Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Things We Dare Not See: Media Revisions Of Incestuous Relationships, Mattheus M. Oliveira

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Nowadays we can see a steadily growing acceptance of queer relationships in our films and novels, whether they are romance films or violent war movies. What we don’t get to see are examples of incestuous relationships that are consensual and harmless. For example, when Luke and Leia accidentally share some romantic feelings in Star Wars, that bond is suppressed. We don’t get an acknowledgment of a brother and sister’s emotional support in the movie adaptation of V.C Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic. This erasure stems from a long history of cultural and legal censorship of incest that only discusses …

Spectral Bodies: Women's Resistance Across Time In North America, Whitney C. Evanson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project contrasts the lived experiences of feminists within the EZLN in Mexico with the historical persecution of community outsiders during the Salem witch trials. I want to explore the differences between a radical political and social movement (the EZLN), and the radical shift in history in which women were accused of witchcraft based on hysteria and rumors. There are parallels between the witch trials and the causes of the Zapatista movement in the ways that women's bodies were treated--their political usefulness to create fear and obedience from citizens by murdering them for their defiance, burying them in shallow graves. …

The Willfulness Of A Missing Frame: Ahmed Zaki And The Politics Of Visual Resistance, Miriam M. Gabriel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Ahmed Zaki (1949-2005) is one of Egyptian cinema’s most prominent leading actors, with work spanning three decades of critical films that informed a generation’s visual register of masculinity. However, the beginnings of his career were marked by public skepticism around his place as a leading actor due to him being “too dark” and “too poor”; as his career continued to flourish, those very markings of racing and classing Zaki because a foundation for increasingly stamping his public image with the “authenticity” of an Egyptian citizen. At a particularly neoliberal moment in the Egyptian economy, that of the early 80s, new …

Not My Queer: Queer Representation In Contemporary Italian Serial Television, Julia Heim

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Contemporary Italian television, like many national televisions, has entered a period in which the relationships the producers and consumers of televisual content are increasingly indistinguishable. In this age of media convergence the new participants of this medium work across platforms to actively engage, consume, create, and recreate both televisual content and our understanding of the medium. These new relationships require a new understanding of the semiotic and discursive changes taking place in television so that we may reconceptualize the contemporary interplay between media and society.

This dissertation maps out a new understanding of the televisual economy through an elaboration of …

360° Winners

SIGNED: The Magazine of The Hong Kong Design Institute

A group of HKDI students has picked up multiple awards for their 360-degree virtual-reality music video made for veteran Hong Kong band The Wynners…

Hyper Reality

SIGNED: The Magazine of The Hong Kong Design Institute

Advancements in camera technology have the potential to break down the barriers between actors and their audience, if not breaking the fourth wall, at least peering over the top of it. But does such new technology really benefit storytelling, or is it just spectacle for its own sake?

Tey (Aujourd’Hui) : L’Irruption Du Temps Dans L’Espace Filmique Schizophrène, Ute Fendler

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

This paper is a reflection on space in film and the experience of migration in the film Tey by Alain Gomis. Tey shows the temptations to overcome the painful cleavage between the schizophrenic perception of a space filled with feelings and memories on one side, and the structures of power and economic interests on the other one. The focalisation on space becomes evident in the reduction of time down to one single day and the waiting for death of the individual. In the process of negotiation between absence and presence, the film makes evident what neo-liberal politics mean to the …

A Comparative History Of Resurrection Plants, John Charles Ryan

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "A Comparative Literary History of Resurrection Plants" John Charles Ryan assembles a comparative history of resurrection plants through textual analysis of early botanical commentaries, herbal references, prose, poetry, and other sources. Resurrection plants include a diverse range of botanical species, typically of arid regions, that appear to come back to life after complete desiccation. Historical and contemporary observers—from sixteenth-century herbalist John Gerard to contemporary Australian poet John Kinsella—have expressed an abiding fascination for resurrection plants' capacity to survive harsh environmental conditions. The plants court their own deaths by paring down—then restoring—physiological processes in relation to shifting ecological …

Urhobo Folklore And Udje Aesthetics In Tanure Ojaide's In The House Of Words And Songs Of Myself, Mathias I. Orhero

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Urhobo Folklore and Udje Aesthetics in Ojaide's In the House of Words and Songs of Myself" Mathias Orhero argues that Ojaide's poetry incorporates Urhobo folkloric contents and Udje style. Using African New Criticism as its theoretical anchor, this paper reveals that Ojaide amply deploys Urhobo folkloric contents and Udje aesthetics in both the form and contents of his poetry and thus, he continues as a modern Urhobo Udje maestro of the hybrid tradition. This paper also brings Ojaide's recent collections to critical lenses, especially as masterpieces of his Urhobo folkloric and Udje adaptations. Orhero concludes by …

The Representation Of Instinctive Homosexuality And Immoral Narcissism In Gide’S The Immoralist (1902) And Mann’S Death In Venice (1912), Louise Willis

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "The Representation of Instinctive Homosexuality and Immoral Narcissism in Gide’s The Immoralist (1902) and Mann’s Death in Venice (1912)" Louise Willis examines two early literary representations of homosexuality in André Gide's The Immoralist (1902) and Thomas Mann's Death in Venice (1912). She reads them with fin-de-siècle sexological theory, mainly Freud's Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905). Willis argues that the texts reflect the reconception of homosexuality as a latent instinct with pathological expression, rather than a sinful act of free will. The article explains that visual imagery conveys homoerotic desire, by incorporating Nietzsche's concept of …

