<p>I december 2003 gick filmen <i>Kill Bill</i> upp på biograferna med ett våldsamt och blodigt innehåll. Reaktionerna blev starka, vilket kan bero på att <i>Kill Bill</i> är en actionfilm där kvinnorna har en annan roll än den lättklädda medhjälparen. Då kvinnorna står i fokus var filmen som gjord för en analysav hur just kvinnan gestaltas i filmens värld. Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka om de patriarkala strukturerna förändras när typiskt manliga roller intas av kvinnor. Analysen inriktar sig främst på filmen <i>Kill Bill</i>, men diskuterar också det sammanhang i vilket filmen skapats och lanserats det vill säga filmindustrin i Hollywood som knappast gjort sig känd för några jämställdhetssträvanden. In December 2003 the movie <i>Kill Bil</i>l premiered.</p> / <p>The reactions to its violent and bloody plot were strong, perhaps because <i>Kill Bill </i>is a film where women play different roles than the usual "sexy assistant", thus also making it suitable for an analysis of how women are represented on screen. The purpose of this thesis is to examine whether the patriarchal structures do change when the typical male part is given to by women characters. The analysis is mainly concentrated on the film <i>Kill Bill</i>, but will also discuss the context in which it was made - the Film Industry in Hollywood which has hardly been known for any ambition to achieve gender equality.</p>

I december 2003 gick filmen Kill Bill upp på biograferna med ett våldsamt och blodigt innehåll. Reaktionerna blev starka, vilket kan bero på att Kill Bill är en actionfilm där kvinnorna har en annan roll än den lättklädda medhjälparen. Då kvinnorna står i fokus var filmen som gjord för en analysav hur just kvinnan gestaltas i filmens värld. Syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka om de patriarkala strukturerna förändras när typiskt manliga roller intas av kvinnor. Analysen inriktar sig främst på filmen Kill Bill, men diskuterar också det sammanhang i vilket filmen skapats och lanserats det vill säga filmindustrin i Hollywood som knappast gjort sig känd för några jämställdhetssträvanden. In December 2003 the movie Kill Bill premiered. / The reactions to its violent and bloody plot were strong, perhaps because Kill Bill is a film where women play different roles than the usual "sexy assistant", thus also making it suitable for an analysis of how women are represented on screen. The purpose of this thesis is to examine whether the patriarchal structures do change when the typical male part is given to by women characters. The analysis is mainly concentrated on the film Kill Bill, but will also discuss the context in which it was made - the Film Industry in Hollywood which has hardly been known for any ambition to achieve gender equality.

This master thesis explores how the use of relatively new conceptual compositions such as "virtue signaling" and "social justice warriors" can alter and/or change the original connotations of "virtue" and "social justice". The study proposes that these compositions can become carriers of ideological structures. Further, it examines what effects these compositions have on the public debate. Using quantitative and qualitative digital text analysis on a selection of articles in Swedish alternative and mainstream media, the thesis finds the new compositions of the words "virtue" and "social justice" to be essentially contested concepts and that they have migrated from alternative media into the mainstream media. The thesis concludes that 1) the new compositions are carriers of the prevailing ideology in alternative media and that 2) the polemic and locked positions in the debate about virtue signaling calls for a discussion about language and its use.

This essay looks at the Government of British Columbia’s ‘New Relationship’ with indigenous people and how British Columbia’s history can inform this public policy debate. Specifically, I draw on the approach used by historian Quentin Skinner to identify two distinct periods in British Columbia’s early history, the coastal fur trade and the colonial period, and to identify how the relationship between indigenous people and Europeans was fundamentally different during these periods. After identifying the key features that made these relationships different, I challenge policymakers to look beyond the colonial period and its effect on our intellectual heritage. Through looking back to the fur trade period, I argue that we can begin to meet the promise contained in the ‘New Relationship’ and its statement of vision.

