Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Women in film'
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1
McCurdy, Marian Lea. "Women Murder Women: Case Studies in Theatre and Film." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Theatre and Film Studies, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/1938.
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This thesis looks at two cases of women who murdered women - the Papin sisters (Le Mans, 1933) and Parker-Hulme (Christchurch, 1954) - and considers their diverse representations in theatre and film, paying particular attention to Jean Genet’s play The Maids (1947), Peter Jackson’s film Heavenly Creatures (1994) and Peter Falkenberg’s film Remake (2007), in which I played a part. What happens when two women (sisters, girl friends) commit violent acts together - not against a man, or a child, but against another woman, a mother or (as in the case of the Papin sisters) against women symbolically standing in place of the mother? How are these two cases - the Papin sisters and Parker-Hulme - presented in historical documents, reinterpreted in political, psychoanalytic and feminist theories, and represented in theatre and film? How might these works of theatre and film, in particular, be seen to explain - or exploit - these cases for an audience? How is the relationship between prurience - the peeping at women doing something bad - and the use of these cases to produce social commentary and/or art, better understood by looking at these objects of fascination ourselves? My thesis explores how these cases continue to interest and inspire artists and intellectuals, as well as the general public - both because they can be seen to violate fundamental social taboos against mother-murder and incest, and because of the challenge they pose for representation in theatre or film.
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Harrington, Erin Jean. "Gynaehorror: Women, theory and horror film." Thesis, University of Canterbury. Cultural Studies, School of Humanities and Creative Arts, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10092/9586.
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This thesis offers an analysis of women in horror film through an in depth exploration of what I term ‘gynaehorror’ – horror films that are concerned with female sex, sexuality and reproduction. While this is a broad and fruitful area of study, work in it has been shaped by a pronounced emphasis upon psychoanalytic theory, which I argue has limited the field of inquiry. To challenge this, this thesis achieves three things. Firstly, I interrogate a subgenre of horror that has not been studied in depth for twenty years, but that is experiencing renewed interest. Secondly, I analyse aspects of this subgenre outside of the dominant modes of inquiry by placing an emphasis upon philosophies of sex, gender and corporeality, rather than focussing on psychodynamic approaches. Thirdly, I consider not only what these theories may do for the study of horror films, but what spaces of inquiry horror films may open up within these philosophical areas.
To do this, I focus on six broad streams: the current limitations and opportunities in the field of horror scholarship, which I augment with a discussion of women’s bodies, houses and spatiality; the relationship between normative heterosexuality and the twin figures of the chaste virgin and the voracious vagina dentata; the representation and expression of female subjectivity in horror films that feature pregnancy and abortion; the manner in which reproductive technology is bound up within hegemonic constructions of gender and power, as is evidenced by the figure of the ‘mad scientist’; the way that discourses of motherhood and maternity in horror films shift over time, but nonetheless result in the demonisation of the mother; and the theoretical and corporeal possibilities opened up through Deleuze and Guattari’s model of schizoanalysis, with specific regard to the 'Alien' films. As such, this thesis makes a unique contribution to the study of women in horror film, while also advocating for an expansion of the theoretical repertoire available to the horror scholar.
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Housel, Rebecca Anne Languages & Linguistics Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences UNSW. "My truth: women speak cancer." Publisher:University of New South Wales. Languages & Linguistics, 2007. http://handle.unsw.edu.au/1959.4/40732.
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1) My Truth: Women Speak Cancer is a creative nonfiction based on three years of interviews with twelve survivors told through the lens of the author's experience as a three-time, sixteen-year survivor of multiple cancers. Each chapter features a different survivor and her story; the cancers discussed include non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Osteosarcoma, Melanoma, as well as brain, ovarian, breast, and thyroid cancers. Current definitions, treatments and statistics are included at the end of each chapter. The book ends with a comprehensive After Words, combining poetry and prose, taking the reader on a further journey of introspection on life, love, friendship, and loss. 2) The Narrative of Pathogynography is a critical exegesis using established theory in the fields of creative writing, sociology, ethnography, literature, and medicine to examine and further define the sub genre of the theoria, poiesis and praxis involved in creating women's illness narrative, or what Housel terms, pathogynography. Housel develops original terminology to define yet undiscovered spaces based on her work in My Truth: Women Speak Cancer.
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Horst, Jennifer Lynne. "The making of the documentary film Women in Red." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2008. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc9088/.
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Though the remnants of a stereotype created over two millennia ago still thrive in American popular culture today, redheaded women are enjoying a more positive role in society than they have ever seen before. Women in Red explores the experience of the redheaded woman in America today by examining how the stereotypes have affected a small group of them, how these women relate to the stereotypes, and why, given the verisimilitude of the stereotype, a non-redheaded woman would embrace such an identity with the simple act of dying her hair red. This is the story behind the experience that is Women in Red.
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Weeks, Andrew. "Depictions of women in stalinist sovet film, 1934-1953." Honors in the Major Thesis, University of Central Florida, 2012. http://digital.library.ucf.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ETH/id/638.
