How do popular media genres reinforce or provide alternative perspectives to circulating official political discourses, as well as articulate issues of social concern? In what ways do such media offer insights into aspects of cultural practices that inform and represent matters of key significance in people's quotidian lives? This dissertation investigates these two general questions within four distinct Ghanaian popular visual media genres: popular video-films, political cartoons, death announcement posters, and vehicle inscriptions (`mottonyms'). Regarding the Ghanaian popular video-films, I examine how the films (re)present the issue of cyberfraud (`sakawa') in Ghana. I contrast the films' (re)presentation of this phenomenon vis-a-vis that of certain official pronouncements on the issue, and argue that a critical approach to the `sakawa film series' reveals a robust counter discourse to official denunciations. My investigation of political cartoons, examines some of the works of the artist Akosua in the Ghanaian newspaper, Daily Guide. Here I focus on how Akosua's works, utilizing popular cultural allusions, function as an alternative media discourse in contemporary Ghanaian sociopolitical debates. As regards the death-announcement posters, I investigate how, situated as they are within certain well-known Ghanaian cultural values and practices, including funerary caskets, these posters remediate these cultural mores in the context of rapid social change. Lastly, regarding the mottonyms, I explore, through interviews with vehicle owners, the interactions between specific life experiences that spurred them to coin these inscriptions and the cultural fabric within which they have done so. Conceptually, this dissertation draws not only from cultural anthropology and its subfields of visual culture, and religion, media and culture, but also significantly from global/international media studies and from emergent works on African cultural and media studies. The harnessing of interdisciplinary conceptual frameworks, such as phenomenological and social constructionist approaches, to interrogate Ghanaian popular visual media in this dissertation advances our current thinking in the above-mentioned fields in several ways. For example, the social constructionist (Lee-Hurwitz 1995; Morgan 2005) and phenomenological approaches (Langsdorf, 1994; Lanigan 1998) that guide the investigation of vehicle inscriptions and death-announcement posters reveal purposeful intentionality in human communication. Furthermore, this dissertation, with its focus on popular video-films, press cartoons, death-announcement posters and vehicle inscriptions concretely elucidates recent expansive theorizations of `media'. Here `media' is understood as practices of mediation (de Vries 2001; Meyer 2003; Zito 2008), and broadly conceived to transcend narrowly defined traditional mass media formats (Downing 1996). In the latter case, I advocate for global/international media scholars to begin to pay equal `field service' to popular media artifacts within the current ambit of the `practice paradigm' in global/international media studies (Postill 2010:4; Couldry 2004).

Le cinéma populaire indien est à la fois un lieu de création de mythes filmiques puissants et un univers qui interagit avec un autre corpus, celui des mythes et des épopées classiques, plus particulièrement le Ramayana et le Mahabharata. Si ces derniers ont souvent été l’objet d’adaptations, surtout dans les premières décennies du cinéma indien, le cinéma contemporain compose des rapports complexes et singuliers vis-à-vis des héros et de leurs hauts faits. Les mythes traditionnels surgissent au détour d’un plan, à la manière d’une résurgence morale, narrative et/ou formelle, tout comme – dans un mouvement inverse – le cinéma cherche ces mêmes mythes pour consolider son imaginaire. Ce travail sur les relations entre mythe et cinéma croise le champ de la politique et de l’Histoire. Les mouvements pour l’Indépendance, la Partition, les tensions intercommunautaires s’insinuent dans le cinéma populaire. La présence des mythes dans les films peut devenir une fixation esthétique des traumatismes historico-politiques. La difficulté de représenter certains actes de violence fait qu’ils viennent parfois se positionner de manière déguisée dans les images, modifiant irrémédiablement la présence et le sens des références mythologiques. Les mythes ne disent ainsi pas tout le temps la même chose. Ces résurgences mythologiques, qui produisent des mutations et des formes hybrides entre les champs politique, historique, mythique et filmique, invitent par ailleurs à un décloisonnement dans l’analyse de la nature et des supports des images. Ainsi, des remarques sur la peinture s’invitent dans le cours de la recherche aussi naturellement que des œuvres d’art contemporain, des photographies ou l’art populaire du bazar. Un champ visuel indien, large et métissé, remet en scène constamment des combinaisons entre l’arrière-plan et l’avant-plan, entre la planéité et la