Notions such as transference, movement, transit and mobility have become fundamental to understand the mechanisms that rule the circulation, reception and production of contemporary cultural artifacts. In spite of the growing scholarship on the topic, very little attention has been given to a particular cultural arena: the realm of contemporary entertainment. By contemporary entertainment, I refer to a set of industrial products which are especially directed to urban young audiences: cartoons, comic books, computer games, blockbuster movies, theme park attractions, etc. This thesis argues that the realm of contemporary entertainment is marked by the presence of intense mobility, by movement and acceleration on at least two levels. First, movies (The Matrix, City of God, Run Lola Run, etc.), TV programs (the so-called “MTV aesthetics”), computer games (Doom or games based on blockbusters) and even cartoons for children (Spongebob, Pokémon, etc.) present frantic editing and engage the audiences’ senses through moving images in a vertiginous “bombardment” of signs – a phenomenon I will call kinesthesics. Second, the production and reception of these cultural objects take place in a highly intermedial environment: computer games become feature movies (Tom Raider, Resident Evil), comic books become feature movies (Sin City, Spiderman, etc.) feature movies become theme park attractions (Jurassic Park), theme park attractions become feature movies (Pirates of the Caribbean) and so on. This thesis shows how these two basic mobile characteristics play a determinant role in the complex economic, technologic and aisthesic rationale that drives the contemporary entertainment industry. i The investigation of these basic traits suggests the existence of mobility paradigms that help us better understand not only products like the ones mentioned above, but also disparate cultural artifacts such as the Brazilian aparelhagem – a traveling technological paraphernalia that brings musical entertainment to poor audiences in the Brazilian Amazon Region. Aparelhagens present an intricate blending of physical displacement, media mobility, visual spectacle and musical frenzy. This successful combination propels a popular and powerful entertainment industry in Northern Brazil known as tecnobrega. By analyzing the phenomenon and comparing it to global entertainment products, the thesis discloses aisthesic patterns that cross social, economic and cultural boundaries.

This thesis is devoted to animation programs in tourism. It describes various types of animation activities within hotel entertainment programs and the process of their realization (sport activities, culture and fun activities, activities for children and teenagers etc). The thesis contains theoretical description of animation programs and reveals some problematic areas in practice of hotel animation.

Romans de l’écrivain américain contemporain, John Irving, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany et A Widow for One Year proposent des univers fictionnels distincts mais dirigés par une question identique : le processus de création, qu'il soit identitaire ou littéraire. Construits autour de la représentation des relations entre les personnages et leur environnement, les trois récits accordent une importance particulière à la transgression, toujours envisagée comme un acte de rébellion mais prenant également une connotation positive lorsqu’elle est entendue comme étape primordiale de la création identitaire. Cette double acception ressurgit dès lors que l’on considère le narrateur ou les techniques narratives, eux aussi caractérisés par une alliance de respect et d’écart par rapport aux normes ou conventions. La combinaison des forces antagonistes identifiées à l’échelle de l’histoire et au niveau narratif produit des romans singuliers alliant tradition et modernité, gravité et ironie. En fin de compte, les romans poursuivent un même but : divertir et contester tout à la fois. / Written by contemporary American author John Irving, The Cider House Rules, A Prayer for Owen Meany and A Widow for One Year propose three different fictional worlds, shaped by a common question concerning the process of creation, both of the individual and of the literary work. In the relations between individuals and their environment represented in the narratives, transgression figures as an act of rebellion and as a vital step in the creation of identity. At the diegetic level, a tension between respect for and departure from fictional norms and conventions characterizes narrative voice and techniques. The association of antagonistic forces gives rise to singular novels that combine tradition and modernity, as well as seriousness and humor. Finally, Irving’s novels are shaped by a common aim: to entertain and to protest at the same time.