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Popular films in the Soviet Union were the products of the implementation of propagandistic messages into storylines that were both ideologically and aesthetically consistent with of the interests of the State and Party apparatuses. Beginning in the 1930s, following declaration of the doctrine on socialist realism as the official form of cultural production, Soviet authorities and filmmakers tailored films to the circumstances in the USSR at that given moment in order to influence and shape popular opinion; however, this often resulted in inconsistent and outright contradictory messages. Given the transformation that gender relations were undergoing in the early stages of development, one area that was particularly problematic in Soviet cinema was the portrayals of women. Focusing primarily on the Stalinist period of the Soviet History (1934-1953), I plan to look at the ways in which women were portrayed in popular Soviet cinema and specifically the ways in which these presentations shifted before, during, and after World War II.B.A.
Bachelors
Arts and Humanities
History
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Horst, Jennifer Lynne Levin C. Melinda. "The making of the documentary film Women in red." [Denton, Tex.] : University of North Texas, 2008. http://digital.library.unt.edu/permalink/meta-dc-9088.
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Hanson, Helen. "Painted women : framing portraits in film noir and the gothic woman's film of the 1940s." Thesis, University of Southampton, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.364751.
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Lacey, Joanne Elizabeth. "Seeing through happiness : class, gender and popular film; Liverpool women remember the fifties film musical." Thesis, Goldsmiths College (University of London), 1998. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.300615.
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McWilliams, Stephen Thomas. "Exercise and Behavior Change in Adult Women Transitioning into Society: A Documentary Film Analysis." Diss., Temple University Libraries, 2014. http://cdm16002.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p245801coll10/id/281081.
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KinesiologyPh.D.
The Role of Film as Persuasive Tool of Social Change: Since the introduction of cinema, both non-fiction and fictional films have been used by film makers, artists, and interest groups to change minds and mold opinions. Documentary films in particular, have a history of being used in a variety of ways to further political causes, raise social or patriotic awareness, or as a call to personal activism. In this project, the use of well designed, aesthetically pleasing documentaries have been advocated for potential use in the field of sport psychology to create awareness of the work of practitioners in order to promote healthy behaviors. Filmmaking can serve the field in a number of creative ways. A recent film is submitted as a demonstration of how a well crafted film can be utilized within the field as both a advocacy piece and an educational resource. There has been a long, historical relationship between sports and film. Throughout cinematic history there have been numerous films, both narrative and documentaries, both about sports or subjects that included sports in their story. Sports lend themselves to narrative and documentary storytelling. As a filmmaker, I was drawn to a story about a non-profit organization, "Gearing Up," which uses a bicycle exercise program to help women in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. The film explores the effectiveness of a therapeutic model developed by "Gearing Up" founder, Kristin Gavin. The production of the film, and my involvement as the producer and director, inspired me to explore the further use of documentary film as both a classroom teaching tool and a vehicle that can inspire behavioral change.
Temple University--Theses
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Vorrasi, Natasha Jaclyn. "Black men, white women : interracial relationships in contemporary Hollywood film /." Title page, contents and abstract only, 2001. http://web4.library.adelaide.edu.au/theses/09AR/09arv954.pdf.
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Scott, Lindsey A. "Caught between presence and absence : Shakespeare's tragic women on film." Thesis, University of Chester, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10034/100153.
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In offering readings of Shakespeare’s tragic women on film, this thesis explores bodies that are caught between signifiers of absence and presence: the woman’s body that is present with absent body parts; the woman’s body that is spoken about or alluded to when absent from view; the woman’s living body that appears as a corpse; the woman’s body that must be exposed and concealed from sight. These are bodies that appear on the borderline of meaning, that open up a marginal or liminal space of investigation. In concentrating on a state of ‘betweenness’, I am seeking to offer new interpretive possibilities for bodies that have become the site of much critical anxiety, and bodies that, due to their own peculiar liminality, have so far been critically ignored. In reading Shakespeare’s tragic women on film, I am interested specifically in screen representations of Gertrude’s sexualised body that is both absent and present in Shakespeare’s Hamlet; Desdemona’s (un)chaste body that is both exposed and concealed in film adaptations of Othello; Juliet’s ‘living corpse’ that represents life and death in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet; the woman’s naked body in Roman Polanski’s Macbeth (1971) that is absent from Shakespeare’s play-text; and Lavinia’s violated, dismembered body in Julie Taymor’s (Titus, 1999) and Titus Andronicus, which, in signifying both life and death, wholeness and fragmentation, absence and presence, something and nothing, embodies many of the paradoxes explored within this thesis. Through readings that demonstrate a combined interest in Shakespeare’s plays, Shakespeare films, and Shakespeare criticism, this thesis brings these liminal bodies into focus, revealing how an understanding of their ‘absent presence’ can affect our responses as spectators of Shakespeare’s tragedies on film.
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Atakav, Atil. "The representation of women in Turkish cinema in the 1980s." Thesis, Southampton Solent University, 2009. http://ssudl.solent.ac.uk/774/.
