Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Film and Media Culture'
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1
Hoare, Jonathan Giles. "Imperialism & 'alternative' film culture : the Empire Marketing Board film unit : 1926-1933." Thesis, Kingston University, 2010. http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/21827/.
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This thesis explores the early years of the British documentary movement as it formed within the Empire Marketing Board between 1926 and 1933. I begin by offering new insights into this formation by focusing on key institutions that have been under-researched in existing literature. The movement started with government money and resources, in a position formalised by the EMB's use of the Imperial Institute, a Victorian institution with an established history of public education, exhibition and research. Within this official institutional framework the EMB's filmmakers enjoyed an extraordinary level of creative freedom. They were simultaneously embedded within the'alternative' film culture that had developed from the independent screenings of the London Film Society (1925-1939). The Society offered coverage of the art and history of film for the first time in Britain, alongside showcasing a wealth of contemporaneous experimental and avant-Barde fiction and non-fiction work. Drawing on a variety of primary archival sources (some of which have not been previously explored) in the first three chapters I examine how the EMB's film unit developed in a relationship between the Board, the Imperial Institute and the Film Society. This position defined the work they produced, and the style and the content of their films for the EMB. The filmmakers were part of an Imperial discourse that aimed to promote Britain and the British Empire, however they were also engaging with, and contributing to, an international movement of filmmakers and intellectuals who were using documentary film to look closely at contemporary society from new perspectives. The fourth and fifth chapters offer fresh insights into filmmaking at the EMB, with a personal study based on new research into the life and work of Basil Wright. Although he was a central figure at the EMB, his role has remained under-researched. The material I present here offers a new account of the early formation of the documentary movement at the EMB and the original resources that the Board and its filmmakers drew upon.
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Haupt, Adam. "Stealing Empire : debates about global capital, counter-culture, technology and intellectual property." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/8646.
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Includes bibliographical references (p. [223]-246).This thesis examines the agency of marginalised subjects in the context of global capitalism and the information age. The key question that is addressed is whether transnational corporations have appropriated aspects of cultural identity, creative expression and technological innovation for their own enrichment - to the detriment of civil society. Where this is the case, this thesis considers what opportunities exist for issuing challenges to the power of global corporations. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's concept of Empire provides the theoretical foundation for examining cultural, technological and legal conflicts between the interests of citizens and those of corporations. Hardt and Negri theorise the ways in which former imperial powers continue to extend their military, economic and political power in former colonies. The authors argue that former imperial powers no longer compete with each other for the same resources because they now co-operate with each other through multilateral organisations and trade agreements. Ultimately, the key beneficiaries of these modes of co-operation are global corporations that tend to monopolise the production and distribution of technological and cultural products at the expense of the public interest and the functioning of democracy. This work considers the possibilities of responding to Empire and resisting globalisation through strategies that employ some of the same decentralised, network-based techniques that benefit global corporate entities. Hardt and Negri's concept of 'the multitude' as a multiplicity of singularities makes sense of the diverse struggles under discussion in this study, providing the conceptual basis for possibilities of multiple engagements with Empire that are not reductive and that do not exclude certain interest groups. This is an interdisciplinary project that uses case studies to analyse the relationships between law and policy documents, technological development, and the production of cultural texts (such as hip-hop music). Specifically, this work explores the MP3 revolution and Napster (version one); digital sampling in hip-hop; hip-hop activism on South Africa's Cape Flats and these activists' use of new media in their pursuit of social justice. It addresses concerns about the commodification of youth culture as well as debates about intellectual property and the United States' use of trade agreements as enforcement mechanisms that serve the interests of its own corporations. This thesis presents an overview of copyright and trade agreements in order to examine the vested interests that underlie them. In keeping with the focus on globalisation and cultural imperialism, US legislation - such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act - is discussed in relation to alternatives to proprietary approaches toward intellectual property, such as open source software and Creative Commons licenses.
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Sadegh-Vaziri, Persheng. "Iranian Documentary Film Culture: Cinema, Society, and Power 1997-2014." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2015. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/363567.
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Media & CommunicationPh.D.
Iranian documentary filmmakers negotiate their relationship with power centers every step of the way in order to open creative spaces and make films. This dissertation covers their professional activities and their films, with particular attention to 1997 to 2014, which has been a period of tremendous expansion. Despite the many restrictions on freedom of expression in Iran, especially between 2009 and 2013, after the uprising against dubious election practices, documentary filmmakers continued to organize, remained active, and produced films and distributed them. In this dissertation I explore how they engaged with different centers of power in order to create films that are relevant to their society. To focus this topic, my research explores media institutions, their filmmaking practices, and the strategies they use to produce and distribute their films. This research is important because it explores the inherent contradictions in the existence of a vibrant documentary film community in a country that is envisioned as uniformly closed and oppressive in the West. The research is also personally motivated, because I have close connections to the Iranian documentary film world, where I previously made films and produced television programs. I conduct the study with a multi-faceted approach, utilizing participant observation in the field in a four-month period, in-depth interviews with key players, personal reflections, and textual analysis of the films. I focus on about twenty filmmakers and their films, chosen from a pool of more than 500 documentary filmmakers, giving a cross section of this community based on their age, sex, and their professional history and success within Iran and internationally.
Temple University--Theses
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Viljoen, Estella. "New masculinities in a vernacular culture : a comparative analysis of two South African men's lifestyle magazines." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/8129.
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Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (p. 273-289).
This thesis chronicles the emergence of men's lifestyle magazines within South Africa between 1997 and 2007. It aims to contextualize the emergence of these magazines within the broader South African context and position each magazine as representing a nuanced masculine ideal to the mainstream male readers. This thesis then offers a critical reading of two more marginal men's lifestyle magazines, namely, MaksiMan (2001-2007) and BLINK (2004-2007).
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Aceti, Lanfranco. "European avant-garde : art, borders and culture in relationship to mainstream cinema and new media." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2005. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/7762/.
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This research analyses the impact of transformation and hybridization processes at the intersection of art, science and technology. These forms of transformation and hybridization are the result of contemporary interactions between classic and digital media. It discusses the concept of 'remediation' presented by Bolter and proposes the concept of 'digital ekphrasis,' which is based on Manovich' s analyses of the interactions between classic and digital media. This is a model which, borrowed from semiotic structures, encompasses the technical as well as aesthetic and philosophical transformations of contemporary media. The thesis rejects Baudrillard's and Virilio's proposed concepts of 'digital black hole' as the only possible form of evolution of contemporary digital media. It proposes a different concept for the evolutionary model of contemporary hybridization processes based on contemporary forms of hybridizations that are rooted in aesthetic, philosophical and technological developments. This concept is argued as emancipated from the 'religious' idea of a 'divine originated' perfect image that Baudrillard and Virilio consider to be deteriorated from contemporary hybridization experimentation. The thesis proposes, through historical examples in the fine arts, the importance of transmedia migrations and experimentations as the framework for a philosophical, aesthetic and technological evolutionary concept of humanity freed from the restrictions of religious imperatives.
