Visual Studies Commons^™

The Use And Implications Of The Visual Presentation In The 2024 Presidential Debates, Emma L. Rasmussen

Journalism Undergraduate Honors Theses

In this study, the two 2024 presidential debates were analyzed for a variety of different trends including: who was on screen, the different camera shots used, and camera movement. Looking specifically at who was on screen, coding counted the moderators, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris. Six different camera shot types were also analyzed including: wide-overview shot, split-screen format, single medium shot, two-shot head on, two-shot low camera angle, and two shot high-camera angle. Camera movement behaviors were: counterclockwise motion, clockwise motion, zoom-in, zoom-out, and no movement. Video formats of the 2024 CNN and ABC debates were run through …

How Design Depicted In Film Contributes To The Evolution Of Cultural Narratives, Catherine Vanhoose

Interior Design Undergraduate Honors Theses

Interior Design and its trends have had significant influence on pop culture and the general public through the course of human history. Acting as a universal language, design is a tool often used to help communicate ideas. The different interpretations of these ideas are what help to create cultural narratives. This capstone explores the relationships between film and design as creative arts, how they are affected by the current times and trends throughout the history of women, and as a result how women throughout history are influenced by these relationships. Findings provide insight on how interior design is used to …

Scarico: It’S Only A Movie, Most Of The Time, Thomas Nelson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Exploitation cinema is a domain of motion picture content catering to a viewership interested in imagery that is more provocative than what mainstream audiences desire to see. These types of films are typically considered lowbrow entertainment and have been made in every era, albeit in a limited capacity proportional to the niche audience demand for them. Some time periods see a rise in exploitation film productions in response to a growing demand for such content from a larger share of the broader cinematic audience. This relationship indicates that period-specific cultural factors can cause mainstream audience members to seek out more …

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 …

Screening For Our Fathers: Representations Of Native American Masculinity In American Film, Jeromy Duane Miller

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In this work, I examine representation of Native American masculinity in the American film industry. The American film industry began just over a century ago, and one of its earliest subjects was the Native American. Throughout its history, the American film industry has maintained a steady trajectory of exploitation and erasure of Native American men and their subsequent masculine qualities. While there are notable historical outliers and critical exceptions in the 21st century, Native American men in film have been continually reduced to corpses, devoid of significant social presence, and denied meaningful explorations of their sexuality and interpersonal identity. The …

Badnaam Women Of Bollywood: The Combative Sexual Politics Of Item Songs In India, Ketaki Deshpande

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study analyzes the controversial Bollywood convention “item number,” a vampy song with suggestive lyrics and hypersexualized imagery of dancing women, as a crucial cultural artefact reflecting the gender and sexual uneasiness in India. Sex avoidance is a common theme in Bollywood films and in the country, where media and people are heavily censored and policed by anti-Romeo squads under the Modi administration. The item girl breaks the sexual tension with a mega hit song and hook step that fuels the economy of dance and desire in India. While the song is completely unrelated to the narrative of the film, …

Media’S Portrayal Of Women And Its Impact On Body Image And Self-Esteem, Hannah Bareis

Marketing Undergraduate Honors Theses

This project addresses the portrayal of women in media and its damaging effects on body image and self-esteem. It raises two critical questions: What negative impact is media creating on women? What can be done to combat these destructive effects?

According to a study done by Common Sense Media, "American teens use an average of 9 hours of media daily, not including for school and homework" (Common Sense Media, 2015). This data, along with many others, shows the severity of media exposure to teens. This has brought a valuable discussion to the table. How has this impacted female body image, …

Beautiful People: The Past, Present, And Future Of The Fashion Industry's Thin Ideal, Shane White

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Negative body image among women has become an extremely relevant topic in the last decade. The “ideal” female body image and what a person should look like according to marketing and advertising has become a highly controversial issue. This project seeks to show how the fashion industry has, over centuries, shaped how people think they need to look and in today’s time and show how it has been a root cause of issues like body image complexes leading to negative self-perception, eating disorders, mental illnesses like anxiety, depression and addiction, and even suicide. Over the last three to four decades, …

New Flesh Cinema: Japanese Cyberpunk-Body Horror And Cinema As Catharsis In The Age Of Technology, Sarah Henry

