Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Walt Disney And The Propaganda Complex: Government Funded Animation And Hollywood Complicity During Wwii, Amanda Cunningham

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

Walt Disney’s work as an animator during World War II had a measurable impact on culture and in the development of government produced messages. It is important to examine this understudied area of Disney’s life and his studio’s efforts to produce wartime training and propaganda films during WWII. Government agencies, including the U.S. Treasury, contracted Disney to produce 32 animated shorts between 1941 and 1945 (Gabler, 2007).

Employing a semiotic approach of cinema, this study focuses on the cartoons The New Spirit (1942), Der Fuehrer’s Face (1943) and Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi (1943). While American wartime …

Long May She Reign: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Gender Expectations In Disney’S Tangled And Disney/Pixar’S Brave, Caitlin J. Saladino

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

This project addresses messages about gender expectations in Disney princess narratives. The two films included in my project are Tangled (2010) and Brave (2012), which feature the most recently inducted princesses to the marketed Disney Princess line (Rapunzel and Merida, respectively). Using genre as an organizing principle, I argue that Rapunzel and Merida are different from the past Disney princesses (Snow White, Cinderella, Ariel, Jasmine, etc.) because their narratives reflect new ideas about gender expectations in modern society. The central tension appearing in both films is the opposition between the image of woman as traditional, domestic, and dependent and woman …

Gilded Age Visual Media As The Impetus For Social Change: Jacob Riis’S Reform Photography And The Antecedents Of Documentary Film, Denitsa Yotova

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

This study examines the birth and evolution of the social documentary genre in visual media. It suggests that a mixture of ideology, technology, and social awareness are necessary for a successful social reform. It finds that despite the limitations of technology during the nineteenth century, social documentaries were produced long before they were part of the genres of photography and film. By focusing on the work of Danish photographer Jacob Riis and tracing the emergence of film, this study demonstrates a connection between documentary film and Riis’s social documentary photography and public slide exhibitions. The study concludes that in order …

The Lifestyle Of The "Urban Tribe", Nichelle D. Mcnabb, Rachel Friedman

Communications Faculty Scholarship

It was once the norm for people to get married in their early twenties,

perhaps right after college or maybe during college. Once married, there was

the need to start a family as soon as possible. However, nowadays, people

appear to be substituting (at least for this period of time after college) the

traditional family structure with a new one – the “urban tribe.” This paper

takes a critical approach to examining portrayals of rituals in “urban tribes”

in two television shows – Will & Grace and Friends in which we argue that

the progressive elements of these shows counter …

Rave Culture- A Tale Of Two Scenes, Christopher Mohr

Faculty Curated Undergraduate Works

This article compares two iterations of rave culture through the perspective on scenes as outlined by Geoff Stahl in his essay "'It's Like Canada Reduced': Setting the Scene in Montreal." By applying both communication and sociopolitical theory to the comparison of the original rave scene to that of today's, a vivid understanding of how scenes and subcultures construct themselves- both within and around the cultural environments from which they are born- will become apparent.

Unruly Girls, Unrepentant Mothers: Redefining Feminism On Screen By Kathleen Rowe Karlyn; African American Actresses: The Struggle For Visibility, 1900-1960 By Charlene Regester; Unsettling Sights: The Fourth World On Film By Corinn Columpar: A Review By Mantra Roy, Mantra Roy

Faculty and Staff Publications

No abstract provided.

A Prison For Others—A Burden To One's Self, Anne Collins Smith, Owen M. Smith

Faculty Publications

Women have come a long way since the mid-1960's, both in the real world and in the world of philosophy. Given the advances in society and the developments within feminism that took place between that decade and the first decade of the 21st century, we might reasonably expect the new Prisonerseries to present a more contemporary perspective on women than the original. Such is most emphatically not the case. If we compare the original Village to the new one, it looks as if those pennyfarthing wheels are spinning backwards instead of forwards.

