Other Film and Media Studies Commons^™

Black And Silver Screens: Afropessimism And Filmic Appropriation In Contemporary Video Art, Madeleine A. Seidel

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis looks at the video works of artists Ulysses Jenkins, Ina Archer, and Garrett Bradley and their appropriation of images of Black actors in Classic Hollywood films through the theoretical framework of afropessimism.

Slacking, Dazed And Rocking: A Study Of Richard Linklater, Parker D. Otto

Honors Capstones

The purpose of this capstone is to examine a filmmaker’s work to better understand the artist as well as look at an underappreciated filmmaker. Richard Linklater is that filmmaker. Several of his films are popular, others less so. By exploring his filmography, it can be determined whether he’s a true artist deserving of more attention from the filmmaking community as well as general audiences. After examining Linklater’s films, not only were there recurring thematic elements that cemented his artistic dominance, but there’s a feeling of evolution as he ages. The research of this project was conducted through watching Linklater’s films …

Reclamation: The Crown Of African American Identity, Lindsey Kellogg

English MA Theses

African American voices have been the main sources of influence on society and culture. For this reason, it is important that African Americans speak up and reclaim their voices. Not only are their voices important, but the stories that lie behind the voices are what need to be amplified. With the application of postcolonial theory, this thesis takes modern stories located in North America depicting racist behavior towards African Americans from the year 1970 to present-day New York City in order to fully amplify the process of social struggle. As these narratives are passed down through generations serving as a …

Meet And Run, Gia M. Binner

Theses and Dissertations

A defense for Gia Binner’s MFA Thesis, Meet and Run, argues that accessible art, known in this paper as commercial dance, is a meaningful vehicle for social change and that it has the ability to dismantle the outdated, European concert dance dominance by modeling the interdependency of both worlds.

Letters To Medusa, Maiya Redding

Theses and Dissertations

This context paper for the MFA thesis dance film Letters to Medusa connects the mythology of Medusa as a narrative of trauma. Engaging #metoo and Micaela Coel’s I May Destroy You and Misfits, Redding discusses the power of art to serve as a vehicle for healing and forgiveness.

..., Claire Alfonso

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Words are fickle, easily misunderstood, and often put us at a loss... but we all have so much we feel we need to express. This begs the question: Is there any safe way of communication? Can anything ever really be communicated how you mean it? Will you ever see the reflection of what you feel, think, and dream outside of yourself? In response to this existential dilemma, I imagine an alternative language of images, sounds, color, feelings, and non-identification. My thesis is a meditation on the issues with standard language and the idea of alternative language. In my argument I …

Methods In Costume And Projection Design For Theatre, Jessica Wallace

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

A report detailing multiple practices for theatre design in costumes and projection. It is focused on playscript analysis, the design process, and the final build of the design for production.

Traumas And Recovery In Takaya Natsuki's Fruits Basket, Vesper North

English (MA) Theses

This thesis examines the various traumas within Takaya Natsuki’s anime series Fruits Basket and how the act of transformation triggers the beginnings of recovery for numerous characters. Fruits Basket bears striking similarities to the French fairy tale Beauty and the Beast (as well as later adaptations) originated by Gabrielle-Suzanne de Villeneuve. Throughout, I draw parallels between the “Beauty and the Beast”-genre with Fruits Basket and how the anime expands upon shared themes, specifically trauma. Additionally, I analyse the birth of and recovery from traumas (caused by bullying, loss, abuse, and feelings of otherness) for “Beauty and the Beast” archetypes within …

0875: Mike Jones President Barack Obama Media Collection, 2008-2013, Marshall University Special Collections

Guides to Manuscript Collections

This collection is predominantly newspapers from 2008-2011 and magazines from the same time period. Other items include campaign paraphernalia such as a t-shirt, campaign signs (one covered in anti-Obama graffiti), campaign buttons, bumper stickers, and an advertisement for the coverage of the 2008 election by Arizona Daily Star, and VHS recordings of the election, inauguration of President Obama, and President Obama’s first 100 days in office

The Great Resignation: A Content Analysis Of News Sources' Portrayals Of The Covid-19 Labor Shortage., Mackenzie Williams

College of Arts & Sciences Senior Theses

When workers left the labor market in large numbers during the COVID-19 pandemic, proclamations of a labor shortage emerged extensively throughout the news. In this study, I analyze the coverage of the worker shortage among three news sources with different political orientations. Several themes emerged from analyzing a total of 75 articles. The findings showed that the perspective shown in the article, the cause of the labor shortage, restaurant worker portrayal, support of solutions, and opinion of the labor shortage all differed based on the political identity of the news source. This research supports previous findings that show there is …

Narrating Madness: Building Narratives Against Privileged Identity, Kristin Santa Maria

All Dissertations

This dissertation examines how competing narratives related to madness and mental health can provide insight into the inconsistencies of preconceived biases that tie into privilege and power. These biases relate to identities associated with race, gender, class, and embodiment. By exploring madness narratives, we can see how madness often becomes a quality used to isolate and “other” people that act against typical societal and cultural norms. Works of fiction and nonfiction that pertain to madness narratives can either be used to perpetuate stereotypes of normalcy or as a vehicle to allow for a more open and frank discussion of madness …

Culture In Disney Films: A Comparative Analysis Of Color, Composition And Rhythm, Megan Paul

Interior Design Undergraduate Honors Theses

As a student of design, I take inspiration from everything around me. The media I consume, the places I visit, and the people I meet.By choice or not, I and my generation are subject to the various forms of pop culture, film is one of them. Film is one of few art forms which combines several methods and elements of design to produce a cohesive result, as opposed to a singular medium. This forms the connection to design thinking and is the foundation for the study.

