Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Anti-Communist Politics Of The Second Red Scare And How It Affected Hollywood And The Types Of Movies Being Made, Maddy Everson

Honors Program Theses

During the Second Red Scare from 1947 to 1957, anti-communist sentiment was rampant and affected Hollywood and the types of movies being made. This was due to governmental agencies—as well as non-governmental institutions and people—being suspicious of and investigating anyone who was suspected of having communist ties. This caused a level of fear that affected what was shown in the content of the movies and who could make them. It is important to examine how the movies and film industry was influenced by the Second Red Scare. This is because Hollywood was strongly affected not only at this time but …

Germans-Jewish Culture And Modern Multiculturalism In Germany (Intersession 2021), Robert D. Tobin

Syllabi

"This class studies the expression of cultural identity in central European literature. How many people come to think of themselves or others as "Germans", "Jews", "Turks", "Foreigners", "Immigrants"? While the Holocaust is obviously central to the German-Jewish relationship, it is not the only focus of this course -- we will read literary reflections of the emancipation of the Jews, of German-Jewish assimilation and symbiosis, of the rise of anti-Semitism and Zionism, as well as attempts to remember the past. And while the long history of the relationship between Jews and non-Jews in Germany will be a major component of our …

Pixelated Domes: Cinematic Code Changes Through A Frank Lloyd Wright Lens, William Allen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Panoramic 360-degree documentary videos continue to saturate the visual landscape. As practitioners' experiment with a new genre, understanding meaning and making awaits the academic and marketplace landscape. The new media journey of 360-degree documentary storytelling is ripe for media archaeologist to explore. New media scholar Lev Manovich (2016) believes "we are witnessing the new emergence of a cultural metalanguage, something that will be at least as significant as the printed word and cinema before it" (p. 49) Considering the meta- development of this new media genre, my dissertation seeks to discuss the historical roots of the panoramic image, define 360-degree …

El Mar Y La Gente: Hacia Una Contextualización De Lo Indígena En El Botón De Nácar, Jonathan Braden Taylor

Honors Theses

El presente trabajo analiza las ramificaciones ontológicas, epistemológicas, y políticas del botón de nácar, un documental hecho en 2015 por el cineasta Patricio Guzmán. El siguiente análisis busca poner esta obra cinemática en el contexto de la formulación y el desarrollo del estado-nación chileno, lo cual ha ocurrido a expensas de las personas indígenas de la zona. Se observa que se emplea significación verdaderamente descolonizada en representaciones y discusiones de espacios acuáticos, lo cual engendra avances teóricos que utilizo para contextualizar el filme. Se sostiene que los efectos políticos de dicha significación descolonizada se ponen en marcha productivamente cuando son …

Step By Step : Walk Your Way To... : Fall 2020 The Arts Of Storytelling Student Exhibition, Yan Yan Mak

Artists-in-Residence Programme : Exhibition Catalogues

The works presented in this catalogue demonstrate the outcome of artistic and cultural interactions between Ms Yan Yan Mak and her students in the Fall semester of 2020-21. The Department of Visual Studies is very grateful for their contribution in promoting creativity and art appreciation within and beyond the Lingnan community.

Floating Roots: Agnes Varda's Uncle Yanco, Homay King

History of Art Faculty Research and Scholarship

This article traces one source of Agnès Varda's artistic inspiration to Jean “Yanco” Varda, the subject of her 1967 short film Uncle Yanco (US/France). Jean Varda was a peripatetic artist who lived on a houseboat and was part of a bohemian circle that included Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Alan Watts, and other luminaries of the San Francisco counterculture. Both Vardas were gleaners and artists. The author argues that both saw the imagination as a place where matter and spirit were reconciled. The article builds on previous work about Varda's The Gleaners and I (Les glaneurs et la glaneuse, …

Introduction: Future Varda, Rebecca J. Deroo, Homay King

History of Art Faculty Research and Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Anna May Wong And The Color Image, Homay King

