Empowered, embattled and embittered women seem to be everywhere in the media today. Either in film, on television or on the Internet, there are more and more women being shown in a variety of working roles. Women are being shown in nontraditional jobs, they are allowed to work in the man's world and they can take charge. All of these things are remarkable but a note of caution is needed, for while these women are working the boardroom the girls are taking over.Women in power are increasingly being shown as unattractive, undesirable and unpleasant. While their counterparts- girls, are shown as loving, lovable and sweet. Films are reinforcing the girlish archetypal ideal by allowing girls to be the winners in nearly all situations.Female characters may begin the story as independent women but they are soon shown the error of their ways and are quickly reduced to a more pleasant, more malleable girl by the film's end.The content analysis of 37 Best Actress Academy Awardwinning films revealed that women are reduced to girls nearly 87 percent of the time. These women gave up their careers, or at least their career goals. They changed their appearance, they altered their personal goals and they suddenly found a way to express more emotion than they ever had in their life as a woman.Further analysis revealed that several subthemes were present in the films. In 19 of the 37 films women were raped or they were the victims of attempted rape. In 12 of the 37 films women were widows, they either began the film as a widow or they were to shortly suffer the grief of widowhood. In 22 of the 37 women are the victims of violence or they are threatened with violence and in 15 of the 37 films the characters are threatened with the loss of their home or they are struggling to make the journey to their home.The final analysis revealed that women were either pitied, maligned, abused or raped while girls were celebrated, loved and adored. / Department of Journalism

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Kansas, 2008. / Adviser: Catherine Preston. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--York University, 2005. Graduate Programme in Women's Studies. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 192-201). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/yorku/fullcit?pNR11579

Please consult the full text version of the thesis for the abstract. / (M.A. (English))

This thesis proposes that the merging of the theories of ‘accented’ cinema and postcolonial feminisms allows for the establishment of a theoretical framework for the analysis of (what will be argued for) an emerging postcolonial feminist film practice. In An Accented Cinema: Exilic and Diasporic Filmmaking (2001), Hamid Naficy argues that even though the experiences of diaspora and exile differ from one person to the next, films produced by diasporic filmmakers exhibit similarities at various levels. These similarities, he says, arise as a result of a tension between a very distinct connection to the native country and the need to conform to the host society in which these filmmakers now live. Mira Nair and Deepa Mehta are women filmmakers of the Indian diaspora whose films depict Indian women – in comparison with their popular cinematic construction - in unconventional and controversial ways. These characters, at some crucial point in the films, transgress their oppressive nationalist representation through the reclaiming of their bodies and sexual identities. This similarity of construction in Nair and Mehta’s female protagonists, as a result, facilitates a filtering of postcolonial feminisms throughout the narrative of their films. Even though the postcolonial feminist writings of Chandra Talpade Mohanty (1991, 1994, 1997) and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1990, 1994, 1996, 1999) do not relate directly to the study of film or cinematic practices, their works, specifically those regarding the construction, maintenance and perpetuation of nation and nationalism in postcolonial narratives, serve as a specifically gender-focused appropriation of Naficy’s theories. Mohanty and Spivak’s arguments surrounding the use of text and, particularly, narrative as tools for the representation and empowerment of Third world women, women of colour and subaltern women, work toward illustrating how postcolonial feminisms articulate through a specific moment of ‘accented’ filmmaking: that of women filmmakers of the Indian diaspora. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2004.

Thesis (MA (Research Psychology))--University of Pretoria, 2003. / Includes bibliographical references.

The politicized use of humor in accented cinema is a tool for negotiating particular formations of identity, such as sexuality, gender, ethnicity, and class. The body of work produced by contemporary women filmmakers working in Australia, specifically Tracey Moffatt, Monica Pellizzari, and Clara Law, illustrates how these directors have employed critical humor as a response to their multiple marginalization as women, Australian, and accented filmmakers. In their works, humor functions as a critical tool to deconstruct the contradictions in dominant discourses as they relate to (neo)colonial, racist, globalized, patriarchal, and displaced pasts and presents. Produced within Australian national cinema, but emerging from experiences of geographical displacements that defy territorial borders, their films illuminate how critical humor can inflect such accepted categories as the national constitution of a cinema, film genre, and questions of exile and diaspora. Critical humor thus consti tutes a cinematic signifying practice able, following Luigi Pirandello's description of umorismo, to decompose the filmic text, and as a tool for an ideological critique of cinema and its role in (re)producing discourses of the nation predicated on the dominant categories of whiteness and masculinity. The study offers a theoretical framework for decoding humor in a film text, focusing on the manipulation of cinematic language, and it provides a model for a criticism that wishes to heighten the counter-hegemonic potential of cinematic texts, by picking up on the humorous, contradictory openings of the text and widening them through a parallel dissociating process. / Finally, critical humor in the accented cinema of women filmmakers like Moffatt, Pellizzari, and Law is shown to constitute a form of translation and negotiation performed between the national, monologic constraints of film production and cinematic language, the heteroglossia of the global imaginaries that have traveled since the beginning with film technology, and the local and diasporic accents informing a filmmaker's unique style and perspective. / by Alessandra Senzani. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2008. / Includes bibliography and filmography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2008. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Bollywood cinema continues to evolve. As a result, it has become a transnational/cultural role player for Indian audiences worldwide. There has always been a strong link between Bollywood cinema and Indian society. Over the years, it has contributed to the dialogue on women’s roles and position in Indian society. In the past, Bollywood filmmakers were faithful to representations of women who were bound by patriarchal structures in the sense that they were expected to be loyal to ancient Indian traditions and belief-systems. Based on the increase in Indian migration, contemporary Bollywood filmmakers are now catering to the demands of the Indian diaspora and therefore, a more global market. The impact of transnationalism on the representation of women in many Bollywood films has further added to the creation of open spaces for the Bollywood heroine. In this regard, the films of auteur director Karan Johar are valuable because they provide audiences with material that suggests re-thinking patriarchal structures in a transnational world. This study will examine the representation of women in three selected films of Johar within the framework of feminist theory (Indian context). The impact that transnationalism has had on the Indian diaspora and the manner in which this translates into the narratives and representations of female characters in Bollywood films will be discussed. / Afrikaans & Theory of Literature / D. Litt. et Phil. (Theory of Literature)

Bollywood cinema continues to evolve. As a result, it has become a transnational/cultural role player for Indian audiences worldwide. There has always been a strong link between Bollywood cinema and Indian society. Over the years, it has contributed to the dialogue on women’s roles and position in Indian society. In the past, Bollywood filmmakers were faithful to representations of women who were bound by patriarchal structures in the sense that they were expected to be loyal to ancient Indian traditions and belief-systems. Based on the increase in Indian migration, contemporary Bollywood filmmakers are now catering to the demands of the Indian diaspora and therefore, a more global market. The impact of transnationalism on the representation of women in many Bollywood films has further added to the creation of open spaces for the Bollywood heroine. In this regard, the films of auteur director Karan Johar are valuable because they provide audiences with material that suggests re-thinking patriarchal structures in a transnational world. This study will examine the representation of women in three selected films of Johar within the framework of feminist theory (Indian context). The impact that transnationalism has had on the Indian diaspora and the manner in which this translates into the narratives and representations of female characters in Bollywood films will be discussed. / Afrikaans and Theory of Literature / D. Litt. et Phil. (Theory of Literature)