In this dissertation, I considered five representative images of childhood that the Fifth Generation filmmakers created throughout a thirty-five year period of post-Maoist social transition in China since the beginning of the market reform and opening policy in 1978. To look at evolving childhood through their films is to position the construction of childhood under the prism of the most prominent and controversial cinematic transformation. On the one hand, the Fifth Generation’s shift towards incorporated production, theatrical narration, sentimental style, and generally conservative ideology, signals and constitutes their transition into the paradoxes of “market-socialism;” on the other hand, it maps out the fluctuation and signification of three discourses of capitalism, socialism and Confucianism through evolving images of the child and childhood. I expect this original work that bridges Chinese film studies with childhood studies to unfold a thorough and dynamic scroll, through which I can tap into China’s social transition toward authoritarian neoliberalism, and reveal the discursive mechanism where propaganda of communist regime and re-mobilized Confucian values negotiate and compete with global capitalist orders over the construction of childhood. This dissertation claims that the significance of childhood lies in its capability to fight against a homogenized and hostile environment as both a fundamental humanist domain, and a political, critical and imaginative weapon in commercialized Chinese society.

This project focuses on films that reveal concerns about care and subjectivity in a world transformed by neoliberalism, flexible capital, and globalization. As these films show, care is still necessary, but under the logic of neoliberalism and globalization, it becomes a fungible commodity that can be outsourced and delegated--often according to the cost-benefit analyses necessary for life under the entrepreneurial subjectivity espoused by neoliberalism. These films utilize melodramatic modes of expression to articulate the ethical imperative for care; the necessity for this articulation suggests that something is wrong with contemporary institutions and stances toward care, that the means to care falls short of the ideal of caring for loved ones. The Savages focuses on middle-aged siblings forced to take care of their estranged father after he develops dementia. The film serves as a critique of the neoliberal idea that subjects are only responsible for themselves by supporting a more communal vision of subjectivity through reassembling the family. Dirty Pretty Things shows how immigrants face a hostile reception in the wealthy nations to which they migrate. The film illustrates how draconian immigration policies force many into the black market not only for services that are denied them but also to barter their own bodies in hope of becoming full members of the global citizenry. Nobody Knows extends this discussion of the abdication of the state's role in caring for its own citizens. Through the neglect of the children first by the family and then society as a whole, the film illustrates how even the most vulnerable members of society are isolated and forced to fend for themselves. Finally, Take Care of My Cat explores how the care between friends becomes increasingly instrumental as part of the construction of the self. The solidarity of their days as students erodes as each enters the work force, and class differences lead to a breakdown in friendships as self care becomes the dominant ethic. In this context, care, friendship, and family become fungible commodities that can be discarded if they no longer serve in the project of the self. / 2016-06-17

<p> This dissertation investigates the coterminous emergence of imperial documentary operations and modernization programs in the United States during the 1940s and 1950s. It argues that the period saw a governing investment in documentary format and documentary "value," and that this was a response to the containment strategy of cultural diplomacy at the onset of the Cold War. It's focus is a mixed group of governmental and non-governmental entities. The project makes evident how a group of events and practices involved in foreign diplomacy campaigns of knowledge/intelligence and large scale overseas modernization programs give rise to a discourse of documentary diplomacy. The output of these projects was varied: locally-made rural training films; newsmagazine newsreel; travelogues, and the exported nontheatrical American documentaries. As the dissertation demonstrates, they were influenced by a weaponized ethnographic documentary experience, first formulated in Asia by Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson in the late 1930s. The subsequent rise of governing investment in culture for imperial planning during the 1940s, large scale government experiment with training films during World War II, and governing investment in grassroots audiovisual movement of educational film in the United States all bear the marks of these knowledge/intelligence campaigns. The path to freedom, accordingly, became a bifurcating atomized process that ultimately reconceptualized geopolitically sensitive nation-states as people, as audiences, and eventually as individuals available to be freed from their own "hostile" and "uncooperative" governments on their way toward building bottom-up democratic movements. </p><p> Containment campaigns of defending American capitalism against Soviet communism in postcolonial nation-states led to a proliferation of instructional films throughout the world. These missions invested in local filmmaking and established pockets of documentary infrastructure that inevitably played some roles in the making and transformation of national cinemas. As a case study of the emerging discourse of documentary diplomacy, this dissertation also investigates American documentary operations in Iran during the 1940s and 1950s and demonstrates how US-Iranian media projects institutionalized documentary, audiovisual modernization, and media governance in Iran. The Syracuse documentary mission to Iran emerged as among the most important sites of such campaigns. For instance, the first generation of localizing newsmagazine series were made in Iran for Iranians by Iranian crew, using American planning, infrastructure and capital. With this convenient "usage," however, also came subscribing to an ideological package. Media producers and advisors from thirty-five American universities, under Syracuse University's binational contract with American and Iranian governments, participated in this work by 1959. </p><p> As this research project demonstrates, documentary diplomacy in this era brings into contact and coherence film and legal discourse, diplomatic policymaking, film practice, and applied social scientific research and intelligence production. In this respect, documentary diplomacy encompasses a set of events that include making documentary, mobile screening, expert viewing, national character research, applied anthropology intelligence work, survey trips, public opinion projects, courses of audiovisual and documentary training, and nation-building projects of central documentary infrastructure and media governance. </p><p> This dissertation argues that localized missions of overseas audiovisual training and documentary filmmaking and infrastructure during the 1950s operate through a propaganda facade of apolitical modernization by building on the governing strategy of welfare imperialism via invitation. In some cases, this went to extent of sponsoring anti-leftist localized newsreel campaigns of crushing local journalism and a wide range of objectifying practices. The village how-to films enforced a rapid modernization campaign while audiovisual training facilitated central education and governing. The dissertation also argues that the apolitical facade of the imperial documentary campaign in Iran is an expression of claiming fakery and manipulation in the name of the real. </p><p> The project draws from a wealth of declassified archival sources in the United States National Archives at College Park, the Library of Congress, the Archives of Rockefeller and Ford Foundations and other sources including individual memoirs and interviews. The archival sources include memoranda of film scripts, film receipts, correspondence, embassy notes, university and government contract, cultural manuals, immigrant interviews and a documentary bible of administrative film theory and production. </p><p> Following the case study of Iran, the dissertation extrapolates that researching the genealogical course of postwar imperial campaigns of documentary diplomacy in the Middle East and Asia can contribute to understanding of the transformation of modernization programs of central education, media cultures and media governance.</p><p>

