Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Sleeping Beauty: The Reality Of Harmful Images Of Women Within The Film Industry, Noretta A. Morales

Whittier Scholars Program

This senior project is composed of three parts: a screenplay, essay, and journal. The purpose of this senior project is to provide a perspective of how women are treated within the film industry and women’s obsession with beauty and sexuality, as well as how the media portrays women. It focuses on the pressures that women deal with in the film industry and the construction of beauty and sexuality concepts. Drawing from articles, journals, books, and interviews, the project attempts to provide the various sides and aspects of how women give in, or not, to the stress of conforming to the …

The Robert Giard Fellowship, Sarah Chinn

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

For several years we at CLAGS had wanted to work with the Robert Giard Foundation on a project for LGBT artists, but couldn't come up with the right vehicle. Eventually we hit on a perfect project: a fellowship for photographers and video artists working on queer and trans themes that would honor Robert Giard's legacy while directly supporting emerging and mid-career artists.

The Robert Giard Foundation Fellows Enlighten Our World, Carl Sylvestre

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

This spring, the Robert Giard Foundation's partnership with CLAGS completed the first of what is anticipated to be an annual event in both organizations' calendars.

"I Am", Sonali Gulati

Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS)

It was the summer of 1999 in Toronto at my very first public screening of my film titled "sum total" that someone asked me what my next film project was. And I had barely formalized my ideas in my head but I spoke from my heart and spoke of this film about parents of gay and lesbian youth living in India. It had only been a year and a half since my mother had passed away and that feeling of regret of not having come out to her before she died was on my mind.

Sexuality, Exoticism, And Iconoclasm In The Media Age: The Strange Case Of The Buddha Bikini, James Mark Shields

Faculty Contributions to Books

No abstract provided.

Research Report: Violence In Children’S Films, Ann Wheeler, Kristyn Birkeland

OUR Journal: ODU Undergraduate Research Journal

The goal of this research is to find out if violence in children’s films has increased within the past five decades. In order to achieve this goal, 22 children’s films were given multiple reviews by college students, who carefully analyzed them using the same questionnaire. Using a simple random sampling method of research, films were chosen within clusters of decades and were analyzed using variables that depict violence. After collectively studying the results of the twenty-two children’s films, we discovered that violence in children’s films has increased over the past five decades.

Para-Romantic Love And Para-Friendships: Development And Assessment Of A Multiple-Parasocial Relationships Scale, Riva Tukachinsky

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

Parasocial-relationships (PSR) are viewers' imaginary relationships with media personae. Despite the growing body of research on PSR, the field is still lacking a clear conceptualization and precise measure of this phenomenon. The present study suggests a novel theorization of PSR as para-friendship and para-love. Study 1 demonstrates construct validity of a new Multiple-PSR scale using the logic of a multi-trait multi-method approach. Study 2 replicates the factorial solution using confirmatory factor analysis. Finally, Study 3 provides evidence for the criterion validity of the scales. Together, these findings suggest that PSR encompass several types of relationships that might mediate different media …

The Maritorious Melodrama: Film Noir With A Female Detective, Philippa Gates

English and Film Studies Faculty Publications

Feminist critics tend to disagree whether the parachuting of women into traditionally male roles—for example, that of detective—results in a feminist representation. The female detective of the 1930s, however, can be seen to offer a decidedly positive feminist hero in that she defies the stereotype of the “masculine” (i.e. unnatural) woman—especially when one considers the time in which she appeared and representations of female detectives in contemporary film. Despite popular conceptions of classical film, Hollywood did offer progressive representations of working women, ironically in the decade characterized by economic and social upheaval during the Depression. The prolific female detective of …

From Demigods To Slayers: Contemporary Mythology And Gender Economies In Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Adam Kem Yerima

Theses Digitization Project

In the critically acclaimed television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer, writer-director Joss Whedon revises the trope of monster slaying into a contemporary feminist Slayer mythology. This thesis explores how Buffy's Slayer mythology revises gender conventions performed by Greek Demigods myths, specifically Apollodorus' rendition of the myths in the Library of Greek Mythology.

