Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Framing Affect: Close Up To Feeling With Women At The Eighteenth-Century Theatre On The Twenty-First Century Screen, Ros M. Ballaster Professor

ABO: Interactive Journal for Women in the Arts, 1640–1830

Period films and television dramas of the twenty-first century use scenes of attendance at the theatre by women in the (long) eighteenth century as a test of their capacity to feel. Such scenes provide an opportunity to measure the competing affordances of screen and stage regarding affect in the eighteenth century and our present moment. Explored are scenes of theatrical affect from Dangerous Liaisons (1998) to The Duchess (2008), Harlots (2017), Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), Bridgerton (2020). The figure of the liberated, educated, and aesthetically sensitive woman serves in period fiction on stage, screen and page more …

"Uruk ... We Prefer 'Uruk'": The Representation Of The Orc In The Lord Of The Rings: The Rings Of Power, Robert T. Tally Jr.

Journal of Tolkien Research

In Tolkien’s legendarium, there are many complicated characters, vexed figures who combine aspects of what readers might think of as good and evil, but Orcs are, it seems, always and only evil. This despite the fact that Tolkien’s own writings provide ample evidence that Orcs, however loathsome they may appear, are nevertheless people, a “race” that like Elves, Dwarves, Men, and Hobbits maintains social orders and belongs to Middle-earth. The Amazon Prime show The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power offers a glimpse of Orc culture from within, as the audience is introduced to a mysterious new character, …

The Profitability Of Racial Diversity And Gender Balance In Modern Hollywood, M. Garrett Roth, William Mcandrew

The Journal of Economics and Politics

This paper investigates the effects of racial and gender diversity in modern Hollywood. The primary objective is to determine if an objectively measurable increase in diverse casting over the last two decades has had a positive or negative impact on profits, and a secondary objective to measure diversity’s impact on critic scores. The study utilizes data focusing on the fifty most expensive films from 2003, 2008, 2013, 2018, and 2023. The findings indicate that profit is neither positively nor negatively affected by diversity, whether in ethnicity or gender. However, movie critic ratings are negatively affected by ethnic diversity when using …

"Elements Don’T Mix!": Unearthing Racial Scripts And A Rhetorical Economy Of Whiteness In Disney And Pixar's Elemental, Linsay M. Cramer, Gabriel A. Cruz

Communication, Media, and Culture

Using a narrative rhetorical approach, we map how Disney and Pixar’s 2023 film, Elemental, sustains a rhetorical economy of whiteness, as theorized by Asen and Kelly, which emphasizes the degree to which rhetorical constructions of racial difference are foundational to whiteness and economic systems. We identify and critique how Elemental discursively contributes to a system of exclusivity for those within the bounds of whiteness concerning economic mobility via racial scripts. Created and produced during Joe Biden’s United States (U.S.) presidential term (2021–2025), Elemental offers a metaphorical tale that engages the fractious, politically conservative anxieties concerning diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) …

“But Where Are Those Good Old-Fashioned Values?”—The Racial Politics Of Animated Satire In Family Guy, Jordanne Greenidge

Master's Theses

Few animated shows have shaped American pop culture quite like Family Guy. Known for its rapid-fire cutaway gags and irreverent humor, the series has remained a television mainstay since its debut in 1999, despite frequent criticism and even two cancellations. Created by Seth MacFarlane and based on his 1995 student film The Life of Larry, Family Guy has built its reputation on pushing the boundaries of taste, especially when it comes to race, gender, and politics. Though often defended as satire, the show’s use of racial humor raises questions about its true impact: Do its portrayals of Black characters challenge …

Seeing Her, Wanting Her: Postfeminist Desire And Its Contradictions In Zendaya’S Magazine Covers, Sophia Shelley

International Journal of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities

This article examines Zendaya’s modelling evolution as a case study to explore how a postfeminist critique and psychoanalysis can illuminate the contradictory nature of women’s advertising. My analysis compares Zendaya’s covers in Seventeen (2012) and Essence (2020), emphasizing the stark differences in aesthetics, where Seventeen conforms to ideals of (white) femininity, and in opposition, Essence centres around Black femininity and desire. By situating Zendaya as both a gendered and racialized ‘other,’ the intricate dynamics of femininity, race, and age in media portrayals are made visible. I argue that Zendaya’s image is sold through postfeminist ideals of empowerment, choice, and sexuality …