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Sachs, Aaron Dickinson. "The hip-hopsploitation film cycle: representing, articulating, and appropriating hip-hop culture." Diss., University of Iowa, 2009. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/591.
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In this dissertation, I examine the articulation of hip-hop in the mid-1980s as it emerged onto the national stage of American popular culture. Using Articulation Theory, I weave together an argument explaining how and why hip-hop went from being articulated as a set of multicultural and inclusive practices, organized around breaking, graffiti, and DJing, to being articulated to a violent, misogynistic, and homophobic hyper-masculine representation of blackness as essentially rap music culture. In doing so I also argue that there are real political, social, racial, cultural, and ideological implications to this shift in articulation; that something is at stake in defining hip-hop as both black and rap music culture.
I put forward this argument by making three distinct steps over the course of this dissertation. First, I identify a change in how hip-hop was represented and thus articulated in popular media. Through an intertextual analysis of the hip-hopsploitation genre films I show that early hip-hop was being represented primarily as a set of cultural practices cohering around breaking, graffiti, and DJing rather than the now dominant articulation as rap music culture.
Next I set forth one possible reason for this shift within the limiting conditions set by the available media technologies and means of commodification. The visual nature of hip-hop's early articulation coupled with the economic inaccessibility of consumer home video made breaking and graffiti difficult to commodify compared to rapping as an aural element. Using "technological determinist" theorists like McLuhan, Innis, and Kittler, I argue that understanding how hip-hop as been historically constructed requires analyzing the limiting effect that the material conditions of media technologies have on the production of hip-hop.
Finally, I offer a second, racial and cultural reason for this shift in articulation, and begin identifying some of the significance of this shift. A key aspect of the articulation of hip-hop as rap music is the further connection to blackness. This connection may function to maintain white patriarchal hegemony by displacing it on the black body via rap music: a complex dynamic of disidentification and appropriation.
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Kojo, Lovis. "Filmkritikens retorik : En kvalitativ studie av recensioner till hög- och populärkulturella filmverk." Thesis, Umeå universitet, Institutionen för kultur- och medievetenskaper, 2018. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:umu:diva-146647.
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The divide between popular culture and high culture has been a subject of discussion since the early days of media research. Even though popular culture has a somewhat higher status today than in the early 1900’s, the division between the two cultural forms still exists. For example, the movies that appeal to the great masses are rarely awarded the most prestigious European film prices. The aim of this study was to examine how these two cultural practices is separated in film reviews on the Swedish film site MovieZine with the use of the socio-cultural theories of Adorno, Horkheimer and Bourdieu. The main issues consisted of what types of rhetorical arguments the critics use to value the film, and what types of cultural references they make in the different reviews The selection of the movie reviews for this study was based on the ten most viewed movies in Swedish cinema in 2016, and ten movies that were awarded some of the most prestigious and refined American and European film prices in the same year. The general result showed that the film critics used different types of rhetorical arguments based on what type of films they reviewed. In their reviews of the more high cultural films, the citric based their arguments on matters that are considered to be of a more intellectual and analytical kind, than in the reviews of the films that appeal to the masses. The critics often referred to movies or other cultural phenomenon that could be placed on the same side of the cultural spectrum as the movies they reviewed.
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Shaw, Neil. "Culture and gentrification on upper Long street : a study of Long street's evolution and contemporary incarnation, with a look at documentary styles and the cinematic city." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/7972.
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Konkle, Amanda. "MARILYN MONROE’S STAR CANON: POSTWAR AMERICAN CULTURE AND THE SEMIOTICS OF STARDOM." UKnowledge, 2016. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/28.
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Although Marilyn Monroe was one of the most famous American film stars, and a monumental cultural figure, her film work has been studied far less than her biography. Applying C.S. Peirce’s semiotic categories of icon, index, and symbol, this research explains how Monroe acquired meaning as an actress: Monroe was a powerful, but simplified, public image (an icon); an indicator of a particular historical and social context (an index); and an embodiment of significant cultural debates (a symbol).
Analyzing Monroe as an icon reveals how her personal life, which contradicted her official publicity story, generated public sympathy and led to a perceived intimacy between the star and her fans. Monroe’s persona developed through her roles in films about marriage. We’re Not Married (1952) and Niagara (1953) expose the pitfalls of marriage. In response to fan criticism of Monroe’s aggressive persona in these films, however, Darryl F. Zanuck, in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), consciously distanced Monroe both from her aggressive persona and her implicit criticism of marriage. Monroe’s films, in particular, The Seven Year Itch (1955), Bus Stop (1956), and Some Like it Hot (1959), also revealed the tensions inherent in postwar understandings of female sexuality. Monroe’s role in her final completed film, The Misfits (1960), both acknowledges and resists her status as a symbol. This film unites Monroe’s screen persona and off-screen life in resistance to conventional values: her character embraces divorce, lives with a man who is not her husband, and openly criticizes men who betray trust. This film most extensively interweaves Monroe as an icon, an index, and a symbol. In so doing, it reveals how Monroe embodied the contradictions inherent in both postwar culture and Hollywood stardom.
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Cohen, Hart K. "From ethnographic film to indigenous media : communications and the evolution of the ethnographic subject." Thesis, McGill University, 1989. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=75987.
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An important connection exists between ethnographic film and indigenous media though they are rarely linked in film theory. The link is not just hypothetical. Cast in the form of historiography, ethnographic film and indigenous media practices may be read as a continuist discourse with a number of critical turns. One such turn is the transformation of the ethnographic subject into a critical public. What is described as indigenous media allows us to categorize this transformation as a significant difference for the practice of ethnography, but the question remains as to whether this difference is retreivable in the terms set by ethnography. The emergence of the indigenous ethnographer has consequences for understanding the problems in the relations between Western and non-Western cultural formations. As a means through which a culture or nation may represent its own historical evolution, indigenous media is also, however, a discourse in formation--characterized by heterogenous claims and practices.
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Omar, Hadeer. "Egyptianization: Culture hacking as a method." VCU Scholars Compass, 2016. http://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/4114.
