This study covers how Amber Heard and Johnny Depp were portrayed during their defamation trial in Virginia 2022 by the British newspaper The Sun. The research questions include both how Amber Heard and Johnny Depp were portrayed during the timeframe as well as how they were perceived as a couple. The research questions also cover if there were any differences in how The Sun were framing them during the time period. The method that was used was a thematic analysis of all the articles that The Sun published in the time period that the trial took place, the 11th of April 2022 to the 1st of June 2022. To better help our understanding of the subject we used framing theory and celebrity studies as the theoretical framework. The framing theory also includes a subcategory which is the theory about the ideal victim. Since both Johnny Depp and Amber Heard accused each other of abuse, it was relevant to include if one of them were portrayed as a victim. In the thematic analysis we created three categories based on the research questions. Different themes were found in the articles and were placed as subcategories to the three main categories. The first category was about how the relationship between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard was portrayed. Three themes were found: The relationship as a circus, Difference in fame and The trial. The second category was about how Johnny Depp was portrayed. Three themes were identified: Depp as the perpetrator, Superstar Johnny Depp and Innocent or a bully? The third category depicts how Amber Heard was portrayed. Four themes were identified: Heard accused of lying, Heard as the perpetrator, Heard ridiculed by the public and Heard innocent? The results of the study conclude that both Depp and Heard have been portrayed as perpetrators and victims all though Depp was given more attention in the articles than Heard. Another conclusion is that some of the articles describe the case as Depp suing Heard for lying, in contrast to the articles where the case is described as Depp suing Heard for libel.

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Den här uppsatsen undersöker filmstjärnan Leonardo DiCaprios retoriska funktion såsom den manifesteras i klimatdiskursen. Undersökningen genomförs med speciellt avstamp i två av hans filmer vilka i uppsatsen anses särskilt relevanta med tanke på deras produktionsmässiga samtidighet med DiCaprios år som FN:s fredsbudbärare varunder han valde att uppmärksamma klimatfrågan: The revenant (2015) och Before the flood (2016). Filmerna betraktas i uppsatsen som diskurser, likaledes semiotiska texter. Denna undersökning utförs med stöd i ett antal analysverktyg och teoretiska utgångspunkter. Forskningsfälten klimatkommunikation och celebritetsstudier är viktiga utgångspunkter, medan melodrambegreppet och Lloyd F. Bitzers ”retoriska situation” är de viktigaste analysverktygen. Även västerngenren och tillhörande mytbildning bereds stor plats, inte minst på grund av att en av filmerna, The revenant, är en västernfilm. Melodrambegreppet, vars retoriska funktion betonas, sammankopplas med både klimatdiskursen och västerngenren samt George Lakoffs klimatkommunikatoriska tes som kortfattat och förenklat går ut på att känsloargument är det bästa sättet att informera om den globala uppvärmningen. Vidare diskuteras DiCaprios personas förhållande till dessa diskurser och begrepp. Uppsatsens analyser visar att melodrambegreppet är centralt för både klimatdiskursen och de analyserade filmerna. Och att DiCaprios funktion i klimatdiskursen vidare samspelar med dessa aspekter. Samtidigt upprättas frågetecken kring huruvida detta nödvändigtvis innebär att de retoriska diskurserna (filmerna), och likaledes DiCaprio, besvarar sina situationer. Snarare antyder analysresultaten paradoxalt nog att den melodramatiska klimatdiskursen, såsom den kommuniceras via filmerna, trumfas av andra, mer melodramatiska diskurser. / This paper examines film star Leonardo DiCaprio’s rhetorical function as it is manifested within the climate discourse. The analysis is effected with especial focus on two of his films which by this paper are considered particularly relevant considering their productional concurrence with DiCaprio’s year as the UN’s Messenger of peace during which he chose to direct attention toward the climate issue: The revenant (2015) and Before the flood (2016). Both movies are herein considered discourses, likewise semiotic texts. This analysis is effected with the help of several analytical tools and theoretical perspectives. The research fields of climate communication and celebrity studies are important theoretical views for the study, while the narrative concept of “melodrama” and Lloyd F. Bitzer’s “rhetorical situation” are the most important analytical tools. Also, the western genre and its adherent formation of myths are payed a lot of attention, not least because one of the analyzed movies, The revenant, is a western. Melodramas, whose rhetorical function is emphasized, is connected to both the climate discourse and the western genre as well as George Lakoff’s thesis of climate communication which shortly and simply boils down to the view that appealing to feelings rather than reason is the most effective way to inform people about global warming. Furthermore, DiCaprio’s persona is discussed in relation to these discourses and concepts. The analyses of the paper show that the concept of melodrama is central both for the climate discourse and the analyzed movies. And furthermore, that DiCaprio’s function within the climate discourse play into these mentioned aspects as well. Doubts are however raised as to whether this necessarily means that the rhetorical discourses (i.e. the movies), and likewise DiCaprio, succeed in answering their respective situations. The results of the analysis paradoxically suggest that the melodramatic climate discourse, as it is communicated by the two movies, is trumped by other, even more melodramatic discourses.

