Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Recurring Scream: Trauma In Wes Craven's Slasher, Ben Muntananuchat

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates trauma representation in the horror film trilogy Scream, by director Wes Craven and based on the story and characters by screenwriter Kevin Williamson. The franchise is a satirical body of work that uproots the formulaic narrative aspects of the slasher film subgenre, of which it belongs to. Craven and Williamson’s method of critiquing the subgenre employs the usage of its cinematic tropes, though elevating them to a level of postmodern parody. I analyze traumatic representation within the franchise’s layers of mediation and postmodern narrative elements, which are often highlighted in academic discussion. The trauma observed revolves around …

Spring 2020

In The Loop

Letter from the Dean: Advancing Past Adversity; Look Who's Talking: Expert Talk Series; Seen and Heard; Keeping It Real: Client Web Projects for Students; OMG, It's DIBS, LOL!; X-ray Vision: Brian Andrews bones up on anthropomorphic entities and virtual realty in an audacious Project Bluelight film; Nothing But Net: Shannon Linares scores a win for female and first-generation college students in network engineering and cybersecurity careers; Mix Master: Claire Rosas blends disciplines and social synergy in her designs, from egg-ceptional typography to adaptive ergs

Redefining Representations Of Trauma & Modes Of Witnessing In Damon Lindelof’S The Leftovers, Mariana Delgado

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project aims to better understand how and why traumatized subjectivity is framed by The Leftovers’ fictional narrative in a visual and sonic form that rejects these modes of representations of trauma that they themselves have become conventional tropes. This thesis proposes to further examine the way the moving image, specifically the televised image, contributes to our perceived notions of trauma aesthetics through The Leftovers’ use of monologues, along with how and why suffering is sonically framed by the exchange of silence and Max Richter’s minimalist score.

Modernist aesthetics have become the disruptive expectations of contemporary Western cinematic audiences as …

Womanism & Wellbeing: A Manuscript Dissertation Exploring The Effects Of Shame, Loss And Gender Issues, Christy Angelle-Vidrine Bauman

Education Dissertations

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the research on gender issues and psychological well-being across the adult lifespan utilizing qualitative research examining factors (e.g., societal influences, sexual objectification, shame, loss, meaning-making, and internal identity) in developing resilience and mitigating mental health issues. This paper discusses the importance of addressing well-being through expression of loss, meaning-making, and social impact. This manuscript style dissertation will review publications in such areas as sexuality, spirituality, grief, shame, intimacy, social, and interpersonal relationships. The exploration of biopsychosocial impacts as it relates to meaning-making, resilience, and communal involvement. The three publications will be …

Examining The Impact Of Climate Change Film As An Educational Tool, Brittany Bondi, Salma Monani, Sarah M. Principato, Christopher P. Barlett

Student Publications

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to evaluate the effectiveness of film in communicating issues related to climate change. While previous studies demonstrate an immediate effect of a film post-screening, this study also considered if a film can inspire long-term effects, and if supplemental educational information plays a role on participant understanding.

Design/methodology/approach: Using surveys, we assessed undergraduate students’ climate change responses pre-, immediately-post, and 9-weeks post watching the climate change documentary The Human Element (Prod. Earth Vision Institute, 2018). In the 9-week interim before the final survey, half of the participants received weekly information on climate change via …

Built Bodies: Representations Of Monstrous Transsexuality In The Frankenstein Film, 1945-1975, Carmilla M. Morrell

College of Communication Theses and Dissertations

This thesis considers the relationship between representations of the Frankenstein’s Monster on film and the transsexual identity to argue that they can be ontologically consolidated into the figure of the Monstrous transsexual: a constructed, hybrid being whose uncategorizability within conventionally rigid structures of sex and intolerable embodiment of incongrous “parts” renders them as simultaneously powerful with radical potential and vulnerable from ostracization, oppression, and hostility. By analyzing both Frankenstein films from the post-war era of 1945-1975 and the power dynamics of the gender clinics in which the modern understanding of transsexuality was established, this thesis demonstrates the ways in which …