This study examines the role of propaganda and popular culture in constituting the American political tradition through the study of NFL films by employing a decidedly overlooked theoretical conception of the American political tradition—the countersubversive tradition thesis. Originally put forth by Michael Rogin, the countersubversive tradition is defined as “the creation of monsters as a continuing feature of American politics by the inflation, stigmatization, and dehumanization of political foes.” It is my belief that in looking at what constitutes the individual characteristics of the countersubversive tradition in a text like a sports film it is easier to see how it fits into similar theories offered by political scientists and others about the intersections of pop culture, sport, propaganda, and political tradition.

Perhaps no one has had more influence on the role of political documentary in the contemporary public sphere than filmmaker Michael Moore. His unique melding of committed political arguments with an ironic reflexive style have changed the very look and feel of documentary film, contributing significantly to the form’s newfound popularity. Furthermore, his steadfast commitment to progressive politics has given the issue of socioeconomic “class” the kind of attention it rarely receives within the mainstream media. However, Moore’s films have also been the recipient of viscous attacks from his political opponents, and subject to some of the most contentious public debates over the documentary form since the 1960s. This study integrates documentary theory and poststructuralist discourse analysis within a critical/cultural studies perspective to map out the ways in which generic conventions, interpretive strategies and rhetorical maneuvers have often combined to undermine the political goals and cultural legitimacy of Michael Moore and his films. First, I look at the ways in which Moore’s own deployment of a patronizing mode of address transforms his films into “fantasies of advocacy”; narratives that invite an imagined audience of fellow advocates to evaluate and judge the lives and behaviors of the working-class subjects depicted on-screen. Such a depiction only works to strengthen middle-class forms of social authority which have worked, historically, to encourage class resentment. Second, I describe the ways in which Moore is also undermined by a mass media system within which progressive views are not often welcome. I explain how a number of discursive logics worked to frame Moore at various times throughout his career as an untrustworthy documentarian pushing Leftist propaganda, as an “indie film auteur” providing innovative cinematic experiences to middle-class audiences, and as a savvy celebrity-huckster selling political entertainment to embattled liberals. Finally, I describe how Moore’s opponents on the political Right exploited the problematic aspects of both his rhetorical strategies and public reception to paint Moore as a “Liberal Elitist,” a move that worked to derail the political effectiveness of Fahrenheit 9/11 during the 2004 election. By describing the complex, public articulations of Michael Moore and his films, this study contributes to the fields of documentary studies, media studies, cultural studies and political rhetoric.

The aim of this study is to determine the objectivity of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick’s The Vietnam War (2017) 10-parter series in comparison to past Vietnam documentaries such as Emile de Antonio’s In the Year of the Pig (1968) and Peter Davis’ Hearts and Minds (1974). In doing so, this study observes Burns and Novick’s approaches in stylistic editing and the omission of certain narratives of the war, along with what such choices suggest of the political stances assumed by the series and its predecessors. Through each chapter, the study observes: the caustic portrayal of leaders, from their decisions to enter into and prosecute war and the effects of these decisions that remain after their leadership has ended; the way the series empathizes with first-hand veteran accounts through visual reconstruction; and the acknowledgement of the media as ever-present in the representation of the public and the war. The relation between each chapter’s focus is related to the way audiences connect with the war, whether through documented history, public opinion, and/or personal experiences. The study concludes that while the series maintains its objectivity to an extent, it gives a decidedly American perspective of the war.

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This thesis examines portrayals of gaslighting toward women in American film. Gaslighting, a form of psychological manipulation that frequently targets women, has a long history in cinema, and narratives that foreground the practice have developed a series of narrative and stylistic conventions. These conventions frequently simplify the realities of psychological abuse toward women, representing gaslighting and its perpetrators with ideologically patriarchal undertones. Such undertones have changed over time, often in ways that reflect cultural and political shifts within American society. Gaslight films’ female protagonists have demonstrated more agency, while the perpetrators have grown steadily more monstrous as the subgenre shifted from a melodramatic to horrific mode. Using a genre studies approach to survey these constantly evolving tropes across three eras, I argue that the gaslight film is a subgenre that reflects growing attitudes toward and awareness of gender roles and psychological abuse towards women. Concerns involving representations of female agency and the ability of genres to concisely communicate hegemonic, patriarchal ideologies lie beneath this analysis.