Other Film and Media Studies Commons^™

A Theoretical Application Of Metaphor Research To The Film Industry, Michael J. Stanton

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This paper explores the value of using metaphor based marketing research methods (most notably Zaltman Metaphor Elicitation Technique) in the development and green-lighting processes of filmmaking. A review of literature reveals that even large blockbuster films lack any marketing research employed in the developmental stage. Audiences are extremely difficult to analyze when considering something as abstract and subjective as what makes a “good” film. Metaphor based marketing research methods (e.g. ZMET) offer a solution by examining the minds of consumers through language markers called metaphors. Using a metaphor based marketing technique early in a film’s development process may help to …

Immigrant Stories: Exploring The Conflicts That A Filmmaker Must Face In A Documentary, Berenice Saez Briceno

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study attempts to address the personal conflicts that a filmmaker must face in the making of a documentary. It contrasts definitions and theories with the experience of producing the documentary entitled Immigrant Stories and the ethical implications of making it. To conclude, it summarizes the results of the study as final thoughts.

Media Erotics & Adaptation: A Comparative Textual Analysis Of Carmilla, Rebecca Wait

Honors Projects

This project is concerned with understanding the different ways in which Carmilla (1872), a gothic novella, and it’s 2014 web series adaptation differently approach the same basic narrative, especially with regards to their respective representations of individuals who identify as sexual and gender minorities. One of the major functions of importance in this study was to understand the temporality and cultural conditions, which lead to the perceived need for a postmodern adaptation of a pre-modernist text. Through textual analysis, the author compared J. Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla (1872) to Jordan Hall's adaptation (2014). In this analysis, significant differences existed between …

Man/Boy., Nick Hartman

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Verisimilitude, or the appearance of being true, is a concept I turn upside down; relating it to a guise I wear as a contemporary male in a society dictated by learned social behavior and gender norms. Cultural iconography and expected gender norms are tropes I confront within my artwork. Drawings of seemingly everyday objects act as meditations or a fetishized repetition of supposed unobtainable objects and ideals that deal with masculine societal norms. Manliness, machismo, masculinity… it is all a culturally learned and expected pose placed on all men. Coming to the realization that I do not necessarily fit …

"This Aggression Will Not Stand": The Coens On Masculinity, Evan Kelly

Honors Projects

This research examines the constructions of masculinity within the films of Joel and Ethan Coen. Through textual analysis of three film, Raising Arizona (1987), Fargo (1996), and The Big Lebowski (1998), three key themes emerge: masculinity as performance, children and family as ego extensions, toxic masculinity personified, and children and redemption through rejection of hegemonic masculinity. Comprehensively, the paper seeks to prove the Coens uniquely construct masculinity as a performance which can override public policy and interpersonal prosperity. This research serves several functions. First, it recasts the Coens as cutting-edge progressive filmmakers, despite their protestations to the contrary. What we …

Mainstream Versus Ethnic Media: How They Shape Ethnic Pride And Self-Esteem Among Ethnic Minority Audiences, Srividya Ramasubramanian, Marissa Joanna Doshi, Muniba Saleem

Media Studies - All Scholarship

This article explores the underlying processes that influence the ways in which mainstream and ethnic media shape ethnic minority audiences’ self-concepts. Ethnic minorities are often underrepresented and presented in stereotypical and negative ways in mainstream popular U.S. culture, while ethnic media tend to represent them in more diverse and auspicious ways. This study uses survey methodology to simultaneously assess the differential effects of mainstream and ethnic media on ethnic minorities. Specifically, it tests the role of mainstream media and ethnic media in influencing ethnic pride, self-esteem, and ethnic performance (behavioral expression of one’s ethnic identity) among Indian Americans. Results from …

Blade Runner And The Divine Menace, Alexander W. Pickens

MAD-RUSH Undergraduate Research Conference

Following the decline of Christianity in mainstream Western culture, a void rose in the moral and societal code. Those writers that emerged presented alternate visions that worked their way into the literature of the 20th century. Karl Marx's interpretation of the structure of labor in capitalism presented a new societal hierarchy whose finer points have been worked out in the complex film Blade Runner. This dystopian nightmare, in which a Marxist interpretation of current society bogged down by the ennui of capitalist accumulation is confronted, describes a new religious order based upon this economic theory. Central to this reimagining …

Faint Glimmers Of Civilization: Mediated Nostalgia And “The Grand Budapest Hotel”, Jamie L. Bick

Cinesthesia

This paper explores how Wes Anderson strategically uses nostalgia in his 2014 film The Grand Budapest Hotel as a form of social commentary on the European interwar period and its relation to the current historical era.

1st Place Contest Entry: Critical Media Literacy: Liberating The "Criminal" And Empowering African American Males, Talia Cain

Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize

This is Talia Cain's submission for the 2017 Kevin and Tam Ross Undergraduate Research Prize, which won first place. She wrote about how media contributes to the criminalization of African American males and the effects of this on African American male students.

Talia is a sophomore at Chapman University, majoring in Integrated Educational Studies. Her faculty mentor is Professor Anne Steketee.