Crazy Rich Asians: A Tale Of Immigration, Globalization And Consumption In East Asia, Giana M. Eckhardt, Finola Kerrigan

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

We review the 2018 film Crazy Rich Asians in order to highlight its relevance for debates on immigration, globalization and consumption. In doing so, we argue that a new model of immigration for East Asians, distant and distinct from the American Dream, a “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” narrative infused with an Asian ethic, is being valorized in the film. We also illuminate the complexities of East Asian representation on screen, as evidenced by varying receptions to the film in America and in various regions of Asia. And, finally, we note that while the film celebrates excess in consumption …

Crazy Rich Asians: Exploring Discourses Of Orientalism, Neoliberal Feminism, Privilege And Inequality, Devi Vijay

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

In this review of Crazy Rich Asians (2018), I examine elements of orientalism, neoliberal feminism, privilege and inequality that layer the film. Specifically, I interrogate the film’s American inflection of orientalism, surfacing a constant duel between essentialized Asian and American values, where what is American eventually wins out. Independent, entrepreneurial women are integral to this narrative of global capitalist accumulation. Yet, as the East meets the West in the globalized consumptive spaces of the super-rich, inequalities in the United States and Singapore are either repackaged under the myth of meritocracy, or conveniently erased. While the film demarcates a new Hollywood …

Crazy Rich Asians: When Representation Becomes Controversial, Yikun Zhao

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

Crazy Rich Asians (2018) has been hailed as a symbol of diversity representation, but it has also been challenged for the lack of representativeness. This review analyzes the controversy from two aspects. It traces how this film was made into a progressive symbol of diversity representation through riding sociocultural trends about the rise of Asia and the anti-whitewashing campaign. It also shows that this film tells a classic Cinderella story with a contextual twist of the reversed power balance between the ‘East’ and the ‘West’. Overall, although this movie contributes to bringing attention to the long-existing void of Asian-American representation …

On The Banality Of Transnational Film, Ian Reyes, Justin Wyatt

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

“Breakthrough” global blockbusters like Black Panther (2018) and Crazy Rich Asians (2018) create disturbances among critics and firms forced to wonder if such ripples of diversity will become waves of new cinema wiping out the hegemony of Hollywood and the global West. In this essay, we establish the context for this phenomenon in terms of film’s historical relationship to marketing. Through this context, we theorize a transnational aesthetic for global blockbusters, one that may serve to limit ripples of diversity, breaking waves of change against the rocks of a banal cinema of Americanized nothingness.

Globalization Tropes In Films: A Focus On Crazy Rich Asians, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Deniz Atik

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

I Am Fascinated By What Is Beautiful, Strong, Healthy” Leni Riefenstahl, Gender, And Absolved Guilt, Karmann Ludwig

International ResearchScape Journal

Public discourse around the Nazi regime is typically surrounded by its doctrine of hatred and violence; traditional gender roles and these traits have rendered fascism a decidedly masculine pursuit—which Nazi doctrine wholeheartedly supported. Many men are to blame for the atrocities of the Holocaust and are rightfully criticized and despised for their actions; however, though a major contributor to the fascist ideology through her propaganda, filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl has remained extremely controversial. While scholars and critics have criticized Leni Riefenstahl’s films as emblemizing a fascist aesthetic, many have nonetheless praised her as an innovative artist, arguing for a separation from …

Consider The Source: The Media’S Coverage Of Female Fbi Agents In The 1970s, Kali Devarennes

The Forum: Journal of History

This paper explores the representation of female FBI agents in newspapers throughout the 1970s until the early 1990s. While this subject is not widely discussed, due to lack of exposure and research, this paper reveals how crucial these women were during this period as they redefined how society and male FBI agents viewed women in previously male-dominated fields. In 1970, the media responded to these women with a variety of assumptions and stereotypes defining women as sex objects, physically weak, and mentally unable to handle the dangerous work environment. Through examination of scholarly and primary sources, this paper uncovers the …

