Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Motion picture actors and acturesses'

Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Glasgow, 2002.
Ph.D. thesis submitted to the Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies, University of Glasgow, 2002. Includes bibliographical references. Print version also available.

This thesis examines the changing nature of Hollywood stardom and how this is informed by an emergent celebrity culture. Through several case studies this study augments older forms of analysis with Bourdieu’s concept of capital to create a new model of stardom that can accommodate recent cultural developments. In chapter one four key forms of capital are identified. After contextualising this new model within the history of classic Hollywood and older academic approaches to stardom in chapter two, the analysis of Nicole Kidman’s star text in chapter three shows how her image has evolved to combine all forms of cultural capital and as such exemplifies an entirely new formulation of the Hollywood film star. Chapter four applies this analysis to the small screen, with the case studies of Michael J. Fox and Sarah Jessica Parker showing how some performers are able to accrue cultural capital by simultaneously working in film and television, establishing television as a legitimate site for Hollywood stardom and its associated capital. In chapter five a case study of Brand Beckham shows how the capital of contemporary celebrity can be effectively deployed in order to generate a similar allure to that of the classic Hollywood star and with it a similar level of Hollywood power. The final chapter examines the simultaneous unravelling of one brand and the creation of another in light of the increasing power of the fan within celebrity culture. A detailed study of Britney Spears’s presence on perezhilton.com highlights the involvement of the audience as producers of her image and demonstrates how new technologies can be used to create an entirely new form of fame for the gossip columnist, which in turn has been appropriated by the Hollywood system as the next site for legitimate fame.

The participatory cyberspace, epitomized by the concept of Web 2.0, has become a key venue of Chinese stardom in the post-cinema era.Web 2.0 invites its users to contribute to the content through an architecture of participation. Fans can search, poach, edit, and post filmic and publicity materials about stars, formulating seamless, collaborative reworkings of the star image and generating a new star-fan dynamic. At the crossroads of participatory cyberspace and cinema, transnational Chinese movie stars call our attention to the critical concern of Chineseness. In recent years, a number of Chinese movie stars have attained prominent presence in the global cinematic arena. These acting talents, who are either identified as martial arts performers or known for their performances in martial arts films, won global acclaim as a result of the worldwide reception and esteem for Hong Kong action films and Fifth Generation directors’ films from mainland China. As these stars begin to engineer personae stretching beyond their ethnic identities for the global setting, their stardom engenders discourses of ethnicity and cosmopolitanism.What does it mean to call these stars “Chinese” in the global cyber setting? How do their fans interact to reshape their star personae on the Web? How can one approach and understand “Chineseness” within cyber fan discourse? All these questions point to a central problem of how to conceptualize Chineseness in participatory cyberspace. My agenda in this study is to investigate Chinese movie stardom as a web-based phenomenon by establishing a new theoretical framework for considering Chineseness in participatory cyberspace. I have created a set of four analytical matrixes, each examining a particular Chinese star through a specific fan-based practice on a specific participatory site: vidding Donnie Yen and critiquing Zhang Ziyi on YouTube; photo-sharing about Jackie Chan on Flickr; “friending” Jet Li on Facebook; and discussing Takeshi Kaneshiro on fan forums. Through close investigation of these five Chinese stars, I demonstrate that the cyber setting enables collaborative fan reworkings of star texts and multiple directionality of approaching Chineseness. Cyber fans produce intertextual, multi-faceted star personae, different from traditional film personae whose meanings are anchored in a rigid established representational framework. Through the relentless scrutiny, quotation, manipulation self-affiliation by fans enabled by cyber technology, Chineseness becomes an utterly illusive and indefinable entity, a new form of signification whose meaning is always changing. This unstable, hybrid Chineseness challenges the notion of a star’s given ethnicity, redefining the archetypal martial arts body in unpredictable, manifold and provocative terms for the cyber era. With the aim of advancing the critical theorization of Chineseness, this study unfolds and analyzes the dynamics of the vital relationship between Chinese stardom, web technologies, and fan discourse. It also serves as a timely response to the challenges posed by cyber culture for the disciplines of cinema and cultural studies, in light of the proliferating yet inadequate current efforts in this field.
published_or_final_version
Comparative Literature
Doctoral
Doctor of Philosophy

Thesis (M.A. in communication)--Washington State University, December 2009.
Title from PDF title page (viewed on Feb. 12, 2010). "Edward R. Murrow College of Communication." Includes bibliographical references (p. 107-115).

