This thesis is a study of the gender politics through musical discourse in the Mad Max series. Dystopian narratives are particularly interesting texts for study of gender because they allow for extreme hypothetical situations in worlds that are at once familiar and unfamiliar. Musical discourse in the Mad Max films both supports and complicates dominant readings of gender constructions. I consider the gender politics of the franchise, using Mad Max (1979) and Mad Max: Fury Road (2015) as case studies, and drawing on scholarship on gender in film music, feminist film theory, and Australian car culture. In analyzing this music, I consider its broader cultural connotations, including film music tropes and operatic character types. After considering these genre associations, I analyze the musical gestures for narrative content and consider how the placement of themes with images and dialogue influences that content, with attention to how these factors contribute to a gendered understanding of the character. As the first deep thematic analysis of music in the Mad Max films, my project extends existing scholarship on both onscreen performance and gender categorizations that include musical forces resistant to strict binary categorization. My analysis of gendered musical discourse emphasizes the power of inquiry about gender in film music to clarify, enrich, and complicate texts.

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8 Univerzita Karlova v Praze Filozofická fakulta Katedra filmových studií Diplomová práce Jitka Kotrlová Stínová kinematografie: mytologie australského gotického filmu 70. let Shadow Cinematography: Mythology of the Australian Gothic Film of the 1970's Praha 2015 Vedoucí práce: PhDr. Petra Hanáková, Ph.D Abstract: The thesis focuses on the mythological aspects of films of the so-called Australia gothic in 1970's. In a detailed form of thematic analysis it discovers three fundamental myths within the gothic cycle which then examines the semiotic method of Roland Barthes. The first part is dedicated to the specific situation of the film industry and describes the principles of film funding. The second part is focused on the concept of national cinematography in relation to Australia. The third part is dedicated to the gothic imagination and definition of Australian gothic within the contemporary discourse. The fourth part focuses on the term "mythology". The main part of the thesis presents the three myths emerging from the cycle of Australian gothic films. The first one is the myth of the feeling of isolation that focuses on the meaning of an isolated man in the inland and on the alternation of this myth in the form of a person isolated in the society. On the examples of the films Walkabout (Nicholas Roeg,...