School of Culture and Communication - Theses
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ItemRituals of girlhood: fairy tales on the teen screen( 2015)The research question that this dissertation asks is: can contemporary teen screen media include representations of adolescent girls who oppose their subordinate, objectified position within adult patriarchal culture, and how do these expressions of opposition manifest onscreen? I explore this question through an analysis of postmodern screen texts that hybridise the fairy tale with the contemporary teen screen genre because this contemporary trend in fairy tale revision produces new, more empowered representations of the feminine rite-of-passage. In this thesis, I compare fairy tale narratives that once privileged patriarchal authority – particularly the versions written by Charles Perrault, the Brothers Grimm, and Hans Christian Andersen – with contemporary teen screen revisions that produce new representations of fairy tale heroines who confront and challenge this very authority. To identify moments of feminine adolescent resistance and noncompliance on the teen screen, I chart the phase of liminality in the rite-of-passage narrative. While there has been some theorisation of liminality on the teen screen, not enough work has been done on how liminality provides a space for heroines to articulate alternative feminine adolescent voices and identities. This dissertation redeploys Victor Turner’s work on liminality for a feminist agenda. I use this theory as a way to not only locate instances of dislocation and fissures in the dominant system that regulates girlhood, but to also discover how the limits of this system can be made malleable in the liminal zone. Additionally, I explore the political potential of liminality by investigating whether this unsettling of limits can create social change for the heroines beyond the liminal phase in their post-liminal return to conventional culture. This dissertation makes an original contribution to knowledge by arguing for the feminist potential of these moments because they represent a rupture in the status quo, and in the resistant space of this gap, a new screen language of feminine adolescence articulates the girl as a powerful subject who is agentically doing girlhood.
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ItemDon't let the future pass you by: iterative dystopias on the postmillennial screen( 2015)In the decade 2001-2010, films which presented spectacular futures dominated the box office. In contrast, Code 46 (2003), 2046 (2004) and Inception (2010) conceived immediately recognisable tomorrows, pessimistic futures firmly rooted in the socio-historical present. Despite their divergent production backgrounds, differing story arcs and disparate aesthetics, this thesis contends that these texts are key, early examples of a new subcycle of films it titles Iterative Dystopia. Using a social science fiction criticism methodology, this thesis conducts an interdisciplinary investigation which draws on science fiction genre analysis, dystopian narrative theory and contemporary sociological concepts to define the formal characteristics of the collection and offers fresh readings of the texts. This thesis finds that Iterative Dystopias are defined by the theme of perpetual liminality, an original concept developed following the work of sociologist Arpad Szakolczai. Iterative Dystopia’s perpetually liminal protagonists trace iterative paths across their narrative arcs, searching for an alternative to the continuous transitions of lives lived in this in-between state. Their goal is personal. They just want a place to call home. In direct contrast to the conventional dystopian protagonist, these characters are seeking their utopia within the familiar. These characters are, however, thwarted in their attempts to find a sense of belonging. Through a close textual analysis, this thesis explores three of the narrative environments in which these characters conduct their quotidian existence: the home, the relationship and the mind; and establishes that Iterative Dystopia’s protagonists are frustrated by paradoxes. They reside in Foucauldian heterotopic places and are uncomfortably exposed in their performance of their everyday. They seek solace in their relationships, but find their communications hampered. Their verbal and haptic exchanges produce multiple, contradictory meanings which this thesis explores through Fritz Senn’s concept of dislocution. They seek refuge in their memories, but their minds are sites of control. Working from Ulrich Beck’s definition, this thesis defines these characters as uncertain and contrasts them with the anxious, alienated protagonist found in the conventional dystopian form. Ultimately, Iterative Dystopias retain a glimmer of hope in the ambiguities that remain as their credits roll. In conclusion, this thesis finds evidence that, far from being limited to films which garnered theatrical release in the postmillennial decade, the Iterative Dystopia subcycle continues beyond the bounds of this study.