Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Film genre theory'

The films of Quentin Tarantino have held a significant influence on modern cinema, and therefore on cinema studies. As such, studies on the social and philosophical implications of his work have appeared over the years, mostly in regards to content. However, with the exception of references to his use of cinematic violence, studies of his technique—i.e., his cinematic style—have been rare, and rarer still have been studies of the social implications that arise from the patterns of his style as well as those his subject matter. The following thesis seeks to use the concept of Auteur Theory—specifically, that Tarantino is the primary artist of the films directed by him—to propose that a specific artistic style conveys a specific worldview: namely, that the artistic choices made by the director, in content and technique, can and do convey a viewpoint regarding “real life” and the world. Specifically, this work will culminate in analyzing and determining tenants to be gleaned from the Tarantino canon regarding issues of justice, both on an individual and societal basis. With his focus on crime—again, both societal and individual—Tarantino makes commentary on societal breakdown; the audience’s emotional support (or lack thereof) for characters and their actions corresponds with identification, and therefore draws real-life parallels. Such refers to the concept of “Realism”, which will be discussed in detail. Further, Tarantino’s trend of recycling elements from prior films refers to artistic “Postmodernism”—use of “pastiche” and sampling to create a “new” work. The thesis will analyze the value and meaning of the major samplings in Tarantino’s films—particularly in regards to genre--and concludes that, far from a simple conglomeration, a Tarantino “Genre-Blender” forms a cohesive whole, oriented towards specific impact of the audience. From the above two issues of Realism and Postmodernism in art, and establishing the existence of a cohesive artistic vision in Tarantino’s work, this thesis identifies patterns in such that identify specific viewpoints on questions of “Good”, “Evil”, and “Justice”. Key to this is the dichotomy between objective principles and subjectivity in human interaction amid the applications of principles. Tarantino’s work conveys a belief in certain objective tenants; however, the applications that arise through interaction cause complications, arising through human limitations in perspective. The ultimate purpose of this study is to link studies of social implications of film to not merely content, but in choices in cinematic style. It is a contribution at once to studies of film and to studies of artistic theory (in particular Realism and Postmodernism), using both to analyze how a specific, popular, mainstream artist reflects a worldview through the sensibilities that are channeled in creating his works.

This study deals with a research on what the opening sounds in movies tell us about the story that we are about to follow. The purpose is to examine if and how the sound in the first five minutes of the movie contribute in giving information about the film’s genre. The theoretical base includes both genre theory and Michel Chion’s theory on film sound. Six different movies representing different genres, countries and year of production are analyzed in an audiovisual way.

The result shows that the sound in the opening sequence could describe the genre which the movie belongs to, but it doesn’t always work like this. The analysis also shows examples on movies where the sound in the beginning of the movie focus on other things, like describing place or ethnicity. In some of the movies, especially the ones that represent adventure and action, you can hear the genre very clearly. In others, for example the comedy, there is a bit harder to decide if the sound alone could tell us about which genre the movie belongs to, and if the sound is typical for that specific genre or if it could be about almost everything. Furthermore, in some movies it was quite clear that the sound concentrates on describing something else instead, for example the place where the story is set.

Since the late seventies, the violence, speed and spectacle associated with the genres of war films, Westerns and the spectacular melodramas of early cinema have developed into a distinct genre of its own – the action film. With the development of the stylistic language at the core of this generic universe came derogatory generalisations and a tendency to categorise simplistically. To overcome these simplifications, this thesis explores the shifts in generic language to distinguish its subtleties and complexities of logic. Overwhelmingly the genre is considered masculine, but the purpose of this thesis is to explore the logic of this masculinity and analyse the effect of the feminine upon it. Beginning with overviews of the theoretical attempts to grasp the concept of genre that focus primarily on the limitations of the view of their having distinct boundaries, the theory that genre theory has failed is investigated. Leaving this view of boundaries through an exploration of symbolic universes that have translucent boundaries, the filmic movement of genre passes back and forth through the theoretical frameworks. The intention is not to analyse the overall concept of genre, but to focus on the symbolic universe and the language intrinsic to action films. The rules of action cannot be simply transposed onto other generic categories but stand-alone. Genre theory does not fail if approached from a perspective of discourse analysis focusing on the development of symbolic universes. Using Jacques Lacan’s theory of the four discourses, and focusing primarily on the oppositions of the Master’s and the Analyst’s discourse, the question moves from the listing of conventions as the markers of the boundaries of genre, to exploring why the combination of certain conventions and signifiers coming together created the genre. Through Lacanian discourse analysis it becomes apparent that the generally acknowledged logic of masculine and feminine are limited. The masculine is the ‘norm’ that appears to need no explanation, but the feminine has transgressed the norm and shown the construction of fantasy inherent in the genre. This has led to post-action films that are ambiguous both in their generic structure and symbolic language.