Carlos Saura Y La Relativización De La Historia Y La Memoria Antes De La Transición, Luis Guadaño

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) La idea principal del presente trabajo es la de intentar darle una nueva perspectiva a tres películas de Saura- El jardín de las delicias (1970), La prima Angélica (1973) y Cría cuervos (1975)- que las pondría en relación con el espíritu de la transición y no solamente con la oposición política al regimen de Franco. La crítica ha analizado estas películas principalmente desde una perspectiva que hace referencia al context histórico-político específico de su aparición dentro de la dictadura de Franco. Así, por ejemplo, se han interpretado como los últimos coletazos críticos al Régimen poco antes de su …

Feminine Purity And Masculine Revenge-Seeking In Taken (2008), Casey R. Kelly

Scholarship and Professional Work - Communication

The 2008 film Taken depicts the murderous rampage of an ex-CIA agent seeking to recover his teenage daughter from foreign sex traffickers. I argue that Taken articulates a demand for a white male protector to serve as both guardian and avenger of white women's “purity” against the purportedly violent and sexual impulses of third world men. A neocolonial narrative retold through film, Taken infers that the protection of white feminine purity legitimates both male conquest abroad and overbearing protection of young women at home. I contend that popular films such as Taken are a part of the broader cultural system …

Veronica Mars Kickstarter And Crowd Funding, Bertha Chin, Bethan Jones, Myles Mcnutt, Luke Pebler

Communication & Theatre Arts Faculty Publications

This conversation among Bertha Chin, Bethan Jones, Myles McNutt, and Luke Pebler about the Veronica Mars (2004–7) Kickstarter campaign to fund a film assesses the implications of crowd sourcing and fan labor.

Financial Markets And Online Advertising: Reevaluating The Dotcom Investment Bubble, Matthew Crain

Publications and Research

While the dotcom period is often dismissed as a false start in the history of the web’s commercial development, it is better conceived of as highly generative of modern structures of online advertising. Soaring investment markets and the developing online advertising sector entered into a pattern of mutual reinforcement that began in 1995 and intensified until the bubble collapsed in 2000, transforming the character of the web in the process. This article sketches the contours of this generative capacity, focusing on the production of demand for online advertising services. Taking the approach of critical political economy, this narrative is contextualized …

Science-Fictional North Korea: A Defective History, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

Kafkaesque, Orwellian, eerie, surreal, bizarre, grotesque, alien, wacky, fascinating, dystopian, illusive, theatrical, antic, haunting, apocalyptic: these are just a few of the vaguely science-fictional adjectives that are now associated with North Korea. At the same time, North Korea has become an oddly convenient trope for a certain aesthetic – an uncanny opacity; an ominous mystique – that many writers and artists have exploited to generate striking science-fictional effects in texts with little or no connection to North Korean reality. (The 2002 Bond film Die another Day, for example, draws from North Korea’s science-fictional aura to animate North Korean super-villains who …

Performing And Interpreting Identity, Lee Farquhar

Scholarship and Professional Work - Communication

This one-year cyber-ethnography examines  identity presentations and interpretations  of 346 Facebook users. The social–psychological theoretical framework used drew specifically from symbolic interaction, Goffman’s performance of self, and schema theory. Generally, Facebookers sought social acceptance with their presentations. Primary findings indicate that the Facebookers present over-simplified imagery to reduce ambiguity and align with specific social groups. This study asked Facebookers to respond to strangers’ Facebook profiles, and the responses showed that due to the glut of identity-related information on the site, interpretations are heavily reliant on schemas. Online interview participants indicated several basic categories of identity performance that were used to …

Ua51/1 Collections & Connections, Jennifer Wilson

Collections & Connections

This spring/summer 2013 issue features Al and Jeane Baker honored for their in-kind gift to the libraries' centennial mural as well as Dr. Nicholson who won this year's Kentucky Literary Award for his book about Derby. The issue also highlights the 2013 SOKY Book Fest that brought in 130 authors. It reports the newly renovated Commons at Cravens and the just installed web-based service StackMap, which can visually guide users to the stacks of books in Cravens Library using their smart phones. As usual, all of the Libraries’ literary events have been mentioned in the issue, particularly the new grant-supported …

From Fandom To Franchise: Generational Discourse Among Fans And Producers, Nicholas C. Benson