Health Communication Theories: Implications For Hiv Reporting In Asia And The Pacific, Trevor Cullen

Research outputs pre 2011

This paper focuses on the expanding HIV (Human Immunodeficiency Virus) epidemic in parts of Asia and the Pacific region and recommends the adoption of insights from particular health communication theories. The author argues that these paradigms can assist in broadening the current scope and content of HIV reporting. One theory in particular - Social Change Communication (SCC) - challenges the media to extend the framing of HIV from primarily a health story to one that is linked to more macro socio-economic, cultural and political factors. Asian and Pacific countries that have an emerging or expanding HIV epidemic need to realise …

Chicana Photography: The Power Of Place, Ann Marie Leimer

NACCS Annual Conference Proceedings

Abstract:

The concern with space, location, place, and geographic site has received heightened attention from artists and theorists from the 1960s onward. For critics and creators engaged with these concepts, the analysis of the interaction between of the processes of spatialization, identity formation, and memory has emerged as an important aspect of critical discourse. Lucy Lippard defines space as a physical site, understood as landscape or nature, while place implies intimacy, a familiarity with a certain geographic location. For Lippard, human interaction and, most importantly, the infusion of memory into space or a geographic site produces place. Michel de Certeau …

Mad About The Boy, Debra Mayrhofer

Research outputs pre 2011

The media coverage of an out-of-control teenage party in the Melbourne suburb of Narre Warren on 12 January 2008, and its construction of the protagonist who threw the party, has highlighted once again the inequitable treatment of youth, particularly adolescent males, in the Australian media. This paper examines the coverage in terms of the discursive strategies used by the mainstream Australian media to legitimise and naturalise the denigration and humiliation of the boy involved. It will discuss the ongoing demonisation of young males in general, and the concomitant ‘panics’ about their degeneration into moral lassitude, as well as the particular …

Mainstream And Alternative News In Seattle: A Comparative Media Frame Analysis Of Wto Protest Coverage, Richard Feffer S.

Master's Theses - Sociology and Anthropology

Seattle was the site of one of the largest protests in recent American history. In 1999, tens of thousands of demonstrators representing a multitude of causes gathered in downtown Seattle to protest the meetings of the World Trade Organization and the larger issue of globalization. While many of the protest events consisted of peaceful marches and demonstrations with isolated incidents of violence, research on the media coverage of these events found that the mainstream media often minimized the contributions of the protesters, portrayed them as violent and disruptive, and showed support for the ability of the police to maintain order. …

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 83, No. 17, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news.

“Happy Dancing Natives” Minority Film, Han Nationalism, And Collective Memory, Benjamin D. Shaffer

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Cinematic representations of China’s ethnic minorities have been prominent in Chinese visual culture and collective memory since the 1950s. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese Communist Party led campaigns to classify China’s diverse range of ethnic groups. These social experiments inspired a number of documentary and narrative films about the ostensibly “exotic” and “colorful” non-Han peoples of China. The audience for these depictions of minorities in visual culture varied considerably. Some early documentaries fueled the rise of Han nationalism and political agendas within the Communist Party. Several narrative films had large audiences in mainstream Chinese …

Filming Eugenics: Teaching The History Of Eugenics Through Film, Melissa Ooten, Sarah Trembanis

Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies Faculty Publications

In teaching eugenics to undergraduate students and general public audiences, film should be considered as a provocative and fruitful medium that can generate important discussions about the intersections among eugenics, gender, class, race, and sexuality. This paper considers the use of two films, A Bill of Divorcement and The Lynchburg Story, as pedagogical tools for the history of eugenics. The authors provide background information on the films and suggestions for using the films to foster an active engagement with the historical eugenics movement.