The thesis and the two films form a practice PhD in drama exploring ethnofiction - an experimental ethnographic filmmaking approach pioneered by visual anthropologist Jean Rouch. In the mid-1950's Rouch started to experiment with fiction and 'projective improvisation' in ethnographic films such as Jaguar (1957-1967), Moi, unnoir (1957) and La pyramide humaine (1959). Film critics would call these films 'ethnofictions'. After agreeing a story outline, the camera simply follows the subjects' improvisations of their own, and others', lived experiences. The aim is to show aspects of ethnographic research otherwise hard to represent. A key question of the doctoral research has been whether a nuanced understanding of foreign cultures can be created and mediated by combining ethnographic research methods with the processes of dramatic work. Even though Rouch made ethnofictions as part of his ethnographic research, he infused the genre with elements of surrealism and poetry, and often opposed anyone trying to establish theories about his films. Defying Rouch's view on this matter, this thesis explores ethnofiction as an ethnographic filmmaking method by drawing on the experiences from fieldwork and filmmaking among transgendered Brazilians living in São Paulo. The fieldwork resulted in a feature-length ethnofiction and an ethnographic documentary short: Transfiction focuses on identity and discrimination in the daily lives of Brazilian travestis and transsexuals. Informed by transgendered artists, prostitutes, healthworkers and political activists, Fabia Mirassos projected her life through the role of Meg, a transsexual hairdresser confronting intolerance and re-living memories of abuse. Savana 'Bibi' Meirelles plays Zilda who makes her living as one of the many transgendered sex workers in São Paulo, as she struggles to find her way out of prostitution. Drama Queens is an ethnographic documentary short and contains four scenes from the over 200 hours of rushes that were recorded during the fieldwork. The scenes are from São Paulo's annual Pride Parade and present Bibi, Fabia and Phedra who were the main informants of the research conducted at the theatre Os Satyros in central São Paulo.

Textual genre criticism and close readings of novels and films reveal that, in addition to chronicling catastrophes’ aftermaths, the post-apocalyptic genre envisions a future world in which traditional apocalyptic ideology is inadequate and unsatisfactory. While the full apocalyptic trajectory traditionally includes an end met by a new beginning, moments of cultural crisis have questioned the efficacy of apocalyptic metanarratives, allowing for a divergent, post-apocalyptic imagination that has been reflected in various fictional forms.

The post-apocalyptic genre imagines a post-cataclysmic world cobbled together from the remnants of our world and invites complicated participation as readers and viewers engage with a world that resembles our own yet is bereft of our world’s meaning-making structures. The cultural history of the genre is traced through early nineteenth-century concerns about plagues and revolutions; fin-de-siècle anxieties and the devastation of the First World War; the post-apocalyptic turn in the cultural imagination following the Second World War, the atomic bombs, and the Holocaust; the Cold War and societal tensions of the 1960s and 1970s; late twentieth-century nationalism and relaxation of Cold War tension; and renewed interest in post-apocalypticism following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

Textual analysis reveals that the genre is particularly interested in formal experimentation and other postmodernist ideas, carnivalesque transgression, and concerns about survivorship and community. The mobilization of these themes is examined in case studies of the novella “A Boy and His Dog,” the novels The Quiet Earth and The Road, and the films Idaho Transfer, Night of the Comet, and Mad Max: Fury Road.

