Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Desire Lines: An Annotated Screenplay, Alexandra Tydings

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores under theorized questions of power, sexuality, and gender on the film set by analyzing the role of the Intimacy Coordinator (IC), a recent arrival in that space. A film set has its own culture, built from conventions, rituals, and hierarchies. The work of the IC occurs at the nexus of some of the most entrenched and invisible of these dynamics, including gender roles, bodily autonomy, and the power to consent. The author, having worked professionally as an actress, a director, and most recently an Intimacy Coordinator in film and television, now turns to feminist and queer theory, …

Seeing Is Believing: Observing Trans Spirituality Through The Smith-Waite Tarot, Phoebe Santalla

MFA in Illustration & Visual Culture

In 1909 the Rider Company published the Smith-Waite Tarot deck which featured 78 illustrated cards by Pamela Colman Smith. With heavy use of appropriated and ambiguous symbology, the Smith-Waite deck became a meditation tool for realizing alternative realities. By observing the history of the deck, analyzing Smith’s approach to illustration, and retracing the counterculture occult explosion in the 1970s, this essay argues that the Smith-Waite deck is an object the reflects the queered body and self. The modern, trans-contentious, Western political climate creates an environment that obscures the fact that transgender people exist beyond the medicalization of their bodies. To …

Disney Princess Films: Feminist Movements And The Changing Of Gender Roles, Mckinley M. Frees

Chancellor’s Honors Program Projects

No abstract provided.

Skin Echoes, Andreia Santana

Theses and Dissertations

Santana’s explores the intersection of biology and identity, incorporating living matter and performative gestures into installations to reflect on social constructs of history and gender. By observing water and its qualities of defying Western dichotomies, Skin Echoes focuses on the material interchanges across bodies and the wider material world.

Embodiment And Gendered Subjectivity In Ukrainian Women’S Film, Poetry, And Prose During Perestroika (1985-1991), Sandra J. Russell

Doctoral Dissertations

In this dissertation, I look to Ukrainian women’s literary and filmic contributions in the final Soviet years of perestroika to recontextualize and reconsider feminist and gendered epistemologies in Eastern Europe. I view the last Soviet Ukrainian filmmakers, writers, and artists as groundbreaking in their conceptualization a new, more “liberal” vision of nation, especially through their increasingly open and subversive critiques of the Soviet state. I locate perestroika as a powerful moment in Ukraine’s histories of resistance to the weaponization of colonialist and imperialist mythologies, past and present. For women in particular, the stakes of this shifting articulation of nation became …

Film Women Violence, Madison R. Ross

Masters Theses

As a condensed version of social reality, film has become a more common object of modern sociological and criminological investigation. As such, we can explore film to understand taken-for-granted as well as innovative constructions of social phenomena. Among these are gendered violence. We can use film to dig deep into its logics, elaborated in visual and narrative representations. Prior literature has analyzed crime films and the behavioral constructions within them, outlining the representations of serial homicide, rape, mass shootings and revenge. However, few studies have outlined films that do meaningful, non-voyeuristic representational work on the issue of violence against …

Conceptions Of Space, Gender, And Movement Within Literature And Film: An Analysis Of "The Whimper Of Whipped Dogs" & Westward The Women, Stephanie Fishleigh

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Often portrayed as static, and neutral, “space,” as it is used in this paper, refers to a literary conception, one which encompasses a sphere of locations as well as settings of events, characters, and objects within a literary narrative. Much to our detriment, humans are often compelled to codify and compartmentalize the world around us, using perceived differences as our epistemological touchstone. This phenomenon extends even to our relationship to space. In examining the interplay between space, geographies, genre, and gender, using two objects of analysis, this paper seeks to further the current scholarship on how gender ideology informs our …

"I Want To Know What I'M Looking At": Surveilling Gender As A Response To Cultural Anxieties In Halloween, Sleepaway Camp, And Scream, Jennifer Jacinda Mclawhorn

Institute for the Humanities Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to investigate slasher films and how they use gendered tropes to respond to and perpetuate cultural anxieties. The methodology primarily uses textual analysis that includes close attention to content, context, and discourse. The study reveals structural patterns and problems that emerge within slasher films, specifically within the Final Girl trope and the behaviors that govern it. In surveilling the Final Girl’s gender performativity, it is apparent that abjection, or a gut reaction to something that exists between two distinct boundaries or categories, is provoked when the Final Girl crosses a socially established gender boundary. …