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In a broad sense, cultures undergo a metamorphoses due to the external influences and systems impacting the evolution of internal identities. Conversely, Individuals within cultures react to those external influences and systems.The act of hacking a culture is an opportunity to challenge an existing or imported system in order to bring about change and improvement. An aspect of culture hacking is to create messages of satire or irony in order to criticize, or completely reject established systems within cultures.
Post Arab spring, Egyptians practiced culture hacking by applying their cultural tools to external systems and influences, producing a process of ‘Egyptianization’. This investigation examines the MFA program’s culture at Virginia Commonwealth University in Qatar as a case study, and adapts those Egyptianized tools to hack the culture. The program has its own values, rituals, traditions, imported systems, influences and dominant symbols. The aim of this thesis is to generate customized hacking methodologies that identify cracks within this culture and develop an innovative framework to critically analyze them through visual representation.
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Cloeren, Nicole B. ""C" is for Cookie, Culture, and Capitalism: The Muppet Phenomenon in the United States." W&M ScholarWorks, 1999. https://scholarworks.wm.edu/etd/1539626195.
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Lester, Isabel T. "The Power of Media in the Criminal Justice System: How Celebrity Culture has Affected the Prosecution of Professional Athletes." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2015. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/1077.
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This thesis studies the explanation for the media fascination surrounding domestic violence criminal cases of professional athletes, and the reality of the power that the media has on the criminal justice system.
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Hall, Stefan. "“You’ve Seen the Movie, Now Play the Game”: Recoding the Cinematic in Digital Media and Virtual Culture." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1300365433.
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au, M. Stein@murdoch edu, and Michael Stein. "The Chinese Combat Film Since 1949: Variants of 'Regulation', 'Reform' and 'Renewal'." Murdoch University, 2005. http://wwwlib.murdoch.edu.au/adt/browse/view/adt-MU20061123.141154.
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This thesis examines variations of the Chinese combat film, from its origins within cinema in 1949, through to the contemporary period. My argument transposes the critical approach of genre, as a popular style within conventional film criticism, to a specific Chinese form. In particular, this study investigates the combat film as a prevailing mode in Chinese cinema, with a particular history, form of progression and set of aesthetics.
The argument initially applies the war film and combat genre categorisations to Chinese forms. Consequently three major variants emerge, manifest in the regulated (1949-1966), reformed (1980s) and renewed (1990s) styles, respectively. These modes are subsequently examined in rigorous narratological and cinematic contexts, resulting in an expanded conception of the Chinese combat film.
This thesis offers an integrative appreciation of variegations of the Chinese combat film since 1949, sutured to wider discursive and socio-political changes within the country. Moreover, this argument produces a framework for a more expansive and complex comprehension of Chinese cinema, one undergoing continual modes of re-negotiation as the medium progresses into the Twenty First Century.
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Evdoxia, Tsaousi. "Girlhood through film representation : Reconstructing spaces and places for girls." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Barn- och ungdomsvetenskapliga institutionen, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-183372.
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There is a scholar consensus that girls have been marginalized in childhood studies. Taking into account the gender effect in constructing different childhoods for boys and girls this thesis explores the frontiers of girlhood. Girlhood as being abandoned and not perceived in the here and now is constructed only in the future, namely in the frames of femininity and womanhood. This initiates pathology in the lives of girls. This thesis through film representation explored new constructions of girlhood. Two films Barbie as Rapunzel and Tangled based in the fairy tale of Rapunzel were explored through Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. The discursive constructions, the “preppy” girl and the “alternative” girl emerged accordingly as the versions of the “authentic” girl that is searching for her identity and leading to the “self-regulated” girl discourse as a way to reconstruct girlhood.These discursive constructions can be used in the reorientation of girlhood as they unravel the necessities that exist in girl studies.
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Moot, Dennis. "Visual Culture, Crises Discourse and the Politics of Representation: Alternative Visionsof Africa in Film and News Media." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1596021641358625.
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Tarrant, Patrick Anthony. "Documentary practice in a participatory culture." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2008. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/26975/1/Patrick_Tarrant_Thesis.pdf.
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Debates concerning the veracity, ethics and politics of the documentary form circle endlessly around the function of those who participate in it, and the meaning attributed to their participation. Great significance is attached to the way that documentary filmmakers do or do not participate in the world they seek to represent, just as great significance is attached to those subjects whose participation extends beyond playing the part of eyewitness or expert, such that they become part of the very filmmaking process itself.
This Ph.D. explores the interface between documentary practice and participatory culture by looking at how their practices, discursive fields and histories intersect, but also by looking at how participating in one might mean participating in the other. In short, the research is an examination of participatory culture through the lens of documentary practice and documentary criticism. In the process, however, this examination of participatory culture will in turn shed light on documentary thinking, especially the meaning and function of ‘the participant’ in contemporary documentary practice.
A number of ways of conceiving of participation in documentary practice are discussed in this research, but one of the ideas that gives purpose to that investigation is the notion that the participant in contemporary documentary practice is someone who belongs to a participatory culture in particular. Not only does this mean that those subjects who play a part in a documentary are already informed by their engagement with a range of everyday media practices before the documentary apparatus arrives, the audience for such films are similarly informed and engaged. This audience have their own expectations about how they should be addressed by media producers in general, a fact that feeds back into their expectations about participatory approaches to documentary practice too.
It is the ambition of this research to get closer to understanding the relationship between participants in the audience, in documentary and ancillary media texts, as well as behind the camera, and to think about how these relationships constitute a context for the production and reception of documentary films, but also how this context might provide a model for thinking about participatory culture itself.
One way that documentary practice and participatory culture converge in this research is in the kind of participatory documentary that I call the ‘Camera Movie’, a narrow mode of documentary filmmaking that appeals directly to contemporary audiences’ desires for innovation and participation, something that is achieved in this case by giving documentary subjects control of the camera. If there is a certain inevitability about this research having to contend with the notion of the ‘participatory documentary’, the ‘participatory camera’ also emerges strongly in this context, especially as a conduit between producer and consumer.
Making up the creative component of this research are two documentaries about the reality television event Band In A Bubble, and participatory media practices more broadly. The single-screen film, Hubbub , gives form to the collective intelligence and polyphonous voice of contemporary audiences who must be addressed and solicited in increasingly innovative ways. One More Like That is a split-screen, DVD-Video with alternate audio channels selected by a user who thereby chooses who listens and who speaks in the ongoing conversation between media producers and media consumers.
