American Film Studies Commons^™

From Swing King To Swing Kids: The Jazz Era Of ‘Big Band Orchestras’ In World War Ii, Katie Victoria Burnopp

Student Scholar Showcase

Known as the ‘King of Swing’, clarinetist and band leader Benny Goodman (1909-1986) threatened the Nazi cause during WWII. With intent of improving music pedagogy, the purpose of this research was to investigate swing music during World War II. The particular problems of this study were to: (1) identify how the swing music of Benny Goodman (1909-1986) influenced adolescents in the United States of America, United Kingdom, and Germany; (2) explore the Nazi party view on ‘swing’ music of the era; (3) examine how the music of Charlie and his Orchestra became used as a tool for Nazi propaganda; and …

The Semi-Anti-Apocalypse Of Black Panther, Ken Derry

Journal of Religion & Film

This is one of a series of films reviews of Black Panther (2018), directed by Ryan Coogler.

How Lucille Ball Fought The Patriarchy, While Lucy Ricardo (Indirectly) Contributed To Second-Wave (White) Feminism, Anam Rana Afzal

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Author Stephanie Coontz argues that our most powerful visions of traditional families derive from images that are still delivered to our homes in countless reruns of 1950s television sitcoms. In actuality, the happy, homogenous families that we “remember” from America in the 50s were a result of the media’s denial of diversity. Also, women’s retreat to housewifery after working during WWII was in many cases, not freely chosen. In his study of sitcoms, Saul Austerlitz claims that once television arrived in American cities after the war’s end, its impact was immediate and incontrovertible, and no sitcom caught America’s eye as …

Rebooting Masculinity After 9/11: Male Heroism On Film From Bush To Trump, Owen R. Horton

Theses and Dissertations--English

Conceptions of masculinity on film shifted after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from representations of male heroism as invulnerable, powerful, and safe to representations of male heroism as resilient, vengeful, and vulnerable. At the same time, the antagonists of these films shifted towards representations as shadowy, unknowable, and disembodied. These changing representations, I argue, are windows into the anxieties Americans faced in the aftermath of the attacks. The continuing presentation of power as linked to violence, however, illustrates the ways in which conceptions of masculinity have stayed the same.

Good Game, Greyory Blake

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis and its corresponding art installation, Lessons from Ziggy, attempts to deconstruct the variables prevalent within several complex systems, analyze their transformations, and propose a methodology for reasserting the soap box within the display pedestal. In this text, there are several key and specific examples of the transformation of various signifiers (i.e. media-bred fear’s transformation into a political tactic of surveillance, contemporary freneticism’s transformation into complacency, and community’s transformation into nationalism as a state weapon). In this essay, all of these concepts are contextualized within the exponential growth of new technologies. That is to say, all of these semiotic …

Work/Death, Of Each In Their Own, Micah H. Weber

Theses and Dissertations

Writings in support of my visual thesis, including some background, and bibliographic information: Oregon/Death/Animation/Vocation and the artist as an agent of potential.

Laminated Paint, Travis R. Austin

Theses and Dissertations

Though we may not perceive it, we are surrounded by material-in-flux. Inert materials degrade and the events that comprise our natural and social environments causally thread into a duration that unifies us in our incomprehension. Sounds reveal ever-present vibrations of the landscape: expressions of the flexuous ground on which we stand.

Stay Woke, Langston A. Williams

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Throughout the pages of my thesis, I comprehensively analyze the processes, intentions, and production of my thesis film Stay Woke. My examination will exhaustively probe every stage of the film from development to preproduction to production to postproduction and beyond. Individual aspects of this process including writing, casting, locations, production design, cinematography, directing, budgeting, scheduling, and postproduction workflows will be detailed. As I make elaborations in each section, I will explain my learning experiences from each day’s new tasks, challenges, and lessons. All of these things will be framed with regards to the overall goal and themes of the …

Fixing Ground Zero: Race And Religion In Francis Lawrence’S I Am Legend, Michael E. Heyes

Journal of Religion & Film

Francis Lawrence’s I Am Legend is a complex intertext of Matheson’s novel of the same name and its two previous film adaptations. While the film attempts to depict racism as monstrous, the frequent invocation of 9/11 imagery and Christian symbolism throughout the film recodes the vampiric dark-seekers as radical Islamic terrorists. This serves to further enshrine an us/Christians vs. them/Muslim dichotomy present in post-9/11 America, a dichotomy that the film presents as “curable” through the spread of Christianity and the fall of Islam.

