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DECONSTRUCTION OF THE ROMANTIC COMEDY IN CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIEND
Title
DECONSTRUCTION OF THE ROMANTIC COMEDY IN CRAZY EX-GIRLFRIEND.
Creator
Crivelli, Mary E, Mauer, Barry, Preston-Sidler, Leandra, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This research seeks to unpack the narrative of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend using semiotics, particularly through Roland Barthes' work in Mythologies and A Lover's Discourse. The goal of this research is to demonstrate long-form storytelling's ability to interrogate and revisit criticism through consideration of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend's role as an ongoing satire of romantic comedies. This research culminated in a thesis discussing the semiotic myths that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend interrogates, and the process...
Show moreThis research seeks to unpack the narrative of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend using semiotics, particularly through Roland Barthes' work in Mythologies and A Lover's Discourse. The goal of this research is to demonstrate long-form storytelling's ability to interrogate and revisit criticism through consideration of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend's role as an ongoing satire of romantic comedies. This research culminated in a thesis discussing the semiotic myths that Crazy Ex-Girlfriend interrogates, and the process of deconstruction that occurs within the text. The thesis applied the "fragments" identified in Barthes' A Lover's Discourse to corresponding scenes in Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, with a focus on the musical nature of the show. This research also analyzed Crazy Ex-Girlfriend's role as a deconstruction of the romantic comedy genre, and its position as either upholding or subverting the myth of the "crazy ex-girlfriend." Through applying A Lover's Discourse to an hour-long television drama (in this case Crazy Ex-Girlfriend), this research contributes to the field of cultural studies by considering network entertainment media from a critical perspective, and utilizing A Lover's Discourse in an innovative manner.
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Date Issued
2018
Identifier
CFH2000290, ucf:45702
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFH2000290
BLACK FEMINIST ARTICULATIONS OF RACE AND GENDER WITHIN THE HORROR FILM GENRE
Title
BLACK FEMINIST ARTICULATIONS OF RACE AND GENDER WITHIN THE HORROR FILM GENRE.
Creator
Ortiz, Katherine M, Danker, Elizabeth, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
The intent of this paper is to explore a black feminist perspective within the film horror genre. A black feminist perspective investigates how black women are portrayed within cinematic horror. It serves as a method to further articulate the particularities of race and gender within cinema. If we leave the cinematic space without a structural model of intervention, then we are left with film that remains unchallenged for ostracizing black women. The paper argues that black women become...
Show moreThe intent of this paper is to explore a black feminist perspective within the film horror genre. A black feminist perspective investigates how black women are portrayed within cinematic horror. It serves as a method to further articulate the particularities of race and gender within cinema. If we leave the cinematic space without a structural model of intervention, then we are left with film that remains unchallenged for ostracizing black women. The paper argues that black women become articulated through themes of motherhood, death, and sexuality.
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Date Issued
2019
Identifier
CFH2000505, ucf:45682
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFH2000505
LITTLE WOMEN: STUDY OF FEMALE REPRESENTATIONS IN TEEN FILMS AND HOW THOSE REPRESENTATIONS HAVE AFFECTED GENDER PERCEPTIONS
Title
LITTLE WOMEN: STUDY OF FEMALE REPRESENTATIONS IN TEEN FILMS AND HOW THOSE REPRESENTATIONS HAVE AFFECTED GENDER PERCEPTIONS.
Creator
Santiago, Maillim, Gay, Andrew, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
Although teen film is littered with tales of young women coming of age, the messages presented in most of these films follow a formula centered on a patriarchal nuclear family ideal, which leads to damaging perceptions regarding gender roles in teenage society. There is the main traditional model of stay at home mother with a father in the role of the breadwinner; the rise of rape culture; and the glass ceiling in the workplace. The young females consuming a mass amount of this media then...
Show moreAlthough teen film is littered with tales of young women coming of age, the messages presented in most of these films follow a formula centered on a patriarchal nuclear family ideal, which leads to damaging perceptions regarding gender roles in teenage society. There is the main traditional model of stay at home mother with a father in the role of the breadwinner; the rise of rape culture; and the glass ceiling in the workplace. The young females consuming a mass amount of this media then reflect negatively on themselves. The research following this conundrum was broken into two parts: the production of a film looking to remedy the many problems of female representation in teen media and then monitoring the reaction to said film against its target audience: young females between the ages of fifteen and twenty-one. The purpose of this thesis is to explore what makes females within the teenage demographic react to certain kinds of media. If they react negatively or positively towards a media representation of themselves, to what extent does this affect the participants' activity in their daily lives? Therefore, through a process of screening three short films focused on teen issues - including the one made by myself for this study - and then conducting a survey focusing on questions regarding the participants' feelings towards the subject matter, their hopes for themselves, and teen media in general, there was an ability to gauge how deeply teen media affects the modern teenager.
