Lauren Galloway

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

The present study investigated the connection between romantic movie viewing frequency and endorsement of dysfunctional beliefs for romantic relationships in a university-based sample of 228 participants. Respondents completed a questionnaire in which they reported demographic information as well as responses to the several scales that measure endorsement of romantic ideals. I base this investigation of Segrin and Nabi’s (2002) examination of television viewing habits and proclivity for unrealistic expectations of sex, love, and marriage. Both the current study and the investigation conducted by Segrin and Nabi (2002) support the supposition that media play a part in reinforcing beliefs about coupleships. …

The Other September 11th: El Mercurio Media Coverage After The Chilean Coup Of 1973, Valeria A. Gurr‐Ovalle

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

This thesis provides an exploratory overview of the role the El Mercurio newspaper played along with the military after the Chilean coup of 1973. The study reviews the contents of the newspaper’s front pages, including their coverage of the events during the coup. The thesis will show how the paper revisited its coverage each year on the September 11th anniversary, beginning with the years dominated by the military government, from 1973 through 1990, and continuing through the transition to democracy, from 1991 through 2007. The primary method used in the course of this examination is a content analysis, which will …

Oral Presentation: Depictions Of Sexuality And Gender Construction In Japanese Manga And Anime, Sarah Huerta

Festival of Communities: UG Symposium (Posters)

This presentation will explore research into gender and sexuality in anime and manga as compared to popular U.S. displays of gender and sexuality using a brief historical and cultural contextual background on manga and anime. I will discuss a comparison between U.S. and Japanese gender and sexual depictions in anime/manga and popular American media. Lastly, I discuss the potential for anime and manga in exploring gender and sexuality in U.S. studies, as well as my current, ongoing research with individuals in anime/manga groups

The Rhetorical Significance Of Gojira, Shannon Stevens

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

This project tackles the 1954 Japanese film Gojira, known to most Americans as Godzilla. By examining the strong emotions expressed in the film’s narrative, we can begin to understand better the experience of the Japanese survivor of World War II. Specifically, by studying the way the primary emotional responses to a war experience (guilt/anger, pain/suffering, and powerlessness/fear) are represented in the film it is possible to see how Gojira functions rhetorically to provide for the Japanese people a safe venue for post-war expression and healing.