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This thesis examines the relationship between feminism and cinema in the context of the women's movement and women's films of the 1980s. In focusing on the nature and implications of the representation of women constructed in Turkish cinema and the issues addressed by the women's movement, it argues that there are connections to be made on an analytical and theoretical level between the two sets of practices. The thesis argues that the enforced depoliticisation introduced after the coup (on 12th September 1980) by the incoming military government is responsible for uniting feminism and film. First, the feminist movement was able to flourish precisely because it was not perceived as political or politically significant. In a parallel move in the films of the 1980s there was an increased tendency to focus on women's issues and lives in order to avoid the overtly political. Secondly, women's films of the 1980s do not merely reflect a unitary patriarchal logic but are also sites of power relations and political processes through which gender hierarchies are both created and contested. The films of the 1980s empower women by dealing with women's issues and representing them as strong characters; however, at the same time they marginalise and objectify women with their cinematic style. turkish cinema reveals powerful cross-currents producing complex and often contradictory effects, acting both to reinforce and to mitigate against the manifestations of male dominance in different narratives and contexts. However despite these complexities, gender asymmetry in Turkish society is produced, represented and reproduced through filmic texts. There has been very little scholarly work done on the representation of women in Turkish cinema in the 1980s. The existing resources not onlylack focus on the shifts in the representation of women within socio-political context, but also fail to make a strong link between feminism and cinema. Moreover, in resources under scrutiny there is no sustained focus on mise-en-scene. The aim of this thesis is to fill this gap and explain the changes in the cultural, the social and the political, while linking feminism and cinema by examining films using close textual analysis.
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Cupp, Lauren. "The Final Girl Grown Up: Representations of Women in Horror Films from 1978-2016." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2017. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/958.
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Carol Clover defined a Final Girl as a stereotype of the pure, virginal sole survivor in 1980’s slasher films such as Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween. But does this representation hold up in 2016 films? Because the horror genre is so broad today, it’s almost impossible to nail down a certain stereotype of the genre, if there even is one. Films like the 1996 slasher parody Scream historically subverted the slasher genre, and since then there has been little to no iconic Final Girls. I argue that this trope is one very much set inside the confines of the 1980’s slasher genre, and instead is being replaced by an older, more responsible Dysfunctional Mother female character that arises from supernatural films of the late 2000’s-2010’s.
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Drake, Susan Wiebe. "María Félix the last great Mexican film diva : the representation of women in Mexican film, 1940-1970 /." Connect to resource, 2005. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1118953316.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Ohio State University, 2005.Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 177 p. Includes bibliographical references (p. 165-177). Available online via OhioLINK's ETD Center
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Drake, Susan Wiebe. "Maria Felix: the last great Mexican film diva: the representation of women in Mexican film, 1940-1970." The Ohio State University, 2005. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1118953316.
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Lee, Chanju. "Birth and Women in Mythology." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2008. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/art_design_theses/35.
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The Birth is a multi-media video installation inspired by my personal experiences of a miscarriage and the births of my two children. The work is influenced by the mythologies found in Korean culture that focus on the mother figure as a ¡°Great Mother¡±. She is an ¡°ideal woman¡±, a ¡°good mother¡± and a ¡°sincere wife¡±. Working abstractly across the media of painting, video, digital animation, and the paintings of my son, The Birth exploits metaphors and symbols, to tell the story of women, especially the stories of mothers. The work speaks to motherly love and my own identity as an artist and a mother.
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Papen, Manuela von. "Beyond "Kinder, Kuche, Kirche"? : the depiction of women in Third Reich entertainment films." Thesis, University of Bath, 1997. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.241667.
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Martín, Sandra Stickle. "MOROCCAN WOMEN AND IMMIGRATION IN SPANISH NARRATIVE AND FILM (1995-2008)." UKnowledge, 2010. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/gradschool_diss/766.
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Spanish migration narratives and films present a series of conflicting forces: the assumptions of entitlement of both Western and Oriental patriarchal authority, the claims to autonomy and self determination by guardians of women’s rights, the confrontations between advocates of exclusion and hospitality in the host society, and the endeavor of immigrant communities to maintain traditions while they integrate into Spanish society. Taking into consideration current theories of space, mobility, feminism, and assimilation, I center my analysis on four significant moments of migration: the inundation of Western media in other countries that inspires individuals to find alternatives to poverty and oppression; the trauma of the physical and emotional separation from the land of origin; the trials of adjustments to an unknown and, at times, hostile culture; and the construction of a new community within a host society.
The works give testimony to how contact with different cultures, religions, and languages has given way to a unique space between Western images and multicultural realities where power, identities, and destinies are negotiated. Exploring the patterns of displacement and gender roles, I point out how some authors align themselves with the power structures that stifle immigrants’ initiatives, while others choose to challenge the status quo. This space creates an opportunity for change propelled principally by the courage, agency, and mobility of female characters that weaken patriarchal domination in Muslim society and counter powerful Western ideologies. The resulting new culture imbued with personal values rekindles Hispanic-Moroccan historical links and opens the door to a revived multicultural, multilingual, multiethnic Spanish identity. I argue that the determination of the female characters is the key to the changes taking place in the twenty-first century Spanish society, which, according to Spanish migration narratives and films, could anticipate the dissolution of the Fortress Europe and the consolidation of integration. Establishing a dialogue between opposing forces, my analysis invites readers and viewers of the narrated process of immigration to consider their own personal positions on such a pressing issue.