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Date Issued
2013
Identifier
CFH0004382, ucf:45009
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFH0004382
The Heralds of the Dawn: A History of the Motion Picture Industry in the State of Florida, 1908-2019
Title
The Heralds of the Dawn: A History of the Motion Picture Industry in the State of Florida, 1908-2019.
Creator
Morton, David, Foster, Amy, French, Scot, Zhang, Hong, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
Often overlooked in its contribution to cinema history, the State of Florida has the distinction of being among just a handful of regions in the United States to have a continuous connection with the American motion picture industry. This relationship in turn has produced iconic entertainment that has shaped the state's image to the outside world, while production spending has served as an important booster for local economies across Florida. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how...
Show moreOften overlooked in its contribution to cinema history, the State of Florida has the distinction of being among just a handful of regions in the United States to have a continuous connection with the American motion picture industry. This relationship in turn has produced iconic entertainment that has shaped the state's image to the outside world, while production spending has served as an important booster for local economies across Florida. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how the sometimes cooperative and often contentious dynamics between film and television producers and state politicians have influenced this history of film production in Florida. This can best be understood by examining the ideological divide between the pro-business and anti-corporate factions in Florida's government. Through a series of interconnected case studies that apply place-based analysis, this project demonstrates how the Florida government and communities have historically interacted with the motion picture industry. While Florida never truly became an (")Almost Hollywood(") or (")Hollywood East,(") film producers and state officials were at various times successful in turning the cities of Jacksonville, Tampa, Orlando, and Miami into important centers for film and television production. Yet just as each of these production hubs gained momentum, resistance at the state and local level resulted in the industry's decline and departure. These moments of cooperation and conflict provide important insights into the specific environmental characteristics that inspired filmmakers to come to Florida, as well as the social-political circumstances that eventually pushed them from the state. With a close scrutiny of trade press sources, periodicals, local newspapers, and the personal papers of filmmakers and politicians, this work explains the varied reasons behind the repeated rise, fall, and occasional exodus of the state's motion picture industry. This will be achieved by scrutinizing examples that range from policy decisions made by Florida's government from the turn of the twentieth century on through to the current efforts being made by Florida lawmakers to reinvigorate the state's production industry.
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Date Issued
2019
Identifier
CFE0007505, ucf:52630
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007505
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA HOME MOVIE ARCHIVE AND THE HARRIS ROSEN COLLECTION
Title
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA HOME MOVIE ARCHIVE AND THE HARRIS ROSEN COLLECTION.
Creator
Niedermeyer, Michael, Gordon, Fon, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
Since the invention of the cinema, people have been taking home movies. The ever increasing popularity of this activity has produced a hundred years worth of amateur film culture which is in desperate need of preservation. As film archival and public history have coalesced in the past thirty years around the idea that every personÂÂ's history is important, home movies represent a way for those histories to be preserved and studied by communities and researchers alike....
Show moreSince the invention of the cinema, people have been taking home movies. The ever increasing popularity of this activity has produced a hundred years worth of amateur film culture which is in desperate need of preservation. As film archival and public history have coalesced in the past thirty years around the idea that every personÂÂ's history is important, home movies represent a way for those histories to be preserved and studied by communities and researchers alike. The University of Central Florida is in a perfect position to establish an archive of this nature, one that is specifically dedicated to acquiring, preserving, and presenting the home movies of Central Florida residents. This project has resulted in the establishment of The Central Florida Home Movie Archive, and the resulting analysis will show that the archive will be a benefit for researchers from all areas of academic study as well as the residents of Central Florida.
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Date Issued
2010
Identifier
CFE0003432, ucf:48410
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0003432
"City of Superb Democracy:" The Emergence of Brooklyn's Cultural Identity During Cinema's Silent Era, 1893-1928.
Title
"City of Superb Democracy:" The Emergence of Brooklyn's Cultural Identity During Cinema's Silent Era, 1893-1928.
Creator
Morton, David, Foster, Amy, French, Scot, Zhang, Hong, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
This study discusses how motion picture spectatorship practices in Brooklyn developed separately from that of any other urban center in the United States between 1893 and 1928. Often overshadowed by Manhattan's glamorous cultural districts, Brooklyn's cultural arbiters adopted the motion picture as a means of asserting a sense of independence from the other New York boroughs. This argument is reinforced by focusing on the motion picture's ascendancy as one of the first forms of mass...