The Indian Empire And Its Colonial Practices In South Asia, Yubraj Aryal

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The India, Empire and its Colonial Practices in South Asia" Yubraj Aryal claims that Bharatiya discourse supports colonization in South Asia. This discourse justifies oppression of institutions, practices, of the non-Bharatiya colonized. The article examines Indian Empire's colonialism toward the weaker, smaller nations along its border and the Bharatiya ideology at the heart of the repressive empire, which is taken to represent the South Asian subcontinent. The article looks at the way in which Bharatiya is perhaps a more oppressive ideology than Orientalism and gives a glimpse into how society, culture, history, and textuality work around power …

Your Abjection Is In Another Castle: Julia Kristeva, Gamer Theory, And Identities-In-Différance, Ricardo R. Ramirez

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Typified rhetorical situations are often a result of normalized ideologies within cultures; however, they also have the capability to produce new ideology. Within these discursive sites, identities are constructed among these normalized social acts. More importantly, these identities are constructed across many layers, not limited to one social act, but many that overlap and influence each other. In this paper, I focus on the identities that are constructed in marginalized spaces within sites of interacting discourse. Focusing on the rhetoric of abjection posited by Julia Kristeva, along with McKenzie Wark’s exploration of gamespace, a liminal theoretical space that encompasses the …

Adoption, Cynical Detachment, And New Age Beliefs In Juno And Kung Fu Panda, Fu-Jen Chen

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Adoption, Cynical Detachment, and New Age Beliefs in Juno and Kung Fu Panda" Fu-Jen Chen situates his study within today's prevailing climate of global consumption to argue that the 2007 film Juno—featuring an unconventional portrayal of the adoption triad and a cynical detachment from public values—not only trivializes and depoliticizes the practice of adoption but also serves as an ideological supplement to today's global capitalism. Furthermore, Kung Fu Panda 1 & 2 (2008; 2011) provide two ideological messages of contemporary New Age spirituality—"the belief in nothing" in part I, and "the attitude of inner peace" …

Memory And Identity-Focused Narratives In Tănase's 'Lived Book', Nicoleta D. Ifrim

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Memory and identity-focused narratives in Tănase's 'lived book'" Nicoleta Ifrim analyses România mea (My Romania), Virgil Tănase's first book published after the fall of Ceausescu's regime, a collection of interviews in which personal history is fictionalized according to the narrative rules of a "spoken book." The text is representative for the Eastern intellectual travelling to the West, carrying out his own personal post-totalitarian traumas now mirrored in a self-oriented narrative.

A Recipe For Black Girl Magic: A Critical Study Of The Mise-En-Scene In Beyoncé’S Visual Album Lemonade As A Radical Representation Of Black Women, Tatiyana Jenkins

Lawrence University Honors Projects

Lemonade, a visual album released by pop icon Beyoncé Knowles Carter in 2016, crafts a mise-en-scene that redefines the way that black women are allowed to feel and exist in media culture. Contrary to the negative stereotypes and misrepresentations perpetuated in media, Lemonade is a radical attempt to provide audiences with an alternative representation of the experiences of black women. For this honors project, I address the controversy surrounding the visual album’s radical representations of black womanhood. To inform my understanding of the visual album I examine the various creative contributions such as the film Daughters of the Dust directed …

Building Imaginary Worlds (2012) By Mark J.P. Wolf And Revisiting Imaginary World (2016) Edited By Mark J.P. Wolf, Andrew Higgins

Journal of Tolkien Research

Book review of Building Imaginary Worlds (2012) by Mark J.P. Wolf and Revisiting Imaginary Worlds (2016), edited by Mark J.P. Wolf, reviewed by Andrew Higgins

Is Being Wicked The Same As Having Wickedness? A Dialogue On Human Nature Between Wicked, Frankenstein, And Rousseau’S Second Discourse, Emily R. Bezold

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis revolves around the characters of Elphaba, from the musical Wicked, and the Monster, from Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In the comparison of these two verdant characters I seek to analyze their psychological development, starting from their conceptions, to their final moments in their respective stories. I will focus on the parallels between their relations with their fathers, other social connects they may or may not make, and their interaction within the wider social-political world of their stories. In this I seek to explain how Elphaba and the Monster come to represent two different types of man, according …

Selected Readings On Augmented Reality, Ekphrasis, And Michael Field, Robert P. Fletcher

Sight and Song Augmented: Painting and Poetry in Mixed Reality

No abstract provided.

The Blue That Blew Bloo, Daniel Ray Martinez

Art Theses and Dissertations

My work is a combination of videos, objects, and performances with a multidisciplinary practice that engages with the formal language of sculpture, photography, video/cinema, and drawing while being in dialogue with concepts and concerns about the image, the surface, and the space of representation. I am interested in the poetics and phenomenology of life; and the way one interacts in an environment; and the way digital/virtual media has shifted our experiences in life. Rethinking the way one finds boredom to get away from virtual capitalist spaces is a concern for me. I find inspiration in the wandering through spaces. I …

Spiritual Media Experiences, Trait Transcendence, And Enjoyment Of Popular Films, Sophie Janicke, Srividya Ramasubramanian

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

Recent scholarship on media psychology acknowledges that media entertainment offers not only purely hedonistic enjoyment but also meaningful experiences. This study expands our understanding of media enjoyment by exploring the role of media entertainment in evoking spiritual emotions and beliefs, such as those related to connectedness, blessedness, and transcendence. Results from an online survey (N=220) indicate that media entertainment elicits meaningful as well as spiritual emotions and increases the saliency of spiritual beliefs as related to self-actualization and spiritual experiences in everyday life. Furthermore, trait transcendence and eudaimonic media motivations add to the explanation of audiences’ mediated spiritual experiences. Open-ended …