This thesis explores the ways in which those who have experienced psychosis engage with and respond to film texts which feature psychosis; it draws upon screen theory and cultural theory to combine analysis of film content with reception analysis. Adopting a Foucauldian critical discourse analysis approach, (Jäger and Maier 2009) I employ textual analysis to examine the construction of psychosis in three key areas. Firstly, the naming of clinical psychosis is explored through an examination of policy documents. Secondly, a broad range of texts from the inception of film to the present day are analysed to investigate film images and narratives of both named and inferred ‘psychosis’. Ethical guidelines were observed in recruiting and carrying out twentyfour semi-structured interviews with respondents who have experienced psychosis (Koivisto et al 2001, Davies 2005, Horsfall et al 2007, Keogh & Daly 2009). The transcripts of these interviews provide the basis for my third area of discourse analysis; they are explored to determine respondents’ attitudes towards psychosis and films that feature it. In this study I argue that different hierarchies of discourse and procedures of power operate in the three distinct areas through mechanisms of nomination and exclusion (Fairclough 2009). Audience analysis reveals that respondents use film texts in order to make sense of and associatively re-create their experiences of psychosis. Making an original contribution to the field, I have identified the ways in which respondents appropriate specific texts as ‘evocative’ readings. Here, films which do not denotatively feature images/narratives of psychosis are read as highly relevant to respondents’ experiences of psychosis. My thesis makes a valuable contribution to audience studies by bringing together three areas of study in a way that has not been done before. It explores the interaction between audience and text and gives voice to a respondent cohort which has historically been marginalised. The concept of ‘evocative’ reading also enables me to challenge prior emphases on the ‘accurate’ representation of psychosis in popular film (Ritterfeld & Jin 2006, Pirkis et al 2006).

This thesis investigates various forms of historical reassessment in contemporary American cinema (2005-2013), with a particular emphasis on the role that digital technologies play in re-framing, re-negotiating, and re-vivifying historical figures and events. The focus of this work concerns questions relating to cinema’s relationship with history, and how this has been achieved through changing narratives and film aesthetics. It uses critical analysis to propose that a new range of practices and tools have been utilised to address and challenge conventions of specific historical genres, such as the historical epic, the gangster film, and the biopic. The complex and ambiguous notions of historical narrative and experience, together with continued discourses concerning representation, verisimilitude and accountability, make recent historical cinema particularly suitable for demonstrating this. The Review of Literature addresses three major areas through which this thesis has been conceived and conducted: historiography, historical cinema, and film technologies. It considers a broad range of literature in order to acknowledge some of the wider contexts that will be employed in the discussion of the historical film, and establishes the more specific conditions under which my analysis takes place. The main section of the thesis is divided into three chapters, each of which examining a particular sub-genre of the historical film. Chapter One introduces some of the key issues surrounding historical cinema, discussing the conventions of the historical epic in order to frame our understanding of issues of spectacularity and subjectivity in the genre. I use The New World and Che as case studies to examine the differing practical, aesthetic and narrative approaches to the historical epic, considering the implication of technology in terms of style, approach and implication. Chapter Two deals with the gangster film, using Public Enemies to consider issues of immediacy and immersion within the genre. I also compare modern iterations of the gangster film with its classical, revisionist and retro antecedents, making extensive comparisons with Bonnie and Clyde. Similarly, in my study of the biographical film in Chapter Three, I use Citizen Kane as a contrast to the modern form of the “unconventional” biopic embodied by The Social Network. This genre is considered in light of its aesthetic approaches, generic deviations and developments, the public-private dynamic, and the notion of the American Dream. The thesis concludes with an overview of the aesthetic and narrative approaches studied in this work, and draws attention to the contemporary shift in filmmaking practices and technologies. Given the isolated period of study, I propose ways in which the study could be extended in generic, transmedial and methodological terms, as well as acknowledging the importance of the historical film at the levels of expression, representation, and discourse.

