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"According to Their Wills and Pleasures": The Sexual Stereotyping of Mormon Men in American Film and Television

Description: This thesis examines the representation of Mormon men in American film and television, with particular regard for sexual identity and the cultural association of Mormonism with sexuality. The history of Mormonism's unique marital practices and doctrinal approaches to gender and sexuality have developed three common stereotypes for Mormon male characters: the purposeful heterosexual, the monstrous polygamist, and the self-destructive homosexual. Depending upon the sexual stereotype in the narr… more
Date: May 2009
Creator: Sutton, Travis
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Provincial Heroism: Hunanese Audiences and Sylvester Stallone

Description: The thesis focuses on analyzing and discussing Hunanese audience members’ receptions of three of his films – Rocky IV (1985), Cliffhanger (1993) and The Expendables (2010) to reveal the audiences’ motivations of admiring him and his movies. The analysis is based on Hunanese male characteristics because Hunanese culture is a male centric culture. In the Rocky IV film, Hunanese fans like his manhood, nature of soldier, and determination. In the response to Cliffhanger, some audience members appre… more
Date: August 2012
Creator: Kuang, Jun
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Creating Discussion: An Auteur Analysis of Films Directed by Adrian Lyne

Description: This thesis examines the various "signature" threads that are present within the "oeuvre" of the Hollywood filmmaker Adrian Lyne. The goal of this thesis is to showcase both how and why Lyne can be thought of as an auteur and to open up his films to new and previously unexplored meanings. Lyne's eight feature films are analyzed in-depth individually and in comparison to one another from a variety of theoretical frameworks and points of focus in each of the body chapters.
Date: May 2017
Creator: Oliver, Stephanie
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

"Reality" while Dreaming in a Labyrinth: Christopher Nolan as Realist Auteur

Description: This thesis examines how the concept of an auteur (author of a film) has developed within contemporary Hollywood and popular culture. Building on concepts from Timothy Corrigan, this thesis adapts the ideas of the author and the commercial auteur to examine how director Christopher Nolan's name, and film work, has become branded as "realist" by the Hollywood film industry and by Nolan's consistent self-promotion. Through recurring signatures of "realism," such as, cinematic realism (immersive f… more
Date: August 2017
Creator: Cowley, Brent
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Musicals and the Margins: African-Americans, Women, and Queerness in the 21st Century American Musical

Description: This thesis provides an overview of the various ways in which select marginalized identities are represented within the twenty-first century American musical film. The first intention of this thesis is to identify, define, and organize the different subgenres that appear within the twenty-first century iterations of the musical film. The second, and principal, intention of this thesis is to explore contemporary representations of African-Americans, women, and queerness throughout the defined su… more
Date: December 2018
Creator: Wellborn, Brecken
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Poetry of Reality: Frederick Wiseman and the Theme of Time

Description: Employing a textual analysis within an auteur theory framework, this thesis examines Frederick Wiseman's films At Berkeley (2013), National Gallery (2014), and Ex Libris (2017) and the different ways in which they reflect on the theme of time. The National Gallery, University of California at Berkeley, and the New York Public Library all share a fundamental common purpose: the preservation and circulation of "truth" through time. Whether it be artistic, scientific, or historical truth, these in… more
Date: May 2019
Creator: Wahlert, Blake Jorgensen
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Let's Bump Up the Lights: Exploring The Carol Burnett Show as a Cultural Antecedent to Feminist Media Studies

Description: This thesis argues that textual and historical analysis of The Carol Burnett Show reveals that the program utilized slapstick, women's comedy and feminist humor to create comedic parodies of television commercials, melodramas and women's films, and soap operas. Their television commercial parodies reflect Second Wave feminist critiques of media advertising contemporary with the program. Comparison of the work of early feminist film theorists and media critics to the program's parodies of film a… more
Date: August 2019
Creator: Hoover, Jessica
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Forbidden Pleasures: Queerness and Cannibalism in Film and Television

Description: The trope of the queer cannibal recurs throughout fiction as well as film and television. While literature scholars such as David Bergman and Caleb Crain have written about this figure in American literature, the queer cannibal remains unstudied in the realm of media studies. This thesis analyzes six media texts that feature queer cannibals: Hannibal (2013-2015), Ravenous (1999), The Terror (2018), Yellowjackets (2021-), Raw (2016), and Bones and All (2022). Through these analyses, this thesis … more
Date: July 2023
Creator: Hadley, Kristen M.
Partner: UNT Libraries
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