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Fantasy films have been a part of cinema since the very beginnings of the medium. Although fantasy films can be found in every decade of the last century, the genre only became persistently successful from the late 1970s onwards. Perhaps the relatively recent prominence of fantasy goes some way to explain why the genre lacks the academic discourse that other film genres have encouraged. Another reason why fantasy has evaded considerable discussion as a genre could be because of the difficulty in defining it. Fantasy can encompass numerous types of films, and features an array of different thematic and visual styles. Previous studies examining fantasy either fail to consider the mode as a genre, or only consider a limited array of films. Using Tzvetan Todorov’s assessment of The Fantastic as a framework, this thesis examines fantasy films from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. I reassert fantasy’s position as a genre rather than a mode or impulse. Analysing a wide range of films from this period, this thesis outlines the preoccupations of the genre and identifies the various cycles and sub-genres encompassed by the term ‘fantasy’. These categories include those that concern the style of film and those that concern the intended audience. Deconstructing the fantasy genre in these sub-genres makes it more manageable to appraise the genre as a whole. Consistent patterns emerge in the examination of these films, ranging from archetypal characters to a fixation with subversion. The 1980s was a critical time for fantasy cinema as it was the first sustained period of frequent successful films. Fantasy was the most commercially successful genre of the decade; Hollywood’s output in this period still reverberates in today’s industry. Thus, the fantasy genre is most worthy of the critical discussion afforded to other genres.

This thesis examines the four transitional Disney animated features of the 1980s The Fox and the Hound (1981), The Black Cauldron (1985), The Great Mouse Detective (1986), and Oliver and Company (1988)— in order to reassess the significance of this period in Disney history. The Walt Disney Studio is internationally hailed for its animated features produced over the last eight decades, however, the animated films released in the 1980s have been ignored and neglected due to the negative evaluations of scholars and historians who favor Walt’s era and the 1990s renaissance period. A closer examination of the films reveals that Disney was not in a dark age but one of experimentation, excisement, and exploration in contrast to the perceived notions. Each film contributed to Disney animation’s return including a generational shift in creativity, application of computer animation, casting a celebrity as a voice-artist, and the use of theme songs and popular singers. These contributions were technically, thematically, and aesthetically important in reframing Disney’s animated products for future audiences leading to the 1990s successes beginning with The Little Mermaid.

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This dissertation centers on a perceived child safety crisis in the late twentieth century U.S. It charts the emergence of specific cultural anxieties regarding American childhood and the development of new mechanisms designed to safeguard young Americans from “moral threats” such as stranger abduction, exploitation, and pornography. “Stranger Danger” shows that the politics of child safety coincided with Reagan-era efforts to snip the social safety net, promote law and order, lionize the business sector, and shore up the “traditional” family. The study argues that, as the New Deal order crumbled in the late twentieth century, so too did the state’s commitment to shielding American youths from structural problems such as hunger and poverty. Measures focused on child safety arose as social welfare programs like Aid to Families with Dependent Children, school lunch and child nutrition initiatives, and the Comprehensive Education and Training Act fell by the wayside. The shift from provision to protection that “Stranger Danger” takes as its central focus relied upon the development of a child safety apparatus, a collection of legal-cultural mechanisms that have exaggerated the prevalence of moral threats to American children, especially those perpetrated by strangers. Launched by activists and the bereaved parents of slain children, and eventually sanctioned by the Reagan administration, the 1980s child safety campaign authored an array of new instruments intended to protect young Americans from kidnapping, molestation, murder, exploitation, and corruption.

One of the great superpowers in recent history experienced a tumultuous final decade, shining a light on several important policies of economic reform known as perestroika, championed by General Secretary of the USSR Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev. According to, for instance, Stuart and Gregory, the reforms aimed at renewing making the Soviet economy more efficient. In this essay, the impact of the reform on the economy is subject of analysis.The subject is approached the topic via literature research on the topic of 1980s USSR economic problems, combined with key aggregate data on economic conditions (i.e. grain yield production, GDP per capita pre- and post-perestroika, foreign trade, life expectant pre-and post-perestroika). The thesis concluded that perestroika was unable to salvage the USSR, in fact, conditions only worsened after its administration, following into the 1990s.