This thesis explores the concepts of “voice” and “influence” through the case studies of two famous English-speaking Canadian women writers, Margaret Atwood and Carol Shields. The “voice” is multiple, ambiguous and influenced, but it is also apparently unique. How, therefore, is it constructed and where does it come from? I examine, work with and adapt Harold Bloom’s paradigmatic study of influence to a feminist context, exploring the idea that a literary voice can be developed and influenced by Atwood and Shields. I discuss how these writers searched for an appropriate literary role model, exemplified by nineteenth-century English-Canadian writer Susanna Moodie, at the moment when Canadian nationalism and feminism coincided. Atwood and Shields are now canonical writers themselves and important in both the nationalist and women’s tradition, but have they gone on to influence new Canadian women writers? I test the pleasures and the anxieties of Shields’ influence with regard to her creative writing students and her own daughter, Anne Giardini, who has published her first novel. I compare Shields with Atwood, who has achieved a high level of fame, and examine what kind of influence each exerts. I discuss whether literary influence is politically different for women than men and whether there is any jealousy or power struggles between the sexes. Rivalry and competition between writers are not purely caused by the aesthetic issues that Bloom discusses, therefore I contextualise his concept of influence using literary celebrity studies to consider the economic basis of cultural production. This is in order to show that tensions are determined by market conditions, just as much as the new poet’s desire to overthrow a literary precursor. Finally, I examine fan letters to Atwood and Shields as another important source of literary influence. I discuss how fans are constructed through a commercial relationship and how they can also provide an amateur literary voice. Atwood and Shields have helped to create a network of writers across the globe. I explore whether both authors can be role models who will inspire the next literary generation.

This thesis applies a sociological framework to the North American celebrity career of Canadian pianist and broadcaster Glenn Gould (1932-1982) to account for Gould's iconic status as an artist in modern musical culture. Despite the persistent cultural fascination with Gould, as evidenced in the seemingly endless supply of biographies, films, novels, and fan texts which narrate and celebrate his life and work, modern Gould scholarship has consistently neglected issues relating to his artistic reception. This thesis proposes that the modern Gould phenomenon is productively analysed in terms of the contexts of its historical production in North America, where it first originated. Focusing on the circumstances of Gould's career during his lifetime, it identifies three areas of overlapping conceptual interest that provide the basis for an explanatory account of his modern mythology: i) Gould's relationship to the culture of his time, particularly in Canada; ii) Gould's relationship to the mass media; iii) Gould's relationship to his own artistic identity. This approach is refined through the application of Stuart Hall's 'Circuit of Culture' model, which yields an understanding of Gould's celebrity in terms of the processes of its representation, production, regulation, and consumption. Against this theoretical backdrop, and consistent with the premise of my thesis, I ask some key questions: what was Gould's relationship to Canadian cultural nationalism and, specifically, a nationalist discourse of public broadcasting? How did media institutions brand his image, and for what commercial purposes? How did Gould mobilise understandings of his genius and Canadian identity through his artistic discourse and experimental media self-representations as a 'Northerner' and a technologist? Based on this analysis, the thesis concludes that Gould continues to fascinate because of the unique ideological work performed by his cultural identities, and because of the highly mediated nature of his celebrity. The ubiquity of his image on video-sharing websites and social media platforms is a vindication of his radical belief in the validity of a musical career pursued primarily through the electronic media.

This PhD Dissertation was completed through 2011 to 2016 and was nominated for a CAGS-UMI Distinguished Dissertation Award. / My dissertation explores transnational adoptions of black African children by white Western parents as a site through which to think about global affective relationality and transnational histories within intimate proximities. The image of an interracial, transnational family can seem to be a fulfillment of the potential for transcendent love symbolized by humanitarian fundraisers such as Live Aid— a love that collapses borders and brings together races in multicultural bliss. Furthermore, adoptions of African children can potentially challenge discursive systems of categorization that frame the black body as existing outside the body politic. At the same time, however, we cannot understand transnational adoption without taking into account the histories of power that make possible and potentially limit the contours of these affective orientations. Indeed, representations of a transnational family consisting particularly of black African children and white Western parents not only invoke the logic of white moral motherhood within the context of contemporary globalization; they also point to European philosophical traditions that presuppose the colonizer’s right to the black body. In this project, thus, I ask: what are the sociopolitical and cultural motivations behind the desire to express humanitarian love towards African children through the act of adoption? How might these motivations create avenues for exclusion and exploitation even as they create new geographies of belonging? To answer these questions, this project brings the affective domain of contemporary transnational adoption between African children and white American parents into conversation with histories of colonial transnational intimacies and the precarious lived experiences of classed and racialized individuals in the African postcolony. In challenging popular celebratory fictions of the transnational family, it critically examines not only the utopian aspirations and social costs of transnational adoption as a humanitarian project, but also the very affect produced and channeled through adoption as a humanitarian act. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / My dissertation takes a multidisciplinary approach to analyze transnational adoptions of black African children by white Western parents. It offers answers to the following questions: 1. How do the ghosts of colonialism, along with the violent realities of globalization, expose the inequities hidden within idealized humanitarian narratives of rescue underlying global adoptions while at the same time revealing their transformative potential? 2. How can we account for the experiences and psychic struggles of the African adoptee, and what do their contradictions of idealized Western narratives tell us about the fantasies and anxieties of their Western parents? Ultimately, I argue that while the transnational family suggests transformative transnational connections, Western humanitarian frameworks have also sought to manage the messiness of these connections, to fix white and black bodies into old colonial roles, and to exclude certain bodies, namely those of the African birth mothers, out of the affective realm of transnational adoption. At the same time, these attempts at management, I argue, only speak to the productive potential of these messy relations to transform and exceed colonial limitations.