Postfeminism is not an ideological position or coherent theoretical framework that can be applied externally to the analysis of texts. Indeed popular postfeminism – as distinguished in this thesis from academic postfeminism – is knowable only through its workings in culture, specifically in the representation of gender in “postfeminist” media texts. Therefore, this thesis does not adopt a postfeminist position or approach to analyse the source texts, but rather seeks to identify and deconstruct a postfeminist sensibility within them. This sensibility became apparent in 1990s depictions of characters such as Bridget Jones (Renée Zellweger) and Ally McBeal (Calista Flockhart); however, it prevails in texts created in the current moment and inflects their representation of women. This thesis seeks to identify the themes and characteristics of this sensibility at the site of their creation – media texts representing women – expose the reasons why they are problematic, and show that the same traits exist in the texts considered here. In so doing it seeks to demonstrate that postfeminist ideals are still informing representations of women in the media. Furthermore, it seeks to demonstrate that this postfeminist sensibility, despite being a product of 1990s postfeminism and the current post/post-post-feminist moment, inflects representations of women from different time-periods, specifically from the Second World War and immediate post-war period. Because of the media’s (and specifically television’s) central role in the formation of cultural memory, this creates a lens through which women’s history and women’s historical identities are viewed in the present day. This postfeminist lens, or sensibility (Gill 2007), is thereby dehistoricised as an aspect of essential femininity. In this way the politics of the present are cast onto the past. Through this process, the events of the past are drained of any independent meaning and repurposed/redeployed to meet the needs of the present. The centrality and ubiquity of such postfeminist visions of the past is such that postfeminist discourse has become a central component of what this thesis terms, the Historical Sensibility which informs and structures historical drama on television.

The aim of this study is to explore advertising and in particular advertising reception as a significant part of contemporary social practice. Although advertising in some form has been a feature of a wide range of societies, historically and culturally, its economic and social importance has perhaps never been greater. Advertising, across the industrial period and in particular since the Second World War, has through the entrenchment of market economies and the development of different media technologies increased its reach and density through a variety of means. It has become a significant media form, received by audiences differentiated by social, economic, spatial and other factors. This study enquires into the nature of audience reception of advertising through an exploration and application of the encoding/decoding media model. The study argues that attention to the textual and formal elements of the model need to be given greater emphasis and the decoding aspect of the model broadened to deal with a complexity of contextual factors contributing to the process. Advertising media by their nature are comprised of different formal and presentational means. The study focuses on newsprint, television and billboard and other outdoor advertising. The public and private environments in which these forms appear can be characterised through the social and symbolic difference between the domestic environment in which much television is viewed and the outdoor urban environment in which much billboard advertising appears. These are recognised as contributory elements in the reception of advertising and any significance the advert may have for its audience. Audience decoding of advertisements is then a combination of producer intent and a complexity of contributory factors brought to or found in the decoding process. This includes a recognition of various ways of seeing associated with different media forms and social and spatial circumstances and the presentation and reception of adverts as part of a flow of advertising and of a wider social experience. The relation between adverts and other texts also has important intertextual consequences for reception. In the process of decoding, it will be argued that social groups can be understood to act as interpretive communities and a process of advertising diffusion can be observed. Three empirical case studies form a survey of mainly car or car related advertising, featuring television, billboard and newsprint advertising, and highlight a range of possible decodings. The significance of historical and social factors is confirmed as important in securing particular readings of advertisements, and spatial, environmental and contextual features are emphasised in this survey. The survey acknowledges the significance of advertising form and medium and highlights the circumstances in which negotiated and oppositional readings may occur. This study re-emphasises that advertising texts form their signification within a complex arrangement of synchronic and diachronic circumstances in which immediate social and environmental factors should be accorded further significance in the study of advertising. The study concludes with a reflection on its methods and procedures and a consideration of further work that might be carried out in the area of empirical advertising studies. In the interest of a richer understanding of advertising, further research would acknowledge the complexities of audience reception and might include an enquiry into further advertising contexts and environments.

