Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Argo: Cia Influence And American Jingoism, Andrea De Oliveira

The Yale Undergraduate Research Journal

“Argo: CIA Influence and American Jingoism” focuses on the ways in which CIA involvement in the production and publicity of Ben Affleck’s Argo (2012) yielded a biased representation of the Iranian public. Throughout the film, Affleck pictures Iranians as aggressive and deindividualized, spreading the trope of the Middle Eastern fanatic to viewers worldwide. While villainizing the Iranian public, Argo undermines a fraught history of United States intervention in Iran. Although Affleck takes several liberties in cinematizing the Iranian Hostage Crisis, Argo masquerades as a historical authority, peppered with markers of authenticity such as newsreel footage. I argue that the film …

Pennies From Heaven: Death And The Afterlife In World War Ii Fantasy Films, Elise Williamson

Film Studies (MA) Theses

Wartime fantasy films produced by major Hollywood studios during World War II integrate the supernatural (i.e., ghosts, angels, and the afterlife) into wartime settings with relevant protagonists and themes to address the psychological trauma of wartime death and loss. Three case studies – The Human Comedy (Clarence Brown, 1943), A Guy Named Joe (Victor Fleming, 1943), and Between Two Worlds (Edward A. Blatt, 1944) – explore fantasy narratives and conventions unconventionally blended with the war film genre, and illustrate how the war film setting (home front vs. combat front vs. war zone) influences character focus (civilians vs. military), the …

Look At Her: The Subversive Spectacle Of Grande Dame Guignol Cinema, Michelle Smith

English Theses

While the Grande Dame Guignol films of the early 1960s served in their time to capitalize on the reputations of aging female stars and the growing popularity of the horror genre, an updated reading of this subgenre proves that it is rich with social critique regarding the feminine experience, social performance, and the tendencies of classical Hollywood cinema that promote a dominant, patriarchal social narrative. While many popular and critical responses diminish them as “psycho-biddy” or “hagsploitation” films, the Grande Dame Guignol tradition’s transformation of its actresses from glamorous icons to unrecognizable villains rejects such limiting appraisals by focusing on …

Stanley Kubrick, Jewish Filmmaker: A Review Essay, Michael Gibson

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a review of two books: Nathan Abrams, Stanley Kubrick: New York Jewish Intellectual (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2018), and David Mikics, Stanley Kubrick: American Filmmaker (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020).

From Object To Icon: The Unpredictable Path To Everlastingness, Donna M. Desideri

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis explores how a squeaky-clean object transformed into a girl-next-door icon and became a role model for generations to come. And in an industry built on illusions and dreams, reality wore many masks.

Still in its beginning stages and looking to sell tickets, the motion picture industry needed to reconstruct its current downscale public image by presenting a much-improved polished and upscale public image to audiences, all while silencing contradictory images and information. Appealing to a middle-class sensibility to boost this new public image gave the motion picture industry the acceptance it was seeking. By marketing to middle-class audiences, …