It should be clear from the description above that my own practice does not extend to highly interactive, multi-authored or web-enabled practices, nor the distributed practices one might associate with social media and online collaboration. Mine is fundamentally a single authored, documentary video practice that seeks to analyse and represent participatory culture on screen, and for this reason the Ph.D. refrains from a sustained discussion of the kinds of collaborative practices listed above. This is not to say that such practices don’t also represent an important intersection of documentary practice and participatory culture, they simply represent a different point of intersection. Being practice-led, this research takes its procedural cues from the nature of the practice itself, and sketches parameters that are most enabling of the idea that the practice sets the terms of its own investigation.
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Tarrant, Patrick Anthony. "Documentary practice in a participatory culture." Queensland University of Technology, 2008. http://eprints.qut.edu.au/26975/.
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Debates concerning the veracity, ethics and politics of the documentary form circle endlessly around the function of those who participate in it, and the meaning attributed to their participation. Great significance is attached to the way that documentary filmmakers do or do not participate in the world they seek to represent, just as great significance is attached to those subjects whose participation extends beyond playing the part of eyewitness or expert, such that they become part of the very filmmaking process itself.
This Ph.D. explores the interface between documentary practice and participatory culture by looking at how their practices, discursive fields and histories intersect, but also by looking at how participating in one might mean participating in the other. In short, the research is an examination of participatory culture through the lens of documentary practice and documentary criticism. In the process, however, this examination of participatory culture will in turn shed light on documentary thinking, especially the meaning and function of ‘the participant’ in contemporary documentary practice.
A number of ways of conceiving of participation in documentary practice are discussed in this research, but one of the ideas that gives purpose to that investigation is the notion that the participant in contemporary documentary practice is someone who belongs to a participatory culture in particular. Not only does this mean that those subjects who play a part in a documentary are already informed by their engagement with a range of everyday media practices before the documentary apparatus arrives, the audience for such films are similarly informed and engaged. This audience have their own expectations about how they should be addressed by media producers in general, a fact that feeds back into their expectations about participatory approaches to documentary practice too.
It is the ambition of this research to get closer to understanding the relationship between participants in the audience, in documentary and ancillary media texts, as well as behind the camera, and to think about how these relationships constitute a context for the production and reception of documentary films, but also how this context might provide a model for thinking about participatory culture itself.
One way that documentary practice and participatory culture converge in this research is in the kind of participatory documentary that I call the ‘Camera Movie’, a narrow mode of documentary filmmaking that appeals directly to contemporary audiences’ desires for innovation and participation, something that is achieved in this case by giving documentary subjects control of the camera. If there is a certain inevitability about this research having to contend with the notion of the ‘participatory documentary’, the ‘participatory camera’ also emerges strongly in this context, especially as a conduit between producer and consumer.
Making up the creative component of this research are two documentaries about the reality television event Band In A Bubble, and participatory media practices more broadly. The single-screen film, Hubbub , gives form to the collective intelligence and polyphonous voice of contemporary audiences who must be addressed and solicited in increasingly innovative ways. One More Like That is a split-screen, DVD-Video with alternate audio channels selected by a user who thereby chooses who listens and who speaks in the ongoing conversation between media producers and media consumers.
It should be clear from the description above that my own practice does not extend to highly interactive, multi-authored or web-enabled practices, nor the distributed practices one might associate with social media and online collaboration. Mine is fundamentally a single authored, documentary video practice that seeks to analyse and represent participatory culture on screen, and for this reason the Ph.D. refrains from a sustained discussion of the kinds of collaborative practices listed above. This is not to say that such practices don’t also represent an important intersection of documentary practice and participatory culture, they simply represent a different point of intersection. Being practice-led, this research takes its procedural cues from the nature of the practice itself, and sketches parameters that are most enabling of the idea that the practice sets the terms of its own investigation.
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Daley, KaRyn Elizabeth. "The Role of Documentary Film in the Emerging Social Entrepreneurial Culture." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2015. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/5663.
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Considering the current skepticism surrounding the impact and efficacy of nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations, some believe that a unique category of innovator known as the social entrepreneur may be society’s best hope for bringing innovative, scalable, and systemic solutions to bear on the world’s most intractable problems. Social entrepreneurs, as defined by Ashoka, have a unique set of characteristics that determine not only how they move within the world of social change-making but also how they communicate their ideas and mission to the public.
This exploratory study reviewed how social entrepreneurs currently use documentary film and visual media in their communications strategy and public relations practice, what that tells us about the emerging culture of social entrepreneurs, and whether documentary, as defined by John Grierson, is an appropriate tool for these organizations. The author interviewed three founders, three communications professionals, and three filmmakers associated with social entrepreneurial organizations and observed a course for student filmmakers learning to make documentaries for social entrepreneurs. The findings of this study suggested that social entrepreneurs used documentary film as a communications tool when it aligned with their stated missions and goals but that cost, time, and control were significant barriers to implementation. Additionally, social entrepreneurs in all phases of development exhibited a unique set of cultural characteristics that interacted with the intent, content, and effect of their films in both positive and negative ways. The author also noted three distinct levels of filmmaker involvement with social entrepreneurial organizations that impacted the intent, content, and effect of their respective films. These levels of involvement are described as collaborative, independent, and interdependent.
While the author offers some provocative observations about the role of documentary in social entrepreneurial organizations, this study remains exploratory in nature. She suggests several additional avenues of research that may further the scholarly conversation and continue to shed light on documentary film as communication for and by social entrepreneurs.
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Donofrio, Nicholas Easley. "The Vanishing Freelancer: A Literary History of the Postwar Culture Industries." Thesis, Harvard University, 2014. http://dissertations.umi.com/gsas.harvard:11532.
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Throughout the middle decades of the twentieth century, a wide range of U.S. fiction writers took jobs--sometimes briefly, but often for several years or more--in the film, broadcasting, publishing, and advertising industries. As a result of their experiences in these industries at a time when corporate employment was on the rise and freelance work was becoming less viable, writers like Raymond Chandler, Norman Mailer, Sylvia Plath, and Ishmael Reed crafted new narrative forms to examine the problems of bureaucratized creativity. While drawing on literary modernism's techniques and strategies, they traded its aesthetics of difficulty and self-sufficiency--its serene disdain for the uninitiated--for a more broadly communicative disposition.
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Hagener, Malte. "Avant-garde culture and media strategies the networks and discourses of the European film avant-garde, 1919-39 /." [S.l. : Amsterdam : s.n.] ; Universiteit van Amsterdam [Host], 2005. http://dare.uva.nl/document/77937.
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Amador, Lui. "Deslanting the Lens." Scholarship @ Claremont, 1999. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/93.