Another critical component to pop culture is the ability to reach the masses. Due …

An Analysis Of Charging Practices And Their Impact On Battery Degradation In North American Electric Vehicles Built Between 2010-2020, Douglas William Edward Ferrier

All-Inclusive List of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Electric vehicles (EVs) are emerging as a component of the global solution to combat climate change. However, in North America, particularly in the United States and Canada, the transition away from internal combustion engines (ICE) has been slow. North America faces unique challenges due to its geographical size and population in comparison to other continents. The good news is that EV adoption is increasing within North America. Along with increased EV adoption, governments and public companies are constructing charging infrastructure to support increased consumer EV purchases. Despite increased adoption, many future and current owners throughout North American society have concerns …

The Whale-Road To Road House: A Study Of The Contemporary Transmission Of Beowulf, Haley Grindstaff

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores three versions of Beowulf: Gareth Hinds’s graphic novel Beowulf (2007), Maria Dahvana Headley’s translation Beowulf (2020), and Rowdy Herrington’s film Road House (1989). While Hinds and Headley fail to convey Beowulf as a cultural elegy by subtracting or misrepresenting significant scenes and characters, Road House superimposes the story of Beowulf onto 1980s America. Parallels between the plots of Beowulf and Road House and Road House’s interaction with the political underpinnings of the 80s (such as Reaganomics and the AIDS epidemic) make the film one of the best at capturing the elements of cultural elegy in the …

Ecologies Of (Domestic) Trauma, Ecologies Of (Domestic) Violence: A Rhetorical Procession Toward Mourning, Charlotte E. Lucke

All Dissertations

In this dissertation, I posit that intimate partner violence is entrenched in an often-overlooked historical and rhetorical legacy of patriarchal cultural, structural, and direct violences. Many scholars in and outside of rhetorical studies have analyzed and critiqued public representations of trauma and violence, including intimate partner violence. Joining this conversation, I focus on the limitations in the ways influential rhetorical domains both represent and respond to people who abuse their intimate partners. Often, mass media represents people who abuse their intimate partners as individuals void of contexts. Similarly, the criminal justice system holds individuals responsible through law enforcement and incarceration. …

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 …

Taking A Stab At Theory: How The New Halloween Movies Complicate The Horror Genre, Carson Haley Honeycutt

Honors Capstone Projects and Theses

No abstract provided.

She Speaks Her Truth: Black Female Self-Empowerment In African-American Centric Texts, Britt N. Seese

Master of Arts in English Plan II Graduate Projects

A Master's Portfolio that looks into African-American Women in African-American literature and theatrical works.

The Imagined Histories And Futures Of The Past: Wwi And The Cultural Imagination, Kelly Aliano

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

In this paper, I look at various modes of imagining the futures incarnated by the First World War, beginning with artists and writers, like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Erich Maria Remarque, who experienced and depicted the war from a firsthand point of view. From here, I expand that framework to include J.R.R. Tolkien, whose masterpiece Lord of the Rings may owe no small debt to his wartime experiences. I consider the Doctor Who episodes, “Human Nature” and “Family of Blood,” as contemporary attempts to reinsert WWI into the cultural consciousness. Finally, I look at the two versions of War Horse …

Peripheral Storytelling: Cinematic Structures And Audience Agency, Carlos Tkacz

Far West Popular Culture Association Annual Conference

A cultural phenomenon we are all unfortunately familiar with is terrible movies. By terrible movies I mean the kind that lack any semblance of structure, movies in which the characters are flatly drawn, the storylines are predictable, and the writing is especially bad. More specifically, I am interested in why these movies seem to be breeding without end and are no longer relegated to (maybe they never were) the low budget genre films some of us love to hate. I am talking here about the relatively new phenomena of the high-budget, popular-yet-terrible film.

Specifically, I am interested in applying Structuralism, …

How To Make A Monster: The Homosexual Experience In Horror And Thriller Cinema, Mia Lindenburg

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

Horror and thriller’s subtextual stories within cinema have been prominent across many subgenres, creating a wide-spread correlation between the homosexual and the monstruous that grew even noticeable after the start of the AIDS epidemic. Much of horror critique and analysis has been focused on the objectification of the feminine, but the unique role that the male plays in horror and thriller (both as a villain and victim) deserves equal inspection. The research done in this paper demonstrates how horror cinema skews the suggested gender roles and how fear makes us more easily let go of the societal norms held so …

Streaming's Effect On American Media Exports, Aviel Geronimo, Jonathan Swanberg

Undergraduate Research Symposium Lightning Talks

The Media and Entertainment (M&E) industry is largest in the United States with a total value of $660 Billion in 2020. The global M&E industry is valued at approximately $2 Trillion. New technologies have allowed for the advent of streaming services for music, television, film, books, video games, and more. Streaming services allow media exports to be easily accessed by consumers domestically and abroad.