Potter, Hugh Oliver, 1905-1986 (Mss 602), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 602. Correspondence, research notes, book manuscripts, promotional material, and editorials related to Hugh O. Potter’s career as a radio broadcaster and his interests in Kentucky history, specifically Owensboro and Daviess County, and Abraham Lincoln. Includes one box of original legal documents (1783-1953) related to the Massie family of Daviess County.

To Kill A Mockingbird, The Help, And The Regendering Of The White Savior, Brett Seekford

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

Filmmakers continue to use the “White Savior “ archetype to construct racialized messages in the post-Civil Rights era. These protagonists, who resolutely defend the rights of African Americans, ultimately focalize whiteness and marginalize black characters and voices. Though a white savior features prominently in both To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and The Help (2011), The Help’s regendering of the archetype invites viewers to imagine a world in which a white savior is no longer necessary. The Help’s update on the white savior trope from Atticus Finch to Skeeter Phelan allows for deeper development of black characters and a …

Religion And Violence In Jesse James Films, 1972–2010, Travis Warren Cooper

Journal of Religion & Film

This essay analyzes recent depictions of Jesse James in cinema, examining filmic portrayals of the figure between the years of 1972 and 2010. Working from the intersection of the anthropology of film and religious studies approaches to popular culture, the essay fills significant gaps in the study of James folklore. As no substantial examinations of the religious aspects of the James myths exist, I hone in on the legend’s religiosity as contested in filmic form. Films, including revisionist Westerns, are not unlike oral-history statements recorded and analyzed by anthropologists, folklorists, and ethnographers. Jesse James movies, in other words, have much …

“To See My Home Before I Die”: The Trip To Bountiful, Memento Mori, And The Experience Of Death, Margaret Sullivan

Journal of Religion & Film

This article analyzes the portrayal of death in Peter Masterson’s 1985 film The Trip to Bountiful. My claim is that the experience of death, in the film, functions as a tool both for the elderly main character’s increased self-understanding and for her conscious, ethical action. I enter this discussion through an examination of late deconstruction’s ethical turn and the argument that aporetic unknowing, if experienced and endured, leads to the chance for real, authentic action. I then demonstrate how the film depicts such an aporetic encounter with death, and do so, in large part, by focusing on the film’s final …

"I Do Feel The Fire!": The Transformations Of Prison-Based Black Male Converts To Islam In South Central, Malcolm X, And Oz, Kameron J. Copeland

Journal of Religion & Film

Historically, imprisoned Black male converts to Islam have been known for their narratives of redemption and struggles for religious freedom behind bars. While Islam possesses a strong visible presence throughout predominately Black areas of inner cities, it has become a natural feature of Black popular culture in mediums such as hip-hop, film, and literature. By the 1990s, the portrayal of Islamic conversions yielding Malcolm X-style transformations among young Black men, who formerly embodied self-destructiveness, were visible in films featuring Black male protagonists. The prison-based transformations typically involved highly influential Black Muslim leaders improving the social conditions of the inmate, the …

“Don’T You Have Anything Better To Do?” : A Care-Focused Feminist Analysis Of Undertale, Evan Marzahn

Women's and Gender Studies: Student Scholarship & Creative Works

This paper explores the feminist ethic of care in Undertale's "meta" narrative and gameplay from the perspective of an avid gamer. Using Nel Noddings' ethical framework to analyze the actions and attitudes of the characters (including the player) and their consequences, I argue that Undertale provides distinctively feminist ethical gameplay that not only criticizes the frequent violence in role-playing games, but also encourages the player to always approach any interaction with a character (or a real person) as an encounter between individuals whose unique circumstances and needs must be considered.

Sight And Song Augmented, Robert P. Fletcher

Sight and Song Augmented: Painting and Poetry in Mixed Reality

This file is an Android application built in the Unity 3D game engine with the Vuforia Augmented Reality extension. It remediates Sight and Song (1892) by Michael Field (Katherine Bradley and Edith Cooper), a collection of ekphrastic poetry about paintings by the Old Masters.

Performer And Writer Biographies, University Of Dayton

Season 1: The Crossroads

Names and descriptions of the performers and writers involved with this podcast series.

Anime And War, Carol Sun

Honors Papers and Posters

This poster examines the growth and development of anime in Japan in post-World War II Japan, particularly its ability to make audiences question the trajectory of humanity and society and to "critique the society that relies on technology...as a means to prevent or discourage war and conflict".

All Hail Helix: The Internet’S Role In The Creation Of Culture And Narrative, Margaret Furtner 17

Honor Scholar Theses

No abstract provided.

"You Want It All To Happen Now!": The Jinx, The Imposter, And Re-Enacting The Digital Thriller In True Crime Documentaries, Brett Michael Phillips

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this thesis, I outline the changing shape of the reenactment in the contemporary true crime documentary to illustrate a burgeoning crisis of epistemology and anxieties about the authority of evidence in the Digital Age. I examine two works—The Jinx and The Imposter—that deal with evidence in formally similar but ideologically opposite ways.