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Deslanting the Lens examines the historical and sociological implications of how Asian men have been represented in popular American film. From the early days of “yellowface” to caricatures like Long Duck Dong, Asian men have been relegated to perpetual foreigner status in American cinema. This paper will explore why the portrayal of Asian men has been limited to very specific ideas about Asian and Asian Americans are in society. This analysis will also include how socio/political events have shaped and influence popular perceptions about Asians, that inform how Asian men continue to be depicted in film.
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Baracco, Alberto. "Phenomenological hermeneutics of film philosophical thinking : a hermeneutic method for film world interpretation." Thesis, Kingston University, 2016. http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/37321/.
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Over the past few decades, the relationship between film and philosophy has been an object of an intense debate among film scholars, revitalizing some basic theoretical questions about cinematic representations and their meanings. As a result of this debate, many recent works in film philosophy, adopting the approach identified with the term 'Film as Philosophy' (FaP), have considered film as capable of its own philosophical thought. from this specific research perspective, the thesis proposed a new methodological strategy in maintaining FaP. The main aim of this thesis is to develop a hermeneutic method for the interpretation of film philosophical thinking. Starting from the fundamental relationship between film and filmgoer, the proposed method is founded on the concept of the film world. This concept is particularly effective because it identifies the film both as a world to be percieved, which emotionally involved the filmgoer, and as a world to be interpreted, which calls for a philosophical enquiry into its meanings. Moving from the theoretical perspective of phenomenological hermeneutics, combining Merleau-Ponty's and Ricoeur's philosophies, and reconsidering Goodman's theory of worldmaking, the film world becomes the hermeneutic horizon from which film philosophical thought can emerge. The definition of the method proceeds via a detailed examination of Ricoeur's philosophical thought, especially with regard to his hermeneutics of text and logic hermeneutics. Ricoeur's hermeneutic methodology has the potential to provide a valuable resource for film studies by inviting scholars to consider film interpretation in terms of film world hermeneutics, but only on the condition that an open and self-critical dialogue with different perspectives is part of the interpretive process.
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LIANG, Xiaodao. "中国大陆九十年代以来独立电影文化的构成与城市青年文化实践." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2007. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/cs_etd/7.
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本论文主要考察中国大陆九十年代出现的独立电影的特性，首先从一批年轻的独立电影导演及其作品出发，将它们放在当代大陆城市青年文化的历史脉络中，着重考察独立电影的特殊生产机制以及对“青年”的再现，与“青年”在社会建构中出现的变化之间的关系。然后通过使用民族誌的研究方法，重点考察大陆本土年轻观众对独立电影的接受情况，试图解释为何“边缘”成为当下论述大陆独立电影文化特性的重要话语。本文的主要立论是，“边缘”是由独立电影与城市青年文化在不同层面上互构而成的。
这种互构关系的建立，表现在几个方面：首先，大陆进入商品经济时代，具有整合性的建构青年身份的国家意识形态话语失效，导致了年轻人的迷茫和失落，他们断裂和破碎的身份，通过独立电影在国家制片体系之外的生产和制作模式中被再现出来，被称为“边缘”的特殊个体。其次，大陆独立电影被部分青年影迷用来对抗互联网上出现的话语资源垄断和话语权威，从而确立“业余爱好 者”、“草根”等被称为“边缘”的身份。最后一个方面，即是作为影迷的城市青年对不同观影场所和对独立电影不同消费方式的选择，建立了在电影院线、个人在家庭观看影碟等主流渠道以外的，被称为“边缘”的观影方式，但这种方式又不可避免的会引起影迷的身份焦虑。
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Richards, Samantha. "Pacing Your Fears: Narrative Adaptation in the Age of Binge Culture." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2018. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/1087.
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Entertainment is an ever-changing medium, and television specifically has gone through many technological innovations since its bright beginnings. These innovations have consistently changed the way stories are told. Stylistic shifts in key elements ranging from shot format to the way shows are constructed can be seen especially clearly in horror which does not have the same narrative constraints as many other genres, and therefore more room to experiment. By tracking changes in the narrative formats of serialized and anthology horror shows, I define a new era of television brought about by the prevalence of streaming, and the rise of binge culture.
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Molapo, Mpaki. "The cross-cultural camera of Akira Kurosawa." Master's thesis, University of Cape Town, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/11010.
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Bibliography: leaves 110-120.This minor dissertation is undertaken to examine the cross-cultural similarities that are revealed by motion pictures through analyzing the work of Akira Kurosawa and contrasting it with selective mainstream cinema texts. Kurosawa is a critical case in point due to his welding of Occidental and Japanese ideas into his films, and his origin from a hybridized Japan, a society which historically has freely absorbed and embellished itself from numerous cultures, including America, Korea, China and Europe.
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Kurash, Jaclyn Rose. "Mechanical Women and Sexy Machines: Typewriting in Mass-Media Culture of the Weimar Republic, 1918-1933." The Ohio State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1440348446.
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Connelly, Thomas J. "Accelerated Culture: Exploring Time and Space in Cinema, Television and New Media in the Digital Age." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2012. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cgu_etd/50.
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This dissertation seeks to understand the impact of speed on the interrelation and the overlapping of the production and consumption of cinematic and televisual texts. It explores the immediacy of digital media and new economic processes, and how they are informing structures of perception, as well as lending themselves to new and different ways of seeing the moving image in the digital age. These visual expressions are evident in the changing perception of the long take; the increasing use of video gaming aesthetics and database narratives; new and variant forms of narrative and visual styles in television; and the speed of new media technology on new voices and avant-garde expressions in independent and DIY cinema (such as the Internet, personal camcorder, mobile screens, and desktop editing). Conversely, VCR, DVD, DVR devices (as well as online streaming and DVD and Blu-Ray rental sites) have transformed the consumption of the moving image. Time-shifting devices allow for halting and controlling the flow of passing time, permitting for greater textual analysis. And, reciprocally, these new perceptions of the moving image inform expressions of filmic time and space. The speed of digital media and new economic formations raise concerns about lived reality and the attenuation of time, place, and community. It brings forth questions of the waning of pastness and memory, the diminishing of critical distance, and the vanishing of slow time. I argue, however, these shifts that are occurring in cinema and television illustrate that processes of speed are not the prime determinant in the production and consumption of moving images. Rather, they are based on a contingent and open-ended model of articulation--sites where disparate elements are temporary combined, unified, and thus, practiced and lived under the ever-changing conditions of existence.
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Sibielski, Rosalind. "What Are Little (Empowered) Girls Made Of?: The Discourse of Girl Power in Contemporary U.S. Popular Culture." Bowling Green State University / OhioLINK, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1277091634.
