Arts and Humanities Commons^™

From Creator To Curator To Author As Content: Nicolas Winding Refn, Transdiscursive Authorship, And Self-Branding In Twenty-First Century Media, Christopher J. Olson

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation traces Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn’s development from creator and curator to author as content within an evolving media ecology driven by capitalist ideology. A close critical study of Refn’s career from 1996 to 2019 offers insight into contemporary techniques of creating, collecting, and curating media texts, as well as the phenomenon of presenting oneself as content via discursive branding. Given that Refn’s career coincided with the emergence of the World Wide Web and the rise of digital platforms, he thus emblematizes what it means to be a creator working within an increasingly interconnected media ecology. Refn initially …

Screening Bodies: Post-Dictatorship Chilean Cinema, Elaine Joy (Ej) Basa

Theses and Dissertations

Censorship was the modus operandi during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. People and media alike suffered as the oppressive Chilean government suppressed many truths about the Coup, the torture and disappearance of victims and their families, and facts about the state violence that took place from 1973 to the late 1980s. The resulting trauma nurtured a culture of silence, a divided social fabric, and many gaps in historical knowledge. Those who absorbed the media experienced a lack of connection and identification with fabricated and falsified histories, thereby essentially cut off from truly engaging with the traumas of Chile’s dark history. The struggle …

Infrastructural Cinema: Seeing Energy On Film In The Long 1930s, Joni Kay Hayward Marcum

Theses and Dissertations

American energy and infrastructure are at points of major reckoning. Electrical grids suffer major outages, while climate change threatens every known way of harnessing energy resources. But how did we get here? My dissertation, “Infrastructural Cinema: Seeing Energy on Film in the Long 1930s” analyzes the characterization of energy resources in American government and corporate films from the 1920s-1930s, or “infrastructural cinema.” Specifically, I interrogate how infrastructural cinema has affected our understanding of how to control and manage energy, and to what extent our reliance on such infrastructures limits present-day energy solutions. Infrastructural cinema is concerned with how energy and …

Subjective Excess: Aesthetics, Character, And Non-Normative Perspectives In Serial Television After 2000, Jessica Sellin-Blanc

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation aims to fill gaps in contemporary television scholarship with regards to aesthetics and character subjectivity. By analyzing eight series that have all aired after 2000, there is a marked trend in series that use an excessive visual and aural style to not only differentiate themselves from other programming, but also to explore non-normative perspectives. Now more willing to explore previously taboo topics such as mental health, addiction, illness, and trauma, the shows featured in this dissertation show how a seemingly excessive televisual aesthetic works with television’s seriality to create narrative complexity and generate character development. Chapters are arranged …

Rural Masculinities In American Scripted Television Series Of The 2010s, Paul Doro

Theses and Dissertations

The 2010s featured a significant increase in the representation of rural masculinity on television. Much of the increase can be attributed to unscripted programming. Reality series have received considerable attention from scholars, particularly in regard to their representation of stereotypes. This dissertation examines the representation of masculinities in three scripted television series that aired during the 2010s and are set in rural America. The series provide perspectives on rural masculinities that can be placed in conversation with discourses on reality series set in rural environments. Justified, Rectify, and Outsiders depict male characters that veer away from stereotypes and are difficult …

Uncovering The Domesticated Spectator: Film Exhibition And Spectatorship In The Home, 1920-1950, Patrick Brame

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation builds on recent historical scholarship that adds complexity to apparatus theory from the 1970s by examining the experience of film exhibition and spectatorship in the American home from 1920 to 1950. While the screen, projector, and content of home exhibition influenced the spectator’s experience, so too did the domestic environment: blurring private and public spaces loaded with sociocultural tensions of gender, sexuality, race, and class. Through my investigation of amateur filmmaking magazines, primarily Movie Makers, Home Movies, industry journals such as The Journal of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers, and more widely read magazines like Popular Mechanics, …

Trauma And The Myth Of Evolving Masculinity In Korean National Films, Luisa Hyojin Koo

Theses and Dissertations

Much more Korean media content is now circulating globally as streaming services allow easier access to various films and shows. In this climate, it seems pertinent to ask what makes a film or TV show marked “Korean” on Netflix inherently Korean. The popular TV show is not fully depicting Korea but representing an exaggerated and aesthetically warped portion. So what makes the show Korean? Such questions are not new, especially for Korean films. A close look at Korean film history indicates that the country’s film industry was particularly preoccupied with the idea of a Korean national identity, especially under Japanese …

