Due to their characteristic themes (such as 'perverse' desire and monstrosity) and form (incoherence and excess), exploitation films are often celebrated as inherently subversive or transgressive. I critically assess such claims through a close reading of the films of the Spanish 'sex and horror' specialist Jess Franco. My textual and contextual analysis shows that Franco's films are shaped by inter-relationships between authorship, international genre codes and the economic and ideological conditions of exploitation cinema. Within these conditions, Franco's treatment of 'aberrant' and gothic desiring subjectivities appears contradictory. Contestation and critique can, for example, be found in Franco's portrayal of emasculated male characters, and his female vampires may offer opportunities for resistant appropriation. But these possibilities do not amount to the 'radicality' sometimes attributed to the exploitation field. Focusing on international co-productions from early 1960s to mid 1970s, I discuss the ideological ambivalence of their fascination with 'perversity' and 'otherness'. Chapter 1 argues that The Awful Dr Orlof challenges dominant standards of quality in contemporary Spanish cinema, that its figuring of monstrosity contains a potential critique of Francisco Franco's dictatorship, and that it only partially destabilises the genre's traditional gender codes. Chapter 2 discusses femme fatale stereotypes and fantasy tropes in Venus in Furs. Mixing visual discourses of 'high' and 'low' culture in an evocation of male 'mad love', this film dramatises vision in a way which problematises the notion of the mastering, coherent gaze. Chapter 3 argues that Franco's female vampire films embody, while reflexively estranging, heteronormative male fascination with the 'otherness' of female/'lesbian' desire. Franco's supposed transgressivity is often referred to as Sadeian; through a reading of Demoniac and Franco's 'captive women' imagery, the final chapter therefore discusses the political possibilities, contradictions and limitations of Franco's Sadeian representations.

The September 11 attacks employed violence as a means of picture-making on a horrifically unprecedented scale. Furthermore, ‘9/11' crystallised the intersection of trauma discourse and visual culture at both popular and academic levels. Questions surrounding the role of visual images and processes of mediation within trauma theory are thus important in understanding an event which was fundamentally mediated and intensely visual. The concept of ‘virtual trauma' raises the possibility that mediation can become the site or source of trauma, as well as a mode of its transmission or representation. This thesis explores the ways in which the confusion of presence and absence named by the figure of virtuality operates in the register of visuality and visibility, both literal and figurative, in specific representations of 9/11 by Don DeLillo, Frédéric Beigbeder, Paul Greengrass and Luc Tuymans. These are read as responses to the problem of how to represent an event which was already its own representation. It therefore seeks to situate 9/11 within a history of technics as the enframing of a particular relationship between subject and object through representation, as proposed by Heidegger and developed by others including Derrida and Samuel Weber. Through detailed analyses of these works and their popular and academic reception, I highlight the ways in which they both employ and problematise structures of visibility, presence and mediation. Such representations offer an account of the tension between securing and ‘unsecuring' of the subject or beholder which is, in Weber's reading of Heidegger, the result of representational thinking. The thesis thus moves discussion of the impact of 9/11 into the wider context of debates over visuality and subjectification in contemporary media cultures.