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Cronje, Franci. "Border crossings : how students negotiate cultural borders during digital video production." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/10299.
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Includes bibliographical references (p. 278-292).This thesis explores emerging patterns of communication in student video production and the extent to which such patterns signify cultural border crossings in a South African upper income group school context. The investigation was carried out with specific reference to the politics of difference, an educational philosophy defined by Henry Giroux (2006) as border pedagogy. Within the framework of multimodal pedagogy, four learners from diverse cultural backgrounds collaborated with one another in a timeframe of three days to create digital video productions using guidelines provided by the researcher. The production unit was observed in order to answer questions around the utilisation of video production in the classroom, as well as how learners interact and negotiate cultural issues while producing video. The data was analysed with a custom-made multimodal toolkit as proposed by Baldry and Thibault (2006). By employing Kress and Van Leeuwen's four strata of Discourse, Design, Production and Distribution various types of data illuminated themes around social memory, race, the influence of class difference, and gender representation. Assessment techniques in terms of the multimodal theories of Kress and Van Leeuwen (2001) also enabled the researcher to look at the way in which meaning is made "in any and every sign, at every level, and in any mode" (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001: 4). The classroom intervention was designed to encourage adolescents as "unique hybrids" (Bhabha 1994) to cross borders of cultural identity, hypothesising that difference might emerge more clearly in the negotiation and video production process, than what might crystallise in analyzing the final video production. Metaphorical border crossing in a cultural and racial sense might become more apparent in production than final product. The negotiation of Border Difference took preference over the ultimate erosion of these borders.
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Tunney, Ruth. "Interaktivt Innehåll och Konvergenskultur : En diskursiv fallstudie av Black Mirror: Bandersnatch." Thesis, Högskolan Väst, Avd för medier och design, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hv:diva-14272.
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As illustrated by the Netflix special Bandersnatch as a cultural phenomenon, the purpose of this study was to analyze how "new" storytelling forms exist in today's convergence culture. This was done by a discursive case study about TV-critics' reception of Bandersnatch, along with smaller comparative discourses covering both relatively traditional film and TV organizations within the media industry, as well as an online forum. Therefore, it was demonstrated how the convergence culture expanded the expression of interactive content. Themes inspired by the reviews included the categorization of Bandersnatch as a media product. The technological aspects of interactive elements were furthermore used in the analysis of the result. Moreover, this was discussed in relation to theories of design and convergence culture. Finally, the results of the study indicated that Netflix's Bandersnatch was compared to both analogue and digital media products. The film's technological aspects were considered to detract from the storytelling experience of a movie, but rather it generated the type of entertainment found in a video game. An insecurity of the future of film as an artform and a dilution of traditional ownership roles also emerged, as the viewer's control continued to be discussed, not only in relation to Bandersnatch, but also to the overall interactive and participatory digital media landscape.Belyst av Netflix-specialaren Bandersnatch som ett kulturellt fenomen var syftet med denna studie att analysera hur "nya" berättarformer existerar i dagens konvergenskultur. Detta gjordes genom en diskursiv fallstudie om TV-recensenters mottagande av Bandersnatch, ihop med mindre jämförande diskurser som behandlade relativt traditionella film- och TV-organisationer inom mediebranschen samt ett onlineforum. Därmed påvisades också hur konvergenskulturen vidgade uttrycket av interaktivt innehåll. Teman inspirerade av recensionerna inkluderade exempelvis kategoriseringen av Bandersnatch som medieprodukt. De teknologiska aspekterna av interaktiva element användes vidare i analysen av resultaten. Ytterligare diskuterades detta i relation till teorier om design och konvergenskultur. Slutligen indikerade studien att Netflix Bandersnatch jämfördes med både analoga och digitalamedieprodukter. Filmens teknologiska aspekter ansågs förminska berättarupplevelsen som film, men skapade snarare en typ av nöje som återfanns i TV-spel. En osäkerhet om framtiden av film som en konstform uppdagades också, medan tittarens kontroll fortsatte att diskuteras, inte bara i relation till Bandersnatch, utan också i förhållande till helheten av det interaktiva och deltagande digitala medier-landskapet.
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Lingli, Ying. "Relationship between Foreign Film Exposure and Ethnocentrism." Cleveland State University / OhioLINK, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=csu1242850053.
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Tran, Anthony. "Piracy on the Ground: How Informal Media Distribution and Access Influences Cultures in Contemporary Hanoi, Viet Nam." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2012. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc149675/.
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This thesis explores how pirate cultures and “informal” distribution circuits operate on the ground level and integrate global media texts (mainly Hollywood films) into a small section of the local everyday society of Hanoi, Viet Nam. Situating the pirate stores and its components as active and central, this thesis will examine the physical flow of media through these store sites. In addition, by exploring the interactions between media texts, store owners and workers, customers, and the store’s design itself, this thesis will reveal how media piracy (as a form of distribution and “normal” access) influences and negotiates modernity, cultures, identities, and meanings in Hanoi and Viet Nam.
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Fröjdh, Eira, and Saad Elhachimi. "Lush authenticity : The construction of authenticity in branded entertainment." Thesis, Malmö universitet, Institutionen för konst, kultur och kommunikation (K3), 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-44282.
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This thesis examines how authenticity is articulated and communicated in contemporary forms of branded entertainment. In a digital media landscape, participatory culture and co-creation has become of primary importance, leading to ‘authentic’ and ‘amateurist’ characteristics being strategically implemented in advertisements and professional media content production. At the same time, research on brand communication and authenticity have overlooked the many ways in which brands extend and mediate authenticity, especially in relation to symbolism and visual semiotics. In this thesis, we explore the way symbolic meaning is constructed in We the Bathers, a documentary produced in 2019 by director Phoebe Arnstein in collaboration with Lush, a cosmetic brand known for their vegan-friendly and cruelty-free products. The study was conducted using visual analysis which allows us to approach the study object in a qualitative and exploratory way. We then apply the theoretical frameworks of cultural myths and digital storytelling to analyze the effects and strategies employed in We the Bathers to communicate authenticity through the filmic medium. By extending Bell & Leonard’s framework for evaluating organizational storytelling, which highlights the role of the communicative codes of affinity, authenticity andamateurism, we argue that the overall notion of authenticity in video content produced for digital environments can be determined through either of these lenses. By examining the intention of the sender in terms of genuineness (authenticity), relatability (affinity), and techniques which lends the story a sense of ‘realness’ (amateurism), our findings indicate that authenticity can be viewed as a tool for producing certain media effects as opposed to arising from the mediation of inherent personality traits.