Psychobiographers study the lives of extraordinary, prominent, and enigmatic individuals. Psychobiographical research advances our insight into the uniqueness and complexity of the human personality and therefore makes a substantial contribution towards one of the major objectives of the field of psychology. Purposive sampling was employed to select Charlize Theron as the subject of this psychobiographical study. As the only South African who has won an Oscar, Theron is an exceptional individual who demonstrates tenacity and a will to succeed despite significant traumatic events in her childhood. The case study data was organised and analysed according to the general analytic approach developed by Huberman and Miles (2002) and one of Alexander’s (1990) strategies, namely questioning the data. Erikson’s psychosocial theory (1950, 1963, 1995) was selected to guide this study because it recognises the impact of socio-cultural influences on developmental processes and provides a comprehensive, staged framework for studying Theron’s personality development. This study contributes to the development of psychobiographical research in South Africa.

This thesis examines an intermittent uncanniness that emerges in cultural responses to new image technologies, most recently in some impressions of the digital actor. The history of image technologies is punctuated by moments of fleeting strangeness: from Maxim Gorky's reading of the cinematographic image in terms of 'cursed grey shadows', to recent renderings of the computer-generated cast of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within as silicon-skinned mannequins. It is not merely the image's unfamiliar and new aesthetics that render it uncanny. Rather, the image is received within a cultural framework where its perceived strangeness speaks allegorically of what it means to be human at that historical moment. In various ways Walter Benjamin, Anson Rabinbach and N. Katherine Hayles have claimed that the notion and the experience of 'being human' is continuously transformed through processes related to different stages of modernity including rational thought, industrialisation, urbanisation, media and technology. In elaborating this argument, each of the four chapters is organized around the elucidation of a particular motif: 'dummy', 'siren', 'doppelg??nger' and 'resurrection'. These motifs circulate through discourses on different categories of digital actor, from those conceived without physical referents to those that are created as digital likenesses of living or dead celebrities. These cultural responses suggest that even while writers on the digital actor are speculating about the future, they are engaging with ideas about life, death and identity that are very old and very ambivalent.

Costume designer Orry-Kelly has a unique place in Hollywood history as one of the few designers to win three or more Academy Awards and one of the few Australians to succeed in the Hollywood studio system. His work was a major factor in the success of Bette Davis at Warner Bros. However, Orry-Kelly and his work have received little critical attention. This study examines the function of Orry-Kelly's costumes in a selection of Bette Davis vehicles produced at Warner Bros. between 1938 and 1942. In order to assess the value of Orry-Kelly's contributions, the thesis charts the development of the role of the Hollywood studio costume designer and summarises theories relevant to the function of costume in classical Hollywood narrative. Films analysed are Jezebel, Dark Victory, The Letter, The Little Foxes, Now, Voyager, The Great Lie and In This Our Life. Sources consulted for background to Orry-Kelly's life and career include records in the Orry-Kelly File in the Warner Bros. Archives at the University of Southern California, and material gathered in Australia which has not been previously presented in an academic study. The study concludes that Orry-Kelly's costume concepts display an intuitive understanding of processes of human perception and behaviour, and knowledge of the requirements of the film medium, to convey the preferred meanings about characters and aid in story-telling.

This project investigated body image issues of girls aged 13-19 years old. It surveyed a random sample of 100 girls via a self-administered questionnaire. The study found that most teen girls have a celebrity actor idol and that the majority of teen girls are self conscious regarding body shape and weight.