Fantasized Masculinity Performed In American War Narratives, Shea O'Scannlain

English Honors Theses

In this thesis I wanted to explore the ways that masculinity has been written in history through the genre of fiction. The first chapter discusses traumatized white masculinity in Kurt Vonnegut's novel SlaughterHouse Five and Oliver Stone's film Born On The Fourth of July. The second chapter deals with the female Black experience in response to the white patriarchy in Toni Morrison's novel Home and HBO's television series LoveCraft Country. And finally chapter 3 deals with mythologized masculinity redeemed through violence in Martin Scorsese's film Taxi Driver and Frank Miller's comic book series The Dark Knight Returns. …

She Speaks Spanglish, A Podcast Series, Kate Fernanda Becerra

Humanities and Cultural Studies | Senior Theses

This is a podcast series about the immigrant experience in the United States. The series discusses immigration with a focus on women, at different stages of life and their involvement with the daunting transition into a different country and culture. The show will focus on one family, their close friends, and communities. It will also explore feminist themes through the lived experience of the people interviewed. Those who were interviewed have ties to central Mexico (Zacatecas, Jalisco, Michoacan) and Northern California. The Podcast host shares this experience and does one episode based entirely on her perspective as a daughter of …

Female Victimization In The 1970s And 1980s Slasher Film, Sarah Lukowski

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

To examine this portrayal of women in 1970s and 1980s slashers, I will first provide background on the genre using the influential films The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and Halloween (1978), and from there I will define the genre in accordance with its characteristics and formulaic conventions. Clover’s groundbreaking work (1987; 1992), offers a feminist perspective on slasher films and will provide substantial evidence throughout my paper. Then, I will compare and contrast multiple content analyses from the 1980s to the 2000s that use empirical studies to evaluate the degree to which women are victimized in slashers by the …

“I Save Me”: Gender, Agency, And Power In Better Call Saul, Stephanie Kocer

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Historically, women on television have been portrayed in wife and mother roles, making them a foil to their husbands, but never the main focal point of the show. These characters stay on the sidelines, without being given truly original storylines where they are allowed to drive their own narratives. During the first season of Better Call Saul, Kim Wexler is a supporting character, without any storylines that aren’t linked to Jimmy McGill. Jimmy often treats Kim as a damsel in distress. He thinks it’s his job to save her, and usually from the chaos that he’s created. In this thesis …

Tale As Old As...Feminism? The (Re)Making Of Beauty And The Beast, Cara Doreen Hardman

Theses - ALL

In this thesis, I investigate Disney's positioning of the live-action Beauty and the Beast as feminist. Up to this point, Disney's animated Beauty and the Beast has both been hailed as presenting audiences with an empowered princess and criticized for the Beast's aggressive behavior and the positioning of Belle as a woman meant to propel the Beast's story forward. I provide an assessment of the gender politics depicted in Disney's live-action Beauty and the Beast, and I problematize the tendency to classify texts as either entirely feminist or utterly antifeminist. As a whole, this thesis provides an in-depth analysis of …

La Sensibilidad De La Lente Crítica: Las Dinámicas De Poder Y Los Papeles De Género En El Cine Mexicano Contemporáneo, China Campagnuolo

Honors Theses

This project explores the socio-cultural evolution of gender dynamics through the analysis of four contemporary Mexican films: Amores perros (2000) directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Y tu mamá también (2001) directed by Alfonso Cuarón, Las elegidas (2015) directed by David Pablos, and Roma (2018) also directed by Cuarón. These directors are part ofMexico’s cinematic “New Wave,” a modern resurgence of Mexican film that depicts a realistic side of the nation’s political, social, and economic issues. In the opening chapter, I analyzeAmores perros and Y tu mamá también, two earlier films of the “New Wave.” These movies areheavily focused on toxic …

“I’M Real I Thought I Told Ya”: Developing Critical Media Literacy Through U.S. Latinx Digital Media Representations, Solange T. Castellar

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores how audiences engage with U.S. Latinx media representations through the practice of critical media literacy. I interrogate how media consumers construct critical media literacy through interacting with U.S. Latinx figures on digital media platforms, particularly on the social-media app, Twitter, and the user-generated video content platform, YouTube. Throughout this thesis, I argue that users on these platforms who engage with U.S. Latinx pop culture figures, like Jennifer Lopez and Belcalis Almanzar (Cardi B), read, digest, and comprehend a variety of multimedia images, texts, or videos, and that this engagement becomes an accessible form of critical media literacy, …