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Flint, Rob. "Film, video, and digitality : an analysis of cultural form in time-based media." Thesis, University of the Arts London, 2004. http://ualresearchonline.arts.ac.uk/2021/.
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This thesis examines the material properties of time-based image media, in particular live video. The project is practice-based with a theoretical underpinning drawn from the debates on form and meaning associated with Walter Benjamin.
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Bauer, Robert B. "Resisting the Resistance: The Emancipation of Students from the Hidden Curriculum of Commodified Resistant Narratives in Young Adult Dystopian Film Through Open Pedagogical Space and Culture-Jamming." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2015. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/5621.
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Young Adult Dystopian Film exercises an influence over young people of which they are not aware. As part of a structure of domination these films teach students to participate in their own oppression by the capitalist system. The film industry maintains a hidden curriculum like that utilized in school classrooms to conceal the oppression from the masses. One particularly effective means is the portrayal of resistance against oppression in the narratives of the YA Dystopian Film. Young people are drawn to that narrative and end up supporting the structure of domination financially and ideologically. Modes of resistance to this oppression can be found in Media Literacy Education and Public Pedagogy (e.g. culture-jamming). Teachers can incorporate Media Literacy and culture–jamming into a form of radical pedagogy to emancipate students from that oppressive relationship.This thesis investigates the usage of this radical pedagogy though an action research project in a high school drama class in the intermountain west. The students learned the theories, critically reflected on the situation, and created a live culture-jamming performance. The results of the action research show the affordances and limitations of this approach and offer suggestions for instigating its usage by media literacy educators.
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Miller, Rachel R. "The Girls' Room: Bedroom Culture and the Ephemeral Archive in the 1990s." The Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu159361168956799.
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Bouxsein, Benjamin D. "An Analysis of the Depiction of Romantic Relationships in Western Cinema Compared to Cultural Perceptions of Relationships." Ohio University Honors Tutorial College / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ouhonors1556721347157763.
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Gallagher, Meghan M. "John Berger, Paris Hilton, and The Rich Kids of Instagram: The Social and Economic Inequality of Image Sharing and Production of Power Through Self-Promotion." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2015. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/545.
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This thesis updates John Berger's work of critical visual theory, Ways of Seeing, to accommodate emerging web 2.0 technologies and new social media platforms. It analyzes the symbols of wealth and status encoded in both 15th century oil paintings and contemporary Instagram posts and attempts to dissect how American celebrity culture complicates methods of self-promotion and upscale emulation.
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Hohe, Meredith K. "American Dreams and Red Nightmares: Popular Media and the Framing of a Cold War Enemy, 1949-1962." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1283266257.
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Xu, Wei Wei. "Career management : a study of the Chinese film production industry." Thesis, Kingston University, 2012. http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/23025/.
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This thesis presents the results of a multi-method investigation into how individuals in the film production industry manage their careers using China as a case study. Three rich hypotheses were tested against 14 in-depth interviews with inner-core decision makers and a survey questionnaire to which 119 actors and crew responded. The qualitative analysis confirmed that: (i) social networks provide vital functions for finding jobs in the film industry; (ii) personal reputation is vital for a long-term career in the film industry; and (iii) professional talent is socially determined. The findings present an alternative approach to project-based career theory. Social networks convey information on reputation and talent to facilitate the matching of people to jobs and may substitute for labour market institutions such as casting. The thesis proposes an individual career management model which links the key factors of: academic/training, professional talent, teamwork, social networks, reputation, film project, box office, career longevity, job security, self-development and career satisfaction. The model may be applicable to other countries and also to project-based creative industries.
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Chandler, Yuell "Chuck" E. IV. "OPERA AND THE MODERN CULTURE OF FILM: THE GENESIS OF CINEMOPERA, ITS INTERTEXTUALITY AND EXPANSION OF OPERATIC SOURCE MATERIAL." UKnowledge, 2012. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/music_etds/1.
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The boundaries of opera, as in all art forms, are constantly being re-evaluated. This analysis examines one of the most recent developments in opera-the use of film as source material, and connections to the film world- through analyzing three operas: Austrian composer, Olga Neuwirth’s opera, Lost Highway, Chinese-American composer, Tan Dun’s opera, The First Emperor, and acclaimed American film composer, Rachel Portman’s opera, The Little Prince. Each of these works exemplifies the modern relationship of opera and film in different ways. To classify these newly film-influenced works, the term cinemopera is used in describing operas connected to or influenced by film.
Analytical techniques and historical perspectives, as well as revealing how these three operas are associated with the film world through their composers, source materials, and styles are the tools utilized to establish the characteristics of cinemopera as an operatic subcategory. Also, a definition and discussion of intertextuality in these operas reveals not only their cinematic features, but their ties to common practices in music history. Lost Highway is one of the most intertextual works containing sound effects, electronic music, and drawing heavily upon the David Lynch film of the same name as its source material. The First Emperor is an interesting study in modern ethnomusicology and contains many links to film in its source material as well. The Little Prince has a different kind of intertextuality than the preceding two operas because its source material is a French children’s book. However, since its composer, Rachel Portman, is a very distinguished film composer, it represents many elements of style commonly found in cinemopera.
Finally, opera as a business is changing due to its convergence with film. The visual aspect of opera productions is of increasing importance, as is a singer’s credibility in the role they are portraying. Singers must look their parts much more so now than even two decades ago. As cinemopera is explored herein and its effects on the business are discussed, so are the elements of style which clearly serve to classify an opera as cinemopera.
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McMillan, Rachel K. "POPULAR MEDIA AND SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE: INTERPRETING RECENT HISTORICAL TRENDS IN INTERMARRIAGE." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2013. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/573.
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This thesis is about measuring social acceptance of the American public on the increasing trend of intermarriage in the United States. It outlines U.S. Census data in the areas of population, educational attainment, regional data, and marriage data. It analyzes popular and influential media from 1960 to 2011 including: marriage of Guy Smith and Peggy Rusk, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Star Trek, Jungle Fever, The Joy Luck Club, and modern television shows such as Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, Modern Family, and New Girl.
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Noble, Jonathan Scott. "Cultural Performance in China: beyond resistance in the 1990s." Connect to this title online, 2003. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1047438964.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2003.Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains x, 253 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 235-253). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center
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Greene, Justin R. "I Am an Author: Performing Authorship in Literary Culture." VCU Scholars Compass, 2018. https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/5346.