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Educators and scholars continue to lament United States citizens' geographic illiteracy and are calling on Congress to address the crisis. However, despite recent public attention, a lack of national commitment to teaching geography in all public school grade levels persists. Therefore, non-formal educational avenues need to be pursued to address this crisis. One such avenue may be Entertainment-Education (E-E). E-E interventions have been used outside of the U.S. to impact social problems and detrimental behaviors by presenting positive role models in entertainment products designed to stimulate changes in viewers' behavior. For example, soap operas promote condoms use as a HIV prevention strategy (Tanzania), model culturally-sensitive actions to stop domestic violence (South Africa), and promote infant oral-rehydration therapy (Egypt). This study posits academic learning can be facilitated in a similar fashion as behavior change through an E-E methodology. Beginning with an examination of the E-E field by indexing E-E literature found in scholarly publication databases, this study demonstrates the 30-year health message focus of the field and presents a catalogue of E-E interventions cross-referenced by name and target country. The combination of these two products illuminates how U.S. audiences and non-behaviorally based outcomes have not been targeted, leaving academic subject learning as an area into which E-E can expand. The expansion of E-E methodology into geography education (or any other subject) requires understanding of how academic concepts interact with the structure of fictional narratives. Using a grounded theory approach, this study analyzes the U.S. television series NUMB3RS, which uses math to drive the story (as opposed to simply serving as context), to develop an Academically-Based Entertainment-Education (ABEE) model. ABEE is then applied to Google Earth, exploring how to leverage non-linear and visually dependent narratives as well as develop user-driven learning experiences. The implications of research presented here and through future refinement of the ABEE model may potentially (1) develop educative entertainment products supporting formal education and (2) bring geographic knowledge into the realm of popular culture through mass media, thereby impacting geographic literacy at a societal level in the U.S. The electronic version of this dissertation is accessible from http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2011-05-9128.

This research examines the formation and development of Shanghai film star culture from 1905 to 1936, and discusses film stars’ social status in the transitional Republican Chinese society. I argue that the film star culture in Shanghai was shaped by two forces: the popular social ideology and Shanghai’s commercial entertainment culture. Also, because stars took part in the promotion of the popular social ideology through their performance in entertainment, they stepped away from marginalised society and their social recognition increased. This research not only examines stars as images, a conventional method in the approach of star studies within the discipline of film studies, but also takes a historical approach to analyse the original social and cultural context’s influence to the creation and promotion of stars images. Therefore, this thesis relies on analysis of primary materials including newspapers, fan journals, popular magazines, film texts, and stars’ autobiographies. The first chapter introduces a brief history of the development of Chinese film star culture from 1905 to 1936. It especially locates the development of film star culture in the context of the global expansion of Hollywood and Shanghai entertainment industry that developed from the late Qing onwards. The remaining chapters discuss how the popular ideologies and entertainment culture created and promoted three aspects of stars’ images: their screen images, personal images, and social images that were shaped in public events. To illustrate the main argument of this thesis, a case study on Hu Die, arguably the most influential star from the mid- 1920s to mid-1930s, is carried out in the final chapter to demonstrate the relationship between her star image and the social and cultural context. I conclude that although stars were always confronting doubts from the public in regard to their motivations to promote social ideologies through entertainment, the embodiment of these ideologies in stars’ images enabled them to be involved in intellectual discourses, which helped to raise their social status. Such changing status of film stars also reflects a more flexible social mobility that appeared in the transitional Republican Chinese society.

