Thesis (M. Phil.)--University of Hong Kong, 2002. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-143).

published_or_final_version / abstract / toc / English Studies / Master / Master of Arts

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Formal and cultural analyses of The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939) indicate that Dorothy's passage from Kansas, through Oz and back to Kansas symbolically recapitulates paradigmatic stories of both America (the nation's passage from utopian origin, through history, to utopian destiny) and Christianity (the cosmic passage from paradisian origin, through history, to paradisian destiny). In order to "go home" (the explicit theme), Dorothy must "grow up" (the implicit theme); this link is also paralleled symbolically at both national and cosmic levels. Resonating profoundly with the collective ethos, this movie has come to function in a modern (ostensibly secular) society the way myths function in traditional (overtly religious) societies. I conclude that popular movies may be effective replacements for the mythic aspect of traditional religion and that modern societies may appear to be more secular (hostile or indifferent to religion) than they actually are.

Thesis (DBA(DoctorateofBusinessAdministration))--University of South Australia, 2005

Questions of Popular Cult(ure) works in the uncomfortable and unclear spaces of popular culture. This thesis demonstrates how cult cauterizes ambiguity and functions as a framing agent for unpopular politics in popular culture. In tracking the flows and hesitations in the postwar period through the rise of the New Right and identity politics, this thesis shows how cult contains moving and malleable meanings that maneuver through everyday life. It is a slippery and slight subject that denies coherent categorization in definitional frames. This thesis negotiates this liminality by tracking broad social shifts in race, class and gender through textualised traces. The complicated concept of cult is activated within a series of case studies. These chapters are linked together to demonstrate the volatile variance of the cult category. Section one contextualises the terrain of the intellectual work in this thesis. It paints broad brush-strokes of the postwar period, through an animated intersection of politics and popular culture. The first chapter defines the currency of cult in contemporary times. It is devoted to investigating the relationships between colonisation and popular culture. By pondering postcolonialism, this chapter prises open thirdspace to consider how writing and madness performs proximity in the pre and post-colonial world. The ‘maddening’ of cargo cults by colonisers in Melanesia operates as a metonym for the regulation of marginal modalities of resistance. In popular culture, this trajectory of insane otherness has corroded, with the subversion of cult being appropriated by fan discourses, as worship has become ‘accountable’ for the mainstream market. Chapter two unpacks The X-Files as a text tracking the broad changes in politics through popular culture. This innovative text has moved from marginality into the mainstream, mapping meanings through the social landscape. Consciousness and reflexivity in the popular embeds this text in a cult framework, as it demonstrates the movement in meanings and the hegemonic hesitations of the dominant in colonising (and rewriting) the interests of the subordinate as their own. Section two creates a dialogue between gendered politics and contemporary popular culture. The changes to the consciousness in masculinity and femininity are captured by Tank Girl, Tomb Raider, Henry Rollins and Spike (from Buffy: The Vampire Slayer). These texts perform the wavering popularity of feminism and the ascent of men’s studies in intellectual inquiry. Tank Girl articulates unpopular feminist politics through the popular mode of film. The movement to more mainstream feminism is threaded through the third wave embraced by Tomb Raider that reinscribes the popular paradigms of femininity, via colonisation. The computer game discourse permits a pedagogy of power to punctuate Lara Croft’s virtual surfaces and shimmer through the past into the present. Tracking this historical movement, two chapters on masculinity brew the boom in men’s studies’ questioning of manhood. Henry Rollins is a metonym for an excessive and visible masculinity, in an era where men have remained an unmarked centre of society. His place within peripheral punk performance settles his inversionary identity. Spike from Buffy: The Vampire Slayer demonstrates the contradictions in manhood by moving through the masculine hierarchy to deprioritise men in the public sphere. This is a mobile masculinity in a time where changeability has caused a ‘crisis’ for men. Both these men embody a challenging and confrontational gender politics. Cult contains these characters within different spaces, at varying times and through contradictory politics. Section three ponders the place and role of politics at its most persistent and relevant. It demonstrates the consequences for social justice in an era of New Right ideologies. The chapter on South Park mobilises Leftist concerns within an overtly Rightist context, and Trainspotting moves through youth politics and acceleration to articulate movement in resistive meanings. These case studies contemplate the journey of popular culture in the postwar period by returning to the present and to the dominant culture. The colonisation of identity politics by the New Right makes the place of cultural studies – as a pedagogic formation - powerfully important. Colonisation of geographical peripheries is brought home to England as the colonisation of the Celtic fringe is interpreted through writing and resistance. This thesis tracks (and connects) two broad movements - the shifting of political formations and the commodification of popular culture. The disconnecting dialogue between these two streams opens the terrain for cult. In the hesitations that delay their connection, cult is activated to cauterize this disjuncture.

Popular music and film are separate media, framed by specific discourses, histories of distribution and reception, semiotic relationships and literacies. Through these divergent manifestations and ideologies nodes of convergence exist. At moments of connection, new and innovative textual and contextual possibilities emerge, transforming the ways in which audiences both engage and read these media. Whilst often driven by capitalist goals, both popular music and film capture and tether personal expression and collective memory. Through these processes of signification, popular cultural texts belonging to both media forms are able to resist their commodified origins to inform and construct both collective and individual identities. This thesis charts the movement of popular music across cinema. Rock’n’Roll is utilized not only as an amalgam of texts made up of sounds and images, but also as a critical and interpretative apparatus through which specific cultural identities are configured. This work is concerned with various manifestations of political resistance in popular culture, and the ways in which this resistance is moderated through cultural commodification. Using an interdisciplinary approach – converging film analysis, popular music studies and music journalism – this thesis constructs an ideological framework through which film and popular music can be aligned, and through which this alignment can be researched. Through an engagement with myriad cinematic and popular cultural texts, executed through interdisciplinary methods, this thesis establishes a theoretical framework for understanding and analyzing the convergence of popular music and cinema. Its original contribution to knowledge is an evaluation of the ways in which these media are changed through their alignment and how they inform each other both structurally, as tangible manifestations of specific media codes and structures, and politically, in the ideological embodiment of particular identities and representational realities. This goal is achieved through the selection of specific research materials, especially those which have not been subject to detailed investigation in other scholarly studies. Specific filmic and musical texts are discussed because they embody the aesthetic and political synergy of these two media forms as well as demonstrating the cultural processes through which this synergy is enacted. This thesis offers interdisciplinary dialogue as a valid strategy to understand the processes involved in the creation and reception of texts which are cinematic in nature but utilize the language and discourse of popular music. The textual and contextual manifestations of this process are a primary concern. Emphasis is placed on the implications for film form in terms of the structure of texts and their existence within specific genres, the shifting position of the auteur and the renegotiation of the term and its meaning to film and popular music, and the conjunction and interaction between creativity and commerce. In addressing the political and aesthetic possibilities of the film and popular music hybrid, as well as the cultural implications of their convergence, this thesis provides new perspectives for the analysis of both forms.