In this thesis, I offer a reappraisal of direct cinema through a study of documentarian D.A. Pennebaker's mature-period direct cinema. This is an unexamined period in Pennebaker's career that offers new perspectives on an often-maligned form of documentary. The period under study ranges from 1968 to 1970 and encompasses a range of films, commercials, abandoned projects and personal works. I focus on three films: Eat the Document, Sweet Toronto and One P.M. By shifting the critical focus away from the early and classical period of direct cinema, as well as its ‘canonical' films, I ask: How does direct cinema engage with the world in its later stages? What can be understood about direct cinema by examining works that do not circulate in ‘the canon,' and how does this analysis change our perception of it? Two further questions guide my study of Pennebaker: What are the aesthetic properties and ideological preoccupations that characterise Pennebaker's mature period? What is the political address of this set of films and how does that reposition the politics of direct cinema as a whole? Methodologically, I employ a close textual analysis of the films and an historical analysis of the period, conduct personal interviews with Pennebaker, and engage with intellectual debates within documentary studies to answer these questions. My study builds upon recent trends in direct cinema scholarship, which have opened up new critical horizons by returning the critical focus to the film texts themselves and the cultural and social contexts in which they were produced. I contribute knowledge to documentary studies by focusing critical attention on a neglected period in a key documentarian's career. Additionally, I perform a textual analysis of the period's films that focuses on the materiality of sync sound – the crucial, but largely neglected, aesthetic characteristic of direct cinema – as a means of investigating my ideological and political line of questioning. I also develop two key concepts: the performative documentary, which builds upon existing definitions by Waugh ([1990] 2011), Nichols (1994) and Bruzzi (2006; 2013) and furthers the concept through an application of Brecht's alienation effect; and ‘kinetic progressions,' which, I argue, is Pennebaker's cinematic process of signification that exploits classical direct cinema's emphasis on present-ness and found symbolism to further formally evolve the language of direct cinema in a way that fulfils its potentiality for political discourse.

This thesis argues that the presentation of narrative in film involves a fundamental indeterminacy, derived from the status of the event in film. I elaborate this idea of indeterminacy through Gilles Deleuze's ontology of the filmic image and Daniel Frampton's phenomenology of film-thinking. I analyse various manifestations of narrative indeterminacy, looking at examples from silent-era, classical and contemporary cinema from around the world, both within the studio model and outside of it. I look at how we may theorise narrative agency in light of this indeterminacy and its various forms, proposing an alternative to previous models of filmic narration, as well as examining the implications of indeterminacy for a viewer's activity in understanding narrative and how this relates to narrative agency. Here I use Wolfgang Iser's reader-response theory and his theory of literary indeterminacy to propose that this act of viewing is fundamentally interpretive, exploring the extent to which a filmic equivalent to Iser's implied reader may be identified, and the implications of this for conceptions of the relationship between the various types of viewer proposed throughout film theory. What emerges from this is a theory of the act of viewing that attends to the particular status of the event in the moving image of film and the indeterminacy that follows from this in a manner that previous theories do not, proposing an alternative to David Bordwell's theory of narrative comprehension and the related dismissal of interpretation. I suggest how viewer activity can be theorised alongside – rather than instead of – the 'passive' spectators of ideologically oriented film theory, and that what is required is attention to this intersection of viewing positions in film theory.

The focus of this thesis is contemporary British cinema. Specifically, the emergence of a representational trend within its texts that has resulted in a disproportionate number of films whose protagonists are white, male, and who are in some way, beset by crisis. Two categories of identity are thus explored in this thesis, each of which possesses its own register of meaning, each of which requires (or seems to require) a particular approach in terms of the way that it is represented in film. These two categories are race and gender. In every sense then, this thesis seeks to take part in the dialogue which since the late eighties and particularly during the 1990's, has formed around the idea that contemporary white masculinity is in crisis, and has sought to provide evidence both for and against that idea in the texts of contemporary popular culture. What this thesis aims to add to that dialogue, however, is a greater awareness of the way in which race functions in society and in cultural representations, as well as a better understanding of the extent to which its influence is discernible in the texts of contemporary British cinema alongside the trend towards portrayals of white masculine crisis. Employing a cultural studies trajectory throughout, this thesis draws on areas of whiteness and race theory, masculinity studies, film theory, culture and media studies, plus theories of representation, in presenting its arguments, and uses the tools of close textual analysis during the film readings that are its single largest element. Special emphasis is placed on situating both the arguments put forward and the films discussed in their appropriate cultural context, and the thesis frequently looks for parallels outside cinema as a means of illustrating key ideas. Ultimately, this thesis aims to increase the balance of the discussion on the subject of white masculine crisis by highlighting the first term in the phrase, and to better the understanding of contemporary British cinema in the process.