This thesis examines the representation of the American president in fictional films and television programmes, as well as documentary film and photography. It engages broadly with the subject’s entire history, but focuses particularly on the past two decades (1992-2012). Its primary method is close textual analysis, departing from pre-existing studies that are largely preoccupied with questions of verisimilitude and historical accuracy. The construction of the cinematic and televisual presidencies requires a simultaneous negotiation of the ‘real’ political/historical record, and the desire to reproduce and reinforce the representational genealogies inherited from cinema and television’s own histories (not necessarily all explicitly ‘political’). My research has found the presidency to be overwhelmingly reliant upon mythological discourses about American national identity, and traditional conceptions of masculinity. How these constructions impact upon the representation of the president in relation to the contexts from which the films and programmes emerge is of crucial importance. The conception of the presidency has undergone enormous change since the early 1990s. The end of the Cold War, the increased scrutiny of the mass media, 9/11 and the ‘war on terror’, and the economic crisis, have either challenged or reinforced the notion that the president is an omnipotent force, able to bend the world to his will. The strategies cinema and television have employed to address these changes is of crucial significance to this thesis. This thesis will establish the manner in which techniques of mainstream film and television production – genre, visual style, iconography, and narrative – have impacted upon the reinforcement or critique of the presidential myth. As the presidency has suffered relative decline in a more diffuse geopolitical environment, this thesis demonstrates the extent to which the myth of the presidency has required the intervention of mainstream cinema and television to ensure its preservation.

This thesis analyzes a series of films that, in different ways, seek to represent the last Argentine dictatorship. The possibility of interpreting the thematic and formal recurrences of the films as a defining characteristic of a specific genre is posed as a first hypothesis. The second hypothesis postulates the possibility of relating certain aesthetic and rhetorical changes of the series to certain socio-political processes. After presenting a general overview of some of the various forms in which the relationship between cinema and society has been theorized before, the work proposes the instance of enunciation as a principle of articulation between textual and social systems, analysing the subjects involved in each of these levels and the relationship that can be established between them. The apparatus of enunciation (between textual figures), which can be related to the reading contract (between social subjects) can also be associated with the notion of genre. In this context, the thesis explores the possibility of a redefinition of cinematographic genres from the perspective of the Semiotics of Passions. Having established in the previous chapters the theoretical and methodological basis, the second part of the work consists of the analysis of the enunciation in the films of the corpus, in order to establish the main characteristics of the reading contract proposed to the spectator. The analysis starts with the consideration of the genre known in television as "docudrama", paying particular attention to the relationship between what is filmed and the "real", that this genre seeks to establish. This is followed by the partial conclusions of the analysis of the totality of films included in the corpus. A first systematisation of the general characteristics of the films considered allows for a definition of a new genre which we termed "documelodrama".

No description available.

This thesis analyses Chilean documentary films and videos of the post-dictatorial era from the restoration of democracy in 1990 until 2011, focusing on the audiovisual treatment of contested memories of the dictatorship and its legacies. The main argument is that documentary performs a trajectory of a revelation of bodies, oscillating between – at times intersecting with – the bodies of 'direct victims' and the film's body itself. Such an itinerary is deeply intertwined with Chile's own democratic transition. The study aims to transcend Chilean documentary's self-evident testimonial value and restrictive readings of the films as works about trauma, as these eclectic artistic reactions to the military coup present a broad range of affective responses. It establishes connections and disjunctions between different generations of documentarians and heightens the visibility of a number of under-researched productions. To unpack these heterogeneous documentary responses and their aesthetic features, close textual analysis of selected sequences from an extensive corpus is performed. This thesis adopts an interdisciplinary approach informed by the 'haptic turn' in film studies, trauma and memory studies, cultural studies, history and gender. After examining the strategies deployed to reveal the past and its atrocious images, the study reassesses the cinematic homecomings of exilic directors as key precedents of the current rise of first person documentary. The ensuing evaluation of younger directors' productions indicates that whereas childhood memories are mobilised to explore the (im)possibilities of recalling a past only tangentially experienced, a nostalgic approach to the 1980s seeks to claim an active role in the redemocratisation process. Two recent cases featuring rather disturbing voices (of a former agent of repression and of Pinochet’s supporters) shed further light on the transformations experienced both by non-fiction and Chile itself. This thesis thus illustrates a documentary shift from articulating a 'cinema of the affected' to a 'cinema of affect'.

No description available.