Narratives Of Crisis And Independent Cinema: Production, Aesthetics, And Ideology In The Films Of Ramin Bahrani, Kyle Miner

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines the first six U.S. feature films of Iranian-American director Ramin Bahrani in order to explore key connections between various industrially independent production modes and the aesthetic and ideological qualities of the films. Bahrani’s films are divided into three distinct periods based on the production mode in which he was working at the time, here characterized as microbudget, guerilla-style independent, Indiewood, and digital streaming productions. Each chapter explores the production mode in question, including production histories of the relevant films, and then discusses key connections arising between production strategies, aesthetics, and the films’ ideological and historical import. Ultimately …

Why Can't We Be Friends: The Legitimization Of Police Violence In The Buddy-Cop Film Genre, Briah Baker

Theses and Dissertations

This study investigates the legitimization of police violence through the use of humor in the buddy-cop-action-comedy film. Following the development of the judicial system and federal, local, and state governments in the militarization of urban police forces between the 1960s and the early 2000s in the U.S. in order to present a picture of how the buddy-cop film genre grew in popularity over the course of the 1980s and onwards. Through an industrial and contextual analysis of two buddy-cop films that attempt to ‘subvert’ the traditional tropes of a buddy-cop film by casting two Black actors in Bad Boys II …

“Where Are We Now?” The Image Construction Of Arabs And Muslims In Bodyguard, Safa K. Khairy

Theses and Dissertations

Over the past decade Arab and Muslim representations in the media have been either negative or overly simplified as a way to avoid criticism from watchdog groups. Arab and Muslim culture is viewed by the mainstream Western perspective as different, and inferior. According to Edward Said this divide and hierarchy between Eastern and Western comes through the process of Othering and is at the heart of Orientalism. This thesis investigates how Arabs and Muslims are Othered through a case study of the successful BBC television series Bodyguard.

Bodyguard presents the British government and police force attempting to stop various terrorist …

Fast Glass: Modernity, Technology, And The Cinematic Lens, Allain Daigle

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation tells a cultural history of how lenses became cinema lenses. While lenses are essential for film production, we know very little about the early history of cinema lenses. Rather than just focusing on which lenses were used on certain movies, I historicize how lens production became an industry. Between the 1880s and the 1920s, lens production shifted from an artisanal craft to a commercial industry. By looking at how companies created lenses for film production and projection, I expand early film history to account for the creative work of opticians, engineers, advertisers, and distributors. In more specifically focusing …

The Labor Of Play: The Political Economy Of Computer Game Culture, Justin Schumaker

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation questions the relationship between computer game culture and ideologies of neoliberalism and financialization. It questions the role computer games play in cultivating neoliberal practices and how the industry develops games and systems making play and work indistinguishable activities. Chapter 1 examines how computer game inculcate players into neoliberal practice through play. In chapter 2, the project shows Blizzard Entertainment systematically redevelops their games to encourage perpetual play aimed at increasing the consumption of digital commodities and currencies. Chapter 3 considers the role of esports, or professional competitive computer game play, to disperse neoliberal ideologies amongst nonprofessional players. Chapter …

Masculinity In American Television From Carter To Clinton, Bridget Kies

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation examines American television during a period I call the long 1980s. I argue that during this period, television became invested in new and provocative images of masculinity on screen and in networks’ attempts to court audiences of men. I have demarcated the beginning and ending of the long 1980s with the declaration of Jimmy Carter as Time magazine’s Man of the Year in 1977 and Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993. This also correlates with important shifts in the television industry, such as the formation of ESP-TV (later ESPN) in 1979 and the end of Johnny Carson’s tenure as …

"Don't Be Such A Girl, I'M Only Joking!" Post-Alternative Comedy, British Panel Shows, And Masculine Spaces, Lindsay Anne Weber

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses the gender disparity in British panel shows. In February 2014 the BBC’s Director of Television enforced a quota stating panel shows needed to include one woman per episode. This quota did not fully address the ways in which the gender imbalance was created. This thesis argues that the gender imbalance stems from post-feminist sensibilities and masculine-centric trends in British comedy and culture. This work demonstrates this through a discourse analysis of the opinions expressed about panel shows by the British popular press and media personalities from 2002 to 2017. The discourse analysis exposes patterns where British producers …