Show moreThis study discusses how motion picture spectatorship practices in Brooklyn developed separately from that of any other urban center in the United States between 1893 and 1928. Often overshadowed by Manhattan's glamorous cultural districts, Brooklyn's cultural arbiters adopted the motion picture as a means of asserting a sense of independence from the other New York boroughs. This argument is reinforced by focusing on the motion picture's ascendancy as one of the first forms of mass entertainment to be disseminated throughout New York City in congruence with the Borough of Brooklyn's rapid urbanization. In many significant areas Brooklyn's relationship with the motion picture was largely unique from anywhere else in New York. These differences are best illuminated through several key examples ranging from the manner in which Brooklyn's political and religious authorities enforced film censorship to discussing how the motion picture was exhibited and the way theaters proliferated throughout the borough Lastly this work will address the ways in which members of the Brooklyn community influenced the production practices of the films made at several Brooklyn-based film studios. Ultimately this work sets out to explain how an independent community was able to determine its own form of cultural expression through its relationship with mass entertainment.
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Date Issued
2014
Identifier
CFE0005217, ucf:50636
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005217
Digital Dissonance: Horror Cultures in the Age of Convergent Technologies
Title
Digital Dissonance: Horror Cultures in the Age of Convergent Technologies.
Creator
Powell, Daniel, McDaniel, Rudy, Campbell, James, Brenckle, Martha, Arnzen, Michael, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
The first two decades of the new millennium have witnessed an abundance of change in the areas of textual production, digital communication, and our collective engagement with the Internet. This study explores these changes, which have yielded both positive and negative cultural and developmental outcomes, as products of digital dissonance. Dissonance is characterized by the disruptive consequences inherent in technology's incursion into the print publication cultures of the twentieth century...
Show moreThe first two decades of the new millennium have witnessed an abundance of change in the areas of textual production, digital communication, and our collective engagement with the Internet. This study explores these changes, which have yielded both positive and negative cultural and developmental outcomes, as products of digital dissonance. Dissonance is characterized by the disruptive consequences inherent in technology's incursion into the print publication cultures of the twentieth century, the explosion in social-media interaction that is changing the complexion of human contact, and our expanding reliance on the World Wide Web for negotiating commerce, culture, and communication.This study explores digital dissonance through the prism of an emerging literary subgenre called technohorror. Artists working in the area of technohorror are creating works that leverage the qualities of plausibility, mundanity, and surprise to tell important stories about how technology is altering the human experience in the twenty-first century. This study explores such subjects as paradigmatic changes in textual production methods, dynamic authorial hybridity, digital materiality in folklore studies, posthumanism, transhumanism, cognitive diminution, and physical degeneration as explored in works of technohorror.The work's rhetorical architecture includes elements of both theoretical and qualitative research. This project expands on City University of New York philosophy professor No(&)#235;l Carroll's definition of art-horror in developing a formal explanation of technohorror and then exploring that literary subgenre through the analysis of a series of contemporary texts and industry-related trends. The study also contains original interviews with active scholars, artists, editors, and librarians in the horror field to gain a variety of perspectives on these complicated subjects.
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Date Issued
2017
Identifier
CFE0006642, ucf:51231
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0006642
E.A.I. Anxiety: Technopanic and Post-Human Potential
Title
E.A.I. Anxiety: Technopanic and Post-Human Potential.
Creator
Mandell, Zachary, Brenckle, Martha, Jones, Natasha, Scott, Blake, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
Robots have been a part of the imagination of Western culture for centuries. The possibility for automation and artificial life has inspired the curiosity of thinkers like Leonardo Da Vinci who once designed a mechanical knight. It wasn't until the 19th century that automated machinery has become realized. The confrontation between human and automation has inspired a fear, referred to as (")technopanic("), that has been exacerbated in tandem with the evolution of technology. This thesis seeks...
Show moreRobots have been a part of the imagination of Western culture for centuries. The possibility for automation and artificial life has inspired the curiosity of thinkers like Leonardo Da Vinci who once designed a mechanical knight. It wasn't until the 19th century that automated machinery has become realized. The confrontation between human and automation has inspired a fear, referred to as (")technopanic("), that has been exacerbated in tandem with the evolution of technology. This thesis seeks to discover the historical precedence for these fears. I explore three modes of knowledge (Philosophy, Economics, and Film Theory) to examine the agendas behind the messages on the topic of Artificial Life, specifically Robots. I then advocate for an alternative philosophy called Post-Humanism. I argue that what is needed to alleviate the fears and anxieties of Western culture is a shift in how humanity views itself and its relation to the natural world. By structuring my thesis in this way, I identify the roots of Western humanity's anthropocentric ontology first, explore the economic implications of automation second, analyze the cultural anticipations of artificial life in Western media third, and finally offer an alternative attitude and ethic as a way out of the pre-established judgments that do little to protect Western culture from E.A.I.