Creating An Ofrenda, Sara Hinojos

Open Educational Resources

You do not need to be Mexican to celebrate Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). What you need however is a deep and thoughtful cultural understanding of the practice. This lesson plan teaches students what Dia de los Muertos is, the influence of colonialism (past and present), how mainstream media understands the celebration in the U.S., and how local communities honor the celebration. This approach is from a media studies perspective and a particular focus on art, specifically altar making or making an ofrenda. Writer, philosopher, tejana Gloria E. Anzaldúa details that altars are “‘the sanctuary of the …

Visuality Of Race In Popular Culture: Teaching Racial Histories And Iconography In Media, Joni Boyd Acuff, Amelia M. Kraehe

Dialogue: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy

The repetition of racist imagery from historical to contemporary popular culture is indicative of a lack of visual culture education among artists, designers, and other creative cultural producers working today. This paper addresses the dearth of resources for teaching visual codes and conventions of racial iconography that are recycled in popular media and contribute to the fabrication of racial differences, maintenance of racial hierarchies, and normalization of white supremacist ideology. Inspired by Critical Race Theory in art and visual culture education, the essay proposes teaching tactics and sites/sights that can support students in developing visual understandings of race in popular …

"The Power Of Trash": A Review Of Pulp Empire By Paul S. Hirsch, Vincent Haddad

Criticism

Pulp Empire: The Secret History of Comic Book Imperialism by Paul S. Hirsch. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021. Pp. 337. $30.00 cloth.

Prisons Of The Imagination: Carceral Ideology And Race In Science Fiction, Daniel Allen Avant Blachman

Institute for the Humanities Theses

Popular science fiction film and television media commonly deploy narratives and images of prisons and policing, and these discourses in turn are inseparable from racial formations. At the same time, many fans and theorists view science fiction as a genre with immense potential for offering critical consideration of the difference between the fictional and the real world. This thesis examines a range of case studies from popular film and television exemplifying this tension between the perceived generative critical potential of science fiction media and apparent tendency of popular media productions to nearly always fall back on well-worn white supremacist, patriarchal, …

Beneath The Mask: The Performance Of Blackness And Economies Of Caricature In American Fiction, Terri Bowles

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

In American Fiction (2023), written for the screen and directed by Cord Jefferson, satire, drama and comedy frame a knife-sharp examination of America’s cultural reproductions of stereotype and caricature. The film, based on Percival Everett’s novel Erasure, explores the fraught professional position of Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright), a professor-author pressed to write a bestseller amid family upheaval and financial strain. Monk’s resulting novel, a gritty send-up of urban tropism drafted in a fit of fury and frustration, exploits America’s fixation on commodifying and flattening Blackness—and becomes an instant hit. This review explores the film’s interrogations of race, class and …

#Hotgirlsemestersyllabus, Katrina Marie Overby, Gheni Platenburg, Niya Pickett Miller

Feminist Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

When Language Fails: A Critical Analysis Essay Of Kathryn Stockett’S The Help:, Evan Mccreary

Black Album Mixtape

A critical analysis essay of Kathryn Stockett's New York Times Bestselling book, The Help, and it's subsequent film adaptation, and how in recent years, particularly following the murder of George Floyd, the story has been used as a classroom tool for teaching students about racism and its effects. Written by a Black student in a primarily white school community, this essay was written as an antithesis to the ideology that the book and movie exceed their intended intentions of being a beneficial teaching tool to youth.

Viewing The World Through The Prism Of Cross-Cultural Romances: Film Review Of Christmas As Usual (2023) And Further Reflections, Raja Ramanathan

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

‘Poetry Is Not A Luxury’, Rage Should Not Be A Privilege: The Potential Power Of The ‘Racial Imaginary’, Georgia Mcgovern

CMC Senior Theses

Female rage exists outside of the constructed masculine ideal of anger. To examine female rage, one must analyze the intersections between gender and race. I examine white women's privilege and access to female rage in reality and the fictional world. I explore Black Feminist poetry as a form of storage for rage at gender-based prejudice, racial injustice, and their intersection. Using Myisha Cherry’s term “Lordean Rage”, I recognize this specialized manifestation of female rage as an artistic, intergenerational source of energy for change.