Empty Time As Traumatic Duration: Towards A Cinematic Aevum, Kelli Fuery

Film and Media Arts Faculty Articles and Research

Frank Kermode uses the term aevum to question the links between origin, order, and time, associating experience with spatial form. Without end or beginning, aevum identifies an intersubjective order of time where we participate in the “relation between the fictions by which we order our world and the increasing complexity of what we take to be the ‘real’ history of that world”; being “in-between” time is a primary quality of the aevum. Regarding cinema, aevum identifies this third duration as emotional experience, occuring as traumatic time. It facilitates thinking beyond lived temporal experience of everyday life to a philosophy …

Audio Quality As Content: Everyday Criticism Of The Lo-Fi Format, Elizabeth Newton

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the matter of authenticity with respect to audio recordings. In the early 1990s, the term “lo-fi” (“low-fidelity”) emerged as a label used to categorize many different types of popular music, indicating widespread fascination with what I call audio quality, the perceived character of an audio recording. I define audio quality as the relationship between content and mediation, which varies greatly by circumstance. My archival research of zines, press releases, and correspondence examines this relationship in three case studies: Wu-Tang Clan, Bratmobile, and Elliott Smith. I posit the lo-fi format as a critical structure that emerged in …

The Lack Of Recognition For The Film Choreographer In Hollywood, Claire Ross

Honors College Theses

The following research directly addresses why the film choreographer has lacked adequate recognition within the Academy Awards, popularly known as the Oscars, presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Additionally, this study aims to fill the research gap in relation to the minimal documentation that exists regarding the role and contributions of the film choreographer within the film industry. In order to move forward in assessing how the film choreographer can be recognized within the Oscars, one must address why they have not been sufficiently recognized within the history of the Academy Awards. By assessing the film …

Promoting The Consumer Citizen: Seals, Spectacles, And The Gendered Consumer In Depression-Era America, Danielle B. Wetmore

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis will argue that New Deal legislation accounted for increased importance placed on consumers and the articulation of consumer citizenship as female during the Great Depression. Once New Deal programs and legislation determined and legitimized the consumer citizen, the consumer citizen exercised influence though purchasing power. Analyzing the ways the federal government defined women as consumer citizens through programs like the National Recovery Administration’s Blue Eagle Campaign offers important insight into who was considered to have a voice. Notions of citizenship define groups by who has the necessary attributes and qualifications—in this case the means to purchase goods—to be …

Queer Baroque: Sarduy, Perlongher, Lemebel, Huber David Jaramillo Gil

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation analyzes the ways in which queer and trans people have been understood through verbal and visual baroque forms of representation in the social and cultural imaginary of Latin America, despite the various structural forces that have attempted to make them invisible and exclude them from the national narrative. My dissertation analyzes the differences between Severo Sarduy’s Neobaroque, Néstor Perlongher’s Neobarroso, and Pedro Lemebel’s Neobarrocho, while exploring their individual limitations and potentialities for voicing the joys and pains of being queer and trans in an exclusionary society. As I analyze the literary works of each artist, …

A Screenplay For Bystander Intervention For Sexual Harassment Scenarios For College Students, Shanti Herzog

Journalism

This project was developed to describe the drafting of a screenplay for an interactive, virtual reality sexual harassment training module for students of the California Polytechnic University, San Luis Obispo. The research began with the examination of the prevalent and persisting issue of sexual harassment within college campus communities, and how to present college students with the tools to intervene as bystanders, thus encouraging them to intervene when encountering sexual harassment scenarios. The resulting screenplay was written to provide college students at Cal Poly with strategies to identify and take action when encountering sexual harassment, especially in small group gatherings …

Death Positivity: A New Genre Of Death And The Genre Function Of Memento Mori, Melony Elsie Del Real

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This article explores Caitlin Doughty’s “death positivity” as an evolved form of the medieval memento mori, and how this medieval genre serves as a genre function for current day thanatophobic audiences. This is specifically done by analyzing Doughty’s book titled Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, as well as some of her other death positivity mediums. By modeling her rhetoric of death positivity after memento mori, Doughty can effectively deliver her anti-death fearing message to the very audiences that fear death.

Furthermore, analyzing Doughty’s rhetoric as operating within the genre function, a concept put forth by Anis Bawarshi, …