This dissertation is about the intellectual reception of TV in 1980s China. While Chinese media have often been a topic within studies of globalization and global political economy, Chinese TV history still has not gained enough scholarly attention. Chinese scholars' extant studies of TV history have provided valuable knowledge, but a more extensive and critical view of the interaction between TV and culture is still lacking. This dissertation aims to explore Chinese TV history in the pivotal decade of the 1980s from the viewpoint of cultural studies. Using theories of media technology, globalization and gender studies, this dissertation reexamines how a western technology was introduced to and then embedded in Chinese culture. This study of the popularization of TV in 1980s China is historical-critical supplemented with oral history interviews. Well-known Chinese periodicals were studied whose goals were not just to educate people, as was the normal role of media under socialism, but also to entertain them. These magazines include Life Out of 8 Hours, Popular TV, Popular Cinema, Modern Family, and Chinese Advertising. The dissertation also analyzes TV dramas produced in China or imported from other nations in order to examine the interaction between various ideologies of Chinese society and those of international media. It explores how the hybridity between western TV culture and Chinese traditions was represented in popular Chinese visual media. The confusions and ambitions of modernization appeared in the representations of visual media. The intellectual reception of TV in China was a negotiation between tradition and modernity, nationalism and internationalism. Chapter one examines how the Chinese media introduced and represented TV in the 1980s. Chapter two investigates how TV was presented by 1980s Chinese media as a symbol of modern life, wealth and higher social status. In chapter three, I examine how TV, a modern medium, was linked media to nature. Chapter four concentrates on the relationship between TV and other media technologies, such as film and print media. Chapter five focuses on gender representation in discourse and images promoting TV, its dramas, and related media such as TV and film magazines. The epilogue provides a brief review of the general situation of Chinese TV since the 1990s.

The Yuppie, the Young Urban Professional, is a social type closely linked to the popular historical conception of the 1980s. The type is characterized as a young person working in banking, media or finance with expensive tastes in consumption and an individualistic, vapid mindset. Considering the popular conception of the Yuppie as a sort of manifestation of all things 80s, this paper explores how the Yuppie was represented in Swedish newspapers in the period 1984 to 1991. Using Bourdieu’s concept of the classificatory struggle this study charts how the Yuppie was invoked in the social world of its day. Contrary to the mythic belief of the 1980s as the decade of the Yuppie, the social type is represented only as a culturally dominant type between 1985 and 1987 and becomes a historical concept by 1988. The Yuppie was channeled as opposed to the socially conscious Hippie-type of the 1970s and the traditional Swedish working class. Furthermore, the Yuppie was viewed by contemporary commentators as a sort of amalgamation of various social and economic trends that they meant characterized the 1980s, such as the growth and deregulation of the financial sector, rising prices of housing in central Stockholm, and the rise of new forms of labor starkly different from the traditional swedish industry. This contemporary ‘historization’ of the Yuppie attests to a view of history as a sort of pendulum of zeitgeists, where Yuppie replaces hippie, individualism replaces social conscience, seemingly of its own volition.

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Este proyecto de investigación se caracteriza como estudio histórico-etnográfica basado en estudios de casos de la vida cotidiana de nueve mujeres en Valparaíso y Viña del Mar durante la dictadura chilena, analizando el testimonio de los efectos del régimen autoritario en la vida cotidiana de estas mujeres chilenas entre 1980 y 1987. La metodología se radica firmemente en el método etnográfico con entrevistas semi-abiertas y el análisis del discurso de los relatos. En la metáfora de la arpillera (un tapiz anónimo cosido en lona ensamblado a partir de piezas de tela que muestra escenas de la vida cotidiana o protesta la dictadura de Pinochet), trozos y pedazos de experiencia se juntan en el encima de la lona de la historia para dar forma al testimonio de vida la vida cotidiana. Este proyecto se centra en tres aspectos diferentes de la relación entre el Estado autoritario y la vida cotidiana: las técnicas de gobernabilidad (macro), narraciones de silencio y miedo (micro) y trayectorias narrados (espacial), el último inspirado por el ensayo Halbwachs en caminar por la ciudad. Para cerrar, la relevancia del estudio se destaca por el intento de comprender el efecto de un estado autoritario en el sujeto femenino y las respuestas y adaptaciones que las mujeres chilenas adoptaron en la vida privada y pública mediada por la violencia y el miedo bajo dictadura. La dialéctica del acontecimiento y la rutina de la vida cotidiana bajo la dictadura se unen en las memorias narradas, mediada por el presente vivido, lo cual permite una reflexión sobre la cuestión de la alteridad en la sociedad chilena. / The research project is characterized as a historical-ethnographic study based on case studies of the everyday lives of nine women in Valparaíso and Viña del Mar during the Chilean dictatorship, analyzing testimony of the effects of the authoritarian regime on the everyday life of Chilean women between 1980 and 1987. The methodology is firmly rooted in the ethnographic method with semi-open interviews and discourse analysis of the narratives. In the metaphor of the arpillera (an anonymous tapestry sewn on canvas constructed out of pieces of cloth showing scenes of everyday life or protesting the Pinochet dictatorship), scraps and pieces of experience are sewn onto the canvas context of history to shape the testimony of lived everyday life. This project focuses on three different aspects of the relationship between authoritarian state and everyday life: techniques of governmentality (macro), narratives of silence and fear (micro), and narrated trajectories (spatial) inspired by Halbwachs’ essay on walking the city. To close, the study’s relevance is highlighted by the intent to understand the effect of an authoritarian state on the female subject and the responses and adaptations that Chilean women adopted in private and public life shaped by violence and fear. The dialectics of event and routine of everyday life under dictatorship are thus stitched together in memory, mediated by the women’s lived present, facilitating a closing reflection about alterity in Chilean society.