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

Generational discourse surrounding fandom has been an understudied area of media studies. Using Disney's TRON franchise as a case study, this thesis looks at that discourse as it exists in two areas. The first chapter draws on interviews with several actual TRON fans and looks at how the concept of generation is imagined within the TRON fan community. The second chapter draws from promotional interviews done with TRON creator Steven Lisberger to analyze the way the concept of generation functions within the decision making practices and formation of career capital within Hollywood. Ultimately, this paper concludes that the concept of …

Communication And Media Studies Newsletter 2013 Summer, Communications & Media Studies

Communication and Media Studies Newsletter

No abstract provided.

Plight Of The Gameur : Inhibitors To Empathic Connection With Representation Of Suffering In Outreach Games, Kristopher John Purzycki

English Theses & Dissertations

The field of serious game studies, while growing, is still working through the variables that create the conditions for a discernible effect towards real-world player behavior. One branch of serious games I refer to as outreach games aim at informing and prompting the player to take further real-world action. However, a significant impediment to this appeal is the relationship between the player and the game. Referring to the role of the flaneur in post-colonial literature, I describe how the relationship between whom I refer to as the gameur and the outreach game is similar to the urban wanderer, eavesdropping on …

Rationalizing Creativity—Rationalizing Public Service: Is Scheduling Management Fit For The Digital Era?, Ann-Marie Murray

Articles

In public broadcast organizations across Europe, scheduling has been transformed from a marginal, administrative activity to a highly strategic management tool (Hellman, 1999; Hujanen, 2002; Meier, 2003;Ytreberg, 2000) Ellis (2000)described it as “the locus of power in television,” organizing production and managing budgets (p. 26). The role of scheduling in public broadcast organizations today reflects the demands of increasing competition and political pressure for efficiency and accountability. However, new challenges have emerged in the transition from public service broadcasting to public service media (PSM). PSM providers must redefine their mission for the digital era and find …

A Mother's Love: A Screenplay, Marie Hankinson

Renée Crown University Honors Thesis Projects - All

A Mother’s Love is a sixty-eight page feature-length dramatic screenplay. The story attempts to answer the following question: How far should a mother go to ensure her child’s overall happiness and acceptance in the world? In the screenplay, Emily is the mother of Aden, a child with autism. Aden’s autistic condition is about in the middle of the autistic spectrum. When a new doctor recommends putting Aden on an experimental treatment that promises to eliminate Aden’s autistic symptoms, Emily agrees to follow the program. Although the revolutionary treatment begins to radically ease Aden’s autistic symptoms, the drug comes with severe …

Does Movie Viewing Cultivate Unrealistic Expectations About Love And Marriage?, Lauren F. E. Galloway

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The present study examines the association between consumption of media messages via movie viewing and endorsement of ideals and expectations about romantic relationships in a university-based sample of 228 respondents. Frequent viewing of romantic comedy and drama films was significantly and positively correlated with idealized notions that love conquers all, greater expectations for intimacy, and endorsement of the eros love style. Viewing preference for romantic movies was also significantly and positively correlated with fantasy rumination and marital intentions. However, participants who frequently watched romantic movies did not endorse beliefs in sexual perfection, mindreading, or disagreement disallowance. Implications of the findings …

Meet Them Where They Gather: An Analysis Of Nasa’S Communications Approach For The 21st Century, Amanda D. Stein

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Theses

Since the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been tasked with not only governing the United States’ space activities, but also sharing those efforts and subsequent findings with the American public. When President Barack Obama issued the Open Government Directive in 2009, NASA was well positioned to meet the objectives. Today, the administration has built one of the most successful web-based information-sharing presences by government agency, largely by tailoring communications efforts to reach the public on popular social media platforms. This paper will explore how NASA has utilized two-way symmetrical communications …

Zombies As A Generational Metaphor: Connections Between George A. Romero, Zombies And Fandom -- A Critical Study, Alfredo Torres