Logic in the Digital Age prioritizes an ever-widening collection of increasingly more precise artifacts and details, which supposedly paint a more complete picture but end up highlighting what is unknown more often. Key to this examination is the adoption of classic Hollywood thriller techniques (e.g., non-traditional narrative …

Sexy Robots: A Perpetuation Of Patriarchy, Ashlyn Des Roches

Communication Studies

This feminist critique looks into the way that gender, specifically females, are portrayed in some of Hollywood's top films involving Artificial Intelligence: Blade Runner, Her, and Ex Machina. These movies work as a perpetuation of patriarchal ideologies while maintaining the objectification and hypersexuality of women as normalized behaviors. Additionally, while some forms of empowerment are conveyed, the features illustrate women merely on a spectrum of extreme behavior; due to Heuristics and Cultivation Theory, these misrepresentations can be associated with women outside the surrealist realm of the depicted artificially intelligent worlds.

The Dramatization Of Cultural Hybridity And The "In-Between" Turkey In Fazıl's Künye, Önder Çakırtaş

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "The Dramatization of Cultural Hybridity and the "In-Between" Turkey in Fazıl's Künye" Önder Çakırtaş addresses Turkey's historical context and exposes how political, social and cultural changes were expressed in Turkey's public sphere. Using Niyazi Berkes's theory of secularism as proceeding of modernism Çakırtaş discusses different examples of stylistic strategies of cultural hybridity in the playwright's historical-based play, Künye. He investigates how political changes in pre-Turkey times signify Turkey's national striving, and how the Ottoman-conservative past metamorphoses into Turkic-secular. The study juxtaposes the perceptions of 'introduction to Westernization' and 'departure from Islamic past' in a period …

Anarcho-Feminist Melodrama And The Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Claire T. Solomon

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Anarcho-Feminist Melodrama and the Manic Pixie Dream Girl (1929-2016)" Claire Solomon analyzes the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope as an apparatus of capture (Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand). More precisely, her article models how such tropes imply modes of reading anachronistically and metafictionally that decontextualize gestures of resistance and conflate female writers, performers, and characters across time and place. Solomon offers a situated formalist reading of Argentine playwright Salvadora Medina Onrubia's 1929 drama, Las descentradas, revealing an avant-garde counterpoint of melodrama and metafiction as an ambiguous alternative to capture.

Approaching The Value And The Future Of The Novel: A Book Review Article On Boxall's Scholarship, Yili Tang

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

No abstract provided.

“The Robocop We Deserve”: Post-Human Transformations And Social Critique In Paul Verhoeven’S And Jose Padilha’S Robocop, Mynt Marsellus

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Papa’S Got A Brand New Kino German Wartime Memory In Edgar Reitz’S Heimat: A Chronicle Of Germany, Nathan Maclean

Laurier Undergraduate Journal of the Arts

No abstract provided.

Merchandise, Promotion, And Accessibility: Keith Haring’S Pop Shop, Amy L. Raffel

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

During the peak of his career in New York, Keith Haring took his highly recognizable artistic style and distributed it in the form of merchandise in his Pop Shop, established in 1986. Stemming from his early work displayed on the New York streets, directly within public space, and his explorations into mass media strategies, he learned he could make his work accessible to new audiences outside contemporary art institutions and art circles. He translated his work across several surfaces: from subways or canvases, to everyday functional merchandise, such as buttons, t-shirts, and bags sold in his shop. Responding to a …

Negative Affects That Social Media Causes On Body Imaging, Katelyn J. Gaffney

Undergraduate Honors College Theses 2016-

The main purpose of this thesis is to present, discuss and criticize the effect of negative body imagining caused by social media. This will be achieved in part by explaining the history of women and the change of their appearances and Body Mass Index during different times in history. It will also discuss the historical differences of what was considered attractive during those times based on different forms of social media and how it changed from time period to period. Later on in the thesis I will discuss the strong negative influences caused by social media and in the fashion …

"Fragmegration" Of Identity In Laurent Cantet's Ressources Humaines And L'Emploi Du Temps, Peter Schulman

World Languages and Cultures Faculty Publications

As James Rosenau has written, localization and globalization came crashing together at the turn of the 20^th century in a type of oxymoronic chaos he labels "fragmegration" that characterizes the confusion people have as to their role in society. It is this identity confusion that Laurent Cantet portrays in his landmark films Ressources humaines (1999) and L'emploi du temps (2001). Cantet's protagonists seek their place in society as they cope with the sudden destabilization of their local, national, and globalized identities.

“Why (Not) Philosophy Of Stand-Up Comedy?”, Sheila Lintott

Faculty Contributions to Books

Stand-up comedy has been largely ignored by analytic philosophers of art, including those interested in comedy and humor. This is somewhat surprising, given the immense popularity of stand-up comedy and the rock star status enjoyed by some comedians today. I suspect that philosophers are just as likely to enjoy stand-up comedy as anyone else; in some cases (i.e. for some philosophers and some comedians), probably more likely. Here I offer some reasons philosophers of art should take the time to consider stand-up comedy and possible explanation for why philosophers of art have paid far less attention to stand-up comedy than …