School of Culture and Communication - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 8 of 8
-
ItemTravel, Emotions, and Race in Anthony Trollope’s Travelogues, Letters, and Fiction( 2023-06)This thesis examines the role of emotion in Anthony Trollope’s shifting opinions on race and colonialism in his famine writing, travel narratives, and fiction connected to his travels. For a nuanced understanding of his first-hand experiences of race, I tie affect theory to Mary Louise Pratt’s conceptualisation of the contact zone, investigating the complex power dynamic between Trollope and the racial other, Trollope and the colonists, and the role of corporeality and environment in shaping his feelings. In addition, my analysis contextualises Trollope’s negotiation of sympathetic feelings towards the colonised. To address the intricacy of his emotions, I examine Trollope’s rapid writing methods, which preserved his immediate emotions. As this work will demonstrate, Trollope was slow in processing emotions and thoughts, particularly those which challenged his prior beliefs. He was thus prompted to revise some of his views in later works, in particular—as I argue, drawing on the work of Helen Lucy Blythe—using fiction to revisit difficult encounters that had lingered in his imagination. Trollope’s emotional lability was connected to his hasty drafting of work (he wrote quickly as he travelled), which inhibited deep reflection. As I shall demonstrate in this thesis, Trollope’s position on race fluctuated as he travelled through different colonies, learning more about their distinct geographical features, racial conflict, and the politics of his hosts. Examining accounts of his time in Ireland, the West Indies, Australasia, and South Africa, this thesis will offer a new reading of Trollope’s travel writing, combining textual scholarship with emotions and affect theory.
-
ItemSolving Suspicion in Mystery Films( 2019)This thesis seeks to understand how viewers engage mystery films, and how they are engaged by them. Mystery films present a problem for the viewer to solve, from identifying a killer to uncovering a conspiracy, and engage viewers in solving this problem by arousing suspicion. This feeling of suspicion represents points of fixation for viewers within a film’s narrative. Mystery films arouse suspicion using repetition, isolation, duration, and predisposition, and by playing on viewer expectations surrounding the mystery genre and type. When viewer suspicion is aroused, they engage in a form of problem solving to try and resolve ambiguity in the text and reach a solution to the problem in the film. To address these research questions, this thesis employs a range of empirical methods, including quantitative analysis of editing data, neoformalist analysis of mystery films, and a human experiment to determine how specific film practices influence viewer’s perception of suspicion. By focusing only on what can be observed and comprehended, and not on interpretations of a text, Neoformalist analysis may be considered an empirical research method. This range of methods is directed by a set of guiding principles that underpin the thesis, aimed at contributing to our understanding of the experience-of-film. In total, the thesis examines 87 mystery films from 2004-2013 to provide a comprehensive study of contemporary mystery cinema. The thesis demonstrates that viewers primarily engage with mystery films through a form of problem solving, guided by their experience of suspicion. Mystery films are constructed to arouse suspicion and encourage viewers to attempt to solve the problem at the centre of a film. Mystery films use editing structure, problem types, filmic practices, and expectations of genre to curate the viewing experience, attempting to prevent viewers from reaching a solution prematurely. This is largely achieved by cultivating recognition in viewers, ensuring they identify important clues within the film, but fail to synthesise this information into a solution. Viewers can draw on meta-knowledge in an attempt to decode and decipher these practices, leading to new forms of engagement with mystery films. Finally, this thesis illustrates the potential for an empirically informed, interdisciplinary approach to researching screen texts, and the potential for future investigations into the viewing experience.
-
ItemThe topographical parenthesis: articulations of space in the novels of Henry James( 2019)Taking as its cue the “topographical parenthesis” of Washington Square (1881), this thesis proffers the parenthesis as a critically underrated topographical and rhetorical category that is constituent of the novels of Henry James. It argues that the Jamesian novel prioritises the parenthetical, which I classify as the concealed, the unconsummated, the residual, the queer, the feminine, the childish, the nostalgic, the detail and the digression. I argue that these parenthetical figures permeate the literary topography of James’s novels— what I call his “articulations of space”—and that in this parenthetical topography, the author enhances his own narratorial mobility, shifting between points of identification and negation, and engaging with novelistic conventions of realism, romance and decadence. I propose a critical investment in the parenthetical that matches the author’s own. Engaging formalist, intertextual, queer and feminist frameworks, I present six close readings of James’s novels ranging from the early through to the late stage of the author’s career. I demonstrate the centrality of the parenthesis in James’s work as a technical device honed by the author, and its methodological value as an organising device with which to approach the subjects of authorship, genre, influence, production, revision, reception and criticism that are integral to Henry James studies and to literary studies more widely.