Interwar Weimar Film And Masculinity: Challenging The Presumed Crisis Of Interwar German Gender Discourse From Selected Films From 1925-1931, Brandon Metcalf

Dissertations and Theses

The First World War altered the view of masculinity held by many in Germany and shredded what many regarded as unchangeable fixtures of German life. For German men, much of the interwar period meant dealing with the losses from the war, reconfiguring what it meant to be a man. This reconfiguration of gender took place in a context of change in Germany. Many women entered the workforce to replace the lost men. The economic downturn and reliance on funding from the United States motivated many within Germany to examine gender roles and to reassemble masculinity to meet changing circumstances.

This …

Celebrity Memes, Audioshop, And Participatory Fan Culture: A Case Study On Keanu Reeves Memes, Danielle Nielsen, Diane Sabenacio Nititham

Faculty & Staff Research and Creative Activity

Contemporary meme culture keeps Keanu Reeves’ image at the forefront of our imagination. Numerous Keanu-related memes circulate on the internet, featuring images of him from on and off screen. In this article, we argue that the rise of user-generated content, such as memes and social media, requires us to reconsider how audiences and fans consume, adapt, and circulate Keanu’s stardom. Specifically, we contend that memes and their attending participatory culture make Keanu familiar by placing him in knowable spaces and perpetuating his extraordinary ordinariness. To do so, we examine the 2019 ‘Keanu Reeves Walking in Slow Motion’ video clip from …

La Pirogue De Moussa Touré: Une Réponse Humanitaire À Une Crise Postcoloniale, Whitney A. Drew

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

Le journal examine le film de Moussa Touré La Pirogue et le compare à la conversation actuelle concernant l’immigration du Sénégal vers les îles Canaries. En hommage aux victimes du périple tumultueux, La Pirogue attire l’attention sur l’autre face de l’immigration. Le film analyse les idées à travers le prisme des tropes médiatiques popularisés par le psychologue David Olsen et l’historien Hayden White. Dans le contexte du document, ces tropes explorent le message de Touré sur l’immigration.

Nationless States And Stateless Beings: The Politics Of Identity And Citizenship In Claudio Mir’S Mondongo Scam And Cheech Marin’S Born In East L.A., Rebecca A. Barnes

Vernacular: New Connections in Language, Literature, & Culture

In the colloquial sense of the term, the word citizen refers to an individual who belongs to a nation, either by birthright or by naturalization. Therefore, citizenship denotes a political and a social belonging, an ideological home, and, in most cases, a strong foundation for the development of one’s personal identity. However, since nations are inherently artificial structures, made only tangible in the present day by a few centuries of recorded history, a philosophical approach to the term citizen complicates this definition. Based off critics including Hannah Arendt, Homi Bhabha, Fernando Ortiz, and Jacques Derrida, this essay seeks to explore …

From Stage To Screen: The Art Of The Movie Musical, Vanessa Lopez

Symposium of Student Scholars

In this article I take a deeper look into what it takes to make a successful movie musical. When sound was introduced into the movie industry, it was musicals that stole the show. From 1927’s first talkie, The Jazz Singer, to 2021’s movie rendition of Dear Evan Hansen, movie musicals have been a key component of the movie industry. Throughout this article I will be comparing the success of two different kinds of movie musicals. The first type that I will be analyzing are the movie musicals that were written and produced directly for the screen. This includes movies such …

Ergativity In Na'vi, Jacob Barnett

Liberty University Research Week

Undergraduate

Textual or Investigative

Without A Trace: Missing And Murdered Indigenous Women And Exclusion In The Media, Nellasa Mackenzie Stewart

Honors College Theses

The research in this paper is designed to explore the lack of media coverage of missing and murdered indigenous women through primarily qualitative methods and techniques as well as interpret the significance of the lack of coverage through the lens of a critical analysis. The research will address how the coverage of missing indigenous women qualitatively differs with the coverage received by missing white women in the United States and Canada. The research approaches include the analysis of news sources detailing cases of missing indigenous women and missing white women and how their coverage qualitatively differs, as well as a …

Transforming Leviathan: Job, Hobbes, Zvyagintsev And Philosophical Progression, Graham C. Goff

Journal of Religion & Film

The allegory of Leviathan, the biblical serpent of the seas, has undergone numerous distinct and even antithetical conceptions since its origin in the book of Job. Most prominently, Leviathan was the namesake of Thomas Hobbes’s 1651 political treatise and Andrey Zvyagintsev’s 2014 film of the same name, a damning indictment of Russian corruption. These three iterations underscore the societal transition from the recognition of power as being derived from God to the secularization of power in Hobbes’s philosophy, to the negation of the legitimacy of divine and secular institutional power, in Zvyagintsev’s controversial film. This examination of Leviathan’s three unique …