Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Poison Ivy's Green Screen Debut: A Rhetorical Criticism On Erasing Identity On Screen, Jennifer Baney

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

This project investigates the loss of power on screen for female comic book characters. Specifically, I investigate how scenes create narratives using heteronormativity and over-sexualization of female characters. The artifact of analysis included in this project is Batman and Robin (1997). This text focuses on Poison Ivy, including the background of the character before dissecting her role in the film. Turning to Sonja J. Foss (2009) and her feminist critique as a guide to understanding the implications of this research. Using feminist criticism, I argue that Poison Ivy was put in a lesser position, removed of her power, and was …

Trapped In The Mouse House: How Disney Has Portrayed Racism And Sexism In Its Princess Films, Jessica L. Laemle

Student Publications

This paper analyzes the history of one of the most popular entertainment companies in the world, Disney. Through the discussion of multiple princess films, from the beginning of Disney to the more current films, I analyze the ongoing racism and sexism that is presented in these timeless Disney films. I will discuss the implications that this racism and sexism has on the children who view these films and what responsibility Disney has as a worldwide company in terms of what it displays to its audience.

Building Brand Kurdistan: Helly Luv, The Gender Of Nationhood, And The War On Terror, Nicholas S. Glastonbury

Publications and Research

In the early 2000s, the Kurdistan Regional Government hired a US-based firm to begin a public relations campaign called “The Other Iraq.” Since that time, it has worked with a number of PR and lobbying firms to build a cultural, political, and financial apparatus that I refer to as Brand Kurdistan. This apparatus aims to prove to Western audiencesthat the Kurds are a liberal exception in an illiberal Middle East, and to build prospects of KRG’s eventual national independence. This article explores the connections between Brand Kurdistan and the gendering of Kurdish nationalism, focusing particularly on Kurdish pop diva Helly …

The Reification Of Hegemonic Masculinity Via Heteronormativity, Sexual Objectification, And Masculine Performances In Tau Kappa Epsilon Recruitment Videos, Viki Tomanov

Butler Journal of Undergraduate Research

Fraternity members constitute a large percentage of men who hold highly influential jobs in politics, large corporations, and the like. Since fraternities are limited to men-only, it is important to examine how masculinity is both rhetorically constructed and subsequently performed. Tau Kappa Epsilon (TKE), the fraternity with the largest amount of chapters nationwide, is the focus of my analysis. Its popularity among college campuses signifies that its recruitment is successful and that, regardless of initiation into the fraternity, many men (and women) view TKE as an example of masculinity. In my analysis, I examine TKE recruitment videos from various universities …

The Dmz Responds, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

Seo-Young Chu’s “The DMZ Responds” appeared in Telos 184 (Fall 2018), a special issue on Korea edited by Haerin Shin.

From Rice Eaters To Soy Boys: Race, Gender, And Tropes Of ‘Plant Food Masculinity’, Iselin Gambert, Tobias Linné

Animal Studies Journal

Tropes of ‘effeminized’ masculinity have long been bound up with a plant-based diet, dating back to the ‘effeminate rice eater’ stereotype used to justify 19th-century colonialism in Asia to the altright’s use of the term ‘soy boy’ on Twitter and other social media today to call out men they perceive to be weak, effeminate, and politically correct (Gambert and Linné). This article explores tropes of ‘plant food masculinity’ throughout history, focusing on how while they have embodied different social, cultural, and political identities, they all serve as a tool to construct an archetypal masculine ideal. The analysis draws on a …

Wonder Woman: A Case Study For Critical Media Literacy, Adriana N. Fehrs

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

To better grasp the messages Wonder Woman is sending to its audience, a Critical Media Literacy (CML), ideological, and feminist framework is used to examine whether, and if so how, Wonder Woman succumbs to stereotypes that are often portrayed in the media. These theories will be used in the ensuing project to build a curriculum aimed at high school students.The curriculum positions students to examine the hegemonic ideologies that are represented in pop culture, specifically Wonder Woman.