profondeur de champ, entre l’ornementation d’un décor et son abandon. Le cinéma populaire, traversé par la mémoire des mythes et des formes, devient le creuset d’un renouveau esthétique. / Indian popular cinema is both a place of filmic mythical creation and a universe interacting with previous bodies of work; the classical myths and epics, and especially the Ramayana and the Mahabharata. Although the latter have often been adapted, especially in the early decades of Indian cinema, contemporary cinema builds complex and attitudes towards heroes and their achievements. Traditional myths appear in a shot, in the manner of a moral, narrative and/or formal resurgence. In an opposite movement, this cinema seeks those same myths to strengthen its imagination. Working on the relations between myth and cinema, one has to cross the political and historical field, for Independence movements, Partition and inter-community tensions pervade popular cinema. Myths in movies can become an aesthetic fixation of historical-political traumas. The challenge of some representation of violent acts explain that they sometimes hide themselves in images, irreversibly altering the presence and meaning of mythological references. Therefore, myths don't always tell the same story. Those mythological resurgences, producing mutations and hybrid forms between the political, historical, mythical and film-making fields, also invite a de-compartmentalisation when we analyse the nature of the images and the mediums that welcome them. Our study naturally convenes notes on painting, as well as contemporary art, photography or bazaar popular art. A broad and mixed Indian visual field constantly recombines background and foreground, flatness and depth of field and ornemented and neglected sets. Popular cinema, moved by the memory of myths and forms, becomes the breeding ground of an aesthetic revival.

Le Don Quichotte de Cervantès a inspiré tous les domaines artistiques du XIXème siècle (1789-1914). Le choix de regrouper dans un même corpus les arts graphiques et plastiques, les arts populaires, les arts du spectacle et cinématographiques, permet de voir comment les arts s’influencent, se répondent ou s’opposent. Le Don Quichotte est, comme tout sujet littéraire traité dans les domaines artistiques, confronté à son image littéraire, celle créée par son auteur. Notre volonté est de distinguer comment se profilent puis se figent les caractéristiques physiques des personnages principaux au cours du XIXème siècle et ce, principalement en France.Les artistes sont amenés à interpréter le texte. Ils se détachent de l’image littéraire pour s’intéresser aux possibilités plastiques et iconographiques qu’offre le roman de Cervantès. Au-delà de la traduction plastique d’un texte littéraire, l’enjeu est de comprendre comment les artistes parviennent à s’insérer dans la pensée de leur société, c'est-à-dire comment ils arrivent à influer sur la lecture d’une œuvre littéraire. En comparant l’iconographie de don Quichotte à celle d’autres héros, il s’agit de voir en quoi le personnage créé par Cervantès permet aux artistes de se réapproprier cette silhouette et à quelle fin. Son image est largement exploitée dans les domaines de la publicité et de la caricature. L’étude vise à saisir par quels moyens les deux héros vont se retrouver transposés dans une société pour en faire, tantôt la critique, tantôt l’apologie, au gré des contingences politiques, économiques et sociales, voire oniriques ou fantaisistes, c'est-à-dire sans substrat critique et par pure référence ludique. / The Don Quixote of Cervantes has inspired all fields of arts of the nineteenth century (1789-1914). The choice to group in one corpus the visual arts, popular arts, performing arts and film, let us see how the arts influence, answer or oppose each other. The Don Quixote is, like any literary subject within the arts, confronted with his literary image. Our desire is to distinguish the emerging profiles of the main characters of nineteenth century France and then analyse their physical characteristics.Artists are asked to interpret the text. They detached themself from the literary image and have greater interest in the visual and iconographic opportunities offered within the novel of Cervantes. Beyond the visual translation of a literary text the challenge is to understand how artists manage to fit into the thinking of their society, or in other words, how they can influence the reading of a classic work of literature. By comparing the iconography of Don Quixote through other heroes we can understand how the character allows artists to adapt this figure and for what purpose. His image is widely used in the fields of advertising and caricature. The study aims to understand the means by which the two heroes will find themselves transposed into a society to make, sometimes critical, sometimes complientary comments, according to the political contingencies, or economic, social, even whimsical and fantastical i.e. without a basis of critical reference and amusing.