Film and Media Studies Commons^™

The Bitter Buddha, William L. Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of The Bitter Buddha (2013) directed by Steven Feinartz.

Preserving Film Preservation In The Digital Era, Becca Bastron

School of Information Student Research Journal

This paper explores the current controversies surrounding film preservation in the digital era. Questions address the benefits of new technologies and the potential sacrifices to a film's authenticity and designation as a valued historical, social, and cultural artifact. Issues examined include film's frail format, archives's financial and storage limitations, the concept of "the original film," and how current digitization methods affect each of these areas. This paper addresses the recent restorations of two particular films—Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) and Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo (1958)—and concludes that digital technologies are not stable enough to replace traditional preservation methods, but they can greatly …

Mike & Molly -- An Other World, Maureen Elizabeth Johnson

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This thesis explores the impact of the television show Mike & Molly on the modern debate related to fat in America. The thesis uses the work of Michel Foucault as well as disability scholars such as Lennard Davis and feminist scholars such as bell hooks to examine how a comedy show like Mike & Molly can further disenfranchise fat people in society. The thesis shows that fat makes people an Other in society, and television shows and other forms of comedy that mock those who are fat just reinforce that Other status.

Decolonization And Community Media: Fostering A Decolonial Imaginary In El Alto, Bolivia, Rebecca Jackson

Media and Cultural Studies Honors Projects

Radio Trono, a community radio in Bolivia, uses grassroots critical theory and participatory media to illuminate the influence the colonial matrix of power has on participant's bodies, daily lives, and imaginations. Corporal decolonization, the theory of decolonization developed by the collective that manages Radio Trono, focuses on the body as a site of liberation at multiple scales of geography, and links new bodily configurations to new imaginaries and possibilities for resistance to coloniality of power. This theory infuses Radio Trono's production process and content while the radio's presence in El Alto works to decolonize and democratize the city's media system.

Productive Resistance, Nihilist Production, And The Fetish Of Negation, Hanna Backman

Media and Cultural Studies Honors Projects

No abstract provided.

The Bollywood Hindu Heroine, Emily Holmstead

AWE (A Woman’s Experience)

The melodramatic, high-grossing Bollywood film industry is intertwined in almost every aspect of Indian culture with its blunt commercialism and unapologetic enthusiasm. Both the western world and the feminist movement are changing women’s depictions in these films. These featured women fill university classrooms and cry out against social injustice all the while pursuing husbands and performing traditional rituals. The power structure of the female-male relationship is also changing as women’s education and career are given more importance while maintaining their devotion to romance and motherhood. The appetite for female-centered films will grow as the theories and practices of female empowerment …

The Va-Jay-Jay Revolution

Women’s Studies, Feminist Zine Archive

Writings and art about beauty standards, the portrayal of lesbians on television, a critique of the word bitch, organized religion as a violation of women's rights, harassment in public spaces, and the representation of women in various countries as observed by studying abroad.

W.O.C. In Da Biz, Graeme Aegerter, Ellen Butterworth, Katie Davidson

Women’s Studies, Feminist Zine Archive

Writings and art addressing intersectionalities of music, gender, and race, focusing on M.I.A., Janelle Monae, and Ciara Princess Harris.

Recognition For The ‘Beautiful Jewess’: Beauty Queens Crowned By Modern Jewish Print Media, Kerry Wallach

German Studies Faculty Publications

This chapter demonstrates how women’s bodies were appropriated (in times of adversity) to promote Jewishness and Jewish ethnic/racial body aesthetics in a variety of locations, including Europe (Germany, Poland, Hungary), Tel Aviv, Argentina, and the United States.