In this dissertation, I bring together film theory, literary criticism, anthropology and psychology to develop a paradigm for the study of teen films that can also be effectively applied to other areas of pop culture studies as well as literary genres. Expanding on Thomas Doherty's discussion of 1950s teen films and Ian Jarvie's study of films as social criticism, I argue that teen films are a discrete genre that appeals to adolescents to the exclusion of other groups. Teen films subvert social mores of the adult world and validate adolescent subculture by reflecting that subculture's values and viewpoints. The locus of this subversion is the means by which teenagers, through the teen films, vicariously experience anxiety-provoking adult subjects such as sexual experimentation and physical violence, particularly the extreme expressions of sex and violence that society labels taboo. Through analyzing the rhetoric of teen lifestyle films, specifically the teen romance and sex farce, I explore how the films offer teens vicarious experience of many adolescent "firsts." In addition, I claim that teen films can effectively appropriate other genres while remaining identifiable as teen films. I discuss hybrid films which combine the teen film with the science fiction genre, specifically Back to the Future and Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, and the musical genre, specifically Girls Just Want to Have Fun and Dirty Dancing. In my discussion of the slasher film, specifically the Halloween. Friday the 13th. and A Nightmare on Elm Street cycles, I highlight how teen films function as a safe place to explore the taboo. Finally, I discuss the way in which the teen film genre has evolved in the 1990s due in part to shifts in social and economic interests. The teen films of the 1990s include the viewpoints of women, minorities, the handicapped, and homosexuals and question the materialistic ethos of the 1980s films.

This study is a research on how dystopian features are expressed within different genres. The purpose is to discuss films that contain dystopian features in relation to genre and to examine if there are shared conventions in the films that can make dystopia a film genre on its own. The theoretical base includes genre theory and Rick Altman’s semantic/syntactic approach to film genre. Five films from different genres, all produced within the time period of 2000-2010, are analyzed with a semantic/syntactic approach to genre and then discussed in relation to dystopia and prior research. By using a semantic/syntactic approach to film genre it is possible to identify shared conventions. Only by using a co-ordinate semantic/syntactic approach is it possible to fully understand the interaction between conventions within a genre. The result shows that there are conventions that are characteristic for dystopia and dystopia can thus be considered a subgenre. The films analyzed in this essay share conventions characteristic for dystopia but also offer variation in form of, for example, theme. The subgenre dystopia therefore offers something familiar but also variation which is central in film genre. The analysis also shows that there are symbols that carry meaning within these films which implies that they have a common iconography.

The essay is a theoretical analysis on genre, based on André Breton's views on black humor. Breton is believed to be the person who is the mind behind the term "black humor", but his views on black humour have not – as far as I’m concerned – been applied in a film-scientific context. There is no cohesive view of the genre concept, as reflected in four selected genre theorists' texts that I selected. Texts that also have been published in various decades. The disposition for my essay is to begin by clarifying the definition of “black humour” by Breton and then highlight the key ideas of Leo Braudy, Thomas Schatz, Rick Altman and David Bordwell. In the end, I will try to interpret the ways in which black humor can be formed as a genre of its own. My conclusion is that there is no clear answer to how black can be formed as its own genre, but on the other hand there are a number of critical perspectives on the genre concept. Together, all theorists demonstrates complex relationships between ideological roots and present-day added significance. In the final discussion, I argue that there is a need to continue studying more about "black humor" by adding additional relevant dimensions and linking them to genre theory.