This thesis examines how Hollywood's female star images were created, promoted, and sold to the public, using a case study of Barbara Stanwyck. The research focuses in particular on the models of womanhood Stanwyck offered, her position as a female star in the male-controlled film industry, and her shifting image from the start of her career in 1930 until her final television performance in a continuing-character series in 1969. The research takes a different look at star studies as it is conventionally approached within the discipline of film studies. I use a historical approach that examines stars not just as images but also as part of a film's production, distribution, and exhibition process. I also attempt to develop the dominant approach of examining stars as images by using the historical approach to demonstrate how star images were created and promoted, and I argue that an understanding of these historical and industrial processes provides a better knowledge of the fashionability of stars. In writing the thesis I therefore rely on previously unused primary materials found in various papers and archival collections, fan magazines, and newspapers. The analysis of these materials demonstrates the relationship between Stanwyck's image and the cultural and industrial events or trends of the time by locating the image in its original context. The chapters are arranged chronologically by decade, but they are primarily organized around a key historical, social, or industrial aspect that describes the focus of that decade. In my conclusion I offer explanations for the shifts in Stanwyck's fashionability and I consider the usefulness of the historical approach to understand star images.

My thesis explores debates on the commercial and textual priorities of New Hollywood cinema through examination of the career of John Hughes. I argue that scrutiny of Hughes' career and the products associated with him expose the inadequacy of established approaches to cinematic authorship and New Hollywood cinema. By mounting a historically grounded investigation of Hughes' career, his status within the cinema industry, and his work as a commercially successful and agenda-setting filmmaker, I aim to reevaluate existing perspectives on post-1970s mainstream popular U.S. media. Drawing on an extensive array of previously unexamined primary materials, the thesis focuses on Hughes' shifting status as a “creative producer” within the U.S. film industry, as well as on the construction of the John Hughes “brand” during the 1980s and 1990s. I explore how Hughes secured considerable industrial power by exploiting opportunities presented by expanding ancillary markets and changing production agendas. I argue that established models for conceptualising industrial trends, such as Justin Wyatt's “high concept”, fail to capture the complexities of Hollywood's commercial strategies in this period. I conclude that historical research can challenge previous assumptions and contribute to a more detailed and precise understanding of the operations of the U.S. film industry in this period. By scrutinizing the films that Hughes wrote, produced and/or directed, I consider how Hughes' films are complexly determined industrial productions that are shaped both by a set of radically fluctuating commercial imperatives, as well as by Hollywood's standardized formats and frameworks. The production of Hollywood cinema may be a collaborative enterprise, but I argue that certain individuals and institutions can exert greater control over aspects of the process. In conclusion, I suggest that such a historical methodology can illuminate not just the work of one particular filmmaker but can shed new light on the broader operations of Hollywood as a commercial culture industry.

The diary film as a unique, personal, and private cinematic genre for a long time has not received its fair share of attention in academic research. This thesis therefore focuses mainly on the historical development, characteristics, and aesthetics of the diary film per se, conducting a critical dialogue between them in order to explore a field of study that should be clarified instead of staying ambiguous. The discussion of this thesis can be divided into two parts: first, I pay specially attention to the historical context of the diary film in the 1950s to 1960s in America. Combing through different film theories regarding amateurism and different personal filmmaking approaches proposed by Marie Menken, Maya Deren, and Jonas Mekas, the first part of the thesis aims to locate the origins of the diary film. Moreover, with the discovering of the early historic material of the avant-garde film movement and the diary film in Taiwan, a transnational connection of the diary film between America and Taiwan has been established. The second part of the thesis focuses on the analyses of the diary film texts from various filmmakers in America and in Taiwan across different periods of time: they include Jonas Mekas, Hollis Frampton, Saul Levine, George Kuchar, Shine Lin, and myself. By the close reading of these films, I provide concepts from different perspectives as analytic tools in the diary film research: the parenthetical structure of the voice-over and the image in the diary film, and the different modes of diary filmmaking (perceptive, retrospective, and access) in terms of temporality and technology. To conclude, this thesis not only wishes to suggest forward-looking views on this marginal field, but also to reconstruct and reinvent the research of the diary film in Taiwan.