Film After Authority: The Transition To Democracy And The End Of Politics, Kalling Heck

Theses and Dissertations

A comparison of films made after the transition from authoritarianism or totalitarianism to democracy, this dissertation addresses the ways that cinema can digest and extend moments of political transition. By comparing films from four different nations—the Italian Germany Year Zero, Hungarian Sátántangó, South Korean Woman on the Beach, and American Medium Cool—in relation to ideas drawn from critical and political theory, this project examines how and why these wildly diverse films turn to ambiguity as their primary means to disrupt the ravages of unchecked authority. By intervening in discussions of aesthetics and politics, this dissertation contends that ambiguous aesthetics has …

Just Say No: Authority, Disobedience, And Individuation In Some Of Sam Peckinpah’S Minor Films, Ron Felten

Theses and Dissertations

Sam Peckinpah is best known for his films The Wild Bunch (1969) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973), and quite a bit of the existing scholarly work on Peckinpah focuses on these two films; what’s more, much of the work that does exist on his other films tends to be subjective and celebratory. The aim of this project is to critically and soberly examine Peckinpah’s relatively minor works and from particular perspectives. Specifically, this dissertation focuses on one of the major thematic threads that runs through all of the director’s films, both major and minor: how ordinary people …

A’ Oor Ain: The Making Of A Scottish National Cinema Through Short Fiction Films 1930-2016, Zach Finch

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation tells a story of Scottish national cinema through Scotland’s short fiction films from 1930 to 2016. As a small nation within the United Kingdom, Scotland’s film culture has played a subordinate role in relation to England’s, and has struggled for decades to create its own thriving film industry. However, in the mid-1990s, critics and scholars began to talk of a uniquely Scottish national cinema, rather than the traditional and all-encompassing “British cinema,” because of the success of films like Shallow Grave (1994) and Trainspotting (1996). In spite of some key successes, the sustainable production of feature films has …

Numerical And Experimental Studies Of Atomic Layer Deposition For Sustainability Improvement, Dongqing Pan

Theses and Dissertations

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is an approved nano-scale thin films fabrication technique with remarkable uniformity and conformity in surface geometry. This dissertation presents numerical and experimental studies to investigate the transient physical and chemical ALD process in order to improve its sustainability performance in terms of throughput, wastes and emissions.

To be specific, in this dissertation, the transient process of ALD is studied extensively through both numerical and experimental approaches to find the influential factors on the two main critical sustainability issues: low throughput and negative environmental impacts. Different numerical schemes are developed and studied for ALD process simulations. In …

Bigas Luna And The Being Of Spain: A Reading Of "Jamón, Jamón" (1992), Mario Sanchez Gumiel

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis aims at seeing Bigas Luna’s Jamón, jamón (1992) as a modern text that explores the issue of the so-called Being of Spain. Although the Being of Spain has often been considered an issue constricted to the first half of the twentieth century (as well as centered around the question of which landscape could best express the essence of Spanishness), I want to add to the discourse that such an issue is not an issue that must be constricted temporarily to the first half of the twentieth century, but still a current one.

In developing this topic, I will …

Romance Networks: Aspiration & Desire In Today’S Digital Culture, Katherine Morrissey

Theses and Dissertations

Genres like romance have long been seen as nodes of cultural conversation that negotiate broader social tensions around women’s lives and desires. As media industries increasingly design products to function across media platforms and serve as part of larger transmedia franchises, the technological and market structures which once helped to separate different areas of media production are becoming more porous. This project addresses the movement of audiences, texts, and creators across platforms and considers the ways popular genres and their various sub-categories work at both micro and macro levels.