Esta investigación está centrada en las estrategias narrativas que conforman el modo melodramático empleado en el cine narrativo de Hollywood y su relación con la construcción de los cuerpos modernos. Proponemos, siguiendo a Peter Brooks, que la crisis entre los valores que introdujo la modernidad —con su correspondiente recomposición de un mundo desacralizado— y el antiguo orden simbólico encontró en el melodrama la expresión de la tensión entre los esquemas morales cristianos y la moral secular naciente. Partimos de la idea de que el melodrama, particularmente el cinematográfico de la primera mitad del siglo xx, opera como una suerte de fórmula moderna basada en el modo melodramático. Reconstruimos las transformaciones que la modernidad introdujo en la mirada sobre los cuerpos: tanto su exposición y exhibición como su ocultamiento o su censura, y revelamos los recursos utilizados en la constitución melodramática de los cuerpos modernos, el manejo del tiempo-espacio en función del pacto ficcional que las películas analizadas proponen. Seguimos la huella del melodrama como matriz cultural de diversa aparición en el conjunto de producciones para las masas y su particular forma de colaborar en la construcción de la experiencia de la modernidad y de sus cuerpos. Para desarrollar estas ideas, organizamos la exposición en dos partes: Modernidad y narración y Cuerpos melodramáticos, cada una compuesta por tres capítulos. En la primera, con el objetivo de establecer los modos de narrar de la modernidad, dedicamos el capítulo inicial a la conexión de dichos modos con la ficción y, particularmente, con las posibilidades narrativas que ofrece el cinematógrafo a finales del siglo XIX y principios del XX. El segundo capítulo, De la ficción de la vida moderna a la imaginación melodramática, presenta el recorrido por las trasformaciones que resultan del encuentro de los hombres y las mujeres de la época con las tecnologías y las nuevas mentalidades modernas. En el tercer capítulo, Matrices culturales de la narración, proponemos que la narrativa cinematográfica actúa como una suerte de matriz cultural en la que se mueven, se forman, se expresan, se crean y se re-crean esos cuerpos modernos. La segunda parte, Cuerpos melodramáticos, la dedicamos a identificar los cuerpos modernos como cuerpos melodramáticos en algunas producciones cinematográficas de Hollywood y la manera como estos se construyen en ellas. Esta parte se desarrolla en tres capítulos: Cuerpos melodramáticos, De la imaginación melodramática y La fórmula: El melodrama como drama del reconocimiento. En ellos se examina la fórmula narrativa empleada para presentar los cuerpos melodramáticos cinematográficos en las películas Una mujer de París (Charles Chaplin, 1923), El viento (Víctor Sjöström, 1928) e Historias de Filadelfia (George Cukor, 1940). El seguimiento de la retórica del exceso nos ha llevado a preguntarnos donde tiene lugar tal exacerbación de los sentimientos en el melodrama: ¿es el cuerpo femenino ese lugar?, ¿es el cuerpo de la nación moderna el que se concreta en ese lamento de un mundo que se aleja de las formas tradicionales de los sagrado para entregarse a los principios de la racionalidad instrumental del progreso bajo cuya lógica se regula también la expresión de las emociones? El proceso investigativo nos ha mostrado que, más que una mirada reivindicativa, lo que el melodrama merece es que se lo considere por su capacidad de dar cuerpo a las narrativas modernas y, sobre todo, que esa capacidad en muchos casos ya es reivindicativa en sí misma. Una huella que va del menosprecio arrogante al reconocimiento del poder de los géneros menores para encarnar y narrar las nuevas preocupaciones modernas.
This research focuses on the narrative strategies that make up the melodramatic mode used in the Hollywood film narrative and its relation to the construction of modern bodies. Following Peter Brooks, we propose that the crisis between the values entered by modernity—with the corresponding recomposition of a desacralized world—and the old symbolic order found in melodrama the expression of the tension between Christian moral schemes and the nascent secular moral. We start off from the idea that melodrama, particularly film melodrama from the first half of the twentieth century, operates as a kind of modern formula based on the melodramatic mode. We reconstruct the changes that modernity introduced in looking at bodies: both exposure and exhibition and concealment or censorship, and disclose the resources used in the melodramatic constitution of modern bodies, time-space management according to the fictional covenant the analyzed films proposed. We follow the print of melodrama as cultural matrix of different appearance on the set of productions for the masses and its particular way to collaborate in the construction of the experience of modernity and their bodies. To develop these ideas, we organize the presentation in two parts: Modernity and narration and Melodramatic bodies, each composed of three chapters. In the first one, we dedicate the opening chapter to the connection of these modes with fiction in order to establish the modes of narration of modernity, and, particularly, with the narrative possibilities of the cinema in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. The second chapter, From the fiction of modern life to the melodramatic imagination, presents the tour through the transformations resulting from the encounter of men and women of the era with modern technologies and new mentalities. In the third chapter, Cultural matrices of narration, we propose that the film narrative acts as a kind of cultural matrix in which modern bodies move and are formed, expressed, created and re-created. The second part, Melodramatic bodies, centers on identifying modern bodies as melodramatic bodies in some Hollywood film productions and how these bodies are built in them. This part is divided into three chapters: Melodramatic bodies, On melodramatic imagination, and The formula: Melodrama as drama of recognition. These chapters examine the narrative formula used to present the cinematographic melodramatic bodies in the films A woman of Paris (Charles Chaplin, 1923), The wind (Victor Sjöström, 1928) and The Philadelphia story (George Cukor, 1940). Monitoring the rhetoric of excess has led us to wonder where such exacerbation of feelings takes place in the melodrama: is the female body that place?, is the body of the modern nation the one embodied in the lament of a world moving away from the traditional forms of the sacred to be delivered to the principles of progress’ instrumental rationality according to which the expression of emotions is also regulated? The research process has shown us that, rather than a vindictive look, what melodrama deserves is to be considered on its ability to shape modern narratives and that above all that capacity in many cases is already vindicating by itself. A print that goes from arrogant contempt to the recognition of the power minor genres have to portray and narrate new modern concerns.