Rape Culture In Disney Animated Princess Movies, Patricia Paulson

All Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Other Capstone Projects

Gender stereotypes, rape myths, and rape culture are perpetuated in U.S. media, including media aimed at young people. Previous research in the areas of gender, gender stereotypes, portrayals of gender in movies, Disney movies, rape myths, and rape culture are all examined. Prior to this research, no study had been conducted to determine if the characteristics of rape culture are portrayed in Disney animated princess movies. For this research, an ethnographic content analysis is conducted on all thirteen of the Disney animated princess movies to determine if the characteristics associated with rape culture are portrayed in these movies. The findings …

"Don't Be Such A Girl, I'M Only Joking!" Post-Alternative Comedy, British Panel Shows, And Masculine Spaces, Lindsay Anne Weber

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis discusses the gender disparity in British panel shows. In February 2014 the BBC’s Director of Television enforced a quota stating panel shows needed to include one woman per episode. This quota did not fully address the ways in which the gender imbalance was created. This thesis argues that the gender imbalance stems from post-feminist sensibilities and masculine-centric trends in British comedy and culture. This work demonstrates this through a discourse analysis of the opinions expressed about panel shows by the British popular press and media personalities from 2002 to 2017. The discourse analysis exposes patterns where British producers …

The Gender Wage Gap In The Film Industry: A Review Of Literature, Christine Pires

Senior Theses

The gender wage gap is defined as the difference between the amounts of money paid to women and men, often for doing the same work (Cambridge, 2017). The gender wage gap is a reoccurring financial issue in all aspects of the business world. Most all career paths have had a wage gap between men and women. Having equal pay for equal work should be a thing of the past. However, women today are still fighting to close the wage gap and work equally in all fields. The film industry is one of the largest entertainment industries in America and still, …

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.

Politics Of Feminist Revision In Di Prima's Loba, Polina Mackay

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Politics of Feminist Revision in di Prima's Loba" Polina Mackay explores Diane di Prima's two-volume epic Loba (1998) and, through a comparison of di Prima to the work of Adrienne Rich, argues that Loba practices a politics of feminist revision. Further, Mackay examines the ways in which di Prima starts to move away from the recovery project of female voices in patriarchal culture, associated with late twentieth-century Feminism, towards a women's literature which need not be defined entirely through its resistance to patriarchal narratives of gender in men's literature. Here it focuses on di Prima's revisionist …

Commercial Content Moderation: Digital Laborers' Dirty Work, Sarah T. Roberts

Media Studies Publications

In this chapter from the forthcoming Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class and Culture Online (Noble and Tynes, Eds., 2016), I introduce both the concept of commercial content moderation (CCM) work and workers, as well as the ways in which this unseen work affects how users experience the Internet of social media and user-generated content (UGC). I tie it to issues of race and gender by describing specific cases of viral videos that transgressed norms and by providing examples from my interviews with CCM workers. The interventions of CCM workers on behalf of the platforms for which they labor directly contradict …

Sticking To The Script: Sexual Scripts In The Slasher Sub-Genre, Jennifer L. Clay

Theses and Dissertations--Communication

The “slasher” sub-genre has been immensely popular, even spawning television shows that invoke the familiar slasher conventions. This sub-genre has simultaneously become vilified by media researchers over the years. The slasher has received particular criticism for allegedly reinforcing regressive attitudes regarding female sexuality. This study applies sexual script theory to better understand the messages about sex found throughout the sub-genre. This study utilizes content analysis to study the more recent iterations of the slasher sub-genre including the re-make, the modern slasher film and the slasher television show. This analysis uncovered that the slasher sub-genre has evolved over time. While slasher …

Gender In The Slasher Film Genre, Brandon Bosch

Department of Sociology: Faculty Publications

It slices, it dices, it has entertained and scared audiences for decades—it’s the slasher film. Despite being dismissed by critics, the slasher film refuses to go away. Even if you don’t go to these movies, they are hard to escape, as every Halloween at least a few trick or treaters will dress up as a character from these movies. Given the longevity and popularity of this genre, I want to spend today talking about how these films often represent gender.

