Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Hype, Hope, And Hit In Movies: A Contribution To The Metatheory Of Bubbles, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Romeo V. Turcan

College of Business Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Truth Begins In Lies': The Paradoxes Of Western Society In House M.D., Jason A. Hagey

Theses and Dissertations

The core of House M.D. is its assertion that current Western civilization lives in a perpetual state of dissonance: we desire to have the rawness of emotion but we can only handle this rawness when we combine it with intellect, even if that intellect lies to us. This is the ontological paradox that the televisual text grapples with. Through the use of archetypal analysis and allegorical interpretation, this thesis reveals that dissonance and its relationship to contemporary Western society. Through House M.D. we realize that there are structures to the paradoxes that we live and there are paradoxes in our …

Nothing To Be Done: The Active Function Of Samuel Beckett's Text, Deleah Vaye Emery Waters Silva

Theses and Dissertations

Fintan O'Toole states: "Plays survive not by being carefully preserved, not by being exhibited from time to time in theatrical museums, but by being tried and tested, taken apart and reassembled" (Game Without End).One of the great misconceptions and critiques of Samuel Beckett is of his presumed unrelenting control over his works. Artists, hoping to creatively collaborate with Beckett as they move his texts to performance, feel limited by his strict enforcement of that which he has written in his texts. Traditional relationships and functions allow directors to interpret an author's text. Not so with Beckett. Beckett demands …

Media Meets Science: The Experience Of A Media Teacher And Science Teacher As They Implement Media Literacy In A Science Classroom, Matthew Jay Brown

Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative action research study looked at my collaboration with a science teacher as we combined a Television Production class with an Advanced Placement Environmental Science class. This cross-curricular case study explored the implementation of the principles of media literacy, defined by the National Association for Media Literacy Education, into the science classroom where media literacy has traditionally been a non-factor. The impact of media and technology on everyone's daily lives is making it necessary for us to become media literate. The use of media literacy tools and strategies in a combined media production class and an AP science class …

Meta-Radicalism: The Alternative Press By And For Activist Librarians, Alycia Sellie

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Culturator: Film Noir Meets Bike Culture, Daniel Dean

Art & Design Faculty Research

Part of this weekend’s nuit blanche Northern Spark festival, project Mobile Experiential Cinema invites goers to embark on a rambling, bicycle-mounted, multi-location cinematic experience that blends bike culture with locally-bred film. Created by artists Daniel Dean and Ben Moren, the project launched alongside the inaugural Northern Spark fest last year as an interactive projected film-focused group ride featuring live performance elements and urban exploration embodying all plot twists and theatrical curve balls we’ve come to expect from the mystery genre. We caught up with Mobile Experiential Cinema collaborators Dean and Moren to chat about the project’s creation, its noir influences …

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.

Menstruation As Heroine’S Journey In Pan’S Labyrinth, Richard Lindsay

Journal of Religion & Film

I propose that the Guillermo del Toro film, Pan's Labyrinth (2006) follows the narrative outline of Joseph Campbell's hero's journey as experienced through the biological process of onset of menstruation in its young protagonist. I suggest a reading of the film that takes into account the visual and mythological symbolism of the figure of Pan, as well as the cultural context of menstruation in mythology and religion. I offer interviews from the director that support this interpretation, but ultimately I value a folk interpretation, or a "viewer's hunch" that the strange and fertile symbolism of the film represents a coming-of-age …

The Woodshed, Catherine R. Amond

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In this paper, I will share in detail the entire process of creating my thesis film, The Woodshed. I will cover each step from writing and pre-visualization to producing, directing, production design, cinematography, editing, and sound. I will mainly focus on the style of directing I employed and the key decisions I made as an editor to best tell my story. I will then evaluate my decisions to determine the success of the project.

Lost In Space No Longer: The Visionary Union Of 'The Wire', Brett Dupré

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In its serial space, David Simon’s The Wire season two relates the seemingly “disconnected” union men, foreign sex worker women, and African-American drug traders and crosses constructed boundaries of race, gender, sexuality, and geography to evoke the possibility of a transnational working class. The Wire’s serialized narrative trespasses the limitations of money and numbers games and of individual characters to build, scene by scene, what Roderick Ferguson calls in Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique “the location for new and emergent identifications and social relations” (108).

Blood In The Grass, James Trent Davis

LSU New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This paper thoroughly examines the thesis film, Blood in the Grass. Each area of the film's production is carefully analyzed, including writing, directing, production design, cinematography, editing, sound, and technology and workflow. In addition to these areas, the background and ideology of the filmmaker provides a context for the choices made in production. This overall analysis discusses the effectiveness of the goals set by the filmmaker for the film to be an emotionally effective commentary on capital punishment, and to be conducive to the short film medium.