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Walsh, Mary E. (Mary Elizabeth) 1941, Barbara Quinn, Callista Roy, and Annette McDermott. "Women Religious Handing on the Faith in America (Film and Discussion):." The Church in the 21st Century Center at Boston College, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:102674.
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McCormack, Colin Fawcett. "Women Who Kill: A Rhetorical Analysis of Female Killers in Film." University of Akron / OhioLINK, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=akron1289347404.
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Williams, Rachel L. "No job for a lady : women directors in Hollywood." Thesis, University of Nottingham, 2001. http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/11518/.
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This thesis explores the position of female film directors working in Hollywood. It is intended to address an area in feminist film theory which has often been overlooked. Although it is incorrect to say there has been no feminist analysis of the "mainstream" woman director, most of the work which has been done concentrates either on finding the feminism or femininity of her films, or studies only a select few directors. This research widens the debate by validating the study of all women directors, and moves away from the search for definitive feminist meaning in the cinematic text. It employs a contextual and multi-theoretical approach to interrogate the multiplicity of meanings embodied by the phrase "woman director". The first chapter interrogates auteur theory because any discussion of female authorship must confront this critical perspective. The female director makes a problematic auteur since that figure is traditionally gendered as masculine. Chapter two is a "state of the industry" examination of the position of the woman director in Hollywood, with a special emphasis on mentoring. Chapter three examines the marketing of Mimi Leder's films The Peacemaker (1997) and Deep Impact (1999). Chapters four, five and six explore the construction of the woman director as "star", presenting in-depth case studies of Jodie Foster and Penny Marshall. Chapters seven and eight look at the reception of Blue Steel (1990) and Strange Days (1995) directed by Kathryn Bigelow, and Clueless (1995) directed by Amy Heckerling. Each chapter is designed to contextualise and historicise the woman director in order to better understand why her gender has prevented her from being seen as a "natural" director: that is, why directing has been viewed as a suitable job for a man but "no job for a lady".
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Davis, Siobhan. "Migrant mother to Rosie the Riveter : the visual representation of women in the United States 1930-1940." Thesis, Keele University, 2002. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.275246.
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Davis, Amy Michele. "Disney's women : changes in depictions of femininity in Walt Disney's animated feature films, 1937-1999." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2001. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1382007/.
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The animated films of Walt Disney have played an important role in American culture. Most Americans, either during childhood or adulthood, have been exposed to at least some of them. The films themselves have, in some respects, reflected American society and culture. They may also, at least to some extent, have influenced them. As academic scholarship on the history of Hollywood film has grown, various aspects of Disney's influence and cultural position have likewise come to be the focus of study. In recent decades, also, there has been a continually greater interest in the role of women in American society and how that role is constructed. Uniting both these scholarly interests, this thesis analyses how Disney films depict femininity, and the ways in which such depictions correspond with those in the larger arena of Hollywood film. To make these issues more comprehensible, it describes the beginnings of animated film in the United States, together with the early career and works of Walt Disney. In order to cast light on the manner in which such portrayals have changed over time, the films examined are analysed in relation to three particular time periods: 193 7-67, 1967-89, and 1989-99. By examining the depictions to be found within individual films, and comparing these depictions both with one another and with selected live-action, mainstream Hollywood films of the same eras, a better understanding of the make-up of the Disney films as a body of work is achieved, and a corrective offered to some of the misconceptions of Disney to be found within American society in general.
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McGuffie, Allison Doris. "African educational film and video: industry, ideology, and the regulation of Sub-Saharan sexuality." Diss., University of Iowa, 2013. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/1695.
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This thesis examines the industry of non-profit educational filmmaking in Sub-Saharan Africa, from the 1930's to the present, with particular attention on the contemporary period of video production from the late 1980's to approximately 2010. This thesis, first, identifies that there is a consistent industrial infrastructure around non-profit educational filmmaking in Sub-Saharan Africa, which has not previously been articulated. Second, it describes the industry's historical origins and contemporary manifestation, delineating the pathways for funding, systems for production, and avenues of distribution and exhibition, as well as the ideological underpinnings of each. Finally, this thesis proscribes alternative industrial practices for the imagination and execution of non-profit educational videos that alleviate some of the otherwise deeply engrained hierarchical features of the industry by drawing on several examples of recent innovations in the industry.
This thesis claims that the standard procedures by which non-profit educational films and videos in Sub-Saharan Africa come to be are problematic in the way that they maintain colonial hierarchies between Western philanthropic funders, cosmopolitan humanitarian professionals acting as producers, African casts and crews, and audiences that are necessarily objectified in order to be studied quantitatively. This structure has profound effects on content, most recently evident in neoliberal ideas that valorize the privatization of solutions to public health problems and quaint stories designed to encourage audiences to emulate ideal behavior based on Western gender norms as a primary solution to complex social problems, such as HIV/AIDS.
Drawing on examples from recent innovations in the industry, this thesis finally proposes that changes in the balance of decision-making power in the African educational film and video industry - changes such as sourcing audiences for stories addressing HIV/AIDS, integrating with existing media markets, or more loosely providing international support to existing local initiatives that pinpoint local concerns - are necessary in order to better realize the potential of cinema to effectively address the myriad of social, environmental, political, economic, and medical challenges faced by real and distinct Sub-Saharan audiences.