-
ItemConduct unbecoming: reconfiguring gender and genre in 1990s Hollywood cinema( 2017)This study identifies an interplay between gender and genre in a 1990s Hollywood production context, and demonstrates how this undermines gender and genre categories. Late twentieth century post-classical Hollywood cinema experienced significant industrial changes which produced a range of different aesthetic practices. This study will demonstrate that the reconfiguration of the representation of women and femininity in this period has resulted in significant changes to Hollywood genre filmmaking practices. This investigation will make an original contribution by arguing that the intervention of female protagonists into conventionally male roles and genres has prompted some important changes and innovations to the codes and conventions of genre. The analysis will demonstrate how an interplay between gender and genre is enunciated through postmodern appropriation and subversion. An increasing use of genre hybridity, allusion, pastiche, parody and intertextuality has frequently relied on a subversive use of gender, in terms of women and femininity, in order to alter genre conventions. This is not viewed as a symptom of a decline in Hollywood filmmaking practices, but rather as a sign of a postmodern Hollywood aesthetic that addresses changing socio-cultural attitudes to women and femininity. The study examines a range of genres traditionally featuring male protagonists. It explores the direct relationship between unconventional female protagonists, playing roles usually reserved for men, and the resulting changes and innovations to genre conventions. Identifying the interplay between gender and genre highlights the interactive nature of the relationship between these elements and foregrounds the importance of understandings of gender on the codes and conventions of genre. As a result of these changes, the notion of gender oriented genre becomes increasingly reconsidered, especially in terms of the positions of identification that are offered to spectators. The study will focus on how these changes have been influenced by feminism and queer theory and are a response to important movements in the historical and socio-political context under investigation.
-
ItemMontage Vietnam: documentary aesthetics and the dialectic of popular radicalism( 2014)This thesis is the first in-depth study of the politics of exposition in explicitly political, populist documentary, taking as case studies three pivotal documentaries of the Vietnam era - Emile de Antonio’s In the Year of the Pig (1968), Peter Davis’ Hearts and Minds (1973) and The Newsreel Film Collective’s Summer 68 (1969). Three different aesthetic approaches are linked by the filmmakers’ desire to undermine dominant representations of ‘the television war’ whilst consciously avoiding relegation to the art-house for fear of ‘preaching to the choir’. As such, the desire to reach as wide an audience as possible is continually offset by the politics of visual pleasure and documentary realism. This thesis offers an examination of how these tensions play out, termed here the dialectic of popular radicalism. These films’ political aesthetic can be mapped by examining their dialectical relationship to both mainstream entertainment and news services, as well as European modernism. This map will use the mechanics of each film’s metalanguage as its defining structure. Through a recalibration of Comolli and Narboni’s influential ‘Cinema/Ideology/Criticism’ (1969) - via the varied lenses of documentary, genre and Soviet film theory - a politicised understanding of Keith Beattie’s ‘documentary display’ will be produced. It is my contention that the dialectic between popular and radical sensibilities manifests in varying degrees of visibility of each film’s metalanguage, or textual ‘voice’, to use Bill Nichols’ 1981 formulation. This visibility is at the heart of these films’ political aesthetic. Solidifying Nichols’ conception of voice as the metalanguage of the popular political documentary provides a concrete means of understanding documentary realism in relation to rhetoric: rather than looking through documentary’s window onto the world, it draws focus onto the window itself. Taking lessons from Marxist aesthetic and film theory as well as the works themselves, this thesis encourages an antagonistic approach to traditional structures of representation in documentary, while taking into account the dynamic nature of aesthetic radicalism and the need for rhetorical intelligibility. If accepting cinema as a continuously evolving textual system necessitates the abandonment of static notions of classicism, it follows that we must also jettison those regarding documentary progressivity.
