Film and Media Studies Commons^™

It Won’T Be Easy, Allison Arkush

School of Art, Art History, and Design: Theses and Student Creative Work

Interdisciplinary artist Allison Arkush engages a wide range of materials, modalities, and research in her practice. In It Won’t Be Easy, Arkush places and piles her multimedia sculptures throughout the gallery to create installations that overlap ­with her writing and poetry, sometimes layering in (or extending out to) audio and video components. This approach facilitates the probing exploration of prevailing value systems through a flattening of hierarchies among and between humans, the other-than-human, and the inanimate—though no less lively. Her work meditates on and ‘vendiagrams’ things forsaken and sacred, the traumatic and nostalgic. The exhibition title acknowledges that the …

How Ya Mom 'N Dem, Zoe Young

LMU Theses and Dissertations

A boujee bride-to-be must find a way to break a family curse meant to ruin the success of her marriage.

Total Wreck, Bianca Arroyave

LMU Theses and Dissertations

Bianca is the baby of her large Colombian/Puerto Rican family. She will use that and her spitfire personality to her advantage any chance she gets. A heated debate is her love language and sarcasm, the enemy. A lover of surreal worlds, Bianca thinks of herself part of her own Colombian crime family. Growing up on a healthy diet of campy black comedies and deep crime dramas, Bianca fuses the two in a new way. She would say her disability is the least interesting thing about her, but it does serve to give her a unique perspective on writing disabled characters. …

The Wheel Of Power In Hbo's Game Of Thrones, Inbar Shaham

Mythlore: A Journal of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and Mythopoeic Literature

Maps the familial power struggles and patterns of inheritance of Westeros as depicted in the television adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series by using A.J. Griemas’s semiotic square. Applying this framework to the title logo of the series also supports this interpretation.

Iron Family, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Iron Family (2021), directed by Patrick Longstreth.

Toasted Corn Flakes, Michael Mccurdy

LMU Theses and Dissertations

Against biblical odds, the baseball version of a stage mom and her grifting ex road trip their kids’ baseball team across the midwest in the name of life, liberty, and the little league world series.

Loverboy, Mariepet Mangosing

LMU Theses and Dissertations

Will a Lothario Millennial from Jersey commit to love or continue being a fuckboy? Genre: rom com, dramedy

Xbox In Japan? Understanding The Distinctions Of The Japanese Video Game Market To Increase Microsoft's Competitive Advantage, Sekani Adebimpe

Senior Theses

Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony remain the biggest players in the video game console space. While all three companies have achieved worldwide success, Microsoft’s performance with the Xbox brand in Japan is an outlier for its historically poor sales numbers dating back to its 2001 debut. The purpose of this thesis is to unearth the various cultural distinctions inherent to the Japanese gaming industry that Microsoft must consider to gain a stronger foothold in the country, as well as diagnose the biggest issues facing Xbox with Japanese consumers. To accomplish this, several cultural frameworks were used to assess the differences between …

Thistle & Sage, Tara Reynolds

LMU Theses and Dissertations

THISTLE & SAGE (One-Hour Weird-West Drama Pilot)

Maggie Crolley, a budding folk witch and frontierswoman fights to liberate her family and other enslaved townsfolk from a troupe of vampires in 1870 Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Bisexuality In 21st Century Media, Bethany Abrams

Audre Lorde Prize

This paper sets out to examine bisexuality in 21st century media in order to highlight the importance of good bisexual representation. Media that perpetuates harmful stereotypes only adds to the discrimination that bisexual individuals experience. This paper begins by discussing stereotypes and types of discrimination that are particularly relevant to the bisexual community. After this, pieces of media are analyzed thoroughly for how they portray bisexuality. The three main pieces that are analyzed are Alex Strangelove, Atypical, and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. After analyzing each piece, the paper continues to examine audience reactions and discusses the implications of representing bisexuality …

John Williams: Scoring And Interpreting Emotions In Film Music, Hadlee Lane Hubbard

Senior Honors Theses

This research paper examines how John Williams’s film scores convey an emotional narrative to the audience. First, the literature review will discuss pertinent theories on film music and emotions informing the current research. The paper then establishes Williams’s composing style, and centers on his connection to the classical symphonic composers and to the film music of the Golden Age of Hollywood. The research then analyzes how John Williams’s music influences emotions in prominent scenes from several of his films including Jurassic Park, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and The Empire Strikes Back. Finally, the paper concludes with a …

The Making Of Everyday Hollywood: 1930s Film Influence On Everyday Women’S Fashion In Nebraska, Anna Naomi Kuhlman

Department of Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This research examines the influence of film fashions on middle-class, Nebraskan women’s dress during the Great Depression (1932-1940). The Great Depression challenged the middle class: while standards of living remained high, the economic means to achieve those standards diminished. Despite the crisis, women strove to keep up with current fashion trends. While previous literature has examined how Hollywood directly affected trends and styles of the 1930s in major American metropolitan contexts, the manifestation of trends in the dress of middle to lower socio-economic classes in Middle America remains under-examined. Against the backdrop of Depression-era hardships specific to Nebraska’s agricultural economy, …

"What If We're On The Wrong Side?": Police Brutality, Protest, And Player Culpability In Heavy Rain And Detroit: Become Human, Karmann E. Ludwig

All NMU Master's Theses

Choice-based video games have often been called “interactive movies” for their unique position as a genre that lets players craft a unique story by making decisions that alter the game’s narrative. Two well-known examples in this genre, Quantic Dream’s Heavy Rain and Detroit: Become Human, offer a variety of possible story lines and outcomes for players to experience. However, because these two narratives are steeped in themes of police brutality, systemic racism, and protest, the way a player shapes a story does not exist in a relatively “moral-free” vacuum. Rather, the legal and social precedents that are often used to …

After Yang, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of After Yang (2021), directed by Kogonada.

Gladiolus, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Gladiolus (2022), directed by Azadeh Navai.

Be Right Back, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Be Right Back (2022), directed by Frauke Havemann.

Brian And Charles, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Brian and Charles (2021), directed by Jim Archer.

Dual, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Dual (2021), directed by Riley Stearns.

Long Line Of Ladies, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Long Line of Ladies (2022), directed by Rayka Zehtabchi and Shaandiin Tome.

“For Now We See In A Mirror, Dimly”: Dialectical Wholeness In Oshii Mamoru’S Ghost In The Shell, Mari Aida

Comparative Literature M.A. Essays

This essay argues that Oshii Mamoru's 1995 animated film Ghost in the Shell, while indicating possible alliances with the political interests of cyberfeminism, ultimately advocates for the oppositional agenda of dialectical wholeness. Foundational texts of cyberfeminism, such as Donna J. Haraway's "A Manifesto for Cyborgs," have criticized narratives of isolation and a return towards a primordial wholeness implicit in Euro-American scientific culture. In the context of these texts, the cyborg symbolizes a departure from such narratives and guides the political project of reimagining epistemological boundaries. However, despite its apparent alignment with such projects, Ghost in the Shell dramatizes and …