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Mattsson, Lisa. "Women and Film Adaptations : Feminism in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew." Thesis, Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för språk och litteratur, SOL, 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:lnu:diva-10816.
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This paper will focus on feminism over time as well as film adaptations. By comparing the play The Taming of the Shrew, written by William Shakespeare, with the movie from 1967 with the same name and also the movie 10 Things I Hate about You from 1999, the aim is to see if, and how, the specific wave of feminism, and the woman, is portrayed in the different film adaptations. The different waves of feminism and the movie of that wave are presented together, one by one. Lastly, an analysis of the movies follows.
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Marubbio, Miriam. "Death of the celluloid maiden: Images of Native American women in film." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/280367.
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Death of the Celluloid Maiden: Images of Native American Women in Film traces and analyses the representation of Native American women in the history of American film. In particular, the work focuses on the figure of a young Native woman who falls in love with, aids, or otherwise is connected to the white hero and dies for that choice. I have labeled this representation the Celluloid Maiden trope. It contains two primary figures that I have termed the Celluloid Princess and the Sexualized Maiden. These figures inform each other from the 1910s through the 1960s and combine to form a hybrid character in the 1970s and 1990s. The trope emerges in conjunction with the myth of the Frontier and the white American Adam/hero figure as ambiguous references to inter-racial mixing and assimilation. While each generation of media maneuvers the trope to fit the political and social milieu of the period, it remains a solidly entrenched vehicle through which colonialism and racism are enacted on the body of the Native American woman. Within the Celluloid Maiden trope, native culture, sexuality, and race conflate into interchangeable identifiers of difference that participate in a larger discourse of nationalism, itself based on a hierarchy of race and gender. Thus, the Celluloid Maiden trope and its components are deeply tied to American identity politics and an ongoing re-establishment of a white, patriarchal system of power through its narratives of belonging, nation formation, colonization and racism. Death of the Celluloid Maiden's significance lies in its dedication to understanding the ways in which our culture utilizes racialized, gendered and sexualized bodies, especially female bodies, as sites for inscribing difference. The dissertation explores the complex web of power relations that exists in the cultural arena informing film images. In particular, I am concerned with how the historical and visually reproductive relationship between whites and Native Americans in general, which informs this particular image of Native American women specifically, creates intercultural boundaries that continually reinforce social, racial, and gendered difference.
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Jacquin, M. C. "Narrative unrest : the politics of narrative in women artists' film and video." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 2013. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1396991/.
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This dissertation examines the politics of narrative in women artists’ film and video. It investigates not only how narrative was and is used as a powerful instrument to offer counter-discourses to those sanctioned by the dominant culture, but also how narrative forms themselves can be invested with political significance. Starting in the 1960s, the supposed neutrality of narrative forms came under sustained attack, particularly by post-structuralist thinkers such as Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Julia Kristeva. Their political critique of narrative quickly found its way into the work of experimental film and video makers, whose responses ranged from total rejection to partial and conflicted acceptance. Part One of this thesis seeks to understand the various ways in which narrative was reshaped in the work of women filmmakers and video artists from the 1970s and 1980s – who, I argue, could not do away with narrative as easily as men. It focuses on the independent scene in Britain, revealing the impact of feminist theory and the women’s movement on the ‘return to narrative’ in British avant-garde film and video, and the major contribution of women artists to the deconstruction and refashioning of narrative forms. It also proposes detailed analyses of particular narrative strategies, as found in the work of Laura Mulvey, Lis Rhodes, Tina Keane and Zoe Redman, among others. Part Two brings the question of the politics of narrative into the twenty-first century through an in-depth discussion of three contemporary video installations by Chantal Akerman, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, and Catherine Sullivan. It shows how the narrative strategies deployed by an older generation of film and video makers have been re-articulated in new ways in these works, and proposes new terms to understand the use, meaning, and political resonance of narrative in contemporary film and video: Porous, Schizophrenic and Contagious.
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Thompson, Lauren Jade. "Becoming what women want : formations of masculinity in postfeminist film and television." Thesis, University of Warwick, 2012. http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/57075/.