Through The Lens Of Koreans: The Influence Of Media On Perceptions Of Feminism, Neha Cariappa

Master's Projects and Capstones

Regardless of country and culture, the media has the power to influence the opinions and perceptions of its viewers. This project evaluates specific Korean movies—and the reactions of South Koreans to gender representations in films that are considered “feminist”—along with the variety show genre, which also tends to reinforce gender stereotypes and imbalances. With these media representations as a framework, this research explores the impact of the internet in forwarding feminist views along with unearthing the reactions of Koreans. Given the anonymity of the internet and social media, these platforms allow for honest expression and counterpoints to sexist views and …

Everything Feels Like The Future But Us: The Posthuman Master-Slave Dynamic In Japanese Science Fiction Anime, Ryan Daly

Masters Theses

This thesis is an exploration of the relationships between humans and mechanized beings in Japanese science fiction anime. In it I will be discussing the following texts: Ergo Proxy (2006), Chobits (2002), Gunslinger Girl (2003/2004), and Mahoromatic (2001/2002). I argue that these relationships in these anime series take the form of master/slave relationships, with the humans as the masters and the mechanized beings as the slaves. In virtually every case, the mechanized beings are young females and the masters are older human males. I will argue that this dynamic serves to reinforce traditional power structures and gender dynamics in a …

Final Master's Portfolio, Heather M. Stephenson

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

This collection examines hegemonic responses to shifting gender norms in a series of Anglo-American novels and films in the late 19th century through the late 20th century. Beginning in the Victorian era before progressing to the 1950s, 1960s, and the 1970s—with gestures to the Jacobean era and the contemporary period—each piece in this collection examines one or more text(s) as a vignette demonstrative of changing gender issues within their context. By situating each text within its historical and cultural milieu, this collection examines efforts, in different instances, to reassert long-standing gender norms throughout the ages. Not only does the collection …

Acting Hysterical: Analyzing The Construction, Diagnosis And Portrayal Of Historical And Modern Hysterical Women, Gillian Singer

Honors Theses

Hysterical women’s stories from the 19th and 20th centuries have all too often been ignored and furthermore, invalidated through the capitalization and spectacularization of hysterical women’s experiences. “Acting Hysterical: Analyzing the Construction, Diagnosis and Portrayal of Historical and Modern ‘Hysterical’ Women” aims to acknowledge hysterical women’s narratives by studying the visual documentation of hysterical women. Visual documentation of hysteria began with the photographing of Dr. Jean-Martin Charcot’s “hysterical” female patients and extends to modern cinematic representations from the last two decades of historical and modern hysterical women.

Medical Muses, a book based in years of research by Asti Hustvedt served …

Misinterpretations Of The Taming Of The Shrew: Adaptations And Their Emphasis On Gender, Brianna Reisenwitz

HON499 projects

Misinterpretations of The Taming of the Shrew: Adaptations and Their Emphasis on Gender focuses on modern adaptations of The Taming of the Shrew. Modern adaptations have a preoccupation with gender that was not necessarily present in the original play, and that is because they fail to include the induction scene. The works discussed are the book Vinegar Girl, the films Isi Life Mein, Deliver Us From Eva, 10 Things I Hate About You, and the television show BBC's ShakespeaRe-Told. In these adaptations, several gender focused themes are apparent. With the framing story, though, the play has many different interpretations, and …

Violence In The Hands Of Women: An Analysis Of Gendered Violence In Life Is Strange And Before The Storm, Mitchi Anne Maja

Senior Theses

This thesis is an analysis of the video games Life is Strange and Before the Storm and how they serve to reflect social expectations and norms placed upon both women and men even today. Cultural studies recently accepted video games as a form of media to study, especially with the prevalence and accessibility of video games in various platforms. Violence in video games is culturally associated with men and the male audience; my analysis focuses on violence in the hands of women. By analyzing the choices I made as a player and how these games present their narratives and characters, …

Poison Ivy's Green Screen Debut: A Rhetorical Criticism On Erasing Identity On Screen, Jennifer Baney

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

This project investigates the loss of power on screen for female comic book characters. Specifically, I investigate how scenes create narratives using heteronormativity and over-sexualization of female characters. The artifact of analysis included in this project is Batman and Robin (1997). This text focuses on Poison Ivy, including the background of the character before dissecting her role in the film. Turning to Sonja J. Foss (2009) and her feminist critique as a guide to understanding the implications of this research. Using feminist criticism, I argue that Poison Ivy was put in a lesser position, removed of her power, and was …