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Authorship is not merely an act of putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard; it is a social identity performance that includes the use of multiple media. Authors must be hyper- visible to cut through the dearth of information, entertainment options, and personae vying for attention in our supersaturated media environment. As they enter the literary world, writers consciously create characters and narratives around themselves, and through the consistent and believable enactment of these features, authors are born. In this dissertation, I analyze the performance of authorship in U.S. literary culture through an interdisciplinary framework. My work pulls from authorship studies, performance studies, celebrity/persona studies, and sociological studies of art to uncover how writers create and disseminate their authorial identities. The writers used in this project embody four types of authorial identity: Jonathan Franzen as the professional artist, David Foster Wallace as the Romantic genius, Tao Lin as the digital eccentric, and Roxane Gay as the Intersectional Feminist. These writers flirt with popular recognition, but they remain tied firmly to the serious, or in a Bourdieuvian sense, restricted area of cultural production. As my case studies progress, I highlight how print, audio/visual, and digital media are used or not used by these writers as sites for their performances. I claim that as writers develop their characters on such digital platforms as Twitter and Tumblr that they are more accepting of the validity of digital authorship. However, this acceptance is diminished by the dominant role print media have in the conceptions of authorship. The varying ways literary tradition, media, and celebrity intersect are brought to the forefront in these examples, shedding light on the need for larger conceptions of authorship in the literary world. My interpretation of authorship as social identity performance broadens a relatively restrictive and, in many ways, stagnant area, adding nuance to how literary culture actively works to maintain and dilute the value of one of its most prominent features.
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Lee, Leiya Ho-Yin. "Viewing and viewing again : film narrative and the time-travelling spectator." Thesis, Kingston University, 2017. http://eprints.kingston.ac.uk/38725/.
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Having had a time-travel-like experience of witnessing an audience response at a Disney 4D screen performance in 2010 that mirrored that at the fabled screening of L’Arrivée d’un train en gare de la Ciotat in 1895, this thesis argues that there is an inherent quality of time-travel in cinema. This thesis investigates if Film Studies and concepts of time travel can inform one another to create new ideas on film spectatorship. The natural place to start is to study films that feature time-travel narratives. Time travel in films has three key characteristics, each of which is tackled by individual chapters: (1) complicated narrative structures; (2) an aesthetic of repeats; and (3) adherence to a strict cause-and-effect logic. First, this thesis studies narrative structures developing on David Bordwell’s cognitivist work, and, combining with ideas from analytic philosopher Jack W Meiland, continental philosopher Henri Bergson and mathematician Hermann Minkowski, this thesis presents graphical representations of time travel and film narration. Next, the thesis deals with the idea of revisits and repeats, where the Freudian concept of nachträglichkeit (“deferred action”) is useful in trying to understand ‘repeating’ cinematic experiences, such as the knowledge of ‘twist’ endings (à la The Usual Suspects) during repeated viewings. The fact that this thesis uses a psychoanalytic concept to complement a Post-Theory cognitive approach is an attempt to reconcile the dichotomy between the two often antagonistic paradigms. Finally, two opposing systems of thinking, of cause-and-effect and of chance, are pitted against one another; it is then argued that cinema is where these two incompatible logics coexist harmoniously, making cinema a time machine and the spectator a time traveller.
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Cheng, Ling-Yan. "Cross-media and cultural study of music in Hong Kong film and Cantonese opera." Thesis, University of Liverpool, 2012. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.569123.
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This thesis focuses on the cross-media adaptation of films and Cantonese opera performances in Hong Kong, a former British colony located at the Southern border of China, This especial status of Hong Kong gradually constituted its peripheral position, in which Hong Kong struggled to survive-between Mainland China and the British colonial governments. Issues of diasporic consciousness, floating identity, and freedom of creativity are closely associated with the creation of experimental Cantonese operas in the 1950s and the contemporary Hong Kong cinema. With extensive fieldwork and archival research carried out in Hong Kong, Singapore, and China, an in-depth investigation is made to study various adaptations between films and Cantonese operas in Hong Kong after the Second World War and its Japanese occupation. Through analysing the influence of Western films on the new Cantonese opera productions and their later film versions, the changes in music made in the adaptation process demonstrate the close connection of Southeast Asia and Hong Kong, as well as the freedom of creativity Hong Kong benefited from its marginal position at the time. The adaptation practices in contemporary Hong Kong cinema are significant to the studies of the social and political circumstance of Hong Kong prior to its return to China in 1997. An attempt is made to examine how the reappearance of Cantonese opera in 1990s films contributed to the reaffirmation of local identities. A Mainland Chinese film featuring Peking opera in political turbulence is cited as cross-reference to the concurrent Hong Kong cinema. The crucial changes made in the film adaptation, and the censorship experienced by the production in its homeland and Taiwan, clearly suggest Hong Kong's identity as 'other' to Chinese. In conclusion, I argue the cross-media and cross-cultural adaptations of Cantonese opera and Hong Kong films demonstrate the hybrid identity of Hong Kong, which in turn signifies its refusal to assimilation into Chinese culture as it assumed quasi-colonial status.
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Gupta, Anjali. "Beneath Still Waters: An Exploration of Transmedia Narratives and Twitter Fiction." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2015. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/604.
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Beneath Still Waters is an original transmedia mystery narrative that explores the possibilities of an interconnected media landscape as a unique platform for creative use and audience engagement. Transmedia storytelling refers to the building of a fictional world comprised of multiple parts across different platforms, where each component makes a valuable contribution to the whole. This project uses the tools and strategies of social media to tell a complex and interactive multi-platform story.
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Nyberg, Evelin. "Leadership, assembled : A narrative analysis of the construction of leadership in relation to democracy in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame." Thesis, Jönköping University, HLK, Medie- och kommunikationsvetenskap, 2021. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:hj:diva-53618.
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Superhero film is currently a popular form of entertainment, which during recent years has become political in its content. While research has previously shown that the superhero narrative carries messages of ideology and social issues, little is known of how the film genre communicates regarding leadership. Through examining the narratives in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, this study aims to explore how leadership is constructed in relation to democracy in a democratic context by using the United States as an example. The study utilises theorisations of democracy as well as representation theory, supplemented by three concepts borrowed from the leadership theory trait theory. The narrative analysis and the narrative plot points are used as method with a model of analysis to retrieve the empirical evidence. The study’s results show that the villain, while having a societal motivation which can be considered democratic, mostly represented nondemocratic traits. The superheroes mostly show democratic leadership, but they are not able to solve the conflict with the villain democratically. This suggests that the leadership constructed in a democratic context still contains some limitations, which could be connected to how nondemocratic actions are justified in some situations even in the democratic context.