Scholars have also studied slasher films, and have provided a more formal definition than the one that I just provided. …

Happiest People Alive: An Analysis Of Class And Gender In The Trinidad Carnival, Asha L. St. Bernard

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Many of the marketing strategies inherent to the modern version of the Trinidad Carnival include texts that represent Trinidadians as young, fit, bikini-wearing, party enthusiasts. In these advertisements, Trinidadians are often characterized as carefree and welcoming to anyone participating in the much-anticipated annual festival. However, dominant narratives highlight certain groups and cultural aspects of the island while frequently masking several inequalities. They cleverly conceal other narratives and therefore marginalize groups and individuals from the very festival that is understood by many as a national symbol. Through informal participant-observation, and an analysis of some of the main promotional material, in particular …

Commercial Content Moderation: Digital Laborers' Dirty Work, Sarah T. Roberts

Sarah T. Roberts

In this chapter from the forthcoming Intersectional Internet: Race, Sex, Class and Culture Online (Noble and Tynes, Eds., 2016), I introduce both the concept of commercial content moderation (CCM) work and workers, as well as the ways in which this unseen work affects how users experience the Internet of social media and user-generated content (UGC). I tie it to issues of race and gender by describing specific cases of viral videos that transgressed norms and by providing examples from my interviews with CCM workers. The interventions of CCM workers on behalf of the platforms for which they labor directly contradict …

Reel Women: Gender Stereotypes In Film, Kayla Marie Krahn

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

Horror films portray female characters as sexual, helpless victims. When horror films attempt to portray female characters as the hero, this sends a message to audiences that women can be strong and independent. An experiment was conducted to test an audience's perceptions gender stereotypes of women in the horror film, Scream. Results indicate that stereotypes present in the horror film effected the participants' perception of women as competent heroes. Female participants were also more likely to perceive women as more competent than male participants. Then, from a qualitative standpoint, five individuals were interviewed about their perceptions of characters in their …

Moving Foward?: Problematic Ideologies In Twenty-First Century Fairy Tale Films, Alyson Kilmer

All Master's Theses

Fairy tales, as a reflection of our values and belief systems, are crucial in shaping and maintaining cultural ideologies. In the twenty-first century, cinematic fairy tales have the unique position of representing such values in an expansive and expeditious manner. Audiences must therefore be critically conscious of the messages promoted by these tales. An analysis of the five most popular contemporary fairy tale films, Disney’s Princess and the Frog (2009), Tangled (2010), Universal’s Snow White and the Huntsman (2012), and Disney’s Frozen (2013) and Maleficent (2014), revealed minimal attempts to propitiate critical audiences in regard to changing cultural values, but …

Gender Identity Construction Through Talk About Video Games, Sara M. Cole

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "Gender Identity Construction through Talk about Video Games" Sara Cole discusses the construction of gender identity in terms of experiences of digital media and interactive play. Digital literacy expresses, shares, and reaffirms gendered self-identification through experiences of video game play with narratives that either confirm or deny stereotypical biases. In-depth interviews were used to explore the effects of play practices on conceptions of masculinity and personal identity in males who grew up in the 1980s by focusing on a linguistic analysis of the pragmatics of their shared thoughts on play, fantasy, use of digital media, and violence. …

How Toni Morrison's Facebook Page Re(Con)Figures Race And Gender, Beatriz Revelles-Benavente

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In her article "How Toni Morrison's Facebook Page Re(con)figures Race and Gender" Beatriz Revelles-Benavente explores Morrison's Facebook page and comments on it. In 2010, Morrison opened a Facebook page where she received a large amount of comments and created debates and Revelles-Benavente analyses how these comments navigate questions of race and gender. Based on theoretical considerations about issues of race and gender in cyberculture and applied to the narratives posted on Morrison's Facebook page, Revelles-Benavente argues that the problematics of race and gender are relational and the question needs to be centered on the object of study as the relation …

Doctor Who And The Creation Of A Non-Gendered Hero Archetype, Alessandra J. Pelusi

Theses and Dissertations

This project investigates the ways in which the television program Doctor Who creates a new, non-gendered hero archetype.