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This thesis uses a range of recent television and film texts to interrogate postfeminist media formations of masculinity. In particular, this work focuses on increasingly prevalent media narratives that are about producing men as suitable romantic partners for postfeminist women. Arguing that existing literature on postfeminism ignores or trivialises the issue of masculinity, this thesis addresses new cultural formations of masculinity that are linked not only to postfeminist discourse, but also related cultural and economic shifts such as post-industrialisation and the rise of neo-liberal cultural politics. Analysing texts from the mid-1990s to 2012, the work argues that such representations are rife with tensions and contradictions. They represent in part an ungendering of previously feminine arenas (such as the makeover, and the home) yet are also marked by a discourse that requires the reassertion of sexual difference and the maintenance of heteronormativity. As such, the urge towards coupling becomes central to these formations, across the range of texts discussed within this thesis. The thesis argues that postfeminist media representations of masculinity are often characterised by an interplay between dominant, residual and emergent formations. In the makeover show, the mission is to improve a man to satisfy his existing partner (perhaps as preparation for a proposal) or to ready him for entry into the dating market. In the lifestyle show, the advice given on how to manage domestic labour is committed to encouraging harmony between the heterosexual couple. The homebuilding sitcom focuses on the challenges of the transition between youth and the establishment of a family unit: finding the right partner, settling down, building a home, having children. The Hollywood romantic comedy, even in its recent, male-centred incarnations, still presents successful coupling as integral, essential, and inevitable, even if its attitude to the union is sometimes ambivalent. In all of these television and film genres, there is a considerable focus on how men must change in order to become, and stay, "marriageable". This emphasis on coupling is paired with images of singledom as failure, a pathologisation which, this thesis argues, is rapidly becoming ungendered. The example texts' reinforcement of compulsory heterosexuality, their focus on a particular 'life-stage' (the early stages of independent living) and the increased focus on men's private lives means that domestic space and the home become key sites in which these tensions and battles are played out. This thesis examines the central role of the home, its decor, arrangement and labour, as both one of the major negotiations of coupling and as an aesthetic strategy for representing different formations of masculinity and postfeminist dilemmas of masculinity within this group of texts.
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Martinez, Alexandra. "The Contention of Space in Contemporary Cuban and Brazilian Film." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193970.
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The purpose of this dissertation is to study women's representation and the contention of space in contemporary Brazilian and Cuban films, in order to analyze the way in which the films reflect societal values regarding gender roles and, consequently the way the nation is represented. The Cuban films I examine are: Retrato de Teresa (1979) and De Cierta Manera (1964), the short "Julia" from Mujer Transparente (1990) and from Brazil I work with the films Gabriela (1983) and A Hora da Estrela (1984.) All of the films have a protagonist that is a woman, and all were successful in the box office and had some international recognition. The films have strong female protagonists and share similar socio-political contexts- the socialist government in Cuba and the military dictatorship in Brazil, as well as a time period marked by social unrest as women's rights groups were very active in both countries. My hypothesis is that although these films were commercially successful, groundbreaking and innovative; they ultimately were marked by some of the gendered contradictions and the feminist questionings of their time. In fact, my analysis reveals that, although they each raise many issues and questions about an egalitarian society for both men and women, they fall short in terms of a progressive politics of gender. A notable exception, the film A Hora da Estrela provides a striking difference to the other films.
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Lin, Zhichun. "Hearing Their Stories Through Polyphonic Soundtracks: Women and Music in Contemporary Chinese Film." The Ohio State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1374231964.
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Umbaugh, Melanie. "Meet-Cutes & Motherhood: Roles of Women in Recent Rom-Coms." Ohio University Honors Tutorial College / OhioLINK, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ouhonors1524838486510027.
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Karceski, Julie Wilkins Lee. "Smart, sultry and surly a textual analysis of the portrayal of women scientists in film, 1962 - 2005 /." Diss., Columbia, Mo. : University of Missouri--Columbia, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/10355/6663.
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Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on March 10, 2010). The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Thesis advisor: Dr. Lee Wilkins. Includes bibliographical references.
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Weston, Alexandra C. "Valkyries Handbook: Representations of Women in Comics." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2015. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/616.
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This thesis delves into the surprisingly uniform treatment of the female character in comic storytelling, across all media, and will examine how this has evolved over time. It further explores what these changes represent for the stories, the characters, the creators, and the readers. The focus of the production aspects of this project is on the curation and development of a feminist perspective on comic books, their narrative and the industry that forms them. Looking at specific examples from historical and modern comics, as well as creative
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Gateward, Frances K. "Challenging racism and sexism through cinematic discourse : black women film and video makers." Ann Arbor, Mich. : ProQuest Information and Learning, 2005. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?res_dat=xri:ssbe&url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_dat=xri:ssbe:ft:keyresource:Reg_Diss_01.
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Salem, Lema Malek. "Women in contemporary Palestinian cinema." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2015. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/women-in-contemporary-palestinian-cinema(20e6c0d2-f5e8-4b75-bdd7-6933c8ab7432).html.