Impressive Failures: Mavericks Of Film Authorship And The Impossibility Of Success In Hollywood, Tom S. Davies

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation directly challenges the critical and commercial primacy of success attached to Hollywood films and their filmmakers, especially when one argues for or against their quality and/or importance within cinematic history. Through a process of shifting and multiplying perspectives within a broader narrative that is critical of what separates success and failure, certain films and filmmakers that were judged as failures or disappointments under impossible prerequisites of creating a successful film––commercially, aesthetically, or both–– are, instead, reconsidered as constructive counterpoints to the expectations of the Hollywood economic field of production as well as to the inevitable disappointment of the …

She Would Not Be Silenced: Mae West's Struggle Against Censorship, Charlotte N. Toledo

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

Mae West, an actress during Hollywood's Golden Age, used her fame on stage, in films, and on the radio to offer social commentary on relationships between men and women in society. Her irreverent style of addressing issues of female sexuality and power certainly caught peoples attention and made them think about these issues in new ways. At the same time, her racy delivery made her a target of stage, film, and radio censorship. She refused to be silenced and continually pushed against restrictions to deliver he message of empowerment in her trademark provocative manner.

"This Aggression Will Not Stand": The Coens On Masculinity, Evan Kelly

Honors Projects

This research examines the constructions of masculinity within the films of Joel and Ethan Coen. Through textual analysis of three film, Raising Arizona (1987), Fargo (1996), and The Big Lebowski (1998), three key themes emerge: masculinity as performance, children and family as ego extensions, toxic masculinity personified, and children and redemption through rejection of hegemonic masculinity. Comprehensively, the paper seeks to prove the Coens uniquely construct masculinity as a performance which can override public policy and interpersonal prosperity. This research serves several functions. First, it recasts the Coens as cutting-edge progressive filmmakers, despite their protestations to the contrary. What we …

Religion And Violence In Jesse James Films, 1972–2010, Travis Warren Cooper

Journal of Religion & Film

This essay analyzes recent depictions of Jesse James in cinema, examining filmic portrayals of the figure between the years of 1972 and 2010. Working from the intersection of the anthropology of film and religious studies approaches to popular culture, the essay fills significant gaps in the study of James folklore. As no substantial examinations of the religious aspects of the James myths exist, I hone in on the legend’s religiosity as contested in filmic form. Films, including revisionist Westerns, are not unlike oral-history statements recorded and analyzed by anthropologists, folklorists, and ethnographers. Jesse James movies, in other words, have much …

How To Attain Liberation From A False World? The Gnostic Myth Of Sophia In Dark City (1998), Fryderyk Kwiatkowski

Journal of Religion & Film

In the second half of the 20th century, a fascinating revival of ancient Gnostic ideas in American popular culture could be observed. One of the major streams through which Gnostic ideas are transmitted is Hollywood cinema. Many works that emerged at the end of 1990s can be viewed through the ideas of ancient Gnostic systems: The Truman Show (1998), The Thirteenth Floor (1999), The Others (2001), Vanilla Sky (2001) or The Matrix trilogy (1999-2003).

In this article, the author analyses Dark City (1998) and demonstrates that the story depicted in the film is heavily indebted to the Gnostic myth of …

Eng 100: Filthy, Ryan Courtney

English 100-200-300 Conference

No abstract provided.