I examine Claudia Rankine’s term “racial imaginary” as an imaginative space in which white people draw lines …

Racialized Masculinities In Professional Basketball: Utilizing Mixedness To Challenge Commonplace Black/White Media Discourses About Nba Players, Anthony C. Peavy

Communication ETDs

In this dissertation project, I utilize a Critical Mixed Race Studies (CMRS) lens to examine how mixed-race Black/White players in the National Basketball Association (NBA) are represented, discussed, racialized, and gendered by major sports media platforms. More specifically, I utilize this project to elucidate how media centered on professional basketball continue to partake in hegemonic and essentialist rhetoric surrounding Black and White masculinity—that which has been used to discuss Black and White men in basketball throughout the entire history of the sport—to homogenize mixed-race Black/White men in the NBA and present them in a way that diminishes the potentially deconstructive …

Sharp Stick Grasps At Autistic Women’S Liminal Vulnerability, Meaghan Krazinski

Ought: The Journal of Autistic Culture

This film analysis of Sharp Stick by Lena Dunham critically explores how the film uptakes representations of the ideas around the vulnerabilities of Autistic women in popular culture, and yet does not explicitly name them as such. This liminality is critical and plays into the intersectional analysis that the author engages around the way vulnerability and Autistic identity is interpreted and read. The author draws upon McDermott's (2022) "neurotypical gaze" in an analysis that shows how traditional tropes around Autistic women’s vulnerability are social constructions that are brought into relief by stereotypes around race, gender, and ability. The author uses …

Cinematic Camouflage, Jared Valdez

English Language and Literature ETDs

There is a war for recognition happening on the Hollywood battlefield. Traditionally, in every war there is an enemy and an alley; in this study, the enemy is systemic racism, and the alley is Black culture. That is, this dissertation seeks to detail the past, present, and future implications of this battle for truth, inclusion, and recognition in American pop culture. This discussion examines how various multi-media forms like literature, film, television, and comic books work as tools to combat racism in American society. More importantly, the theories presented in this text are all linked to actual tactics of military …

Mixed Speak: Towards A Re-Poetics Of Race And Self, Celina Mizuki Ohga Samuelson

Media and Cultural Studies Honors Projects

This paper tells the stories of mixed-race Japanese people. I engage in a re-poetics, positing storytelling as an essential tool into complicating our understandings of race and self. I examine the relationship between language and race, exploring how subjects existing within a space of mixedness navigate identity-formation and racial belonging. Operating under a socio-constructivist lens, I begin with a brief re-telling of the history of race in Japan, re-framing mythologies of race throughout literature, legislation, and into national and colonial projects. While popular discourse alleges Japan was and is a country of racial homogeneity, I argue that this falsifies colonial …

The Extinction Race: Techniques Of The Human In Proust, Via Houellebecq, James Dutton

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article, “The Extinction Race: Techniques of the Human in Proust, via Houellebecq” James Dutton “reads” identity and race from the point of view of technics. Namely, he does so through the work of two nominally “Eurocentric” authors, Marcel Proust and Michel Houellebecq, observing how familial and racial resemblance is a living inscription of “lost time.” This inscription comes about through the technical means available to and constitutive of the categories which bind them. Thus, instead of furthering unfinishable racial distinctions which only serve to support discourses of racism, this article follows assertions made in the novels of …

Norm And The People, Jacqueline N. Wade

Theses and Dissertations

Norm and the People is a 90-minute hybrid film about the Minister and activist Norman Eddy and the work he and other activists did in Spanish Harlem from the 1940s through his death in 2013. The film is told through interviews, archival photos and videos, reenactments, and puppets.

