Visual Studies Commons^™

How Integration Of Hollywood Techniques Benefits Filmmakers And Improves Viewership: Application Of Bong Joon Ho’S Work, Lucy Cronin

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Bong Joon Ho utilizes techniques derived from Hollywood cinema to transcend borders globally, informing viewers about the socio-politics in South Korea while engaging them as well. Based on Film Scholar Andrew Higson’s theory that Hollywood is everywhere, I argue that by analyzing three of Bong Joon Ho’s films, Memories of Murder (2003), Mother (2009), and Parasite (2019), it is understood that through the language of imagery, South Korean socio-politics can be understood. Comprehensive literature reviews of the film's commentary on socio-political circumstances that reflect South Korea’s past or current struggles, and comparisons of the cinematography of critical scenes in the …

The Weight Of The Unknown: Xenophobia In Lucía Puenzo’S Xxy, Daylen Motamed

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This project examines how Lucía Puenzo’s film titled XXY critiques societal responses to unique identities (specifically intersex as an example), asking how xenophobia and normative gender expectations shape the marginalization of bodies that exist outside the binary. Situating the film within scholarship on queer adolescence and intersex representation, the analysis of this poster will argue that XXY exposes how institutions such as medicine and family reinforce harmful notions of “normalization.”

Drawing on close textual analysis of key scenes and engagement with critical sources, including Guillermo Olivera’s work on space and visibility and testimonies from intersex individuals, this study investigates how …

Lifelong Movie Goers, Hardworking Filmmakers, And Oscars Discourse, Haley Kamola

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This paper focuses on the discourse surrounding the Academy Awards, often referred to as the Oscars. The differences in discourse between people working in the film industry and those who watch movies are analyzed, as they represent the supplier and recipient of films and filmmaking. These two groups offer varied perspectives on the topic. The discourse of another group, a group in-between–student filmmakers–is also analyzed. To many people, what makes a film “good” is quite subjective, so the Academy Awards are often a subject of discourse. One particular focus of discourse will be the 2024 Academy Awards. There were a …

Sensorial Memories: A Cinema Speculum In Aftersun(2022) And Petite Maman(2021), Tingyi Zhu

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

In her 1975 article "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," Laura Mulvey used psychoanalysis as a political weapon to critique the issue of the male gaze in traditional Hollywood narrative cinema. Mulvey's work is pioneering for feminist film studies but was criticized and reexamined among film and feminist scholars. Building on the precedent of Mulvey and the feminist research of Luce Irigaray, contemporary scholar Lucy Bolton has proposed the camera as an "Irigarayan speculum," explaining how certain contemporary films delve into female characters' inner worlds, creating them with subjectivity and diversity. Drawing on contemporary feminist film theories and phenomenology theories, I …

She-Ra And The Princesses Of Power: An Intersectional Analysis Of A Modern Reboot, Laine Marshall

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Children’s animation offers the viewer a unique window into the nuances of current societal norms. Because children’s animation is made for the young, sensitive, and impressionable, it is carefully controlled and often heavily censored. Any statements made regarding the protagonist’s heroism or the villain’s malignity are meant to be accepted as universal truths for the growing minds of our youth. The recent 2018 Netflix and DreamWorks Animation animated reboot of the classic 1980's series "She-Ra: Princess of Power," now titled "She-Ra and the Princesses of Power," shook the animation industry with its groundbreaking representation and astounding visuals. Following its predecessor’s …

Here To Win, Not Here To Settle, Sarah Kaino

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Ethnic representation goes beyond color blind casting, the diversity of actors, or non-stereotypical casting choices. It is not just a matter of minorities being included in mainstream storylines, but minorities being able to tell their own stories as well. The relevance and relatability of storytelling in film and theatre transcends culture, which is in part the beauty of these mediums. But the impact of Asian Americans seeing stories from their own culture cannot be exchanged for anything less because there is no substitute for visibility. Movies are the source of inspiration for many. Movies can also reinforce a transparent ceiling …

Play This Paper: Forms Of Time In The Open World, Branching Narrative, Roleplaying Game, Jimmy Evans

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This paper is an analysis of chronotopes in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt that reveals how the procedurality of video games might suggest a refined heteroglossic form. Synthesizing contemporary american philosopher Ian Bogost’s concept of procedural rhetoric with the materialist linguistic theory of Mikhail Bakhtin, this ultimately hypertextual and interactive article reflects on language as Bakhtin once did: as "agent and agency” (MPL 146). After detailing how the three major processes of the game coordinate spacetime, it is necessary to conclude that its kaleidoscopic nature provides new opportunities for the rendering of the geometry of thought in what is a …

Images Of Sexually Deviant Women In French Film, Lara Fox

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This research explores representations of sexually deviant women in French film beginning with the New Wave film movement of the1960s and continuing to present day. This work examines the extent to which the gender of a film’s director affects the presentation of female nudity, infidelity, homosexuality, BDSM, and pornography onscreen. Through the lens of scholarly articles of film theorists and feminists such as Laura Mulvey, Simone de Beauvoir, and Hélène Cixous; and of both feministic and anti-feministic works of famous French directors such as Jean-Luc Godard, Catherine Breillat, and Emmanuelle Bercot, this capstone work identifies filmic triumphs and failures of …

French Women In Art: Reclaiming The Body Through Creation/Les Femmes Artistes Françaises : La Réclamation Du Corps À Travers La Création, Liatris Hethcoat

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The research I have conducted for my French Major Senior Thesis is a culmination of my passion for and studies of both French language and culture and the history and practice of Visual Arts. I have examined, across the history of art, the representation of women, and concluded that until the 20^th century, these representations have been tools employed by the makers of history and those at the top of the patriarchal system, used to control women’s images and thus women themselves. I survey these representations, which are largely created by men—until the 20^th century. I discuss pre-historical …