This project focuses on four specific production networks for romantic content: …

Retrograde Returns Of The American Housewife: Reimagining An Old Character In A New Millennium, Ruth Emelia Wollersheim

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation explores the immensely popular return of the housewife character in the twenty-first century. From films like The Stepford Wives (2004), to television dramas like Desperate Housewives (2004-2012) and The Good Wife (2009- ), to reality shows like Wife Swap (2004- ), Bravo’s The Real Housewives franchise (2006- ), Basketball Wives (2010- ), Mob Wives (2011- ), and most recently on the blogosphere with personalities like The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond, the housewife character has reentered our imaginations on a mass scale. This anachronistic character trend is in stark contrast to the urban, working superwoman ideal of the 1980s …

Institutional Influence On Documentary Form: An Analysis Of Pbs And Hbo Documentary Programs, Mark Joseph Irving

Theses and Dissertations

INSTITUTIONAL INFLUENCE ON DOCUMENTARY FORM - A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF PBS and HBO DOCUMENTARY PROGRAMS

by Mark Irving

The University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, 2015

Under the Supervision of Professor Michael Z. Newman

Beginning in the 1980s, the documentary genre has undergone a transformation to accommodate modes of stylistic expression and subjective thematic exposition previously not evident in the genre. This deviation from the form’s traditional modes of expression typically associated with fact-based, journalistic pursuits can be attributed to the institutional underpinnings of media outlets that exhibit documentary programming. These institutional factors, a consequence of an evolving marketplace and shifts …

Animating Aesthetics: Pixar And Digital Culture, Eric Duwayne Herhuth

Theses and Dissertations

In the pre-digital age of cinema, animated and live-action film shared a technological basis in photography and they continue to share a basis in digital technology. This fact limits the capacity for technological inquiries to explain the persistent distinction between animated and live-action film, especially when many scholars in film and media studies agree that all moving image media are instances of animation. Understanding the distinction in aesthetic terms, however, illuminates how animation reflexively addresses aesthetic experience and its function within contexts of technological, environmental, and socio-cultural change. “Animating Aesthetics: Pixar and Digital Culture” argues that the aesthetics that perpetuate …

Nostalgic Frontiers: Violence Across The Midwest In Popular Film, Adam R. Ochonicky

Theses and Dissertations

In "Nostalgic Frontiers: Violence Across the Midwest in Popular Film," I analyze the temporality and politics of nostalgia while providing a critical history of Midwestern representations in popular culture from the turn of the twentieth century through the first decade of the new millennium. A general line of inquiry informs this project: how do narratives set in the Midwest imagine, reify, and reproduce Midwestern identity, and what are the repercussions of such regional imagery circulating in American culture? Throughout this project, I identify shifting cultural perceptions of the Midwest at particular historical moments. In relation to these regional considerations, I …

Propagating Monsters: Conjoined Twins In Popular Culture, Susan Kerns

Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes representations of conjoined twins in the United States to illustrate how historical images are in conversation with biographies, medical documents, sideshows, and contemporary film and television shows about conjoined twins, both fictional and nonfictional. The recycling of established tropes and the privileging of science over humanity results in limited understandings of the fluidity of conjoined twin identity. Separation and individuality are favored, relegating conjoined twins to "disabled" people that need fixing. Studying biographical artifacts of Millie-Christine McKoy's and Daisy and Violet Hilton's careers illuminates the interrelationship between biographies, images, and rights. Although born into slavery, Millie-Christine overcame …

Film, Relay, And System: A Systems Theory Approach To Cinema, Thomas Schur

Theses and Dissertations

Film theory is replete with references to systems, yet no theory has emerged to provide a cohesive explanation of how cinema, as both technology and institution, operates as a relay system. Interdisciplinary in nature, my dissertation proposes a systems theory of cinema deriving largely from the work of social scientist Niklas Luhmann. Systems theory is especially productive for the ways that it intervenes at crucial sites of conflict and irresolution within film studies. With its emphasis on nonhuman agencies, systems theory calls for reappraisal of the significance of the human to the cinema apparatus--a significance long assumed to be simply …

Be A Man If You Can: Examining Pre-Migration And Post-Watts Revolt Identities Of Black Working-Class Men In The Films Of Charles Burnett, 1969-1990, Donte L. Mcfadden

Theses and Dissertations

The films of Charles Burnett from 1969 through 1990 focus on the presentation of black working-class men in South Los Angeles as the decline of industrial jobs alters the socioeconomic landscape. Two periods that are important to understand the historical reference of Burnett's films are the Second Great Migration, in which African Americans evacuate the oppressive climate of Jim Crow to live in Los Angeles during World War II, and the Watts Revolt, a week in August in which residents of the Watts region revolted against law enforcement and business owners in response to the treatment of two African American …