published_or_final_version / Comparative Literature / Master / Master of Philosophy

The aftermath of World War II witnessed large-scale military demobilisation and. in its wake, a vast influx of returning servicemen. Their homecoming signalled a transition from military to civilian life which was often described as 'readjustment.' The term is usually taken to imply a process of homogenisation which engendered a condition of conformity in ex-servicemen and, by extension, in society at large. This thesis argues against this view and demonstrates that 'readjustment' wasn't intended to reproduce conformity but, on the contrary, was to provide the means for the reconversion of the 'conformist' ex-serviceman into the independent, autonomous citizen necessary for the functioning of a democratic society, especially in contradistinction to the conformism associated with the totalitarian Other. It was assumed that servicemen had become habituated to the military's authoritarian regimen of regulation and command which subsumed individuality. Hence, 'readjustment' was concerned with the 'nonconformist' individual who would become indispensable to a postwar' Americanism' which was being defensively constructed against totalitarianism and, moreover, against the 'totalitarian' implications of a conformism often seen as endemic in America as a mass society. This study recontextualises postwar film narratives (1945-48) in relation to the discourse of 'readjustment' and, by treating 'conformity' as a complex, contradictory and unreliable term, it problematises 'readjustment' and its role in the construction of postwar 'conformity.' The thesis draws methodologically on Michel Foucault's work on discourse theory, and Dana Polan's approaches to 1940s' narrative and social history. The study comprises two principal areas of research: part one analyses the sociological construction of 'readjustment,' and part two examines how 'readjustment' and its ramifications were refracted through film narrative. The film readings acknowledge the incoherence and instability implicit in the title's key terms through an approach which highlights narrative inconsistency, ambivalence and contradiction, and which works to disturb the notion of postwar social history as a stable, coherent narrative.

Urban actuality films are short, single shot views of street scenes, skyscrapers or construction sites, or views from moving vehicles. They are, typically, regarded as simple filmic snap-shots. Conversely, early cinema is conventionally thought to be a complex hybrid medium, a crucible for the idea and representation of the modern. Through close, contextualised analysis of a series of New York films, this study addresses the discrepancy between the putative insubstantiality of actuality films and the evident complexity of early cinema. A hitherto overlooked historical coincidence of actuality cinema, the modernisation of New York and its intermedial culture is shown to provide both a subject and setting for filmmakers. Actuality cinema is a technology of the present; accordingly, temporality is pivotal for this study. Tom Gunning's 'cinema of attractions' thesis and a neurological conception of modernity posit a familiar shocks-and-jolts axis of the relations between cinema and modernity. In contrast, I argue for an alternative axis, founded in periods, rather than moments, of time and seek to demonstrate cinema's role as a technology of an expanded present time. Fifteen films of transport systems, skyscraper building sites and ways of seeing New York's streets, make up the primary source material. In these films, time provides a space for the representation and negotiation of the modern. An expanded present fosters a thickened visuality. Within New York's intermedial culture, the adoption of stereoscopic visual practices was key to constructing a coherent filmic present, and a place for the spectator within a cinematic world. As a functioning space and time machine, a cinema of simultaneity, the complexity of actuality filmmaking practices increasingly moved actualities towards, and enabled their interrelation with, an emerging narrative cinema. Rather than a failed experiment, New York actuality cinema is here demonstrated to be an example of cinema working.

Joseph E. Levine has been largely neglected by Film Studies, yet he was a uniquely important figure in the US film industry during his lifetime. As an independent producer, distributor and promoter, Levine's influence on the post-War cinematic landscape of the US was wide-ranging and profound. His versatility and multifariousness were unsurpassed during his lifetime and analysis of his abilities, strategies and influence complicates many areas of current film scholarship. Levine was a very prominent figure in the popular press where he was perceived as a master showman. His prominence and hyperbolic style undermines the traditional understanding of the cultural intermediary, a role usually associated with discretion. Levine's conspicuousness led to him becoming an easily identifiable public figure yet, due to his varied output, he resists the notions of branding that are often associated with prominent figures in the film industry. Studies of reputation building strategies are often closely aligned to critical approval, yet Levine never courted critical favour. Although Levine's output catered for many niche tastes, his public image was unabashedly populist. He would, however, utilise the critical adulation bestowed on others to bolster his own reputation as a supporter of talent, providing an ideal case study for the complex political interactions of reputational assessment. As a pioneer of industrial strategy and practice, Levine was hugely influential. He pioneered saturation publicity and opening tactics and was an early advocator of the use of television in movie marketing, and therein he represents a vital missing link in the evolution of blockbuster marketing techniques. He was similarly influential regarding the marketing and distribution of art cinema and, in the 1960s and 1970s, he helped to redefine the role of the independent producer. All these factors combine to make Levine an ideal vantage point for surveying cultural and filmic mores of the post-War US. His career was one of extraordinary contradictions and complexities. An analysis of his career provides a deepening of understanding of film historiography of this era and calls into question many commonly held scholarly assumptions regarding taste cultures, cultural boundaries and the supposed demarcation between independent and major studio film production.

The Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematogräficos (ICAIC) was the first cultural institution to be created by the new Cuban revolutionary government in 1959. One of its aims was to create a revolutionary cinema to suit the needs of the Revolution in a climate of transformation and renewal. At the same time, issues of gender equality and gender relations became extremely important in a revolution attempting to eradicate some of the negative social tendencies of the past. This thesis brings together these two extremely significant aspects of the Cuban revolutionary process by examining issues of gender and gender relations in six Cuban films produced by ICAIC from 1974-1990; a period of dramatic change and development in both Cuban cinema production and in Cuban civil society. The films are: De cierta manera, Retrato de Teresa, Lejania, Hasta cierto punto, ¡Plaf! (o demaiado miedo a la vida), and Mujer transparente. The thesis argues that the portrayal of aspects of gender relations in Cuban cinema developed along a progressive path from expressions of the modern to expressions of the postmodern, closely following a cultural transition in the nation as a whole. This does not mean that there occurred an absolute rejection of all the principles of what it meant to be `modern', but that, in the latter half of the 1980s, expressions of the postmodern can be seen through the prism of gender relations in the films produced during the latter part of the period concerned. One of the goals of this thesis is to illustrate how, through the prism of the gender debate presented on film, analysed using a number of theoretical approaches, Cuban cinema both reflected and produced some of the central ideological concerns on the island during this period. It will be possible to see how the gender debate both helps to create and, at the same time, makes reference to, more general cultural debates on the island. As such, the issues around gender explored through Cuban cinema can be seen as one of the most important cultural topics of this period.

This thesis examines the complex role played by film in the maintenance of an American “self” in opposition to a series of politically and culturally defined pathological “Others” in the 1950s. I reveal how popular imagery and political rhetoric combined to link domestic “deviants” such as juvenile delinquents, homosexuals, domineering or passive mothers and drug addicts with the Communist “Other,” portraying each as essentially pathological, an insidious and sickly threat to the health of the American home and family. By analysing case-studies within a wide-reaching and inter-connected cold-war media relay, underpinned by archival research that takes in newspaper and magazine journalism, television shows, government documents and medical journals, I uncover the ways in which film helped to maintain the visibility of the disenfranchised, as well contributing to their cultural surveillance and the discursive currency of the “pathological” Other. My study exposes the politics involved in medically attaching the term “diseased” to pre-existing domestic groups, and demonstrates how a culture maintains its guard against an invisible enemy. My thesis demonstrates that, across genres, American cinema embraced socio-medical tropes and disease metaphors in narratives that aimed to delineate friend from enemy and “self” from “Other” and in this way exposed fears and tensions that simmered beneath the supposedly placid surface of the 1950s.

This thesis is an analysis of the development of regional film policy and practice in England. From the late 1960s regional film production sectors have gradually emerged from small-scale, under-resourced cottage industries to become significant areas of British film practice. By the mid-2000s the English regions were incorporated into a national film policy strategy based on a network of nine Regional Screen Agencies and centrally coordinated by the UK Film Council. Along with similar developments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, for many commentators the devolution of film production has questioned the traditional way that British cinema can be understood as a national cinema. This thesis aims to understand how regional film production sectors have developed, what filmmaking practices have characterised them and what these mean for British cinema. It is argued that the development of regional film policy and practice can be understood in terms of two distinct models: the regional workshop model and the regional “creative industries” model. Each was based on different systemic processes and ideological frameworks, and is best represented in institutions. The development of an institutional framework for regional film production is placed within the wider context of the trajectory of public policy in Britain in the post-War period; specifically the shifting boundaries between cultural policy and economic policy. The thesis employs a critical political economy approach to analyse the development of these policy frameworks and the filmmaking practices that have emerged from them, including detailed case studies of regional film practices, specifically regional documentary, regional short film and regionally-produced feature films.

