Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Futures Of Film Criticism: Aesthetics, Cinephilia, Philosophy, And Politics, Christina Elle Burke

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This is an “integrated-article” dissertation that examines new approaches to academic film criticism following what has been called the “philosophical turn” in Film Studies. By arguing that philosophical research has as much to offer film analysis as films can contribute to philosophy, each chapter proposes a method of film criticism influenced by debates in Continental Philosophy. Chapters one, two, and four put prominent thinkers such as Georges Bataille, Jacques Rancière, and Theodor Adorno into a dialogue with films by directors such as Claire Denis, Staub-Huillet, Jean-Luc Godard, and Terrence Malick to account for various creative choices and critical interpretations. Chapters …

Anti-Americanism And The Auteur: Critical Discourse And The French Film Industry From 1946 To 1965, Madison Gee

Honors Theses

Cinema is not only a popular form of entertainment but an art through which socio-cultural, economic, and political activities intersect. France's cinematic history, in particular, is characterized by its government's protectionist policies and the enduring popularity of New Wave films. Yet, the end of World War II saw the expansion of American soft power and, consequently, widespread fear that Hollywood’s market dominance would push out local producers. In this thesis, I aim to study the impact of Cold War anti-Americanism on the French film industry’s development from 1946 to 1965. Through a critical discourse analysis of popular film magazines of …

Video On Film: Video Essay, Videographic Criticism, And Digital Academic Publishing, Tian Leng

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the 2010s, an academic practice called “videographic criticism,” utilizing video essay creation and digital academic publishing, became a popular form of film criticism in the field of film studies. The emergence of such a videographic trend in academia and the existence of video essays in public video-sharing websites have made the task of justifying the scholarly values of video essays an urgent one. Through the analysis of the relationship between the video essay and the essay film, this study shows that the essayistic mode is crucial to distinguish videographic criticism from popular commentary. To understand the potentials of videographic …

W()Men, Natalia M. Keogan

Capstones

W()MEN is a short documentary that examines the horror movie genre and the way that it focuses on women’s bodies. It integrates talking head interviews, clips from over 50 horror films, and narration in order to critically examine how women’s bodies have been portrayed as monstrous within the genre.

nataliakeogan.com/thesis-film

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 …

Women, Convergent Film Criticism, And The Cinephilia Of Feminist Interruptions, Rachel L. Thibault

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation examines the ways in which female film critics practice film criticism in the convergent age. In original research drawn from ethnographic interviews with eight female film critics and bloggers as well as textual, historical, and reception analyses of criticism, this dissertation argues that women who write film criticism in the convergent era are not only writing from a space of marginalization based on the patriarchal dominance of the film industry, but also face a series of obstacles through gendered and discursive conflicts that are unique to writing online and which do not exert the same impact on male …

Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless: The Revelation Of Filmmaking As Cinephilia, Alexandra Proud

Theses : Honours

Auteur, Jean-Luc Godard directed his first feature film Breathless (A bout de soufflé) in 1959 after a decade of working as a film critic for the contentious journal, Cahiers du Cinema. Central to my thesis is the assertion that Breathless is contentious in critical dimension to Godard’s literary criticism. It takes a certain breed of individual with a genuine passion for the state of the French film industry to sustain a politically charged critique of cinema from literary film criticism to filmmaking. The breed of individual is known as a cinephile – an avid moviegoer who may also engage …

A Study Of Japanese Animation, Michele Gibney

Honors Program Theses

This paper takes a sociological approach to the question of popular culture’s ability in Japan--specifically that of Japanese animation--to be reflective of the country's sociological concerns. This is not to say that all anime shows consciously reflect Japanese life, but by extrapolation of recurrent themes one can construct a model of certain sociological issues in Japan. The author split the paper up into five sections each of which tackles a different theme. These sections are: Education, Social and Class Differences, Environment, Post-Nuclear Visions, and An Emergent Feminism. The main point that the author conveys in each section is a way …