History of Art Faculty Research and Scholarship

In Cinema 1, Deleuze proposes the “color‐image,” a type of film image with an “absorbent characteristic” that does not refer to a particular object but seizes all that happens within its range. Like color‐images, racial categories have an absorbent, seizing quality: they assert “color” at the expense of the object of representation. Deleuze does not address the potential applications of his concept to race, but they are especially illuminating when applied to early color‐process cinema. This essay approaches The Toll of the Sea (dir. Chester M. Franklin, 1922), starring Anna May Wong and set in China, the first Technicolor film …

Female Desire, Pop Rock, And The Tiananmen Generation: The Synergy Of Sexual And Political Revolutions In The Banned Chinese-German Film Summer Palace (2006), Qinna Shen

German Faculty Research and Scholarship

The year 1989 comprises a vital part of the Tiananmen generation’s memory and identity. Yet any attempt to address the turbulent events of that year, however obliquely, carries a high risk of censorship. Lou Ye took that risk in Summer Palace (2006). His iconoclastic exploration of sex and politics at a thinly disguised Beijing University was banned in China and languishes in relative obscurity in the West. This article endeavors to ensure that Summer Palace receives the serious recognition it deserves. The film’s narrative arc stretches from Beijing to Berlin and uses a delayed death in Berlin as an opportunity …

The Berlin-Tokyo Film Axis And A Troubled Co-Production: The Makers Of New Earth/The Samurai's Daughter (1937), Qinna Shen

German Faculty Research and Scholarship

Co-productions are often notoriously difficult, and this was certainly the case in 1936–37 for the most important co-production between Nazi Germany and Japan. What should have been one joint film for the international market turned out to be two different versions: New Earth in Japanese and English by Itami Mansaku and The Samurai’s Daughter in German and Japanese by Arnold Fanck. This article focuses on three filmmakers – producer Kawakita Nagamasa and the directors Fanck and Itami – to better understand the production and reception of the films and what led to the split between the directors. The push for …

Community Of Creation: A Documentary On Finding Community Through Art, Sidney Thompson

Student Academic Conference

Community of Creation is a documentary project created under the film production program. The documentary itself focuses on the ideas of local art, fellowship, and adaptability throughout a small community gallery located in Rochester, MN named SEMVA. This presentation will focus on the communal influence of local art and the impact it had on the unique production of the documentary.

Society Doesn’T Owe You Anything: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas & Video Games As Speculative Fiction, Marc A. Ouellette

English Faculty Publications

Since Donald Trump’s election in 2016, popular and scholarly commentators have been looking for speculative and/or dystopic literary works that might provide analogues for the Trump-era. Perhaps the most famous of these was the renewed popularity of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. In this regard, though, video games remain an underexplored fictional form. With its exaggerated and parodic satire of an America ruled by the corruption and greed of extreme right-wing populism, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (2004) offers a speculative fiction that players can enact as well as imagine and simulate as well as prepare. Thus, reading the …

El Inmigrante En El Cine Del Siglo Xxi: Un Análisis De La Identidad Indocumentada Y Sus Esfuerzos Por Mantener Una Comunidad Unida Dentro Y Fuera De La Pantalla, Guadalupe Valente

CMC Senior Theses

El cine en los Estados Unidos ha sido una parte clave de su cultura por muchos años. La industria del cine en los Estados Unidos es un negocio de miles de millones de dólares y con unas de las influencias más inmensas en el país. En términos del género inmigratorio en el cine, existen varias percepciones negativas de la comunidad Latina – incluyendo entre ellas: el traficante de drogas, el violador, el ladrón de trabajo, el empleado doméstico o el trabajador de “blue collar.” Aunque existen muchos estereotipos para los latinos, unos de los personajes más maltratados es el inmigrante …

Vidas Precarias: Crisis Económica De 2008 En El Cine Y La Literatura Españolas, Abraham Prades-Mengibar

Theses and Dissertations--Hispanic Studies

The collapse of the real estate bubble in 2008 brought an economic crisis that began to spread throughout the world, and Spain was one of the countries most negatively impacted. During the Great Recession, the governments of PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español) and PP (Partido Popular) didn’t present viable solutions to end the crisis. Instead, they enforced drastic economic cutbacks. Meanwhile, the governments subsidized the banks to rescue them; in theory, to save the Spanish economy. However, the Spanish population continued to suffer the effects of economic crisis. Writers and filmmakers used their work to call attention to the negative …