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis provides a critical analysis of a specific group of films that combine the subgenres of cyberpunk and body horror which I call New Flesh Cinema. Films of this subgenre counter fears and anxieties of technological advancements by re-imagining the rise of technology and its societal effects as a transitional process through the illustration of literal and visceral depictions of the necessary alterations people will have to undergo in order to transition successfully into the new world. To contradict apocalyptic fears of advancing technology, these films offer a vision of a “New Flesh.” I argue the films share three …

Barrier-Breaking Women In Indian Cinema, Paulina Sobczak

Communication Student Works

During the last 100 years, Indian Cinema has played a major role in the influence of certain attitudes toward women in Indian society. Early on, women were portrayed as evil temptresses, sex symbols, and/or damsels in distress. These roles went against equality and were far more challenging for the women in Indian films. In 1954, a group of about 13,000 women petitioned the prime minister that these character types were unacceptable. They believed these films were having a negative effect on society, especially for the generations to come. This short documentary showcases the journey of the women who began this …

The Farnsworth House & 'The Grand Budapest Hotel': Cinematic Spaces, Rylie Davis

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Mies van der Rohe designed the Farnsworth House as a personification of his architectural vision, an architectural language void of the mistakes of the past that could be taught universally. Mies’ illusory idea of free-flowing anti-space was ideologically unconnected to the cinematic arts, nevertheless the application of his design philosophy consequently resulted in spaces that were scenographic and cinematic. Just as a cinematographer establishes a relationship between the viewer and the scene, Mies van der Rohe used perspective to frame views transforming the Farnsworth House into an intermediary object establishing a relationship between nature and the viewer. The Farnsworth House …

Moulins: Down The Arctic Drain, Jonathon Nugent Carlson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This observation-style nonfiction documentary film follows a National Science Foundation expedition to the Greenland ice sheet. The bivouac lasted for 25 continuous days. University of Arkansas Professor of Geosciences Matt Covington, Ph.D. teamed up with University of South Florida Professor Jason Gulley, Ph.D. to plan, propose, and ultimately accomplish the research goals of the expedition with the assistance of Ph.D. student Celia Trunz, M.S., and experienced expeditionary team member Vickie Siegel. As an observational-style documentary film, all scientific background information imparted herein is taken directly from interviews conducted with Professor Covington, to minimize opining.

The film begins in mid-flight, as …

Literary And Cinematic Representations Of Neoliberal Forms Of Contemporary Violence In Latin America With Special Interest In Mexico And Colombia, Ivan De Jesus Iglesias

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In the last decades, with an increased rhythm and greater intensity, the so-called neoliberal violence has come to play a relevant role within the history of world societies. The Latin American institutional, political, social, and economic changes of the 1970’s and 1980’s, especially those produced under dictatorships, contributed to create the conditions for the implementation of the processes of economic liberalization and global market as part of the concept of institutional modernization and cultural globalization that gave rise to the neoliberal mentality. In this context, neoliberalism becomes hegemonic as a mode of discourse and is incorporated into the way individuals …

Modern Palestinian Filmmaking In A Global World, Sarah Frances Hudson

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation employs a comprehensive approach to analyze the cinematic accent of feature length, fictional Palestinian cinema and offers concrete criteria to define the genre of Palestinian fictional film that go beyond traditional, nation-centered approaches to defining films. Employing Arjun Appardurai’s concepts of financescapes, technoscapes, mediascapes, ethnoscapes, and ideoscapes, I analyze the filmic accent of six Palestinian filmmakers: Michel Khleifi, Rashid Masharawi, Ali Nassar, Elia Suleiman, Hany Abu Assad, and Annemarie Jacir. After a detailed examination of each filmmaker’s body of work, I examine the trends that occur across the genre that have the greatest impact on the Palestinian filmic …

Communicating Through Space: An Exploration Of Interdisciplinary Relationships Between Architecture And Theatre Through Practical Application, Erin E. Hunter

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

Space as an expression of ideas is a relevant topic both in theatrical design and architectural design. Both create worlds, places in time, and experiences. The theatre is a platform where architectural ideas can be explored on a real scale. Audiences can make associations based on representation on the stage and connotations from popular culture. Theatre is more temporary than architecture by nature, and therefore theatre can reference architectural ideas in temporary settings to tell a story. By analyzing the physical characteristics of a space and the societal and cultural conditions that created it, a theatre set can isolate moments …