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Date Issued
2018
Identifier
CFE0007049, ucf:52022
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0007049
BEYOND POSTMODERN MARGINS: THEORIZING POSTFEMINIST CONSEQUENCES THROUGH POPULAR FEMALE REPRESENTATION
Title
BEYOND POSTMODERN MARGINS: THEORIZING POSTFEMINIST CONSEQUENCES THROUGH POPULAR FEMALE REPRESENTATION.
Creator
Mosher, Victoria, Campbell, James, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
In 1988, Linda Nicholson and Nancy Fraser published an article entitled "Social Criticism Without Philosophy: An Encounter Between Feminism and Postmodernism," arguing that this essay would provide a jumping point for discussion between feminisms and postmodernisms within academia. Within this essay, Nicholson and Fraser largely disavow a number of second wave feminist theories due to their essentialist and foundationalist underpinnings in favor of a set of postmodernist frameworks that might...
Show moreIn 1988, Linda Nicholson and Nancy Fraser published an article entitled "Social Criticism Without Philosophy: An Encounter Between Feminism and Postmodernism," arguing that this essay would provide a jumping point for discussion between feminisms and postmodernisms within academia. Within this essay, Nicholson and Fraser largely disavow a number of second wave feminist theories due to their essentialist and foundationalist underpinnings in favor of a set of postmodernist frameworks that might help feminist theorists overcome these epistemological impediments. A "postmodern feminism," Nicholson and Fraser claim, would become "the theoretical counterpart of a broader, richer, more complex, and multilayered solidarity, the sort of solidarity which is essential for overcoming the oppression of women" (35). Interpreting "Social Criticism" through a feminist cultural studies model in which texts are understood to be simultaneously constituted by and reflective of their own sociopolitical spaces, I argue that the construction of Nicholson and Fraser's "postmodern feminism" is, first and foremost, neither a postmodernist critique nor a means of overcoming the pitfalls of essentialism and foundationalism. Instead, the construction of this theoretical paradigm can be shown to be complicit with postfeminist discourses, wherein an implicitly patriarchal discourse of postmodernism is called upon to repair the deficiencies of feminisms, deficiencies that postmodernisms, in some ways, helped to bring into view. To provide a conceptual backing for these claims, I move toward an examination of mass culture, surveying the similarities between "Social Criticism" and the film What Women Want. Such a comparison, I suggest, facilitates a better understanding of how "Social Criticism" can be shown to be imbedded in a postfeminist narrative structure in which feminisms are relegated to a discursively subordinate gendered position in relation to postmodernisms. Finally, in what I find to be the most important aspect of this thesis' inquiry, I ask what it means to build a "broader, richer, more complex, and multilayered solidarity" by disavowing second wave feminisms in favor of postmodernisms. I conclude that, in using postmodernisms as a panacea for feminist theories, Nicholson and Fraser curtail what might have been a rigorous interrogation of and direct engagement with second wave feminist theories that would also attend to the phallogocentric underpinnings of postmodern theories. To underline the potential consequences, I turn to a set of televisual and filmic texts including Sex and the City, Desperate Housewives, and The Devil Wears Prada to gauge what their "postmodern feminism" might represent in practice rather than what it entails as philosophy. This juxtaposition of these two differently defined and yet overwhelmingly similar postmodern feminisms, I propose, underscores the potential that Nicholson and Fraser may have instituted a postmodern feminist methodology in which it is possible that feminisms might emerge not as discourses essential for "overcoming the oppression of women" but rather as discourses that can be critiqued into oblivion.
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Date Issued
2008
Identifier
CFE0002141, ucf:47518
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0002141
Secondary World: The Limits of Ludonarrative
Title
Secondary World: The Limits of Ludonarrative.
Creator
Dannelly, David, Adams, JoAnne, Price, Mark, Poindexter, Carla, Kovach, Keith, University of Central Florida
Abstract / Description
Secondary World: The Limits of Ludonarrative is a series of short narrative animations that are a theoretical treatise on the limitations of western storytelling in video games. The series covers specific topics relating to film theory, game design and art theory: specifically those associated with Gilles Deleuze, Jean Baudrillard, Jay Bolter, Richard Grusin and Andy Clark. The use of imagery, editing and presentation is intended to physically represent an extension of myself and my thinking...
Show moreSecondary World: The Limits of Ludonarrative is a series of short narrative animations that are a theoretical treatise on the limitations of western storytelling in video games. The series covers specific topics relating to film theory, game design and art theory: specifically those associated with Gilles Deleuze, Jean Baudrillard, Jay Bolter, Richard Grusin and Andy Clark. The use of imagery, editing and presentation is intended to physically represent an extension of myself and my thinking process and which are united through the common thread of my personal feelings, thoughts and experiences in the digital age.
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Date Issued
2014
Identifier
CFE0005155, ucf:50704
Format
Document (PDF)
PURL
http://purl.flvc.org/ucf/fd/CFE0005155