In this thesis, I explore the representation of Nazis and violence in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009), including how the film proposes justification for violence and murder, and how the film participates in cultural fantasies. The film presents an alternate outcome of World War II in which the Allies achieve victory by assassinating Hitler and the High Command of the Third Reich in a movie theater. The Nazis in the film, far from being a complex enemy, are used for their token villain status. Using the Nazis in this way both participates in and reinterprets the Nazisploitation genre. The protagonists, the clandestine military force known as the "Basterds," which attacks German troops using guerrilla warfare tactics, help make this victory possible. Aldo, their leader, encourages his men to brutalize the Nazis they come in contact with, and Aldo shows the way by carving swastikas in the foreheads of Nazis he allows to live. Tarantino creates an aesthetic surrounding his violence in an attempt to create a paradigm in which murder is imagined to be morally acceptable. Yet the film also supports this paradigm by setting the Nazi up in much the same way cinema uses the zombie, as a killable being, a blank body on which violence can be justifiably enacted. As a blank body, cultural imagination can also be inscribed on the Nazi, using them as a meditation on Jewish revenge fantasy and a fantasy of American revenge against terrorists. In the end, the Basterds become more like Nazi villains than heroes due to their participation in Nazi-like violence. The audience, as well, faces the problem of becoming like Nazis by viewing the film.

During the 1920s and 1930s, the Swedish right-wing party Allmänna valmansförbundet (AVF) made citizen into a key concept within their political vocabulary and practice. This thesis examines the distribution, meaning and function of the concept of citizen within the AVF between 1915 and 1936. By using theoretical and methodological perspectives from both the English (Skinner) and German (Koselleck) side of conceptual history vis-à-vis Begriffsgeschischte, this study illuminates how a discursive framework took place within the AVF and expanded throughout the organisation. The constitutional reforms 1918/1921 and the organisational strength from opposite parties, stressed the importance for the AVF to assemble the citizens around conservative value laden concepts: responsibility, ansvar, and public participation, offentlighet. This new situation in political and social life, pushed the AVF towards a reorganisation. The aim was to educate the masses, women and youth into conservative citizens. Citizen became the sole tool in (i) upholding the traditional heritage between folk–state, and (ii) enabling the AVF citizen discourse to spread throughout the society. This study shows the multiple meaning and functions of the citizen concept within the AVF.  It provides a new understanding of how collective concepts became an important part of the struggle for power during the democratization process in Swedish political history and must in that respect be seen as an antithesis to the collective concepts of the Social Democratic Party during this period.

The submitted thesis is titled Representations of Femininity in Quentin Tarantino's Movies and it focuses on the process of femininity construction in six selected movies both written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. The aim of this study is to identify how Tarantino operates the notions of conventional femininity and traditional female gender roles. Furthermore, it investigates to what extent his films either support or subvert stereotypical gender identities. In relation to the research issues the key concepts are defined by the theoretical part of this work. In particular it describes the theory of social and media construction of reality, gender as construct, film as a part of patriarchal structure or feminist perspectives related to the film production. This same part also offers basic information about Quentin Tarantino's personality and his film works in general. In order to answer the research questions the thesis employs a qualitative method of critical discourse analysis which functions as a helpful tool while reconstructing the image of femininity set by media. Moreover, the selected method serves to reveal latent meanings applied by film as a form of media to affect both behavioural and cognitive individual characteristics. Keywords Femininity, gender, construct, stereotype,...

No description available.

No description available.

<p>The Sound and the Fury is William Faulkner’s story of the Compson family’s downfall in the American South during the early 20th century. The novel illustrates the impact on the cultural identity of the South of strictly defined social roles and the tension they created in the aftermath of slavery and defeat in the Civil War. In my analysis, I have chosen to focus on gender issues, especially in their Southern manifestation. The Compsons’ daughter, Caddy, figures prominently in the sons’ narratives, but is only portrayed through their perceptions and memories. My aim is to determine Caddy’s significance in the novel by exploring her relationships with her brothers, as seen through their eyes, and how she is characterized by them. In Benjy’s narrative, I examine her actions as a little girl in light of the Eve myth and the icon of the virgin mother. Quentin’s obsession with Caddy's sexuality as a teenager reveals the implications of associating female sexuality with death, the role of language in reproducing and combating established gender power structures, and the impact of traditional gender roles on women and men. Jason’s binary categorization of women as virgins or whores turns the few glimpses of Caddy as a mother into that of a woman treated as a commodity of exchange. In each of their narratives, Caddy is a dynamic character whose words, body, and actions expose prevailing social and gender power struggles. By conjuring her presence through her absence, her brothers reveal the depth and destructiveness of the social imperatives that underlie their attempts to control her. I suggest that Caddy’s role in the novel is to disrupt the brothers’ narratives and challenge the underlying Southern social and gender constructs that imbue them.</p>