Is First, They Killed My Father A Cambodian Testimonio?, John Maddox

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "Is First, They Killed My Father a Cambodian testimonio" John T. Maddox discusses aspects of the testimonial. Dialoguing with leading Latin Americanists, Maddox argues that Cambodian writer Loung Ung's First, They Killed My Father (2000) challenges this uniqueness and opens studies on the testimonio to new possibilities for intellectual reflection and political activism. In Maddox's view, the continued use of the term testimonio would serve as a reference to this long-standing tradition of writing and thinking about political violence in Latin America. After a discussion of the debate of the definition and function of testimonio and …

Circulating Emotion: Race, Gender, And Genre In Crash, E. Deidre Pribram Ph.D.

Faculty Publications: Communication

Crash (Paul Haggis, 2005) follows a range of diverse but intersecting characters who, in their entirety, are meant to represent a social landscape: modern American urban existence. Through an ensemble cast and a multi-story structure, the film depicts a circuitous society in which one part affects other parts that, in turn, affect all parts.

The film is structured by means of three entangled, sometimes complementary, sometimes competing, cultural discourses. The first discourse is race. In a deeply troubling way, race is most overtly what the film is “about.” In the world of the film, virtually every character is at some …

The Paradox Of Gender Among West China Missionary Collectors, 1920-1950, Cory A. Willmott

Cory A. Willmott

During the turbulent years between the Chinese nationalist revolution of 1911 and the communist victory of 1949, a group of missionaries lived and worked in West China whose social gospel theologies led to unusual identification with Chinese. Among the regular social actors in their lives were itinerant “curio men” who, amidst the chaos of feuding warlords, gathered up the heirlooms of the deposed Manchurian aristocracy and offered these wares for sale on the quiet and orderly verandahs of the mansions inside the missionary compounds of West China Union University. Although missionary men and women often collected the same types of …

Women & Language: Essays On Gendered Communication Across Media, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

The present volume of essays examines women's communication as it has evolved historically across multiple mediums. Part I explores how women became "gossip girls" and the important role of gossip in the perception and practice of female communication. Essays in Part II cover the convergence of oral and written communication in women's literature. Gendered performance in such arenas as salsa dance, Dr. Phil and the Internet is examined in Part III, and essays in Part IV discuss women's communication in the technology-rich 21st century. This excerpt features the introduction and one essay from the co-editor.

Women & Language: Essays On Gendered Communication Across Media, Melissa R. Ames

Faculty Research & Creative Activity

The present volume of essays examines women's communication as it has evolved historically across multiple mediums. Part I explores how women became "gossip girls" and the important role of gossip in the perception and practice of female communication. Essays in Part II cover the convergence of oral and written communication in women's literature. Gendered performance in such arenas as salsa dance, Dr. Phil and the Internet is examined in Part III, and essays in Part IV discuss women's communication in the technology-rich 21st century. This excerpt features the introduction and one essay from the co-editor.

Women & Language: Essays On Gendered Communication Across Media, Melissa R. Ames

Melissa A. Ames

The present volume of essays examines women's communication as it has evolved historically across multiple mediums. Part I explores how women became "gossip girls" and the important role of gossip in the perception and practice of female communication. Essays in Part II cover the convergence of oral and written communication in women's literature. Gendered performance in such arenas as salsa dance, Dr. Phil and the Internet is examined in Part III, and essays in Part IV discuss women's communication in the technology-rich 21st century. This excerpt features the introduction and one essay from the co-editor.

Audience Interpretations Of "Crash", Debbie Owens

Debbie Owens