The WWE, formerly known as the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), has a long history of showcasing harmful stereotypes via hyperracialized characters. Many academics have observed these characters and the overarching types to which they can be assigned as being indicative of the respective sociohistorical conditions in which they were produced. During the mid-to-late nineties, the WWF embarked upon a re-branding effort focused on adopting a new “Attitude” that purported to offer a more “realistic” form of “sports entertainment.” Throughout this “Attitude Era” the WWF purposely obfuscated delineations between fact and fiction, and subsequently, performers and racialized performance. Set against the backdrop of the neoliberal nineties, then – a period when America was supposedly embracing multiculturalism, the “welfare state” had been discarded in favor of fiscal conservatism, and possessive individualism catapulted to paramount importance – in what ways did the hyperracialized characters and storylines of the WWF Attitude Era reflect contemporary American cultural attitudes toward race? This study seeks to answer this question by incorporating historiographical work, industrial discourse analysis, and textual readings to analyze the representation of race in WWF programming of the late nineties. Utilizing an ideological textual analysis to understand how weekly episodes of Monday Night Raw and monthly pay-per-view events that aired during the years of 1997-1999 embodied and reified certain values, beliefs, and ideas, this project will look to the cultural, industrial, and political discourses circulating during the 1990s to show how they intersect with the WWF programming of the period. / text

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Entre os séculos XVI e XVII, a Espanha, à época o mais poderoso império, teve uma de suas principais expressões artísticas no teatro, que se notabilizou por seu caráter fortemente popular, papel análogo ao assumido pelo cinema norte-americano de comunicação de massa na primeira metade do século XX, quando os Estados Unidos já haviam se consolidado como grande potência mundial. Assim sendo, o presente projeto objetiva investigar e relacionar os procedimentos dramatúrgicos do Século de Ouro Espanhol e da Era de Ouro de Hollywood, períodos artísticos de ambos os contextos, a partir de análise comparativa entre obras bibliográficas preceptivas - com o complemento de peças teatrais e filmes específicos - bem como da leitura de referencial teórico diversificado, de maneira que se faça possível o estabelecimento de bases abrangentes para o estudo de uma dramaturgia do entretenimento. / Between the 16th and 17th centuries, Spain, at the time the most powerful empire, had one of its main artistic expressions on theater, which was famed for being strongly popular, something similar to the role played by the American cinema during the first half of the 20th century, when the United States had already established themselves as a great world power. Thus, this project intends to investigate and connect the dramaturgical procedures from Spanish Golden Age and from Classical Hollywood, artistic periods from both contexts, based on a comparative analysis between preceptive works, with the complement of specific plays and films, in order to lay down some comprehensive basis for the study of a dramaturgy of entertainment.

Thesis advisor: John H. Houchin / Cabaret, a socially-amalgamated art form, has worn many hats over the course of its often outspoken history. Evidences of this fascinating and crucial European institution date as far back as the thirteenth century and have since been used to categorize any number of venues showcasing acts of critical prowess and refined talent. By contemporary standards, the term ‘cabaret’ applies to “places of entertainment like night clubs that offer a wide variety of showmanship, food and drink, and often dancing both on stage and on the floor.” However, back at the turn of the twentieth century, when it finally materialized as a recognized form of artistic and social activity, cabaret carried a very strict and idealistic agenda. Whatever the precedents or forbearers of cabaret, the fact is that cabaret, as a distinct cultural phenomenon, had an articulate, recent, and undoubtedly relevant chronology – one that flourished for about half a century between the opening of the first and most famous cabaret in 1881 in Paris, and the political crises of Europe in the 1930s that curtailed the freedoms of thought, expression and experiment that characterizes cabaret in its most potent form. In regards to such impertinent critiques of society – which the arts are hardly foreign – the significance of cabaret, as a catalytic point of artistic convergence as well as a port for mounting populist opinion, holds particular resonance not only in historical contexts, but in modern circumstance as well. Despite the innumerous adaptations, the regional and period variations cabaret has spawned over the years; besides the evolving (albeit vague) definitions of what cabaret was at any given time, cabaret, as an art form, retains many of the inherent intents and purposes that date back to its avant-garde birth. Arguably then, cabaret, a veritable social platform for criticism, holds palpable merit for contemporary artists and the societies they represent, considering cabaret has and perpetually will serve as a synthesizing mechanism to bridge not only the popular art mediums of the day, but the social classes as well. Through research and example, I have isolated the characteristics and social forces behind cabaret that distinguish it from other performance genres in hopes to identify the current potential cabaret poses on an ever-evolving global culture. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2005. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program.