From Shtetl To Stardom: Jews And Hollywood, Vincent Brook, Michael Renov

Purdue University Press Book Previews

The outsized influence of Jews in American entertainment from the early days of Hollywood to the present has proved an endlessly fascinating and controversial topic, for Jews and non-Jews alike. From Shtetl to Stardom: Jews and Hollywood takes an exciting and innovative approach to this rich and complex material. Exploring the subject from a scholarly perspective as well as up close and personal, the book combines historical and theoretical analysis by leading academics in the field with inside information from prominent entertainment professionals. Essays range from Vincent Brook’s survey of the stubbornly persistent canard of Jewish industry “control” to Lawrence …

Lin-Manuel Meets Moana, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner

Faculty Publications

In this article originally published in Public Books, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner wonders whether a Disney musical and a Lin-Manuel Miranda musical want the same thing.

Hold Them Down: Oppression Of Film Noir's Working Woman, Shaire Blythe

Undergraduate Conference on Literature, Language, and Culture

Introductory Paragraph:

The struggle for women’s rights and roles in society has been an ongoing battle, since the beginning, with Adam and Eve. The subjugation that was presented upon Eve, because of her fault and easiness to be deceived, has trailed behind mankind, and film noir would not be excluded. The femme fatale seems to play the role of what Eve started, seducing men with her sexuality to carry out wicked schemes and being the downfall of all men. Thus, men began to identify women as a threat to their very essence but, yet, still cannot resist the temptation women …

Differentiating The Transnational From The National In A Multicultural Setting: Identity In Persepolis And Rush Hour, Laura A. Kasper

The Kennesaw Journal of Undergraduate Research

This essay explores the differences between transnational identities and national identities in a multicultural setting by juxtaposing the films Persepolis and Rush Hour. Furthermore, it examines the characteristics of both transnational and national identities and how they are represented in film. In an increasingly globalized world, it is important to distinguish these two types of identity and consider how these individuals interact with today’s society; thus, this essay asks readers to think about the influence that the commingling of transnational and national identities has on the modern world.

Gi Jane Versus Sergeant Jane Doe: How Women’S Images In War Movies Contribute To Conflicting Expectations Of Women In Combat, Sawyer Marie L. Alberi

All Theses And Dissertations

Research on women’s portrayal in media generally suggests that women continue to be sexualized and objectified as war trophies in the classic Hollywood warrior culture film. The age old question of whether life imitates art or vice versa is important to consider when examining the question of how this popular culture medium contributes to the conflicting expectations of today’s women in combat roles. What is the reality of women’s roles in the US Military compared to the roles portrayed by warrior film media? History tells us that women have been on the battlefield in one way or another since there …

Transforming The Mundane: Juxtaposing Maria Friedman’S "High Society" With George Cukor’S "The Philadelphia Story" As An Emphasis On The Importance Of Theatre, Dana T. Speight Ms.

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The subjects of film and theatre belong to an extensive hierarchical debate that has remained prominent within the realm of performing arts since the introduction of cinema in the late nineteenth century. A plethora of scholars choose to argue in favor of the former, suggesting that film surpasses theatre as superior in both aesthetics and overall execution of naturalism; however, the argument is purely subjective and cannot be applied to all films and their corresponding plays. As a counterclaim, theatre continues to thrive as a prominent source of artistic entertainment globally, not only offering a contemporary twist to preexisting texts, …

An Unchained Analysis Of Racial Tension In America, Moriah Angott

Honors Projects

Modern race issues stem not only from the past but also from a lack of understanding and empathy for each other. How we talk about race will not only inform how we are able to move forward as a society, but it will also say a great deal about how we are evolving as human beings. It is important, and has been recognized as such, that black Americans have the freedom to grapple with that past, to understand it, and to feel connected to those ancestors who suffered in order for the foundation of this country to be built. Is …

The Art Of Death: Murder According To Poe, Hitchcock, And De Quincey, Jeanine Bee

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

This paper examines the works of both Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock in light of Thomas De Quincey’s series of essays entitled “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.” In his essays, De Quincey presents murder as an art form that can be criticized and appreciated just as any other fine art. While De Quincey’s essays faced some negative reaction when they were originally published, both Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock seem to have found something worthwhile in De Quincey’s ideas about the art of murder; Poe and Hitchcock both present murder as an art form …

The New Reflexivity: Puzzle Films, Found Footage, And Cinematic Narration In The Digital Age, Jordan Lavender-Smith