Esta tese analisou os processos de significação na música de cinema tendo como referencial teórico estudos musicológicos com ênfase cognitivista e semiótica, decorrentes da teoria das tópicas musicais, a partir dos trabalhos de Leonard Ratner (1985), Kofi Agawu (1991, 2009), Robert Hatten (1994, 2005, 2014) e Danuta Mirka (2014). A pesquisa se concentrou em dois gêneros cinematográficos, o western e a ficção científica, considerando as práticas musicais a eles relacionadas desde o cinema silencioso, para compreender a formação do inventário associativo que constituiu a base do pensamento tópico no cinema. Ao analisar o inventário musical de cada gênero, observamos que o uso recorrente de figurações e materiais musicais específicos correlacionados a elementos da paradigmática fílmica criou aquilo que denominamos - \"imaginário sonoro do gênero cinematográfico\", que definimos como sendo o conjunto de gestos, musemas, tópicas e sons concretos recorrentes na música do gênero e que contribuíram para a formação de uma identidade musical. A identificação dos elementos constituintes deste imaginário sonoro nos ajudou a compreender a significação musical à luz dos códigos e da mitologia que fundamentam o gênero cinematográfico. Em relação à formação do imaginário sonoro do western e da ficção científica, duas tendências antagônicas ganharam relevância: o papel da tradição folclórica e nacionalista para a identidade da música do western e, por outro lado, a importância das experiências da vanguarda musical para a construção do imaginário sonoro da ficção científica. Os signos musicais que permeiam o imaginário sonoro do gênero cinematográfico se combinam em processos tropológicos e se transmutam para acompanhar os desenvolvimentos técnicos, poéticos, tecnológicos e ideológicos que afetam os campos musical e cinematográfico. Em conjunto com as análises musicais, a teoria da marcação, aplicada ao plano musical por Hatten (1994), nos serviu como profícua ferramenta para a análise das antinomias que orientam grande parte das narrativas cinematográficas. A adoção da teoria da marcação contribuiu para revelar a função da música como alienadora ou -familiarizadora? de elementos da narrativa. Verificamos finalmente a possibilidade de correlação entre o discurso paradigmático das referências tópicas e o eixo sintagmático da forma fílmica.
This doctoral dissertation analyzed the processes of musical meaning in cinema using as theoretical fundament musicological studies of cognitivist and semiotic basis that have followed the theory of music topics after the work of Leonard Ratner (1985), Kofi Agawu (1991, 2009), Robert Hatten (1994, 2005, 2014) and Danuta Mirka (2014). The research concentrated in two cinematographic genres, the western and the science fiction, considering musical practices related to them since the silent movies, to understand the formation of an associative inventory that has become the basis of the topical thought in cinema. Analyzing the musical repertoire of each genre, we observe that the recurring use of specific figurations and other musical materials, related to elements of the film paradigms, has created what we called - \"sound imagery of a cinema genre\" . We defined this concept as the set of gestures, musemas, topics and concrete sounds often used in the music of that genre which contributed for the identification of the music with the images and the plot. The identification of the elements of this sound imagery helped us to understand the musical meaning by the perspective of the codes and myths that form the cinematographic genre. In relation to the formation of the sound imagery of the western and the science fiction genres, two antagonist tendencies have emerged, the role of folkloric and nationalistic traditions for the music identity of the western genre and the importance of avant-garde musical experiments for the construction of the science fiction sound imagery. The musical signs that cross the sound imagery of the cinematographic genre blend through tropological processes and transform themselves to follow the technical, poetical, technological and ideological developments that affect the fields of music and cinema. Besides the musical analysis, the markedness theory, applied to music by Hatten (1994), served as useful tool to analyze the role of antinomy that guide many of the cinematographic narratives. The adoption of the makedness theory contributed to reveal how the music alienate or familiarize the elements of the narrative. We also verified a possible correlation between the paradigmatic discourse of the topical references and the syntagmatic axis of the filmic form.

