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Furyous Female Just-Warriors of Post-Apocalypse and Dystopia

Description: The intention of this thesis is to identify and analyze the precise shift from an exploitative archetype to an empowered representation of women warriors, to identify the arena in which male and female characters are given equal agency in the context of war, and finally explore the key characteristics that make up an empowered female hero. This thesis also addresses the sociocultural nature of the warrior woman archetype as it pertains to the current role of women in the military. The films an… more
Date: December 2017
Creator: Lynch, Shaylynn
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The 50,000 Watt Blowtorch of the Great Southwest: The History of WBAP

Description: This paper looks at the history of WBAP while examining how programming has changed from 1922-2014 and how WBAPs audience helped shape programming at the station. This paper reveals four formatting changes throughout the stations history and provides in-depth statistical analysis of how WBAPs audience changed during the stations 90 plus years of existence.
Date: December 2016
Creator: Dixon, Chad M
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

It's All Coming Back to You: 1980s Retro Film Culture and the Masculinity of Cult

Description: The 1980s is a formative decade in American history. America sought to reestablish itself as a global power and to reassert the dominant ideology of white, patriarchal capitalism. Likewise, media producers in the 1980s sought to reassert the dominance of the white, male, muscled body in filmic representations. The identity politics of the 1980s and the depictions of the white, muscled body once prominent in the 1980s have been the site of conservative nostalgia for a young, male-dominated, cult… more
Date: August 2017
Creator: Collins, Ryan William
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Netflix Strategy in France: Local Language Productions, Teen Audiences, and Instagram Marketing

Description: The relationship between France and Hollywood is rooted in a deep history that dates to the late 1800s. French Cultural elites and policymakers have regulated Hollywood to prevent the American ideals that are depicted in Hollywood movies from infringing on French culture, restricting free trade distribution practices to limit audiences' accessibility of imported, non-French media. These import regulations have strengthened French exceptionalism, which is an ideal that recognizes France as being… more
Date: May 2023
Creator: Kite, Rachel
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

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

What Does It Mean to Go Super Saiyan: Gender Identity and Fandom in the Toonami Release of Dragon Ball Z (1998-2003)

Description: The intention of this thesis is to analyze the representations of masculinity in the anime series Dragon Ball Z as it aired on Cartoon Network's programming block Toonami, specifically the nature in which they were framed and how oppositional interpretations in the fandom became prevalent as a result. The series emphasizes the evolution of its central characters Goku, Vegeta, and Gohan into performing a sensitive masculinity, but there are a prevalence of images in the series that discredit thi… more
Date: August 2021
Creator: Liverett, Nicholas
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

Saint Sony: Deliverer of Christian Content for the Evangelical Market

Description: Many evangelical Christians distance themselves from the mainstream commercial culture, because they perceive mainstream media and popular culture to promulgate immoral messages through representations such as sex and violence. This disconnect from Hollywood have made evangelicals a tough audience to market. Sony, however, has been able to connect with the evangelical market by producing a line of contemporary Christian films through their in-house division Affirm Films. By prioritizing the nar… more
Date: August 2018
Creator: Patino, Stephen
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

Nine Lives: A History of Cat Women, Subversive Femininity, and Transgressive Archetypes in Film

Description: 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 o… more
Date: August 2020
Creator: Barnett, Katrina
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Crying for Change: Examining the Use of Period Melodrama and the Melodramatic Mode in Contemporary Queer Representation

Description: This thesis illustrates how Melodrama and the melodramatic mode have been adapted within contemporary cinema as both a means of commenting on prior LGBTQI representation, and of exposing mainstream audiences to the issues still faced by many within this spectrum. Through my analyses of Carol (2015), Brokeback Mountain (2005), and A Single Man (2009), I examine how filmmakers have drawn on Melodrama as both an aesthetic form, and as a reference to the broader field of generic history and critici… more
Date: August 2021
Creator: Bonthuys, Justin
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

King of the Merchandise: How Showa Era Paratexts Forever Changed the Godzilla Franchise

Description: The Godzilla media franchise is one of the longest running media franchises, which means the character himself has gone through many changes throughout the years. However, in American pop culture, the characters of Godzilla is perceived as a hero, a friend of humanity and defender of Earth. This reputation comes from the Showa Era, where Godzilla often fought on the side of humanity, rather than trying to destroy them as depicted in the original Gojira. In recent years, Toho, Godzilla's corpora… more
Date: May 2021
Creator: Cooper, Dalton
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

Chronicle of the Online Culture Wars: Reactionary Affective Publics in Neoliberal Postmodernity

Description: The Age of Trump witnessed the visible rise of intense culture wars and polarization in the United States. While culture wars are not new phenomena, the current iteration has digital media acting as new discursive structures and mediating battlegrounds for all sides of the cultural conflict. This project chronicles these online culture wars, demonstrating how within a neoliberal and postmodern socio-cultural condition, the rise of ambivalent, profit-driven digital technologies and platforms str… more
Date: May 2021
Creator: Montalvo, David Rafael
Partner: UNT Libraries
open access

The Mutant Database: Media Franchise Authorship, Creators' Rights, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Description: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) is a massive ongoing franchise that began as a 1984 self-published comic book created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. Its history is intertwined with the creators' rights movement and the Creator's Bill of Rights (CBR), which rejected work-for-hire contracts, wherein creative laborers—creative authors—cede authorial control of their labor. Because the production of comic books and their franchises is highly collaborative, intellectual property (IP) rights a… more
Date: May 2022
Creator: Cardenas, Jen
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

Views from the Beach: Spectator Positions and the American International Pictures Beach Party Films

Description: The American International Pictures (AIP) Beach Party Films were a major American cultural phenomenon in the early 1960s and continue to play a significant role in the American cultural imagination. The AIP Beach Party Films, despite their popularity and influence, have been largely ignored by academia and a thorough academic examination has yet to be written. This thesis attempts to change such an academic precedent. At first glance, the Beach Party Films are frivolous and chaotic (perhaps exp… more
Date: July 2023
Creator: Leavy, Mark
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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