<p> Examining Whedon's cyborgs using Donna Haraway's essay "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s" and the literary theory of posthumanism, I examine which posthuman cyborg characters exhibit characteristics of villainy as well as those that display the antipodal characteristics of heroism. Haraway is well known as one of the earliest theorists to examine cyborgs in literature as transformative figures, and she is referenced in almost every cybernetic studies text available. Haraway's construction of the cyborg identity, which she deems essential for the progress of feminism, opens up a new type of human existence. For Haraway, the cyborg's conglomeration of bits of organic matter with that of machine creates an authentic replication of natural human existence, removed from possible human error within the body itself. Haraway's definition of the cyborg allows for some clear-cut outlines of what constitutes the body of the cyborg. The cyborg is a fused being, a combination of both organic and nonorganic material, which exists in both reality and fiction (Haraway 7). Whedon's corpus is replete with cyborg characters, from the `Frankensteinesque' Adam in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to that of the manipulated human forms of River Tam and the Reavers in Firefly and Serenity, and lastly to the technologically-adept Dolls and Topher Brink in Dollhouse.</p>

<p> &ldquo;The Story You Are About to Hear Is True&rdquo;: <i>Dragnet, </i> Transmedia Storytelling, and the Postwar Police Procedural" places the radio, television program, and feature film, <i>Dragnet</i> (19491959), at the intersection of cultural history and media history during the U.S. postwar period. The program, which follows two police detectives as they investigated crime, was drawn from real cases from the Los Angeles Police Department. By bringing audiences into police work with a new seriousness, <i> Dragnet</i> functioned artistically and ideologically as a pedagogical site for U.S. citizens. Heavily influenced by the program's collaboration with the LAPD, <i>Dragnet</i> presented an ideal of civic cooperation that responded to the increased faith in professionalized knowledge and organizational competence resulting from the successes of World War II. </p><p> This dissertation argues that <i>Dragnet</i>'s place in postwar culture cannot be understood apart from its place in media history. The source of <i>Dragnet</i>'s pedagogical effectiveness, as well as its popularity, was an aesthetically ambitious form of realism that crossed media platforms. By breaking the hackneyed conventions of crime drama, <i>Dragnet</i> reinvigorated radio drama (19491957). It then carried its prestige over to television (1951-1959), where it defined the terms of one of the new medium's most stable genres, the police procedural. In 1954, it became one of the first television shows to become a feature film. In addition to its contribution to postwar culture, <i>Dragnet</i>'s fluid movement across media fills out the history of transmedia storytelling and convergence culture, making an important intervention in media studies.</p><p> Combining archival research and close textual analysis to see the full spectrum of <i>Dragnet</i>'s cultural influence, this project contributes to a fuller understanding of how industrial practices shape civic knowledge and definitions of citizenship, a critical concern in an increasingly mediated age.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of California, Berkeley, 2006. / (UMI)AAI3253896. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-02, Section: A, page: 0379. Advisers: Mark Sandberg; Linda Williams.

<p> The primary objectives of this thesis are to research the Conquest of Mexico and to integrate research to expand upon <i>Mexica</i>, a 125 page historical fiction screenplay that was started in 2008 about the 16th century invasion of Mexico by Hern&aacute;n Cort&eacute;s. Through quantifying and writing commentary on the revisions to reflect the integration of new research, the enhanced work is accompanied by a critical introduction essay that simultaneously serves as a literature review to determine how sources contributed to the dramatization. The critical introduction is in Spanish, the research was conducted in Spanish and English, and <i>Mexica</i> is in English, to better reach the target, mainstream American audience. The essay addresses schools of thought and theoretical frameworks on the conquest and how they have been accepted, rejected, dramatized and/or incorporated in the screenplay. By analyzing chronicles, literature, film and television relevant to the conquest, narrating experiences and creative license are demonstrated. The essay exhibits a historiographical review by examining myths, misconceptions and consensus on several themes relevant to this era of initial contact in the New World. The critical introduction of <i>Mexica</i> explains how the enhanced script better integrates the indigenous perspective through analysis of a variety of sources, with a non Euro-centric emphasis, to reflect compelling and multidimensional characters in the historical fiction genre. </p>

<p> Bruce Lee is a martial arts action star whose enduring screen image has lasted many decades beyond his death, and this is partially due to the numerous clones that came out after the star's premature death in 1973. These clones and various spin-offs of Lee's life's works resulted in the phenomenon dubbed "Bruceploitation." As time passed, the Bruceploitation phenomenon slowed down, but more recently there has been an interest in Bruce Lee's life with various films and television series that attempt to tell the life story of the actor, especially with his family's involvement. While earlier forms of Bruceploitation films strove to exploit Lee's image for financial profits, these more recent works do not seem to exploit Lee in the same way. In particular, Bruceploitation in more recent works aims to exploit the martial arts star's narrative to associate his persona with specific ideologies. I argue, however, that the more recent television series by China Central Television, <i>The Legend of Bruce Lee,</i> is in fact following in the legacy of Bruceploitation in that this category of texts is not only about making money without the consent of the star, but it is rooted in the act of exploitation, which redefined the image of Bruce Lee in a national Chinese context. Although the CCTV series may not look for financial profits as its main goal through the perpetuation of Lee's narrative, it is exploiting his image for ideological purposes. In particular, the series exploits Lee's image to assert national Chinese power in a global context, which can be seen through the production practices, circulation of the series, and the construction of specific scenes throughout the series. </p>

<p> This dissertation is a social history regarding moviegoing and film audiences in Cali, Colombia, from the 1940s through the 1970s that aims to explore the meaning of movies in relation to the broader historical context and field of social forces in which they existed. This analysis of the intersection of the actual material conditions of existence of film-related practices and social imaginaries about movies is developed taking into account three main elements. The first one is the definition of film audiences by their film preferences, moviegoing practices, and socio-demographic characteristics. The second aspect is the role that moviegoing and moviegoing-related activities had within the broader cultural and political positioning of the filmgoers in relation to personal and collective, urban identities as demarcated by social class, age, and gender. The third element has to do with the geopolitical positioning of Cali, which poses very specific inquiries into the context of a non-capital city of a so-called underdeveloped country in Latin America. The analysis of these three aspects permit us to acknowledge and understand how moviegoing, the activities related to it, and the ways in which people thought of themselves as film spectators intertwined with urban, cultural, and political dynamics in modes that defined the diverse yet connected ways in which people identified themselves as urbanites, dealing with the conflicts between tradition and modernity in the historically and geographically situated context of an "underdeveloped" country and its struggles to reach the much desired and elusive modernity.</p>