“Part Of The University Lexicon”: Marketing And Ontario Universities, 1990-2013, Daniel Robinson, Lindsay Carrocci Bolan

FIMS Publications

The authors examine the emergence and consolidation of marketing practices at five Ontario universities, beginning in the early 1990s, with a focus on student recruitment and the articulation and promotion of institutional identity. The five schools represent a cross-section of the university landscape in Ontario. Interviews were conducted with personnel performing communications and marketing-related functions. Institutional records, when available, were consulted, as were internal publications, trade publications, and print media accounts. The authors situate their treatment of this topic within the field of Critical Management Studies (Alvesson & Willmott, 2003) and related works dealing specifically with marketing. Most notably, they …

Serial Killing Serial Children: Dexter's Counterfeit Families, Steven Bruhm

Data and Test Instruments

No abstract provided.

The Counterfeit Child, Steven Bruhm

Data and Test Instruments

No abstract provided.

Dracula's Colonized Tongue Speaks Through Fanged Teeth, Creighton Nicholas Brown

Journal of Dracula Studies

No abstract provided.

A Very Victorian Feast: Food And The Importance Of Consumption In Modern Adaptations Of Dracula, S. Brooke Cameron, Suyin Olguin

Journal of Dracula Studies

No abstract provided.

Triangulated Desire In Meyer's Twilight: A Queer Dynamic, Jami Mcfarland

Journal of Dracula Studies

No abstract provided.

Introduction: Cuts To Dissolves – Defining And Situating Ecocinema Studies, Salma Monani, Stephen Rust

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

This is the abstract for the entire book:

Ecocinema Theory and Practice is the first collection of its kind—an anthology that offers a comprehensive introduction to the rapidly growing field of eco-film criticism, a branch of critical scholarship that investigates cinema’s intersections with environmental understandings. It references seminal readings through cutting edge research and is designed as an introduction to the field as well as a sourcebook. It defines ecocinema studies, sketches its development over the past twenty years, provides theoretical frameworks for moving forward, and presents eloquent examples of the practice of eco-film criticism through essays written by the …

Environmental Film Festivals: Beginning Explorations At The Intersections Of Film Festival Studies And Ecocritical Studies, Salma Monani

Environmental Studies Faculty Publications

Drawing from the burgeoning field of film festival studies and its engagement with public sphere theory, I examine environmental film festivals to suggest that their festival terrain is bounded by three end-member festival types, that of the official public sphere, the alternative public sphere, and the corporate or trade-show sphere. Few environmental festivals fall neatly into a single end-member category. Analyzing how they construct their identities suggests the complex ways in which these festivals work to negotiate their presence in a heterogeneous environmental and media landscape and makes room for continued attention to these unique sites of ecocinema engagement.

Montage And Memory: Articulations Of Literary Modernism In Alain Resnais’ Early Films, Ria Banerjee

Publications and Research

The fascination that literary modernism has with thingness, that essential static being of inanimate objects, has been the subject of much critical attention. This paper seeks to add to that body of criticism by looking at Alain Resnais’ films, specifically referring to Night and Fog, Hiroshima Mon Amour and Muriel as examples of cinematic modernism which further complicate modernism’s obsessive re-configuration of the status of things in relation to the human lives that exist among them. By the turn of the twentieth century, a concern with the limits of human perception of the world was at the fore. Buffeted …

Independent Animation: Exploring The Fine Line Between Inspiration And Imitation, Rebekah Rifareal

AUCTUS: The Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship

I came into VCU hoping to eventually go into independent animation. The UROP opportunity popped up and it sounded great and I thought, “Hey, this is something that I’ve been wanting to do.” I read the book The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate (which is a children’s book that I’m basing my animation off of) as I was coming into school freshman year and I thought it would be great to do a project on it. So, I wrote up a proposal and people liked it!

Microfilm Fragmentation, Dylan Halpern

AUCTUS: The Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Scholarship

Fragmentations that manifest during the translation from analog media to digital are often inexplicable and distinctly intriguing. In this study, I delved into the expansive collection of microfilm in the VCU library in an attempt to discover the fractures and errors of the material and aesthetically catalog them. Using a (now arcane) microfilm reader, I documented errors on the films themselves (likely present since the film’s creation and/or as a result of decay), technological flickers resulting from an imperfect scanning technology, and artificially introduced human errors that resulted from improper machine use for effect. The original content of the microfiche …