A dominant trend in cyberpunk scholarship draws from Fredric Jameson's diagnosis of postmodernism as the logic of late capitalism, using Jameson's spatial pastiche, schizophrenic temporality, and waning of affect, along with Jameson's characterization of Baudrillard's simulacrum to interpret postmodern cultural artifacts. For many cultural critics, the city of cyberpunk is thoroughly postmodern because parallels can be drawn between the cyberpunk city and the postmodern condition. However, very little work has considered the ways in which cyberpunk can defamiliarize the necro-spatial and necro-temporal logic of neoliberalism. This project moves away from more traditional disciplinary aesthetic methods of analyzing power and urban systems, such as interpretation and representation. And, it problematizes the biopolitical present in three different ways. First, by weaving in and out of an analysis of the narratives, discourses, and spatio-temporalities of cyberpunk and neoliberalism, I seek to produce epistemological interferences within these genres/disciplines, and thus, to disrupt the conceptual and lived biopolitical status-quo of late-capitalism. The goal is to open the door for discomfort with and a critical awareness of the necrotic conditions of competition by highlighting the fictive nature of neoliberalism. Second, this study problematizes accelerationism as a viable alternative to leftist politics and suggests in the end that accelerationism is a form of neoliberal resilience. It does this through an analysis of the biohacker that reframes this subject in terms of accelerationism and the logic of intensity. I argue that the biohacker is the accelerationist subject Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek advocate for in their "Accelerationist Manifesto," suggesting that this accelerationist subject is, in the end, a neoliberal subject that fits easily within the conditions of competition. This study argues that the biohacker in its numerous forms reflects an underlying pure neoliberalism at work within accelerationism and its neoliberal governmentalities. I suggest that far from being an alternative to leftist politics, accelerationism may further the goals of neoliberalism in its desire to accelerate to a purified market space. And, finally, this study works towards offering a biopolitics that theorizes death in terms of ordinariness and suggests that biopolitics is still a useful analytic within neoliberalism. In other words, Foucault's biopolitics can do more than theorize a genealogy of biological racism and genocide. Rather than advocate for moving beyond biopolitics, this study argues instead that neoliberal biopolitics can still be understood in terms of Foucault's analytic, and that perhaps, we need to disentangle Foucault's work from Achille Mbembe's "Necropolitics."
Doctor of Philosophy
A dominant trend in cyberpunk scholarship draws from Fredric Jameson’s diagnosis of postmodernism as the logic of late capitalism, using Jameson’s spatial pastiche, schizophrenic temporality, and waning of affect, along with Jameson’s characterization of Baudrillard’s simulacrum to interpret postmodern cultural artifacts. For many cultural critics, the city of cyberpunk is thoroughly postmodern because parallels can be drawn between the cyberpunk city and the postmodern condition. However, very little work has considered the ways in which cyberpunk can defamiliarize the necro-spatial and necro-temporal logic of neoliberalism. This project moves away from more traditional disciplinary aesthetic methods of analyzing power and urban systems, such as interpretation and representation. It problematizes the biopolitical present in three different ways. First, by weaving in and out of an analysis of the narratives, discourses, and spatio-temporalities of cyberpunk and neoliberalism, I seek to produce epistemological interferences within these genres/disciplines, and thus, to disrupt the conceptual and lived biopolitical status-quo of late-capitalism. Second, this study problematizes accelerationism as a viable alternative to leftist politics and suggests in the end that accelerationism is a form of neoliberal resilience. And, finally, this study works towards offering a biopolitics that theorizes death in terms of ordinariness and suggests that biopolitics is still a useful analytic within neoliberalism. Methodologically, the project utilizes an interdisciplinary approach, pulling from political theory, genre studies, discourse analysis, and digital ethnographic research. Professionals and scholars interested in contesting neoliberalism will benefit from this study as it offers ways to problematize neoliberalism’s reality construction.