Fabricating Freddy Vs. Jason: Understanding A Motion Picture As A Social Encounter Between Fans And Filmmakers, Jason M. Rapelje

Dissertations

The break in the mass communicative chain, which separates producers and receivers from one another in both time and space, impedes researchers from studying motion pictures as social encounters. As with face-to-face encounters, producers and receivers of motion pictures depend upon the use of "rules of relevance" (Goffman, 1961) and "typifactory schemes" (Berger & Luckmann, 1966) for their encounters to take place. I examine the social encounter that takes place between some of the filmmakers and fans of Freddy vs Jason through the use of these concepts, as well as a revision of John B. Thompson's (1990) methodological framework of …

Bridging The 'Generation Gap' : Understanding Cross-Generations' Views Through The Visual Media Of The 1960s, Kit Ling Luk

APIAS Working Paper 工作論文

This working paper is based on the findings of the 2002 film screening cum focus group discussions amongst the young and the old organized by APIAS. Using the visual media: Hong Kong film in the 1960s as a media, the present project intends to explore the family as the social arena in addressing parent and children’s contrasting views on love, marriage and its impact on their parent-child relationships. The project also aims to shed light on ways in promoting intergenerational communications via structured intergenerational programmes.

Project Objectives

1. To explore the ‘gap’ between the young (born in the 1980s) and …

Another Look At Gender In Prime-Time Television, Jan Carolyn Kircher

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Television has become an important agent of socialization in society today. Social interaction on prime-time television was examined 24 years ago by members of the Sociology Department at South Dakota State University. That study was similar to this research project that investigates gender roles on prime-time television. The earlier study used a modified version of the Bales Interaction Scale to code male and female behavior to assess the extent to which prime-time television presented traditional or nontraditional gender roles. This study used research methods similar to those of the previous study to see if traditional gender roles depicted on prime-time …

The Body Of The Terrorist In Contemporary Cinema, Robert Duggan, Páraic Finnerty

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This article will explore the presentation of the body of the terrorist in a range of British and American films with a particular emphasis on how these films combine political and romantic plotlines. As part of a broad consideration of how the terrorist is presented, this essay will concentrate in particular on Cal (1984), The Crying Game (1992), The Dancer Upstairs (2002) and The Quiet American (2002). Rather than fully engage with the more complex discourse of politics, often these films ask audiences to conceptualize the transgressive figure of the terrorist through the very familiar vocabulary of love and sexual …

中国大陆九十年代以来独立电影文化的构成与城市青年文化实践, Xiaodao Liang

Lingnan Theses

本论文主要考察中国大陆九十年代出现的独立电影的特性，首先从一批年轻的独立电影导演及其作品出发，将它们放在当代大陆城市青年文化的历史脉络中，着重考察独立电影的特殊生产机制以及对“青年”的再现，与“青年”在社会建构中出现的变化之间的关系。然后通过使用民族誌的研究方法，重点考察大陆本土年轻观众对独立电影的接受情况，试图解释为何“边缘”成为当下论述大陆独立电影文化特性的重要话语。本文的主要立论是，“边缘”是由独立电影与城市青年文化在不同层面上互构而成的。

这种互构关系的建立，表现在几个方面：首先，大陆进入商品经济时代，具有整合性的建构青年身份的国家意识形态话语失效，导致了年轻人的迷茫和失落，他们断裂和破碎的身份，通过独立电影在国家制片体系之外的生产和制作模式中被再现出来，被称为“边缘”的特殊个体。其次，大陆独立电影被部分青年影迷用来对抗互联网上出现的话语资源垄断和话语权威，从而确立“业余爱好 者”、“草根”等被称为“边缘”的身份。最后一个方面，即是作为影迷的城市青年对不同观影场所和对独立电影不同消费方式的选择，建立了在电影院线、个人在家庭观看影碟等主流渠道以外的，被称为“边缘”的观影方式，但这种方式又不可避免的会引起影迷的身份焦虑。

Towards A Bibliography Of Critical Whiteness Studies, Tim Engles

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

As the title implies, this book offers a multi-disciplinary overview of the explosion of work in scholarly critical whiteness studies. The contributing bibliographers acknowledge that this work follows and builds upon a great deal of whiteness critique previously provided by African American writers, and by those writing from other racialized positions. Each section provides a solid introduction to key concepts and practices regarding whiteness in a particular field, including: philosophy, history, literature, cinema, the visual arts, psychology, education, media studies, qualitative inquiry, personal narratives, and international and comparative approaches.

Too Many Options Dilute Shared Experience, David E. Drew, Hedley Burrell

CGU Faculty Publications and Research

Despite the red carpet glitter of the Oscars, it is no secret that Hollywood has had a far from perfect year at the box office.

And unfortunately for Tinsel Town, its problems go beyond the obvious need for more successful films.