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“The New Reflexivity” tracks two narrative styles of contemporary Hollywood production that have yet to be studied in tandem: the puzzle film and the found footage horror film. In early August 1999, near the end of what D.N. Rodowick refers to as “the summer of digital paranoia,” two films entered the wide-release U.S. theatrical marketplace and enjoyed surprisingly massive financial success, just as news of the “death of film” circulated widely. Though each might typically be classified as belonging to the horror genre, both the unreliable “puzzle film” The Sixth Sense and the fake-documentary “found footage film” The Blair Witch …

Graverobber, Individualized Chorus: The Greek Chorus Reinterpreted In Repo! The Genetic Opera, Grace Markulin

The Downtown Review: An Interdisciplinary Journal Written and Peer-Reviewed by Mandel Honors College Students at Cleveland State University

The rock opera film Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008) provides its audience with details regarding the film’s setting and perspectives on the morality of the film’s plot through the character Graverobber, whose sung dialogue expresses this information. Graverobber’s penchant for scene-setting and moralizing within the film classifies the character as a Greek chorus according to the parameters of the Greek chorus in antiquity and modern interpretations of the chorus in twentieth-century musical theater, but the character’s visual distinctiveness, preexisting relationship with an established character, and prominent use of solo vocal lines throughout his sung dialogue demonstrates a degree of individuation …

Mountain Men On Film, Kenneth Estes Hall

ETSU Faculty Works

Excerpt: The mountain man of American folklore and history is a man between cultures. Like Janus, the doorkeeper god of the Romans, he is bifrontal, looking back at European, white civilization, and forward toward Indian civilization and culture.

Female Anti-Heroes In Contemporary Literature, Film, And Television, Sara A. Amato

Masters Theses

The anti-hero character has steadily become more popular in contemporary literature, film, and television. Part of this popularity is due to the character's appeal to the audience. This character type often commits acts that challenge the regulations of society. These acts, however, can become wish fulfillment for some audience members, making the acts of the character a vicarious experience as well as making the character more relatable because of the character's flawed nature.

This study will trace some of the evolution of the female anti-hero by discussing an ancestral character of the female anti-hero—Hester Prynne the protagonist of Nathanial Hawthorne's …

Strong, Independent, And In Love: Fighting Female Fantasies In Popular Culture, Allison P. Palumbo

Theses and Dissertations--English

During the late 1970s and 1980s, feminist critics like Janice Radway began to reconsider so-called women’s genres, like romance novels and soap operas and melodramas, in order to address the forms of subversion and expressions of agency they provided female audiences. However, in spite of greater willingness to consider the progressive potential in romance narratives, there has been little such consideration given to stories of romance for the fighting female character—defined as a protagonist who uses violence, via her body or weapons, to save herself and others. The fighting female has received a good deal of attention from critics like …

Father Of All Destruction: The Role Of The White Father In Contemporary Post-Apocalyptic Cinema, Felicia Cosey

Theses and Dissertations--English

Since September 11, 2001 a substantial number of English-language, post-apocalyptic films have been released. This renewed interest in the genre has prompted scholars to examine the circumstances within western society that make post-apocalyptic films appealing to audiences. The popularity of these films derives from a narrative structure that reinforces conservative notions of good and bad and moral absolutism. The post-9/11, post-apocalyptic film typically features a white male hero who, in one way or another, reestablishes the pre-apocalyptic social order through proclamations of mandatory and prohibitive laws that must be adhered to by the survivors. The hero of post-apocalyptic film does …

Marilyn Monroe’S Star Canon: Postwar American Culture And The Semiotics Of Stardom, Amanda Konkle

Theses and Dissertations--English

Although Marilyn Monroe was one of the most famous American film stars, and a monumental cultural figure, her film work has been studied far less than her biography. Applying C.S. Peirce’s semiotic categories of icon, index, and symbol, this research explains how Monroe acquired meaning as an actress: Monroe was a powerful, but simplified, public image (an icon); an indicator of a particular historical and social context (an index); and an embodiment of significant cultural debates (a symbol).

Analyzing Monroe as an icon reveals how her personal life, which contradicted her official publicity story, generated public sympathy and led to …