Cada divendres les cartelleres cinematogràfiques s’omplen de nous títols que cerquen atraure el màxim nombre d’espectadors al cinema. Poques pel·lícules aconseguiran mantenir-se a la gran pantalla durant algunes setmanes; la majoria seran reemplaçades ràpidament per deixar lloc a les noves produccions, que esperen ser estrenades. Des dels anys vuitanta del segle XX molts autors s’han interessat per determinar a partir d’un model matemàtic quins factors ajuden a aconseguir l’èxit d’una pel·lícula i, d’aquesta manera, mitiguen l’alt risc que suposa el negoci cinematogràfic. Algunes de les preguntes que s’han plantejat aquests autors de forma més recurrent són les següents: com responen els espectadors davant l’obtenció d’un premi?, com influeix en el públic incloure en l’elenc un actor reconegut? o quin efecte té la crítica professional en la decisió d’anar al cinema a veure una pel·lícula determinada? El repte principal d’aquesta recerca ha estat adaptar a la realitat del cinema català els criteris que fins ara s’han emprat per analitzar altres indústries cinematogràfiques, sobretot la nord-americana. La disparitat entre el model cultural i industrial d’aquestes dues cinematografies augurava uns resultats significativament diferents. S’ha recollit informació de 267 produccions catalanes estrenades entre els anys 2008 i 2014 i, seguint el treball dels autors consultats, s’ha realitzat una anàlisi multivariable per contrastar de forma conjunta tots els possibles factors que poden intervenir en l’èxit cinematogràfic. Només d’aquesta manera ha estat possible reduir considerablement el nombre de determinants de l’èxit per establir els que realment tenen influència en l’explotació en sala d’una pel·lícula. Els resultats que s’han assolit són reveladors i definidors de la realitat en la qual es desenvolupa la producció de cinema a Catalunya i refermen amb evidències científiques el coneixement subjectiu d’aquest sector. Per tant, el principal valor d’aquesta recerca radica en el contrast objectiu mitjançant una tècnica provada estadísticament, que, en refermar el coneixement subjectiu previ, aporta seguretat a l’hora de prendre mesures i d’actuar sobre la realitat examinada. Una primera conclusió general del treball realitzat és la poca connexió d’una part de la producció cinematogràfica catalana amb els espectadors ja que un terç de la producció catalana del període analitzat no ha estat vista per gairebé cap espectador. En segon lloc, i com a resum de les conclusions que s’han obtingut amb aquesta recerca es pot avançar que els aspectes pressupostaris i l’estructura empresarial del sector són els aspectes que més influeixen en l’èxit d’una pel·lícula catalana, seguits del reconeixement generat pels guardons principals dels premis Goya —i dels premis Gaudí a Catalunya—, que comporta una forta repercussió en el nombre d’espectadors que aconseguirà aquella pel·lícula. Per contra, la presència en festivals no té cap influència en l’èxit intern d’una pel·lícula, però és determinant en la internacionalització. Pel que fa als factors artístics, només s’ha trobat una relació directa entre l’idioma utilitzat per al rodatge i els resultats obtinguts en taquilla. La resta de factors que s’han introduït en l’anàlisi s’han descartat, atès que no aporten informació significativa al model. La comparació de l’anàlisi sectorial amb els resultats del treball empíric assenyala una peculiar coincidència entre els principals problemes que afecten el sector cinematogràfic català i els factors que intervenen en l’èxit de la seva producció: nivell de pressupost i estructura empresarial són factors que limiten la producció cinematogràfica catalana, però, alhora, apareixen com els determinants més influents en la consecució d’uns bons resultats d’explotació, tant al mercat interior (l’espanyol) com a l’exterior (l’europeu).
Every Friday, movie listings fill up with new films seeking to attract as many moviegoers to the cinema as possible, but only a few movies will manage to stay on the big screen for weeks. During the 1980s, many researchers used mathematical models to attempt to determine the factors which help to make a film successful, and so mitigate the high risks involved in the movie business. The main challenge of this study has been to adapt to the Catalan cinema industry the criteria which have been used to analyze other film industries, above all the American industry. Following the work of the researchers consulted, data from 267 new Catalan productions from between 2008 and 2014 was obtained, and a multivariable analysis was carried out to evaluate all the possible factors which might contribute to the success of a film. The results obtained are revealing, and help to clarify the reality of film production in Catalonia, providing scientific evidence to back up the subjective knowledge of the sector. Thus the value of the study lies in employing a statistically proven method to reinforce previously subjective knowledge, and provide security when making key decisions in film-making. To summarize the conclusions obtained in this study, it can be stated that budgetary factors and production company characteristics are the aspects which play the most important role in the success of a Catalan film, followed by the recognition generated by the main awards, the Goyas – and the Gaudi awards in Catalonia – which also have a major impact on the number of moviegoers who choose to see the film. By contrast, movies’ presence at festivals has no influence on the national success of a film but is decisive in its international career. As for artistic factors, it has only been possible to establish a direct relationship between the language in which the film is made and the results at the box office. The rest of the factors introduced in the analysis have been discounted, given that they do not contribute any significant information to the model.