The way we experience both movies and television has evolved. We don't do things together the way we once did. We rent movies and watch them at home rather than going to a local movie theater with family and friends. Box office returns suffer and the centrality of film in our lives is weakened.

The same fragmentation is true …

Finding The Watermark: A Filmic Response To Domestic Abuse Within Australian Film From 1970 - 2006, Erin Nichols

Theses : Honours

Due to various social, international and economic encumbrances, Australian film has made a limited foray into the representation of domestic abuse. A limited number of films have been made on this topic since the early 1970's, and even then, the depiction of this social issue has been watered down and sanitised for mainstream consumption. It is the author's belief that the filmmaker has an important and highly influential opportunity to present a social commentary on issues and must not shirk that responsibility. The film project supported by this exegesis responds to the above concerns and the priority has been to …

Le Français D’Origine Maghrébine Face Au Prisme Médiatique, Hassiba Lassoued

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

Whether we admit it or not, the mass media manipulates the masses. This fact proves to be especially dangerous in the context of French people of Maghrebian origin. The media presents them as either incapable of being “assimilated” or as models of integration. At any rate, there seems to be no middle ground between these two extremes.

Discovering Your Cinematic Cultural Identity, John Shelton Lawrence, Marty S. Knepper

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

This paired set explores the experience of cultural identities constructed by and experienced through popular film. The essay “Discovering Your Cinematic Cultural Identity” reflects the authors’ decades of residence in the state of Iowa and their personal irritation with the stereotypes that Hollywood regularly calls upon in evoking the American rural. We gained a new perspective on this sort of imagery when it surfaced again in Field of Dreams (1989) and The Bridges of Madison County novel (1992) and film (1995). Each of these films triggered unprecedented film tourism for the state. Through an exploration of these films and others …

Nothing's Gonna Give? Age, Gender, And Cultures Of The Screen, Christine Scodari, Becky Mulvaney

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

Christine Scodari's and Becky Mulvaney's Nothing's Gonna Give? Age, Gender, and Cultures of the Screen investigates the 2003 romantic comedy Something's Gotta Give, written and directed by Nancy Meyers as exceptional in its featuring a fifty-something woman as leading actress. Beginning with an analysis of the filmic text itself, the authors do not confine themselves to it, but go on to critically engage with its reception in both the press and academia. While the focus is thus shifted from the film to the meta- and para-texts produced in the course of its reception and promotion, the underlying questions asked …

Women And Power In Hollywood: Comparing The Female Position Of Power In The Film Industry In The 1920s & 1970s, Caitlin Mcfarland

Whittier Scholars Program

This project is a research paper on the history of women in the film industry. The author begins by pointing out that women have established narrative film, started the first American studios and tried inventive new camera angles among other accomplishments that are not talked about. During the early 1990s, women were in the center of the film industry and well represented. The return of men from the war, socio-economic status, the creation of the Code of Decency, and more sophisticated technology were some of the theories as to why women became marginalized in the industry. The paper then discusses …

Media Messages About Body Image And Food: Adolescent Perceptions Of Contradictory Messages In Television Commercials, Carrie Wise

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

This study had two primary purposes, the first of which was to examine contemporary television media messages and to ascertain whether there exists an ideological contradiction between messages associated with ideal body types and messages associated with obesity. The second purpose was to explore adolescents' perceptions of these messages and to understand their possible effects on adolescents. This study was conducted using a fallibilitic realism methodological approach. Two data collection methods were used in this study. A content analysis of current television commercials was conducted, from which three major findings emerged. First, there was a high frequency of commercials containing …

On Dixon's Straight: Constructions Of Heterosexuality In The Cinema, Markus Rheindorf

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[First paragraph]

Wheeler Winston Dixon's Straight is an odd book. An interesting book, to be sure, but one that falls short of its promise or, rather, its many promises. While its title, especially the definite article in its subtitle, would seem to suggest a rather abstract and general treatment of constructions of heterosexuality in the cinema, a cinema somehow constructed as a totality, the book is both inspiring and frustrating in its unsystematic approach to its object(s). Object(s) because it would be difficult, even without raising any objections to the construction of the cinema as a singular totality, not to …