“Deliberate Voluptuousness”: The Monstrous Women Of Dracula And Carmilla, Judith Bell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Vampire women play a culturally significant role in films and literature by revealing the extent to which deviation from Socially accepted behavior is tolerated. In this thesis, I compare the vampire women of Bram Stoker’s Dracula and J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla to their depictions in recent adaptations. In Stoker’s Dracula, the vampire sisters are representative of the shortcomings of 19th century gender roles, especially in regard to women’s communities. In recent adaptations, the vampire sisters’ revealing clothing, promiscuity, and lack of characterization are still closely connected with villainy, and as in Stoker’s novel, the women’s violent deaths in the …

(Re)Animating The Horror Genre: Explorations In Children's Animated Horror Films, Megan Estelle Troutman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This project seeks to define the subgenre of children's animated horror film by examining its classification within the children's film genre and its use of generic conventions of horror. While this project does not aim to conflate children's film as a genre and animation as a medium, the scope of this project will be limited to children's animated horror films from 1993 - present day. In order to explore the subgenre of children's animated horror films from 1993-present, I will focus specifically on the following films: Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were …

The Role Of Women In Film: Supporting The Men -- An Analysis Of How Culture Influences The Changing Discourse On Gender Representations In Film, Jocelyn Nichole Murphy

Journalism Undergraduate Honors Theses

Women are underrepresented in film. Racial minorities are underrepresented in film. White men are vastly overrepresented in film. How do these facts affect audiences that are so demographically different from what is portrayed onscreen? This study serves to examine how character representations in film relate to the demographics of the audience viewing them, and how these portrayals have changed over a 20-year span. Considering the depictions of women in the context of social gender movements of the last two decades will provide a deeper understanding of the attitudes toward female characters, as well as factors that shape the themes and …

Ideology In Popular Late Twentieth And Twenty-First Century Children's And Young Adult Literature And Film, Iris Grace Shepard

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Texts created for the consumption of children and young adults are not simple texts made for the sole purpose of entertaining young audiences. In fact, these texts are complicated, multi-faceted texts that function both in the creation and performance of childhood. Children's and young adult literature and film disseminated mainstream ideology about young people's place in society and attempt to enculturate young readers and viewers in regards to race, gender, age, and Social class. However, by helping young people interact critically with these texts, critical thinking skills as well as a passion for reading can be fostered. In addition, by …

Happily Ever After Take Two: Rewriting Femininity In Hybridization Fairy Tale Films, Megan Estelle Troutman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The tradition of fairy tales has evolved drastically over the past five hundred years. At the beginning of the 20th century, fairy tale cartoons became widely popular as an independent medium, as well as introductions to larger films. In 1937, Walt Disney started the tradition of fairy tale cinema with the release of Snow White. Since that time, Disney has released and re-released eleven princess fairy tale films. Critics and parents alike ridicule Disney for its depictions of women as submissive and subservient. Recent films have used fairy tale tropes, without referring to a specific classic tale, in order to …

The Relationship Among Beginning And Advanced American Sign Language Students And Credentialed Interpreters Across Two Domains Of Visual Imagery: Vividness And Manipulation, Linda Stauffer

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Given the visual-gestural nature of ASL it is reasonable to assume that visualization abilities may be one predictor of aptitude for learning ASL. This study tested a hypothesis that visualization abilities are a foundational aptitude for learning a signed language and that measurements of these skills will increase as students progress from beginning ASL students to advanced language learners and, ultimately to credentialed interpreters. Participants in this study consisted of 90 beginning and 66 advanced ASL students in five interpreter education programs in four southern states along with 68 credentialed interpreters. Students and interpreters were administered the Vividness of Visual …

Cinematherapy As A Clinical Intervention: Theoretical Rationale And Empirical Credibility, Michael Powell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Two problems must be addressed before cinematherapy can advance as a credible therapeutic intervention: (a) a solid theoretical rationale must exist supporting its use in mental health counseling, and (b) quantifiable data must exist promoting its treatment efficacy, and these data need to extend to various clinical populations representing a range of mental health conditions. This study intends to address both problems by critiquing the theoretical and experimental literature on cinematherapy and measuring the relative effectiveness of a structured, nondirective cinematherapy intervention at improving the hope and optimism of an adult diagnosed with Major Depression. One person (JV= 1) was …