At What Price: Insidious Hegemony And Character Archetypes Woven Into Until Dawn, Courtney Harvey

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Supermassive Games’s Until Dawn tasks its players with helping eight teenagers survive a night of terror. All eight playable characters may live or die depending on the player’s choices and gameplay proficiency. Despite its intricacies, the game still relies heavily on horror movie tropes, which the characters embody, and they face different treatment based on their gender, race, and sanity. Particularly, the weapons available to them and the scenarios for their deaths and survival contribute to trapping the characters within their given characteristics and forcing them into a role that they cannot ever fully break free from. While the branching …

Gender, Race, And Religion In An African Enlightenment, Jonathan D. Lyonhart

Journal of Religion & Film

Black Panther (2018) not only heralded a new future for representation in big-budget films but also gave an alternative vision of the past, one which recasts the Enlightenment within an African context. By going through its technological enlightenment in isolation from Western ideals and dominance, Wakanda opens a space for reflecting on alternate ways progress can—and still might—unfold. More specifically, this alternative history creates room for reimagining how modernity—with its myriad social, scientific, and religious paradigm shifts—could have negotiated questions of race, and, in turn, how race could have informed and redirected some of the lesser impulses of modernity. Similar …

Steve Mcqueen, The Filmmaker, And Kant’S Sensus Communis, Livia Melamed Margon

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis reflects on the ways in which art reinforces community and reduces political polarity by stimulating shared feelings, namely through Kant's idea of sensus communis. To illustrate its argument, this thesis analyzes the work of Steve McQueen, a politically aware, ethically engaged, and broadly recognized filmmaker and artist.

Whose Voices Count?: Sourcing U.S. American Television News About The World, David C. Oh, Omotayo O. Banjo, Nancy A. Jennings

Media Studies - Open-Access Faculty Scholarship

The current study examines the extent to which U.S. coverage of world news events relies on White and Western sources as well as the role that journalists’ race, story type, and interview type have in the selection of news sources. Furthermore, this study examines whether such sourcing biases exist across commercial and public networks, namely ABC, NBC, CBS, and PBS. Relying on a critical media effects approach, we drew connections between indexing theory and critical race and postcolonial studies to conduct a content analysis of more than 200 news stories and more than 600 sources in 2019 and 2020. The …

Blindspotting And Covid: The Gentrification Of Racism, Ashley Starr-Morris

Journal of Religion & Film

The novel Coronavirus is not only exposing old patterns of racism and systemic inequalities, but deepening them as well. The notion of blindspotting, as described in the film by the same name, is used to understand how the COVID-19 pandemic impacts the “spiritual emergency” or crisis of racism in America. "Blindspotting" is an image or situation that can be interpreted in two ways but is understood by some in only one way, thereby producing a blind spot. In 2020 and 2021, we see segments of American society, from politics to white Christian nationalism, upholding a sacred canopy of exceptionalism by …

Race, Representation, Misrepresentation, Caricatured Consumption Tropes; And Serious Matters Of Inequity And Precarity, Nikhilesh Dholakia, Deniz Atik

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

No abstract provided.

Desde El Fuego Que En Mí Arde: Performance, Literatura Y Cine Afro-Latinoamericano Producidos Por Mujeres Afrodescendientes En Perú, Cuba Y Brasil (1960–2000), Elena Ekatherina Chavez Goycochea

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines different films, literary, and performance art pieces created by contemporary afro-descendant women from Peru, Cuba, and Brazil after the sixties with emphasis on the most relevant works of Conceição Evaristo, Sara Gómez, Victoria Santa Cruz, and Lucía Charún-Illescas. I focus my research on the crucial role these artists played in the cultural identity formation of Latin America when inserting ‘race’ as a category of socio-political analysis and cultural production. How did their films, performances, and texts challenge national narratives and imaginaries after 1960? Although in the sixties, women improved their civil rights in different countries, the ‘mujer …

Officer Ryan: The Misjudged, Simona Berenych

Emerging Writers

This short essay analyzes the character of Officer Ryan in the film Crash in terms of his racist and sexist attitudes. The author argues that the film shows the character's development throughout the film in order to complicate the stereotype of a white, racist police officer.

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.