Communication & Theatre Arts Theses

Since the creation of the modern day zombie by George A. Romero in his directorial debut with the genre altering film Night of the Living Dead in 1968, zombie have been associated with becoming a metaphoric representation of social and cultural issues surrounding the times these films were released, with Romero's films being at the forefront of this phenomenon. A review of Romero's career including his influences was examined as well as the film history of the zombie subgenre, the connections it has to its fans and how the fans influenced the development of the genre. A survey was connected …

Media Bias Through Facial Expressions On Local Las Vegas Television News, Jessica Zimmerman

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

Trust in news media has been considered an important base for social order and cohesion in society and is a crucial variable for evaluating news media. Media credibility has been questioned by the audience for some time and the audience’s trust in the media has been slowly diminishing over the years. When a news broadcaster communicates a story on local television news, it is possible for his own opinions and beliefs to leak through nonverbal communication, specifically facial expressions. This presentation explores the four main local Las Vegas television news stations’ anchors and reporters to visually analyze whether facial characteristics …

Does Movie Viewing Cultivate Unrealistic Expectations About Love And Marriage?, Lauren Galloway

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

The present study investigated the connection between romantic movie viewing frequency and endorsement of dysfunctional beliefs for romantic relationships in a university-based sample of 228 participants. Respondents completed a questionnaire in which they reported demographic information as well as responses to the several scales that measure endorsement of romantic ideals. I base this investigation of Segrin and Nabi’s (2002) examination of television viewing habits and proclivity for unrealistic expectations of sex, love, and marriage. Both the current study and the investigation conducted by Segrin and Nabi (2002) support the supposition that media play a part in reinforcing beliefs about coupleships. …

The Other September 11th: El Mercurio Media Coverage After The Chilean Coup Of 1973, Valeria A. Gurr‐Ovalle

Graduate Research Symposium (2010 - 2017)

This thesis provides an exploratory overview of the role the El Mercurio newspaper played along with the military after the Chilean coup of 1973. The study reviews the contents of the newspaper’s front pages, including their coverage of the events during the coup. The thesis will show how the paper revisited its coverage each year on the September 11th anniversary, beginning with the years dominated by the military government, from 1973 through 1990, and continuing through the transition to democracy, from 1991 through 2007. The primary method used in the course of this examination is a content analysis, which will …

Multimedia Use In Small News Organizations, Robyn K. Keriazes

Honors Theses and Capstones

No abstract provided.

Refresh. Create. Inspire. The Mission, Vision And Values Behind The Coca-Cola Company And The Digital Marketing Strategies Of The "Open Happiness" Campaign, Sara Svendsen

Masters Theses

Due to the influence of Coca-Cola on advertising, digital marketing, and marketing strategies, the present rhetorical analysis seeks to show the many aspects of digital media in the Company's present "Open Happiness" campaign. The study of the campaign seeks to show that the Company mission statement, Company values and the vision of The Coca-Cola Company are implemented into all of the different facets of the Open Happiness campaign, and in the context of Mood Management Theory, exude the overall theme of the campaign, happiness. The parts of the campaign that were analyzed were focused on the YouTube channels of The …

Damsels And Heroines: The Conundrum Of The Post-Feminist Disney Princess, Cassandra Stover

LUX: A Journal of Transdisciplinary Writing and Research from Claremont Graduate University

This research explores cultural shifts in the popularity of the Disney princess in American culture, especially its postmodern resurgence, as well as the complex relationship between Disney’s recent representations of women in the 1990’s and post-feminist ideology. My project begins by analyzing the historic appearance of the Disney female in relation to the women’s movements. I also examine lingering anti-feminist backlash in representations of what I call “New Wave” Disney heroines. Finally, I examine the implications of post-feminist discourse and advertising for young female viewers.

Bullying In A New Ground: Cyberbullying Among 9-16 Year Olds In Ireland, Thuy Dinh, Brian O'Neill

Articles

This paper builds on the data collected in Ireland by the cross-national EU Kids Online II project- a large 25 country survey which investigated children’s experiences of the internet, focusing on issues of use, activities, risks, and safetyi . This article explores incidences, forms and consequences of cyberbullying among Irish children, as well as discussing possible prevention and intervention strategies.

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.