Reimagining The Black Body Through Portraiture: Interpreting The Functional And Societal Roles Of Photography And The Reconstructive Power Of Camera Technology And Photographic Images For African American Self Image, Robert Cain

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis addresses the multiple ways in which the medium of photography, and specifically the portrait photograph, enabled African Americans to visually contest degrading portrayals of blackness and reclaim stolen agency in producing depictions of self throughout the media and popular culture. The societal reverberations of camera technology on the emergence of black photographers like Richard Samuel Roberts, James VanDerZee, and Gordon Parks are analyzed, and the images taken by these artists are read against a history of racist stereotypes, reconsidered for their aesthetic contributions to the art world, and interpreted within the tradition of African American photography. A brief …

The Power Of The Panel: How American Comic Book Media Utilizes The Panel To Alter Audience Interaction, Austin Biese

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

This thesis traces the evolution of the panel across decades as well as various mediums. In one form, the panel becomes stretched when characters break the fourth wall to immerse readers in a new perspective on how the panel functions and creates meaning. In another form, comic book film adaptations comic imagery to instill a sense of nostalgia and to wink and nod at the audience, stretching the conventions of what the panel can be to impact the devoted audience. Lastly, in modern comic-reading apps, a ‘Smart Reading’ function remediates panels to provide an easier and unified path to read …

Reimagining Abandoned Community Space In A Post-Pandemic Environment, Julia Drooff

Scripps Senior Theses

Earlier this year, the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the demise of the Great American Mall by forcing temporary and permanent closures across the country. The low-end malls that remain are dealing with crippling debt and the closing of key department stores like JC Penney and Neiman Marcus[1]. With only super-luxury malls thriving, many of the standard malls set up in the eighties are just abandoned parts of a community. So, what should happen to these abandoned malls? And what role does that space now play in the post-pandemic community? Since malls began to shut-down pre-Covid-19 did the need for …

“Ain’T My Mama’S Broken Heart”: The Mothers And Daughters Of Hillbilly Feminism, Alyssa Dewees

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

The women of country music have long defied the genre's patriarchal associations and used their music as a platform for subversive social messages about gender inequality, and in the past several decades, the country music establishment has grown more willing to alter its image and accommodate these feminist themes. Because country music is marketed and understood by many of its fans as a representation of a lifestyle, this shift in expectations for women’s social roles and possibilities in the genre has an impact on the women who identify themselves with the particular rural, down-home image country music aims to define. …

Podcasts, An Increasingly Effective Media Tool, Katherine Haines

Capstone Showcase

The importance of the world staying connected and up-to-date on current news and new information is only going to continue as technology improves and people look for new sources of education. As we see so many things shift online during the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s only natural that news would continue to shift that way as well. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, podcasts were an alternate source of information that was becoming more and more popular. While the information distributed by podcasts and social media may not be as complete as news from stereotypical sources, they are much more effective because …

Art Imitates Life: The Representation (Or Lack Thereof) Of Black Women In Video Games, Bug Gadson

Capstone Showcase

The key focus of this essay is to compare the representation of black women in media, primarily in television and film, to the representation of black female characters in video games. Using black feminist theory, this essay illustrates the treatment of black female characters in gaming. The particular and deliberate methods of writing black female characters in video games are used to highlight white video game characters and their narratives, instead of giving life and dimension to the black female characters themselves. The hostile and unsafe environments in gaming spaces are cultivated through upholding these harmful stereotypes of black women, …

Disney Princess Films And Their Effects On Gender And Body Image Through The Social Learning Theory, Jessica Yakubovsky

Capstone Showcase

Many of us grew up watching Disney Films and throughout the last decade and prior, the Walt Disney Company has created a variety of characters whom we grew up alongside. As we watched these films we found ourselves within the characters and learned things through them. This thesis paper aims to analyze Disney Princess Films and their profound effects on Gender and Body image through the theoretical perspective of the Social Learning theory. I will analyze Classic Disney princesses such as Snow White and Cinderella, and modern princesses such as Mulan(1998) and Merida (2011). My critical analysis indicates that Disney …

Girls Can’T Like Star Wars: An Analysis Of Feminism Within Fandoms, Julia Neff

Capstone Showcase

Finding the intersection between feminist theory and fandom theory, this paper analysis how women are regarded within a fandom community by their peers and how they are dismissed in a societal context. This paper specifically compares what is "accepted" by society about young women being a fan of a boy band versus an adult man as a fan of a sports team.