Vår samtid genomgår stora förändring i allt från digitalisering till klimatpåverkan och ett resultat av detta är vår längtan efter att få uppleva och ta del av innehåll som påminner oss om en svunnen tid. Nostalgiska inslag finns i många delar av vårt samhälle och denna uppsats undersöker hur ett tidigare decennium representeras i en samtida medieprodukt och bidrar till en nostalgisk upplevelse. Idag finns det en förkärlek till en 80-talsnostalgi vilket blir synligt i många nyproducerade filmer och serier. I uppsatsen analyseras hur man i serien Sex Education (2019-2020) har valt att representera 80-talet i en samtida kontext för att skapa en nostalgisk effekt hos mottagaren. Vidare blir effekten av att blanda ett nostalgiskt grepp (nostalgisk mise-en-scene, musik och genrerefenser) med ett nutidsgrepp (den moderna gestaltningen av tematiken) att dessa kontraster skapar en friktion som väcker tittarens intresse. I uppsatsen tillämpas kvalitativ filmanalys, baserad på en kategoriserande modell, på estetik och tematik i serien Sex Education. Syftet är påvisa seriens nostalgiska inslag och belysa hur de skapas.
Our present time is experiencing a major change in everything from digitalisation to climate change, and one result of this is our longing to experience and share content that reminds us of another time. Nostalgic elements can be seen in many parts of our society and this essay examines how a past decade is represented in a modern media product and the nostalgic experience it generates. Today, there is a love for '80s nostalgia, which becomes visible in many newly produced films and series. The thesis is based on analyzing how the series Sex Education (2019-2020) has chosen to represent the 80s in a contemporary context to create a nostalgic effect on the recipient. Furthermore, the effect of mixing a nostalgic grip (nostalgic mise-en-scene, music and genre references) with a contemporary grip (the modern form of the theme) is that it creates contrasts which causes a friction that arouses the viewer's interest. The thesis applies qualitative film analysis, based on a categorizing model, to aesthetics and themes in the series Sex Education. The purpose is to demonstrate the series' nostalgic features and highlight how they are created.

The mid-2000s saw a surge in the popularity of musical biopics: films such as Ray (2004) which tell the story of a star musician. While academic studies have addressed biopics treating classical and jazz composers, the popular musical biopic (encompassing blues, folk, pop, country, rap, and rock) is not only the least studied subtype of the musical biopic, but the most profitable and frequently made. I analyze four different aspects of the musical biopic that illustrate its significance: Chapter One addresses the musical biopic in the context of the post-studio era entertainment industry. I study A Hard Day's Night as a film which reconciles artistry with the commercial imperative of cross-promotion. Chapter Two surveys the increased presence of minority entertainers in post-studio era musical biopics, covering films featuring African American musicians, as well as films which pair a black mentor with a white musician or producer. Chapter Three examines the relationship between storytelling, particularly the portrayal of love relationships, and song performances. I find in that the post-studio era musical biopic often reconciles narrative structures inherited from the classical Hollywood musical with post-classical film styles. Chapter Four, a psychoanalytic study of the contemporary musical biopic, theorizes the genre's turn to the representation of flawed and scandalous subjects.

Simple content analysis methods, such as the Bechdel test and measuring percentage of female talk time or characters, have seen a surge of attention from mainstream media and in social media the last couple of years. Underlying assumptions are generally shared with the gender role socialization model and consequently, an importance is stated, due to a high degree to which impressions from media shape in particular young children’s identification processes. For young girls, the Disney Princesses franchise (with Frozen included) stands out as the number one player commercially as well as in customer awareness. The vertical lineup of Disney princesses spans from the passive and domestic working Snow White in 1937 to independent and super-power wielding princess Elsa in 2013, which makes the line of films an optimal test subject in evaluating above-mentioned simple content analysis methods. As a control, a meta-study has been conducted on previous academic studies on the same range of films. The sampled research, within fields spanning from qualitative content analysis and semiotics to coded content analysis, all come to the same conclusions regarding the general changes over time in representations of female characters. The objective of this thesis is to answer whether or not there is a correlation between these changes and those indicated by the simple content analysis methods, i.e. whether or not the simple popular methods are in general coherence with the more intricate academic methods.