-
ItemFaces in the shadows: an investigation into the anonymous diary A Woman in Berlin and A Rose in Winter, a fictional retelling of the Rosenstrasse Protest( 2013)This thesis represents the first in-depth academic examination of A Woman in Berlin, an anonymous diary first published in 1954 which detailed the experiences of a woman who experienced first-hand the chaotic weeks of April, May and June 1945 in the German capital, including the arrival of the Russian troops and their treatment of civilians. Her numerous diary entries, which cover a period of eight weeks and contain graphic accounts of the suffering she and others underwent, have frequently been quoted in historical descriptions of the period. Thus their historical value is beyond question, making the lack of investigation of the text even more surprising. To remedy this deficiency, several elements of A Woman in Berlin have been selected which, when examined, will give the reader a far deeper understanding of both diary and diarist. Chapter I considers the various tropes and themes that a reader may detect in the diary, looking at whether the traditional ideas associated with those genres are fulfilled, and how this fulfilment or subversion of it leads to the categorisation of the diary, as well as what this means for the reader. The second chapter focuses on the numerous intertextual references that appear in the diary, evaluating what their inclusion says about both the diarist’s literary knowledge and also her feelings at the moment that prompted her to include them in her recollections. The reader’s understanding of the diarist is further expanded in the third chapter by an examination of the various paratextual elements that make up the diary, in particular the illustrations that appear on the various covers, the fore- and afterwords written by people who seek to conceal the truth of the diarist’s identity and yet let slip numerous details about her, and finally the reaction that has greeted the diary upon its various publications. By focusing on these details, this investigation aims to give the reader an insight into both a fascinating retelling of history and also of a nameless diarist. The creative piece that forms the second part of this thesis is a fictionalised retelling of a little-known historical event known as the Rosenstrasse Protest. This uprising took place in Berlin during the end of February and early March 1943, when, having been prompted by the mass-arrest of the remaining Jews in the German capital, non-Jewish women gathered outside the building in which their husbands were being held and, for seven days, despite bombing raids and the constant, threatening presence of the SS, held a public protest. Despite annual memorial services held to remember this event, as well as a film directed by Margarethe von Trotta that told the story, which premiered in 2003, this event remains all but unknown, particularly to English-speaking audiences, and therefore ripe for retelling. With the event narrated in diary format, the reader is able to employ many of the techniques adopted in the critical study of A Woman in Berlin to come to participate in the unfolding narrative of A Rose in Winter.
-
Item
-
ItemBitter brothers: representations of the male misanthrope in the films of Joel and Ethan Coen( 2011)This thesis will explore representations of the male misanthrope in the films of Joel and Ethan Coen. Drawing on theories such as Sigmund Freud’s notion of ‘The Uncanny’ and Thomas Schatz’s commentary on integration and order genre tropes in Hollywood Genres: Formulas, Filmmaking, and the Studio System, this thesis will explore how the recurrent figure of the male misanthrope serves a critical function in the films of Joel and Ethan Coen. This character type, it will be argued, is used by the Coen brothers to comment upon the nature of masculinity in their narratives, which is universally bitter. It will be put forward that this character emerges from and distinguishes the Coen brothers’ bending and fusing of these conventions of genre that Schatz establishes, across their filmography. It will be argued that the male misanthrope is a consistent and prominent but overlooked character type in the Coens’ cinematic oeuvre. Far from being a stable character though, this thesis will argue that the male misanthrope appears in multiple forms. In the films selected for analysis here, the male misanthrope appears as five character types: the failed lover; the outlaw/flâneur; the authoritarian; the sidekick; and the intellect. Importantly, these representations of the male misanthrope, it will be argued, are socially detached figures. By the same token, these characters could also be described as embodying what Freud calls the uncanny, that is simultaneously “unheimlich” and “heimlich”, or “unhomely” and “homely” (1919). This aspect of the uncanny situates the filmmaking of the Coens as belonging to ‘familiar’ established cinematic codes and conventions while simultaneously taking leave from – or ‘unfamiliarly’ shifting away from – these familiar structures and functions in order to construct their representations of the male misanthrope. They are characters that are created from and emerge out of the fusion of these traditionally opposed genre structures identified by Schatz. The Coen brothers develop these characters in a way that allows each one to resemble ‘everyday life’ figures, such as: the broken hearted; the detached criminal; the egotistical boss; the loyal but annoying friend; and the intellectual. Representations of these seemingly ‘natural’ character types, however, are compromised by the Coens’ non-naturalistic, caricatured approach to genre, narrativity and characterisation. The Coens’ fusing of genre tropes identified by Schatz works to detach the viewer from the Coen brothers’ narratives while suturing the audience into the familiar style that could be more broadly referred to as ‘Coenesque’. The cinema of Joel and Ethan Coen, thus, emerges as a bitter, masculine, cut off world of failed lovers, outlaw/flâneurs, authoritarians, sidekicks and intellects. Their films, however, employ such character types to bend traditional notions of genre as a way of commenting upon masculinity as something that is inherently bitter and subject to change.