Stuart Hall & Theory Of Representation In The Media: Exploring Get Out And Candyman, Lashanna Bryant

Capstone Showcase

Media representation has aided in creating a toxic manifestation of what it means to be Black in America. More specifically, the exploration of Black characters in horror films has opened many doors to hidden racism, discrimination, and oversimplification of their culture and their value in society. In looking into the films Candyman and Get Out there is a clear progression throughout the early 1990s to the mid 2010s that detail a very rapid change from taking a Black character from a background role to the main character.

Out And Proud: The Significance Of Jojo Siwa’S Coming Out And Why Queer Representation In Children’S Media Is Important, Savannah Munholland

Capstone Showcase

Queer representation in the media is slowly improving but children's media still severely lacks diversity, especially LGBTQ+ representation. This paper explores JoJo Siwa, a popular children's influencer and entertainer, and how her coming out will effect the integration of queer representation into children's media.

The Comfort Watch: Psychology And Media Theory Perspectives On Nostalgia And Film, Sohni Kaur

Scripps Senior Theses

This thesis explored the relationship between nostalgia, film, and coping mechanisms,

using both media theory and psychological lenses. Nostalgia, a concept with roots in both media theory and psychology, is best defined as homesickness for a time rather than a place. Nostalgia, when combined with film, leads to the concept of “comfort watches”, a scarcely researched topic. From a psychological standpoint, research suggests that nostalgia and media usage are commonly used coping mechanisms, yet there has been little to no research combining the two. The psychological study included in this thesis was conducted online in the United States using 83 …

What You Save: Cultures Of Collecting In The Digital Era, Sophia Davirro

Scripps Senior Theses

As children, we may have collected items around us such as a box of rocks, insects, stuffed animals, stolen items from a sibling’s room, or crayon drawings on sticky pieces of paper. As our curiosity grows, so do our collections, kept in the closet, soon forgotten but forever representative of a specific time in our life. While the types of objects we collect (and the way we collect them) may change, the desire to leave traces of ourselves behind doesn’t.

This project explores cultures of collecting through a digital media lens and examines how digital technology and our culture of …

Prepare To Pivot: Shifting From The Projection Surface To The Zoom Screen Necessitated By Global Pandemic, David E. Mills-Low

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Design for theatre is an endeavor in which the physical, the corporeal, the defined, is applied to an ephemeral artform, one meant to happen only in the moment and then fade away. As such, building the world of the theatrical space, whether physical or digital, is similar to shooting at a moving target. While one angle of approach may be perfect for a moment, being ready and flexible enough to pivot, whether to reimagine due to limitation or to adjust an entire project due to calamity, like the shift from in person to online streaming. This paper investigates the joy …

As Honorable As Tears: Comedy As Surgeon, Pharmacist, And Clown, Emily S. Rauch

Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Corporate Venturing In The Media & Entertainment Industry: Contextual Factors That Influence Corporate Venture Decision Making, Graylind R. Wherry

Theses and Dissertations

This research study focuses on Corporate Venturing (CV) within the Media and Entertainment(M&E) industry and investigates factors that influence CV decision-making. CV provides a viable strategy to facilitate innovation and organizational change within companies; however, this area is understudied within the M&E industry. Companies that make up the entertainment industry may not have specific insight into how best to exploit this opportunity. Specifically, this study looks at the influence of firm characteristics, industry characteristics, and other outside factors using the PESTLE strategy model characteristics impacting the parent or venture unit's CV decision-making within the M&E industry. In terms of this …

Asper, Isaiah Nearor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2020-2023

Asper is a microbudget feature-length film written, directed, and funded by Isaiah D. Nearor for the requirements of earning a Master of Fine Arts in Entrepreneurial Digital Cinema from the University of Central Florida. Completing a film production can be challenging because not every day is the same. Production took place during Summer 2021 during COVID 19. With proper guidance and safety protocol, the film made it through production. The film is a narrative thriller. This thesis explains the process and decisions made from preproduction through post-production.