Besides Tora-san series and samurai trilogy, veteran Japanese filmmaker Yamada Yoji also endeavors in making family films, however, his ‘home drama’1 genre has long been neglected in academia. To fill this gap, the aims of this research are to investigate firstly the aesthetics of his social realistic films; secondly, what are the family values revealed in his family films and thirdly, how ‘woman’ is portrayed in his ‘home drama’. Working under the ‘director system’ of Shochiku Studio, this research argues that auteur theory which advocates director as the author of a film is applicable to Yamada and is thus employed to examine family films that are produced between 1970 and 2013. Background information of the auteur (author) and his films are reviewed in Part I of this thesis while Part II will focus on the discussion and analysis of the film aesthetics and motifs of Yamada Yoji’s family films. Similar to other cultural artefacts, film aesthetics cannot stand apart from the surrounding culture. Italian neorealism which flourished at the time when Yamada entered the film industry will be used to examine Yamada’s stylistic orientation. It is found that except collaborating with professional actors, Yamada’s films display most of the characteristics of Italian neorealism. In the pursuit of aesthetic realism, the “repeated team” (also known as ‘director’s team’) of Yamada at Shochiku Studio helped him to actualize his film aesthetics. With its adoption of ‘director system’ and ‘star system’, Shochiku is also known for producing shomingeki (film of ordinary people), so besides the possible influences from Italian neorealism, Shochiku Studio may have also cast influences to the artistic style of Yamada Yoji. Through intertextual reading of his social realistic films, the kind of social problem always lies in the dilemma between tradition and progression. Viewing ‘family’ as the fundamental unit of a society, Yamada presents to us the importance of preserving traditional virtues and family values in the continuation of a family so as to the sustainability of a society. This research reaffirms the influence of Chinese ideology on the construction of Japanese family system that the family relationships and the core family values found in films can well be explained by Chinese Confucianism. Under the patriarchal social context, it is interesting to discover the portrayal of ‘strong woman and weak man’ image in his family films. While the oppression of women is depicted in the process of modernization, the image of ‘strong woman’ is presented through the inscription of femininity in Yamada’s cinematic film texts. Rejecting the binary opposition of sexes, women in Yamada’s films is portrayed to encompass the qualities of masculinity and femininity under the ecriture feminine writing of Yamada. This feminine approach can be regarded as a way out, as proposed by the auteur, to tackle social challenges. Through an in-depth examination of Yamada Yoji’s family films, this research demonstrates that is a good way to learn more about a culture or a society through social realistic cinema. / published_or_final_version / Japanese Studies / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Research on global path planning and navigation strategies for mobile robots has been well studied in the robotics literature. Since the problem can usually be modeled as searching for a collision-free path in a 2D workspace, very efficient and complete algorithms can be employed. However, enabling a humanoid robot to move autonomously in a real-life environment remains a challenging problem. Unlike traditional wheeled robots, legged robots such as humanoid robots have advanced abilities of stepping over an object or striding over a deep gap with versatile locomotions. In this thesis, we propose a motion planning system capable of generating both global and local motions for a humanoid robot in layered environment cluttered with obstacles and deep narrow gaps. The planner can generate a gross motion that takes multiple locomotions, humanoid’s geometric properties and striding ability into consideration. A gross motion plan that satisfies the constraints is generated and further realized by a local planner, which determines the most efficient footsteps and locomotion over uneven terrain. If the local planner fails, the failure is fed back to the global planner to consider other alternative paths. The experiments show that our system can efficiently generate humanoid motions to reach the goal in a real-life environment. The system can also apply to a real humanoid robot to provide a high-level control mechanism.

The aim of this study is to investigate the processes that underlie image motion detection in human vision. To do this I have investigated motion perception for a wide range of stimulus velocities across the visual field, and have made use of different stimuli. Two mechanisms were revealed at different positions across the visual field as a result of the examination of the temporal properties of the Lower Threshold of Motion (LTM), that is, the lowest velocity that is reliably detected. The results for central vision showed that the LTM is mediated by a code that utilizes the spatial displacement transversed by the stimulus. For peripheral vision, the LTM is mediated by a code that utilizes the velocity or temporal frequency of the stimulus. This raised the question, do these two processes underlie image motion processing at all eccentricities with different sensitivities at threshold? To investigate this question, a wide velocity range was used to assess the ability of the visual system to discriminate different speeds. The temporal and spatial properties of the stimulus were individually disrupted to reveal the critical cues for velocity discrimination. The results show the presence of two processes at all eccentricities. The two processes can be characterised as a displacement code, and a velocity code. Evidence is shown that the velocity code uses 'velocity' information and not solely temporal frequency information. For central vision, the displacement code is most sensitive for short stimulus durations. The duration at which it is most sensitive is inversly proportional to the velocity of the stimulus. The velocity code is most sensitive at long term regions of the visual field. However, the range of velocities to which each mechanism is sensitive changes at different rates across the visual field. This leaves a range of low velocities which are detected only by the velocity mechanism at large eccentricities. Further investigation into the displacement code has revealed that this code can be characterised by an optimal displacement. This is less than the 1/4 of a spatial cycle of the stimulus which is proposed value for quadrature phase. Also luminance contrast was found to be an important parameter of the motion process. The two codes described above could be mediated by two motion areas of the primate visual cortex: the striate and prestriate cortex. From recent single cell studies, the emerging properties of neurons in these two parts of the visual cortex suggest that the displacement code may be mediated by the striate cortex, and the velocity code by the middle temporal area of the pre striate cortex.