Film and Media Studies Commons^™

"In The Sentimental Past": Cultural Identity Through Film Music Before And After The Hong Kong Handover, Kasady Liu

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Hong Kong: a city characterized by Jackie Chan, kung fu, and its surprising “in-betweenness.” Not quite Eastern and not quite Western, Hong Kong has been placed in a unique position due to its recent handover from Great Britain to China. As a result of this handover, the people of Hong Kong have displayed various attitudes towards their previous, foreign system of democratic government and their new, Communist system of government. Hong Kong’s cultural identity is closely tied with the handover, and in this paper, I analyze how the film music of Hong Kong movies have conveyed ideas about their cultural …

Here To Win, Not Here To Settle, Sarah Kaino

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Ethnic representation goes beyond color blind casting, the diversity of actors, or non-stereotypical casting choices. It is not just a matter of minorities being included in mainstream storylines, but minorities being able to tell their own stories as well. The relevance and relatability of storytelling in film and theatre transcends culture, which is in part the beauty of these mediums. But the impact of Asian Americans seeing stories from their own culture cannot be exchanged for anything less because there is no substitute for visibility. Movies are the source of inspiration for many. Movies can also reinforce a transparent ceiling …

The Media, Education, And The State: Arts-Based Research And A Marxist Analysis Of The Syrian Refugee Crisis, Meng Zhao

Education (PhD) Dissertations

By 2019, the Syrian civil war has lasted for nearly eight years and it has created the largest humanitarian crisis since WWII (Achlume, 2015). Using the siege of Aleppo in 2016 as a case study, the author applied a Marxist-humanist theoretical framework and incorporated arts-based research methodology to examine how US news media supports capitalist social relations. The research question for this study was: how do the US media depictions of the siege of Aleppo, Syria in 2016 reflect capitalist social relations? There were three sub-questions that followed: (1) Which elements of the siege of Aleppo in 2016 get the …

A Cauldron Of Chaos And Cultivation: Rediscovering Disney Animation Of The 1980s, Thomas Price

Film Studies (MA) Theses

This thesis examines the four transitional Disney animated features of the 1980s The Fox and the Hound (1981), The Black Cauldron (1985), The Great Mouse Detective (1986), and Oliver and Company (1988)— in order to reassess the significance of this period in Disney history. The Walt Disney Studio is internationally hailed for its animated features produced over the last eight decades, however, the animated films released in the 1980s have been ignored and neglected due to the negative evaluations of scholars and historians who favor Walt’s era and the 1990s renaissance period. A closer examination of the films reveals that …

Inflicted Viewing: Examining Moral Masochism, Empathy, And The Frustration Of Trauma Cinema, Kira Smith

Film Studies (MA) Theses

The contemporary turn of psychoanalytic film analysis has opened a new mode of understanding cinematic language. However, rejecting classical psychoanalysis would be premature. This thesis will place the two in conjunction, specifically through Sigmund Freud’s conceptualization of moral masochism and Wilfred Bion’s theory of thinking. Through four films: Una, The Tale, The Tribe, and Son of Saul I explore the affective nature of films that depict trauma and why one would gravitate towards such upsetting material. The spectator who seeks to be frustrated is not looking to harm oneself but to process this frustration in order to expand their …

Bending Family Friendly Into Fear: Nostalgia, Minstrelsy And Horror In Bendy And The Ink Machine, Isabelle Williams

Film Studies (MA) Theses

When one thinks of Disney’s Mickey Mouse, fear and horror are not terms normally associated with this iconic American cartoon character; however, the video game Bendy and the Ink Machine turns animated bodies (cartoons) into bodies the player fears. In this game family friendly cartoon characters are transformed into figures of fear. Furthermore, Bendy and the Ink Machine does this by making the bending of Black bodies visible through what I call the gameic gaze. The transformation from family friendly into fear happens through the resistive gaze, the gameic gaze, which lingers on the bending of the diegetic cartoons. Bendy …

Representative Biodiversity: The Ecosystem Of Cartoon Network, Carl Suby

Film Studies (MA) Theses

As a capitalist organism the television program, as explained by Todd Gitlin, uses its slant to sell itself to advertisers with similar leanings on contemporary social issues to maintain its flow of revenue. However, this concept of slant does not account for the broader network, which, like the singular program, cultivates a catalog of programming into a singular slanted message becoming an ecosystem of shows relying on each other to maintain viewership. The successful televised ecosystem will then be home to programs who enjoy long runs and display an easily recognized shared slant. As an example of the televised ecosystem, …

Diversity And Democracy At War: Analyzing Race And Ethnicity In Squad Films From 1940-1960, Lara K. Jacobson

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

Both the Second World War and the Korean War presented Hollywood with the opportunity to produce combat films that roused patriotic spirit amongst the American people. The obvious choice was to continue making the popular squad films that portrayed a group of soldiers working together to overcome a common challenge posed by the war. However, in the wake of various racial and ethnic tensions consistently unfolding in the United States from 1940 to 1960, it became apparent to Hollywood that the nation needed pictures of unity more than ever, especially if America was going to win its wars. Using combat …

Ai Film Aesthetics: A Construction Of A New Media Identity For Ai Films, Priya Parikh

Film Studies (MA) Theses

Recognized as the fourth industrial revolution, Artificial Intelligence is poised to take the film industry by storm. While the current applications of it help streamline production practices, its escalating employment in the generation of film scripts and visuals complicates notions and functions of authorship and new media aesthetics. This thesis examines the unique junction of Cinema and Artificial Intelligence, where experimentation is not only celebrated, but also necessary in order to re-evaluate the conditions of new media. By analyzing the ways in which three films co-written by Oscar Sharp, Ross Goodwin and an AI negotiate with Foucault’s theory of the …

Stardom, Spectacle, Show, And Salability: United Artists And The Founding Of The Hollywood Blockbuster Model, Jessica Johnson

Film Studies (MA) Theses

United Artists was an independent film distribution company that Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, and Mary Pickford jointly formed in 1919 to maintain creative autonomy over their work. Without the benefit of block booking practices through studio-owned theater houses, each founding artist established specific economic and aesthetic practices within their respective oeuvres in order to maintain company solvency. The resulting films produced during the company’s formative years (1919-1931) saw increased emphasis and innovation in regard to stardom, spectacle, show, and salability, features which ultimately innovated the model for the contemporary Hollywood blockbuster. Attributing the formation of the blockbuster to …

Iranian Cinema In Transition: Relative Truth And Morality In Asghar Farhadi’S Films, Mazyar Mahdavifar

Film Studies (MA) Theses

In addition to box office success, Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s films have achieved national and international critical acclaims. However, it is not only this rare achievement of critical and commercial success that sets Farhadi apart from other Iranian filmmakers, but also, his new approach to the issues of truth and morality which have been age-long themes in the history of Iranian art, literature, and cinema. Compared to his predecessors such as Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, and Jafar Panahi, Farhadi’s viewpoint on these themes is distinctly secular. This thesis focuses on the significance of the change Farhadi’s approach has brought on …

1st Place Contest Entry: Countering The Current: The Function Of Cinematic Waves In Communist Vs. Capitalist Societies, Maddie Gwinn

Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize

This is Maddie Gwinn's submission for the 2019 Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize, which won first place. It contains her essay on using library resources, a three-page sample of her research project on how the Czech New Wave and New Hollywood cinema are defined by their agency in preserving and prescribing cultural meaning across their societies while being bound to their economic systems, and her works cited list.

Maddie is a senior at Chapman University, majoring in Film Production. Her faculty mentor is Dr. Carmichael Peters.