Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal

The essay originates from the idea that the United States has a history of racism evidenced in the displacement and discrimination of Native Americans and that the representation of Native Americans in films reflects the changing views of the indigenous population in the surrounding society. The purpose of this essay is to investigate how the Native American characters are portrayed in western films. Two films are going to be analysed; Stagecoach from 1939 and The Revenant from 2015. The theoretical framework that is used for the analysis is Postcolonialism. The findings reveals that Native American characters are portrayed more humanely in The Revenant than in Stagecoach. By applying the findings into the classroom the students can be given the opportunity to discuss human rights, equal value and solidarity between people, which can lead to reflections about the fundamental values of the curriculum.

This essay examines and analyzes specially selected films of directors Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro González Iñárritu, through an auteur-theory perspective. The aim of the essay is to illustrate the current power position of the directors within American film and examine the cinematic language of Cuarón’s Sólo con tu pareja, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Gravity, and Iñárritu’s Amores Perros, Biutiful, The Revenant.

Uppsatsen handlar om att undersöka hur tystnad gestaltas genom ljud. Syftet var att analysera,tolka och redogöra för filmisk tystnad i The Revenant och Sound of Metal samt belysa detljudarbete krävs för att kunna förmedla upplevelsen av tystnad. Undersökningen baserashuvudsakligen på teorier av Michel Chion, Sven Raeymaekers och Klas Dykhoff. Genom attanvända Chions metod masking analyserades sammanlagt sex olika sekvenser ur filmerna.Analysen i uppsatsen var menad att svara på hur tystnad gestaltas i filmerna, vilka ljud som ärassocierade med tystnad och hur bilden samt ljudet samarbetar för upplevelsen av tystnad.Resultatet visar på att tystnadens olika former kan användas för att förmedla karaktärerskänslor, förstärka spänningen i scener men även för att skapa en kontakt med publiken. Detframgick även hur specifika ljud som djurläten på avstånd eller intima/närliggande prasselljudanvänds för att förhöja upplevelsen av tystnad. Resultatet visade även på hur viktig kontextenär av att ha bilden och ljudet gemensamt för att kunna förstå och tolka tystnaden.

<p>Utilizing autoethnography and thematic analysis, this thesis explores reflexivity and social work praxis. Specifically, it illuminates the phenomenon of reflexivity and its related themes; reflexivity’s multiple meanings, challenges and enabling factors, its link to internal processes, rationale for usage and timeliness of inquiry. The multiple ways that practitioners engage in reflexive inquiry was revealed through dyadic interviews. However, current literature does not reflect this and the breadth and scope of reflexive inquiry is lost within contemporary social work discourse. Therefore, this thesis puts forth multiple definitions of reflexivity, which broaden the scope of reflexive inquiry, contextualize its usage and highlight its indications. The first group of definitions, efficacious, exigent and entrenched reflexivity are defined in terms of four key components; the reflexivity’s focus and center, what the reflexivity seeks and the degree to which reflexivity is utilized as a tool of practice. These definitions shed light on the varying depths of reflexive inquiry. The next group of definitions, extant and revenant reflexivity can serve to highlight to the worker when an experience needs to be reflected upon. The final group of definitions, polycentric and monocentric reflexivity, identify the context in which reflexivity takes place, namely communally or in isolation. The impetus for disseminating these broadened definitions is my belief that their incorporation into contemporary social work discourse and utilization as a required tool of practice will further promote the integration and support of the dual existences of the professional and personal selves; that their procurement into practitioner pedagogy will lead to dedicated space within the practice setting that enables one to be an emotional being, complete with emotional realities while simultaneously coexisting as a social worker, complete with social work related realities. I believe this will result in increased efficiency and productivity to serve and care for our clients, as well as increased worker health and well-being, to serve and care for ourselves.</p> / Master of Social Work (MSW)