Betyg VG (skala IG-VG)

“Malice in Wonderland: The Perverse Pleasure of the Revolting Child,” explores the place of “revolting child,” or the child-as-monster, in horror cinema using textual analysis, discourse analysis, and historical reception study. These figures, as seen in films such as The Bad Seed, Village of the Damned, and The Exorcist, “revolt” in two ways: they create feelings of unease due to their categorical perversion, and they also rebel against the family, the community, and the very notion of futurity. This work argues that the pleasure of these films vacillates between Othering the child to legitimate fantasies of child abuse and engaging an imagined rebellion against a heteronormative social order. As gays and lesbians have been culturally deemed “arrested” in their development, the revolting child functions as a potent metaphor for queerness, and the films provide a mise-en-scène of desire for queer spectators, as in the “masked child” who performs childhood innocence. This dissertation begins with concrete examples of queer reception, such as fan discourse, camp reiterations, and GLBT media production, and uses these responses to reinvestigate the films for sites of queer engagement. Interestingly, though child monsters appear centrally in several of the highest-grossing films in the horror genre, no critic has offered a comprehensive explanation as to what draws audiences this particular type of monstrosity. Further, this dissertation follows contemporary strains in queer theory that deconstruct notions of “development” and “maturity” as agents of heteronormative power, as seen in the work of Michael Moon, Lee Edelman, Ellis Hanson, Jose Esteban Muñez, and Kathryn Bond Stockton.
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Cette thèse examine en profondeur la nature et l’application du concept de genre en jeu vidéo. Elle se divise en trois parties. La première fait l’inventaire des théories des genres en littérature et en études cinématographiques. Les propriétés essentielles du genre comme concept sont identifiées : il s’agit d’une catégorisation intuitive et irraisonnée, de nature discursive, qui découle d’un consensus culturel commun plutôt que de systèmes théoriques, et qui repose sur les notions de tradition, d’innovation et d’hybridité. Dans la deuxième partie, ces constats sont appliqués au cas du genre vidéoludique. Quelques typologies sont décortiquées pour montrer l’impossibilité d’une classification autoritaire. Un modèle du développement des genres est avancé, lequel s’appuie sur trois modalités : l’imitation, la réitération et l’innovation. Par l’examen de l’histoire du genre du first-person shooter, la conception traditionnelle du genre vidéoludique basée sur des mécanismes formels est remplacée par une nouvelle définition centrée sur l’expérience du joueur. La troisième partie développe l’expérience comme concept théorique et la place au centre d’une nouvelle conception du genre, la pragmatique des effets génériques. Dans cette optique, tout objet est une suite d’amorces génériques, d’effets en puissance qui peuvent se réaliser pourvu que le joueur dispose des compétences génériques nécessaires pour les reconnaître. Cette nouvelle approche est démontrée à travers une étude approfondie d’un genre vidéoludique : le survival horror. Cette étude de cas témoigne de l’applicabilité plus large de la pragmatique des effets génériques, et de la récursivité des questions de genre entre le jeu vidéo, la littérature et le cinéma.
This thesis provides an in-depth examination of the nature and application of the concept of genre for the video game. It is divided in three parts. Part one features an overview of genre theory in literature and film studies. The essential properties of genre as a concept are identified: it is an intuitive and “thumbnail” classification method, discursive rather than systemic in nature, and that owes its existence to a common cultural consensus rather than theoretical divisions. More importantly, the notions of tradition, innovation and hybridity are found to be central to genre. In part two, these findings are applied to the case of video game genre. A few typologies are examined to show that authoritative classifications are impossible. A model of the development of genres is laid out, based on three modalities: imitation, reiteration and innovation. By studying the history of the first-person shooter, the traditional conception of genre being based on formal mechanics is replaced by a new definition centered on player experience. Part three details experience as a theoretical concept and places it at the center of a new conception of genre, the pragmatics of generic effects. In this view, any object is a matrix of generic anchors bound to become generic effects, provided the player possesses the generic competences required to recognize them. This new approach is demonstrated through an examination of the survival-horror videogame genre. This case study showcases the potential of the pragmatics of generic effects for other fields, and provides a testimony for the recursion of the questions of genre between the video game, literature, and film.