Besides Tora-san series and samurai trilogy, veteran Japanese filmmaker Yamada Yoji also endeavors in making family films, however, his ‘home drama’1 genre has long been neglected in academia. To fill this gap, the aims of this research are to investigate firstly the aesthetics of his social realistic films; secondly, what are the family values revealed in his family films and thirdly, how ‘woman’ is portrayed in his ‘home drama’. Working under the ‘director system’ of Shochiku Studio, this research argues that auteur theory which advocates director as the author of a film is applicable to Yamada and is thus employed to examine family films that are produced between 1970 and 2013. Background information of the auteur (author) and his films are reviewed in Part I of this thesis while Part II will focus on the discussion and analysis of the film aesthetics and motifs of Yamada Yoji’s family films. Similar to other cultural artefacts, film aesthetics cannot stand apart from the surrounding culture. Italian neorealism which flourished at the time when Yamada entered the film industry will be used to examine Yamada’s stylistic orientation. It is found that except collaborating with professional actors, Yamada’s films display most of the characteristics of Italian neorealism. In the pursuit of aesthetic realism, the “repeated team” (also known as ‘director’s team’) of Yamada at Shochiku Studio helped him to actualize his film aesthetics. With its adoption of ‘director system’ and ‘star system’, Shochiku is also known for producing shomingeki (film of ordinary people), so besides the possible influences from Italian neorealism, Shochiku Studio may have also cast influences to the artistic style of Yamada Yoji. Through intertextual reading of his social realistic films, the kind of social problem always lies in the dilemma between tradition and progression. Viewing ‘family’ as the fundamental unit of a society, Yamada presents to us the importance of preserving traditional virtues and family values in the continuation of a family so as to the sustainability of a society. This research reaffirms the influence of Chinese ideology on the construction of Japanese family system that the family relationships and the core family values found in films can well be explained by Chinese Confucianism. Under the patriarchal social context, it is interesting to discover the portrayal of ‘strong woman and weak man’ image in his family films. While the oppression of women is depicted in the process of modernization, the image of ‘strong woman’ is presented through the inscription of femininity in Yamada’s cinematic film texts. Rejecting the binary opposition of sexes, women in Yamada’s films is portrayed to encompass the qualities of masculinity and femininity under the ecriture feminine writing of Yamada. This feminine approach can be regarded as a way out, as proposed by the auteur, to tackle social challenges. Through an in-depth examination of Yamada Yoji’s family films, this research demonstrates that is a good way to learn more about a culture or a society through social realistic cinema. / published_or_final_version / Japanese Studies / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Thesis--University of Southern California. / Order no. : 2522A. Bibliography: leaves 608-623. Also issued in print.

Thesis--University of Southern California. / Order no. : 2522A. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Bibliography: leaves 608-623.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Southern California, 1970. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 248-255). Filmography: 203-246.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Southern California, 1970. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 248-255). Filmography: 203-246.

The thesis concerns the treatment of actuality in film and television, particularly the narrativization of actuality images, and the context of their placement within audio/visual texts. Several instances of the convergence of media form and genre are analyzed, and the conventions of classificatory systems and boundaries that pertain to film and television representations are reconsidered in light of changes in the conventions of genre. The distinction between, and convergence of fictional and non-fictional conventions of narrative are therefore central to the thesis, as are the related issues of viewer response, the nature of subjectivity in the viewer, the connectivity of text and culture, and the relations of actuality to the text. The thesis traces the narrativization of actuality through textual, formal and genre boundaries, adopting a ‘line of flight or deterritorialization’ that enables the thesis to ‘change in nature and connect with other multiplicities.’This line of flight passes through the conventional separation of genre groupings and texts, and, similarly, has been applied in the thesis as a rationale for the diminution of theoretical boundaries. A multiperpectival approach is applied to the permeability of, or transcendent relations of the analysis to the boundaries between genres, between texts and culture, and between actuality and virtual representation. In the thesis there is also a theoretical deterritorialization that consents to a pluralism of theory, which is an approach demonstrated by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus. The model of multi-perspectivalism adopted in the thesis engages in establishing connections and similarities between theories, rather than emphasizing contradictory and exclusive practices. The Foucauldian notion of the rules of formation in discourse, Nichols’ theories of documentary representation of reality, Bordwell’s schematic interpretation, and several other positions are critiqued, as the line of flight embarked upon in the thesis intersects with, and passes through both textual and theoretical boundaries. The thesis consists of two parts: firstly, a location of theoretical perspective, in which the issues of theory pertaining to actuality and narrative are explicated, and the methodological approach of the thesis is defined. The second part commences with an analysis of the most familiar instances of actuality in film and television, with particular attention to documentary forms. It then engages in the analysis of films that represent actuality but which, in the process of narrativization, display a convergence of genre conventions. The films selected for analysis include Steven Speilberg's Schindler's List, (1993) Oliver Stone's JFK, (1991) and Robert Zemeckis' Forrest Gump, (1994) and Contact, (1996). Hence the thesis is concerned with the application of a pluralist theoretical approach, with, however, an emphasis on the Deleuzo-Guattarian notions of rhizome and assemblage. Within this theoretical frame, the connections between actuality and the audio/visual text are explicated, and the formation of text as ‘a rhizome with the world’, is analyzed across a range of examples.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2008.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Case Western Reserve University, 1979. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 262-265). Also issued in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Stanford University, 1981. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 301-316). Also issued in print.