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This thesis seeks to increase recognition of contemporary Palestinian women’s cinema and locates it firmly within the Palestinian film industry. I argue that Palestinian women’s cinema has created and developed a nuanced cinema whilst sustaining and enhancing the Palestinian film industry. The twenty-first century has undeniably witnessed the vigorous development of a Palestinian women’s cinema and the number of Palestinian women filmmakers and films is still on the rise. Scholars have often focused on increasing worldwide recognition of mainstream Palestinian films directed and produced by well-known Palestinian filmmakers. This has resulted in the marginalisation of Palestinian women’s cinema within an already marginalised Palestinian film industry. I locate Palestinian cinema, in the introduction, as a transnational cinema and I also explain my rationale for placing women’s film under the category of “women’s cinema”. In order to offer a comprehensive analysis and to understand and examine the corpus of films in this thesis, I firstly provide an overview of the historical and contemporary background of Palestinian popular arts and cinema, highlighting Palestinian women’s participation. In chapter 2, I discuss women’s roles in Palestinian politics in order to trace women’s positions and roles in political public life because it is difficult to separate activism from social life and thus from cinema, as these three intersect and mutually influence one another. In chapter 3, 4 and 5 I argue, through detailed discussion and analysis of this body of work that, unlike Palestinian cinema at large, Palestinian women filmmakers embody, interweave and reflect on the complex and often contradictory contemporary and historical issues taking into account ideologies and socio-cultural differences in a complex geopolitical space (e.g. sexual restrictions, power and authority, femininity and masculinity, restriction on movement and hyphenated identities). I also argue that these women filmmakers are interested in developing responses to what they see as heterogeneous and hyphenated Palestinian identities while adapting traditional and modern filmic styles. Here I have studied their works thematically as this provided greater insight into the social and historical contexts of contemporary Palestinian lives. I argue that films by Palestinian filmmakers living inside Palestine focus and revolve around socio-culturally sensitive and underrepresented issues of love and sexuality (chapter 3), violence and power (chapter 4). I also argue that hyphenated Palestinian filmmakers, in this case, Palestinian American filmmakers, explore through their work themes of displacement and the imagined homeland by reflecting on historical events and also through examining the different ‘journeys’ of their hyphenated characters, both internal and geographical. I study the films in this thesis within contemporary discourses on culture, cultural capital, discourses of power, identity, migration and diaspora, exile, feminist debates, gender politics, postcoloniality and borderlands.
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Slatewala, Zahabia Z. "Objectification of Women in Bollywood Item Numbers." Scholar Commons, 2019. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/7948.
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Although sexual objectification is commonplace in media culture, music videos provide the most potent examples of it. The current investigation makes an important contribution to the relevant literature regarding the objectification of women in song lyrics while simultaneously broadening the content used to assess objectification. It reflects the ways of objectification of women in India by analyzing Bollywood rap and item songs. Based on objectification theory, one of the primary goals in the present study was to measure differences between visual and behavioral sexual objectification, drawing on theoretically derived indicators of sexual objectification. It also concentrated on measuring the change in the objectification patterns over the years. This was done by conducting a content analysis of 201 songs (n=201). The findings suggested that the visual objectification of women was higher than the behavioral objectification of women and that there is a shift in the common themes and the level of objectification over the decades.
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Rinke, Andrea. "From models to rebels and misfits : images of women in DEFA 'Gegenwartsfilme' 1972-1982." Thesis, University of Reading, 2001. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.367712.
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Black, Audrey. "The Russian Woman as Sexual Subject: Evolving Images in U.S. Television and Film, 2012-2016." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/20504.
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In American entertainment media Russian women overwhelmingly appear in sexualized contexts. For the past 25 years, since the Soviet Union was dissolved, there has been a consistent drive to represent on only a handful of narrative categories. These can be reduced essentially to sex trafficking, mail-order brides, and sexual espionage. Despite this limited repertoire, over the past five years there has been significant variation in approaches taken to those categories. This study offers a surveyed textual analysis of how the construction of the Russian woman as sexual subject has evolved to meet new understandings and imperatives. Many of these texts take on challenging topics with unprecedented levels of discursive and rhetorical sophistication, often subverting popular imagination. Driven by feminist media studies and critical cultural theory, I isolate the elements of these texts that interact with geopolitics and socioeconomic realities, in order to deconstruct the mythologies and ideologies behind these stereotypes.
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Ward, Kathryn Ann. "Clients, Colleagues, and Consorts: Roles of Women in American Hardboiled Detective Fiction and Film." Connect to resource, 1988. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=osu1225394427.
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Jain, Sonika. "Crossing thresholds: documentary film practice and perceptions of marriage amongst middle class Indian women." Thesis, University of Bristol, 2007. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.492588.
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This is a practice-based research which investigates the institution of documentarv representation and marriage with special reference to the Indian context. The research aims at experimenting with ethical, reflexive, and participatory strategies so that the filming process becomes less hierarchical and more interactive for the filmmaker, the participants, and the audience.
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Barnett, Katrina. "Nine Lives: A History of Cat Women, Subversive Femininity, and Transgressive Archetypes in Film." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2020. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1707290/.
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The intention of this thesis is to identify and analyze the cat woman archetype as a contemporary extension of the transgressive witch archetype, which rampantly appears over the course of cinema history, working as a signifier of a patriarchal society's fear of autonomous and subversive women. The character of Catwoman is the ultimate representation for this archetype on grounds of her visibility, longevity, and ability to return again and again. More importantly, Catwoman and her sisterhood of cat women work against male creators as a means of female empowerment through trickery. Within this thesis, key films of varying genres are drawn from throughout cinema history and analyzed in order to demonstrate the intertextual network of characters that make up the cat woman archetype, and the importance of the Catwoman character in her many forms.
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Toure, Zalia Maiga. "Les Femmes Face aux Traditions dans les Litteratures et Cinemas Contemporains de l'Afrique Francophone." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2010. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/194971.
