Film and Media Studies Commons^™

The Financial Crisis Documentary, William L. Gardner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project was a documentary film focused on exploring the 2008 financial crisis in the United States. The documentary incorporates interviews with former Senators, Congressmen and local business leaders in an effort to better understand the causes and effects of the crisis.

Kicking The Can, Peter Ellis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Kicking the Can is a video documentary that explores the financial crisis of 2008 and the socio-political factors that led to the collapse. The documentary was produced over the course of a year and a half, and contains interviews with economists, politicians, academics, and U.S. citizens. Kicking the Can ultimately reveals that the financial crisis is a complex issue that can be analyzed and interpreted from a variety of political and social perspectives. This paper documents the making of the film, the production involved, and the process of working with collaborators and other crewmates.

History And Memory In Gettysburg, Jeffrey M. Parrotte

Media Studies - Theses

Media productions have often turned to history as a source for a narrative. Wars have been refought, kingdoms have risen and fallen, and significant moments have been replicated for documentaries, films, television shows, radio productions, and other live mediums. These presentations give audiences access to moments in history that might have otherwise been forgotten. With this access, research suggests audiences will actually learn from the presentations available. This study focuses on the types of information available in a historical film.

The study is a textual analysis the 1993 film Gettysburg, one of the most well-known and best remembered films about …

Gaming Matters: Art, Science Magic And The Computer Game Medium [Book Review], Marc Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

The singular—maybe more aptly put as the pre-eminent—image that occurs when reading Gaming Matters is that of duelling dualisms. While this is a tried-and-true method of covering a topic, from the dissoi logoi to “The Owl and the Nightingale” and beyond, it is the site and the subject of these apposites that makes for an intriguing if (intentionally) unsettling read. The very title of the book makes the exercise of reading (and likely of writing) a part of and apart from this process. Gaming Matters stands as both call and catalogue. Gaming matters, most certainly, in terms of its audience, …

Package Design Vs. Customer Reviews: A Comparative Study On Influences In Fragrance Buying Decisions, Sarah Willis

Graphic Communication

The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of customer reviews, compared to package design, on the fragrance buying decisions of women aged eighteen to twenty-five. The researcher conducted two surveys: the first asked thirty-five random women to choose between two equally priced, but differently designed, perfumes (Perfume X and Perfume Z). This first group’s preference was Perfume X, with 57.14% of participants choosing this product. The second survey asked a different group of thirty-five random women to choose between the same two perfumes, but with the addition of unequally favorable customer reviews. Group 2 participants preferred the …

Los Ultimos Cristeros (The Last Christeros), Davide Zordan

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Los Ultimos Cristeros (2011), directed by Matias Meyer.

Good Deeds, Carol Miles

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Good Deeds (2012), directed by Tyler Perry.

The Woman In Black, Danny Pegg

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of The Woman in Black (2012), directed by James Watkins.

Take Shelter, Dereck Daschke

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Take Shelter (2011) directed by Jeff Nichols.

The Descendants, William Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of The Descendants (2011), directed by Alexander Payne.

Out Of The Fire, William Blizek

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Out of the Fire (2010), directed by Jeanette Reedy Solano.

Melancholia, Jon Pahl

Journal of Religion & Film

This is a film review of Melancholia (2011) directed by Lars Von Trier.

Slamdance Film Festival 2012 Report, William Blizek, Dereck Daschke

Journal of Religion & Film

This is the report on films reviewed at the Slamdance Film Festival, held in Park City, Utah in January 2012.

Sundance Film Festival 2012 Report, John C. Lyden, William Blizek, Dereck Daschke, Kutter Callaway, Jeanette Reedy Solano

Journal of Religion & Film

This is the report of our editors from the Sundance Film Festival, held in Park City, Utah from January 19-29, 2012.

From The Editor, John C. Lyden

Journal of Religion & Film

The Editor introduces the April 2012 issue of the Journal of Religion and Film.

Ironic Faith In Monty Python’S Life Of Brian, Steven A. Benko

Journal of Religion & Film

Monty Python’s Life of Brian tells the story of Brian, a contemporary of Jesus whose life becomes chaotic when he is mistaken for a messiah. Standard comedic devices are used to mock and ridicule those who use their authority or office to claim that they are more than human. In this case, laughter humbles those individuals and brings them back to the human community. Second, an ironic faith perspective allows the Pythons to assert that it is up to each individual to define the meaning of his/her own life. While some interpretations of ironic faith suggest the possibility of an …

King Of Masks: The Myth Of Miao-Shan And The Empowerment Of Women, Kevin Dodd

Journal of Religion & Film

King of Masks represents a particular type of mythic film that includes within it references to an ancient sacred story and is itself a contemporary recapitulation of it. The movie also belongs to a further subcategory of mythic cinema, using the double citation of the myth—in its original integrity and its re-enactment—to critique the subordinate position of women to men in the narrated world. To do this, the Buddhist myth of Miao-shan, which centralizes the Confucian value of filiality, is re-applied beyond its traditional scope and context. Thereby two prominent features of contemporary China are creatively addressed: the revival of …

Irruptions Of The Sacred In A “World Of Shit”: Profanity, Sacred Words, And Cinematic Hierophanies In Stanley Kubrick’S Full Metal Jacket (1987), Joseph E. Bisson

Journal of Religion & Film

Full Metal Jacket remains embedded in the consciousness of the popular culture mainly because of its abundance of profane language, violent imagery, and salacious set pieces. The juxtaposition of profane language and imagery with sacred language and religious symbolism reveals that Kubrick’s Vietnam film has powerful religious overtones that comprise an important element of the film’s critique of homo religiosus and the modern human condition. By continually juxtaposing the sacred and profane, Kubrick created “cinematic hierophanies” that advanced a cultural critique that inventively integrated ideas from some of the mid-20^th Century’s greatest interpreters of myths -- Carl Jung, Joseph …

There’S No Place Like Home: From Oz To Antichrist, J. Sage Elwell

Journal of Religion & Film

This article explores the dialectic of the uncanny in The Wizard of Oz (Victor Flemming, 1939) and Antichrist (Lars von Trier, 2009), treating the latter as a sequel to the former such that we encounter Dorothy first as a young girl and then as a grown woman. I observe that the uncanny entails a repressive and expressive moment that is cinematically rendered in these two films, and drawing on Freud and Žižek, I argue that in Dorothy’s evolution from Oz to Antichrist we see that the witches and wizards and gods and devils of our own minds are known to …

Scapegoats And Redemption On Shutter Island, Cari Myers

Journal of Religion & Film

The themes of redemptive violence, scapegoating, and ritual in the films of Martin Scorsese have provided much grist for critical scholarship. While it is going too far to claim that Scorsese is intentionally interpreting Girardian themes (which are themselves borrowed from a rich mythological tradition), the comparisons between the theorist and the director are compelling. My goal here is to establish the primary themes of scapegoating, mimesis, the cycle of violence, and feuding identities that occur in both Girard’s works and Scorsese’s films and pull them forward into a more recent work of Scorsese, Shutter Island.