by Ku Ho Kwan Lisbeth.
Thesis submitted in: September 1997.
Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1998.
Filmography: leaves 117-119.
Includes bibliographical references (leaves 109-116).
List of illustrations --- p.vii
Chapter I. --- Introduction --- p.1
Chapter 1. 1 --- Articulating Hong Kong History / Identity --- p.1
Chapter 1.2 --- Identity through Mass-Cultural Mediation --- p.10
Chapter 1. 3 --- Using Popular Culture --- p.18
Chapter II. --- The Locality of Culture: A Contextual Analysis of Cantonese Cinema in Hong Kong --- p.32
Chapter 2.1 --- The Emergence of Local Consciousness through Three Decades of Cantonese Cinema (From the 30s to the 50s) --- p.32
Chapter 2. 2 --- Youth Film and Its Historically Specific Audience --- p.38
Chapter 2. 3 --- Reading Youth Film -- A Purple Stormy Night (紫色風雨夜) --- p.55
Chapter III. --- Mass Mediated Images of Women --- p.64
Chapter 3. 1 --- Connie Chan Po Chu and Josephine Siao Fong Fong as Desired Cultural Images --- p.66
Chapter 3. 2 --- Identification and Commodification --- p.81
Chapter IV. --- Conclusion --- p.92
Chapter 4.1 --- The Ordinary and the Extraordinary-- Siao Fong Fong and the Self-Image of Hong Kong People in the 90s --- p.92
Chapter 4.2 --- Mediating Cultural Identity with Cultural History of Hong Kong --- p.102
Bibliography --- p.109
中文電影目錄 --- p.117
Appendix --- p.120

Bollywood cinema continues to evolve. As a result, it has become a transnational/cultural role player for Indian audiences worldwide. There has always been a strong link between Bollywood cinema and Indian society. Over the years, it has contributed to the dialogue on women’s roles and position in Indian society. In the past, Bollywood filmmakers were faithful to representations of women who were bound by patriarchal structures in the sense that they were expected to be loyal to ancient Indian traditions and belief-systems. Based on the increase in Indian migration, contemporary Bollywood filmmakers are now catering to the demands of the Indian diaspora and therefore, a more global market. The impact of transnationalism on the representation of women in many Bollywood films has further added to the creation of open spaces for the Bollywood heroine. In this regard, the films of auteur director Karan Johar are valuable because they provide audiences with material that suggests re-thinking patriarchal structures in a transnational world. This study will examine the representation of women in three selected films of Johar within the framework of feminist theory (Indian context). The impact that transnationalism has had on the Indian diaspora and the manner in which this translates into the narratives and representations of female characters in Bollywood films will be discussed.
Afrikaans & Theory of Literature
D. Litt. et Phil. (Theory of Literature)