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Starting with a contextual characterization of the concepts of “women”, and “traditions”, this dissertation examines the position of women facing African traditions, particularly through some of their practical manifestations: excision, polygamy and levirate. This dissertation focuses on the description of the ontological, social and cultural bases of these traditional practices in order to reflect on their links to ancestral believes. This study explores how social representations are reflected in a corpus of five novels and three films, chosen in connection with their pertinence to the subject. In this respect, the ideological and philosophical position of the authors regarding those ancestral practices is analyzed. In such a respect, it is important to mention Fatou Keita in Rebelle, Mariama Barry in La Petite Peule, Mariama Bâ in Une si longue lettre, Habibatou Traoré in Sidagamie, Dieudonné Nkounkou in Le lévirat, on the one hand, Sembène Ousmane in Moolaadé and Xala, Cheick Oumar Sissoko in Finzan, on the other hand. My analysis explores the attitudes of female heroines who revolt against their oppressive patriarchal environments and it reveals the necessity of questioning those behaviors and habits of mind that perpetuate the subjugation of women in the name of tradition. I also review perceptions of ancestral practices in West Africa, first by women themselves and then by society as a whole. This study brings to light some of the most traditional and egregious abuses against women that are rooted in West African ancestral traditions, particularly against those women living in rural areas. I consider, for example, the various systems of mystification that allow the oppression of women to persist today in the name of tradition. While this study points out the urgent need to overcome certain negative aspects of West African traditions, it also acknowledges the benefit of valorizing positive elements of traditional life and cultural experience, even more than we already do presently.
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Peksel, Öykü. "Women in New Turkish Cinema : An Analysis of “Climates”, “Three Monkeys” and “Once upon a time in Anatolia”." Thesis, Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för mediestudier, 2012. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-77651.
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This study investigated the cinematic representations of women in ‘Climates’ ‘Three Monkeys’ and ‘Once upon a time in Anatolia’ created by Nuri Bilge Ceylan. It explored the image of women and the ideologies that affects them in the aforementioned films. For the analysis, semiotics is used and feminist film theory is applied. The findings indicated that the women images are affected by patriarchal ideology. Female characters were portrayed as weak or weakened by men regardless of their representative social group. The results showed similarities to Mulvey’s argument and to Friedan’s definition of feminine mystique. Male gaze dominates the visual pleasures and the female characters showed similar features as described by Mulvey and Friedan.
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Su, Xin. "Ideas of film authorship : a study of theories and concepts of agency and subjectivity in film authorship, with a conclusion on the possible configuration of a future theoretical model of feminist film authorship." HKBU Institutional Repository, 2010. https://repository.hkbu.edu.hk/etd_ra/1101.
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Brost, Molly. "Mining the Past: Performing Authenticity in the Country Music Biopic." Bowling Green, Ohio : Bowling Green State University, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=bgsu1210877250.
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Chapman, Sharon Jeanette. "Classical Hollywood film directors' female-as-object obsession and female directors' cinematic response: A deconstructionist study of six films." CSUSB ScholarWorks, 1996. https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/etd-project/1258.
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Martinez, Diana. "Funny Business: Women Comedians and the Political Economy of Hollywood Sexism." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/22789.
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In the last five years there has been great public interest in Hollywood’s “gender problem,” namely its unequal representation of women in key creative roles such as director, producer, and studio head. Yet, in the long history of women in film and television, comedians have had the greatest success and degree of agency over their work. From silent film comediennes like Mabel Normand to Lucille Ball, Carol Burnett, and more recently Tina Fey and Amy Schumer, women comedians have resoundingly had success behind-the-screen as well as in front of it. In order to comprehend the disjuncture between the data and the women comedians’ success, we must account for the women at the center of contemporary popular culture who seem to have successfully navigated highly gendered structures of media.
This dissertation offers an extension of the existing scholarship on the industrial practices of women mediamakers. This dissertation offers a historical production study of gender. This dissertation opens up ways of exploring the range and complexity of gendered practices in Hollywood. It shows how these actions operate within discursive frames and institutional frameworks that generally serve to perpetuate the exclusion of women. I suggest that cultural industries like film and television, when examined simultaneously as creative spaces and business enterprises using a political economy approach blended with cultural studies, offer revelatory sites for the study of gendered labor practices in Hollywood.
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Wolf, Nicole [Verfasser], and Werner [Akademischer Betreuer] Schiffauer. "Make it Real. Documentary and other cinematic experiments by women filmmakers in India. / Nicole Wolf. Betreuer: Werner Schiffauer." Frankfurt (Oder) : Universitätsbibliothek der Europa-Universität Viadrina Frankfurt, 2013. http://d-nb.info/1031630945/34.
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Kim, Natalia N. "Transnational Women Protagonists in Contemporary Cinema: Migration, Servitude, Motherhood." Ohio University / OhioLINK, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ohiou1429100119.
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Gavin, Emma. "Dreadful Women: An Exploration of Gender-Based Social Values and Expectations Through Viewer and Critical Reception of Female Antagonists on Television." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2014. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/scripps_theses/448.
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By examining viewer reception of female antagonists in traditionally feminine roles on television—particularly the role of wives and mothers who have husbands to answer to and children to look after and are thus expected, in some form, to act as a caretaker or guide for others—we can explore modern societal attitudes towards female agency and gender-based expectations of behavior.