The primary focus of this dissertation is to explore a range of light/dark ecological metaphors, which can be read across popular Hollywood cinema from the 1950s to the end of the century. In particular this representational growth in ecological consciousness will be surveyed across a range of genres including Westerns, road movies and science fiction fantasies in particular. Alternative embodiments and agencies of an ecological consciousness, especially feminist and native American Indian, will be closely examined, alongside a white, middle-class, liberal, eco-sensibility, which has become more dominant within modern Hollywood, as evidenced by the Spielberg oeuvre. Each chapter will address a specific theoretical aspect of the study while drawing on detailed examples to illustrate the thesis in general. It is the overall contention of this study that such symbolic expression is both 'shrinking the world' while at the same time 'giving citizens, governments and corporations a heightened consciousness that there are real global ties and maybe a global identity for the occupants of spaceship earth' (Allen et al. 1995: 173). Alongside a more tangible and overt expression of 'light' ecology in film, the human species evolving symbiotic relation with the cosmos (and the resultant oneness with nature) will also be explored. This burgeoning thematic expression is often codified within the duality of a utopian/dystopian future particularly evidenced in the science fiction genre, which continuously adapts and modifies notions drawn from 'deep ecology'. The primary strategy used to uncover such ecological expression incorporates the close textual exploration of space/place alongside moments of excess/sublime within many 'feel good' utopian/dystopian Hollywood texts. This will be articulated through a variety of expressions of rural/urban space and landscape as codified within particular eco-registers by various human and post-human agents, which sometimes transcend the more normative ideological textual specificities of race/class/gender.

An exploration of the applicability of Linda Aronson's flashback theory as a framework for the practice of screenwriting. This practice-based PhD comprises an original screenplay for a biopic of the life and trial of 20th century Scottish medium Helen Duncan, entitled Hellish Nell, and a thesis which reflects the process of writing the script using Linda Aronson's flashback narrative structures. The central focus of this thesis is to explore the applicability of Aronson's theoretical frameworks first circulated in Screen writing Updated in 2000 through the various stages of script development. The Introduction examines what a flashback is and its uses. It sets out Linda Aronson's theoretical framework on flashback narrative structure, in particular her theory on case history and thwarted dream. It also reviews the historical sources of my screenplay and examines the creative practice of exploring through biographic drama a complex and unresolved historical figure. Chapter One investigates Aronson's flashback theory in more detail, how it is assessed and applied. It also explores the issues attendant upon writing biographical drama with specific reference to Aronson's framework. It also examines her three sub-sets and explains why they were excluded from my development work. Finally it covers what areas will be investigated in more detail in the rest of the thesis. Chapter Two sets up the background and story of Helen Duncan, the Scottish medium and psychic. It then focuses on Aronson's thwarted dream and case history narrative structures, and the results that arose from testing their applicability against my own writing practice. The first section deals with the examination of Aronson's thwarted dream narrative structure through the development of Surfacing for Air, my initial attempt at a screenplay. The results were of paramount importance as it was through this initial investigation that the significance of theme and genre were first identified. It also painted to the crucial role of point-of-view. This led to these areas of concern being explored further in the examination of Aronson's case history narrative structure, through the development of the final screenplay, Hellish Nell. The second section explores the development of this screenplay and also assesses the applicability of case history to my own script and writing practice. It illustrates the details of the amendments and the decisions involved in those changes and an analysis of the stages of my research development. It also investigates the impact of genre and theme in determining the content of the links between present and past stories. Chapter Three analyses four contemporary films which involve flashbacks in the light of Aronson's theoretical framework and tests the impact of genre and theme when deciding where the dramatic connections should be between past and present stories and in determining their content. The conclusion provides a modified version of Aronson's flashback theory in the light of the research and analysis undertaken. It also provides new additional questions based on the use of genre and theme when assessing the content of flashback sequences.