This thesis seeks to determine how representations of dyadic teen homosocial bonds and relationships in film lend themselves to queer possibilities. Looking at teens in film across genre, certain types of dyadic homosocial relationships emerge: the best friendship, the antagonistic teen girl friendship, the boys friendship within a wider homosocial milieu, and friendships which fit these types but include gay and lesbian characters. I ground the research by establishing a record of the films released theatrically in the UK between 2000 and 2009 with teens as primary characters, and develop a qualitative and textual analysis of dyadic homosocial relationship types which illuminates their queer possibilities as well as the modes of denial and compensation which may accompany the threat those queer possibilities represent. As it investigates the policing of gender and heterosexual norms in teen homosocial relationships in key texts such as Aquamarine (Allen 2006), Superbad (Mottola 2007), Thirteen (Hardwicke 2003), The Covenant (Harlin 2006), Evil (Håfström 2003), and My Summer of Love (Pawlikowski 2004), the research here expands teen film studies, and applies queer reading practices to an often under-analysed segment of film. It also contributes to gender studies, as the findings here point to the ways that boys continue to be tied to physicality, violence, and athleticism, while girls continue to be tied to mirrors, masquerade, and manipulation. The move to include a variety of genres allows a consideration of how genre-specific tools of analysis, such as those developed in relation to the teen film genre or to dyadic homosocial relationship films such as the buddy film and female friendship film, can be productively mobilised across genres. Issues such as denial of homosocial desire through displacement, triangulated relationships, and passing heterosexual foils link these films to the history of films about homoerotic homosocial friendships. I argue here that queer possibilities are present in a wide variety of otherwise heteronormative films. My arguments centre on structures of desire and denial within homosocial friendships, as well as to the similarities between the heteronormative representations of homosocial desire and those present in specifically gay and lesbian narratives. The ways that these emerge are gender and age specific. By bringing out the denied and repressed homoerotic desires in these films, I demonstrate their existence in various forms. The thesis demonstrates that, in keeping with dyadic homosocial relationships between adult characters, in representations of dyadic homosocial bonds, the boundaries between homosocial/homosexual remains fluid in friendships between teen girls while it is much more rigidly separated in friendships between teen boys, primarily through homophobia, even in films containing gay and lesbian main characters.

This thesis contends that a number of popular Hollywood films from the 1990s present evidence of a transformation in the legitimate ways of acting for white heterosexual men in contemporary Western metropolitan society. I argue that the transformation is intimately tied to the rising dominance of what I call a neoliberal ‘narrative of legitimation’. What is significant about my intervention, and distinguishes it from previous studies of representations of masculinity in film, is the use of the theoretical lens of legitimation and my focus upon late capitalism as a normalising principle. Each of the four chapters is dedicated to a close reading of a single film, Falling Down, Se7en, American Psycho and Fight Club. Through an interrogation of the films, as well as an appraisal of the critical literature that has responded to them, I will argue that a fundamental change has taken place in the legitimate expectations, motivations and justifications that inform the representation of masculinity in late-twentieth-century Hollywood cinema. The necessity for such a change is framed in the films as a response to an urban environment represented as a cynical, indifferent and chaotic hell that has to be resigned to as the only ‘real’ reality. My analysis proposes that through the narrative trajectory of these films conflicting models of masculine conduct are put forward yet successively abandoned, leaving only a single model that is fully aligned to neoliberal ends. This model abandons any attachment to family, nation or community and affirms a resigned individualism that merely maintains itself, unable to attach to or affect the world around it. Such a conflict of narratives, however, also leaves open the possibility of attesting to alternative narratives incommensurable with the prevailing neoliberal narrative of legitimation.

This thesis explores the political implications of Gilles Deleuze's two-volume work on the cinema (Cinema 1: The Movement-Image [2005a] and Cinema 2: The Time-Image [2005b]). I argue that counter to the common reading of these works as being primarily concerned with aesthetics and philosophy, Deleuze's cinema books should be understood as a political critique of the operations of cinema. I outline the main arguments set out by these works as a political formulation and argue that they should be directly related to Deleuze's more explicitly political writings. In particular, I argue that these books should be read alongside Deleuze's later 'Postscript on the Societies of Control' (1992), which re-addresses some of the most significant aspects of his earlier work on cinema following a transforation in media technologies and social organisation. I argue that Deleuze's time-image and his later conceptualisation of control should be understood as forming the two poles of his theorisation of cinema and visual culture. When addressed as connected concepts, a significant political dimension emerges in this area of Deleuze's thought, focusing on a time-image that opens a range of possibilities for the future ordering of the world and a system of control that will recurrently close and eliminate these possibilities. Through a series of studies of film texts I will develop the political implications of Deleuze's thinking on cinema and visual culture in order ot show how the forces of control and the time-image operate and how these concepts can be systematised and further integrated into Deleuze's wider political thought.