Women, Blood, And Dreams: Gender, Dream Spaces, And Monstrosities In A Nightmare On Elm Street And Bloodborne, Amber Appleby

Theses and Dissertations from 2018

Video games exploded in popularity in the 80s and have been a staple in many people’s lives since. Because video games are popular and different, critics tend to ignore them beyond simple analysis like the sexist portrayal of women. Video games, like films, can be read and analyzed using different methods of theory. This is evident in the similarities in Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street and FromSoftware’s Bloodborne. Both media feature overtly gendered imagery and spaces, the monstrousness of women, the blurring of dreams and reality, and Gothic elements that tie them together. Though Bloodborne also manages to …

Wonder Woman: A Case Study For Critical Media Literacy, Adriana N. Fehrs

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

To better grasp the messages Wonder Woman is sending to its audience, a Critical Media Literacy (CML), ideological, and feminist framework is used to examine whether, and if so how, Wonder Woman succumbs to stereotypes that are often portrayed in the media. These theories will be used in the ensuing project to build a curriculum aimed at high school students.The curriculum positions students to examine the hegemonic ideologies that are represented in pop culture, specifically Wonder Woman.

"It Came In Little Waves": Feminist Imagery In Chantal Akerman's Je, Tu, Il, Elle +, Staci C. Dubow

Honors Theses

Chantal Akerman writes, “she who seeks shall find, find all too well, and end up clouding her vision with her own preconceptions.”[1] This thesis addresses the films of Chantal Akerman from a theoretical feminist film perspective. There are many lenses through which Akerman’s rich body of work can be viewed, and I would argue that she herself never intended for it to be understood in just one way. I wish to situate Akerman’s films, in particular her 1974 Je, Tu, Il, Elle (1h 30m), within a discourse of other feminist film theorists and makers that were further rooted in …

The Gender Wage Gap In The Film Industry: A Review Of Literature, Christine Pires

Senior Theses

The gender wage gap is defined as the difference between the amounts of money paid to women and men, often for doing the same work (Cambridge, 2017). The gender wage gap is a reoccurring financial issue in all aspects of the business world. Most all career paths have had a wage gap between men and women. Having equal pay for equal work should be a thing of the past. However, women today are still fighting to close the wage gap and work equally in all fields. The film industry is one of the largest entertainment industries in America and still, …

Sexy Robots: A Perpetuation Of Patriarchy, Ashlyn Des Roches

Communication Studies

This feminist critique looks into the way that gender, specifically females, are portrayed in some of Hollywood's top films involving Artificial Intelligence: Blade Runner, Her, and Ex Machina. These movies work as a perpetuation of patriarchal ideologies while maintaining the objectification and hypersexuality of women as normalized behaviors. Additionally, while some forms of empowerment are conveyed, the features illustrate women merely on a spectrum of extreme behavior; due to Heuristics and Cultivation Theory, these misrepresentations can be associated with women outside the surrealist realm of the depicted artificially intelligent worlds.

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 …

Archiving The '80s: Feminism, Queer Theory, & Visual Culture, Margaret A. Galvan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Archiving the '80s: Feminism, Queer Theory, & Visual Culture locates a shared genealogy of feminism and queer theory in the visual culture of 1980s American feminism. Gathering primary sources from grant-funded research in a dozen archives, I analyze an array of image-text media of women, ranging from well known creators like Gloria Anzaldúa, Alison Bechdel, and Nan Goldin, to little known ones like Roberta Gregory and Lee Marrs. In each chapter, I examine how each woman develops movement politics in her visual production, and I study the reception of their works in their communities of influence. Through studying hybrid visual …

Split Wounds: Diverging Formations Of Trauma In The Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders V, Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, And The Rat Laughed, And Once Were Warriors, Emily R. Johnston

Theses and Dissertations

Split Wounds interrogates naturalized, normalized trauma wisdom—particularly the individualization and pathologization of sexualized trauma. Drawing on Foucault’s concept of discursive formation, explicated in The Archaeology of Knowledge as a set of conditions that enables history, this dissertation elucidates differing discursive formations of trauma in contemporary medical documents, literary texts, and films. The introductory chapter explicates how founding texts in the field of trauma theory construct trauma as a preverbal, psychological experience that can only be represented through fragmented, non-linear, anti-narrative textual strategies. Chapter two exposes such Euro-American modernist ideology in the American Psychiatric Association’s clinical definition of posttraumatic stress disorder …