This thesis examines the widespread use of bestial imagery in satirical verse, prose and prints published between 1789 – 1820, through a study of Shelley, Spence, Gillray, Gifford, Robinson, Catherine Ann Dorset, Thelwall, Eaton, and Wolcot. The thesis asks why these writers and printers used animal metaphors so frequently, but moreover, what impact the use of this imagery had on the political landscape of satire in the period. Recent criticism has focussed on the historical and political contexts of Romantic-era satire, and this thesis follows that criticism with an historicist methodology, combining literary, historical and political approaches. Furthermore, the thesis analyses verse, prose and pictorial satires as contributing to the same political discourse and as doing so in closely related cultural arenas. This thesis claims originality on the basis that not only the use of animal imagery has a significant impact on how both contemporary and modern readers interpret its political meanings and contexts, but also that this is an argument that has not yet been posited by other critics. In addition, this thesis argues that through bestial metaphors, satirical writers and artists create a community wherein imagery is exchanged, developed and manipulated, and that this practice of cultural exchange significantly shapes those satires’ historical contexts. Each of the thesis’ five chapters focuses on a major satiric animal metaphor, whereby close readings of satires are offered alongside wider political and historical contexts. Consequently, this thesis provides a map of the most common satiric animal metaphors and their concomitant politics, and in doing so creates a new critical framework in which the growing interest in Romantic- period satire can be further developed.

Following the terrorist attacks on America on 11 September 2001, the New Labour government enacted an unprecedented amount of terrorism legislation in the form of the Anti-Terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005, the Terrorism Act 2006, and finally the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008. Whilst the government viewed these terrorism laws as vital to national security, many of the measures contained in these acts, such as control orders and increased detentions, provoked intense debates over civil liberties. Much research on media-state relations in the context of responses to 9/11 have found evidence to support the elite-driven paradigm, whereby the media have been shown to fail in their adversarial ‘watchdog’ role by acting as ‘faithful servants’ (Wolfsfeld, 1997) to the political agenda. This research tested these assumptions by examining the media framing of the UK government’s legislative responses to terrorism post-9/11. In so doing, it analyses the relationship between the media and the New Labour government in the context of the policymaking process. To date, longitudinal studies that map the UK media-state nexus within the context of terrorism policymaking are lacking. This thesis therefore, addresses the lacunae in the scholarship. In terms of its theoretical framework, this thesis tests three competing models of media performance (elite-driven, oppositional and independent) on British press reporting of the parliamentary debates (Robinson et al., 2010). Methodologically, it takes an inductive approach to analysing the framing of the debates, and draws on material gleaned from interviews with four former home secretaries. The findings reveal that of the three meta-frames (national security, civil liberties and party politics), the politics frame dominated across all four case studies. Although government sources dominated the debates, the evidence suggests that they had limited influence over the news agenda, which runs contra to the elite-driven (redefined here as government-driven) hypothesis. Instead, at an aggregate level, the evidence lends greater support for the independent model. There is also evidence that some sections of the press did subject the legislation to more robust scrutiny, and thus, to some degree, fulfilled their role as political watchdogs, which supports the oppositional thesis.

The role of national cinema in shaping, reflecting and contesting a complex national identity that is the site of conflict and struggle is the central interest of this study of contemporary Peruvian cinema, 1988-2004. This project examines the relationship between cinema, state and identity in Peru, with a specific focus on the representation of the political violence between the state and Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path) that began in 1980. It looks in particular at portrayals of important events, characters and consequences of the bloody conflict that for a time threatened to destabilize the nation entirely. It considers these representations in the context of a time of great change for Peruvian society and of transition for Peruvian national cinema, and addresses the relationship between developments in film policy and the formation of Peruvian national identity in cinema. As such, it draws on debates about the nature and function of national cinemas, as well as on discussions between artists, cultural theorists and sociologists about the evolution of peruanidad since the declaration of independence from Spain in the early nineteenth century. Once the main elements of the cinematic and social crises have been explored and established in Chapters Two and Three, the remainder of the project consists of three sets of chronologically ordered analyses of individual films that somehow defied the national cinema crisis, and that provoked debate on both the conflict itself, and on broader questions pertaining to the relationship between national identity and violence. The conclusion considers these films as an interlinked body of cinematic works that share similar themes and concerns. It summarises the issues they tackle, the ideological and formal approaches they take to those issues, the potential social and cultural impact, and their contribution to the crystallization of a Peruvian national identity at the start of the twenty-first century.