This thesis explores the zombie’s rise to prominence in popular culture, with a focus on its development within the comics medium. The zombie is not just a ‘floating signifier’ (according to Jerrold E. Hogle), but a revenant signifier, actively and aggressively linking with existing concepts, and transforming them. The thesis also considers both the zombie figure and zombie genre within the parameters of several media – comics, television, film, and literature. The medium of comics is examined in detail as it has evolved through the influence of the zombie just as the zombie has been reshaped by each new representation. In contemporary horror comics, The Walking Dead series is not just commercially successful, it exploits properties of the medium (including panel arrangement, transitions, repetition, and the liminal space within the gutter) to thoroughly explore the metaphors and allusions that have been associated with the zombie. I discuss these metaphors by charting the zombie’s development. A lack of pre-twentieth century literary texts featuring this creature frustrates easy comparison with the monsters of Gothic fiction. Rather than evolving within the novel form, as its rival horror icons have done, the zombie has maintained a visual and visceral identity, maturing with each new incarnation, and becoming ever more gruesome: the walking corpses of ancient texts; a symbol of eternal slavery within Haitian Voodoo folklore; and its modern interpretation as violent and virulent monster. The recent notion of a zombie plague has redefined the creature as a representation of modern fears, and has led to ‘zombie apocalypse’ becoming a commonly-used fantasy scenario. The zombie’s connection to apocalyptic literature is simultaneously ancient and contemporary, with the creature being a signifier of social disorder and disrupted identity. While the emphasis throughout is on the shifting relations between media, comics are the main focus of this study. The symbolism present in the zombie, and the political and cultural ideas stemming from its slow maturation are revealed within The Walking Dead and sustained through the functions of the comics medium. Through the application of Scott McCloud’s comics theory, the closure between panels and the transition within the gutter enhance these ideas, and provide further understanding of the zombie as depicted in comics. The visual/textual relationship within comics is compared with Jacques Lacan’s modalities of consciousness, and the psychoanalytic reading provided here explores the crises of identity within the zombie, and within the fragmented narrative of the comics medium. Alternative psychoanalytic readings, and the physiology/pathology of the zombie itself are undertaken, revealing the creature to be responsive to Julia Kristeva’s concept of the abject, and Slavoj Zizek’s postmodern reworking of Lacanian ideas. The thesis also returns to notions of the Gothic, haunted spaces, and the role of suburbia in the zombie narrative. This is augmented with a study of intertextuality and the “revenant” status of the zombie, and of comics. Through incorporating the critical theory of Kristeva, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Jacques Derrida, and by positioning in parallel comics theorist Thierry Groensteen’s concepts of braiding and arthrology, I emphasise the operations of the zombie figure in the comic book, and other media, asserting that the zombie is a revenant signifier continually returning and transforming, never resting, but endlessly cannibalising and reconstructing debate about identity, morality, and society.

Sans corps, pas d'histoires. Vecteur d'action, instrument de la narration, et support d'un lien d'identification fort entre le spectateur et le personnage, le corps est la principale figure des médiums cinématographique et télévisuel. Si le cinéma a toujours, depuis ses balbutiements, glorifié la vivacité inépuisable des corps, parallèlement déjà, planait la face inversée de cette exposition, la menace muette de la mort. Mais si le dernier souffle avant la mort est bien souvent encore, au cinéma et à la télévision, synonyme d'ultime communion avec la vie et de résistance à la mort, qu'en est-il du corps et du personnage quand la mort s'en est saisi à jamais et qu'il ne reste plus aux vivants, personnages et spectateurs, qu'à se confronter au cadavre ? Figure parasitaire, le cadavre n'est ni un personnage ni même un figurant. A la fois signe vide et noyau narratif, c'est à partir de lui et de son examen pendant l'autopsie ou sur les lieux du crime que va se nourrir et se développer l'intrigue policière. Et s'il peut paraître secondaire, voire accessoire, à regarder les fictions policières sous l'angle de son non-regard fixe et opaque, il donne à voir quelque chose du crime, de son caractère profondément injuste, et des rapports qu'entretiennent les vivants avec une mort qui se présente sur la table d'autopsie, sous ses traits les plus abjects. L'enjeu de cette thèse sera d'envisager la façon dont les fictions policières mettent en scène le cadavre comme le reflet, d'une troublante précision, d'un défaut contemporain de distanciation face à la mort. Il s'agira bien pour nous, et selon un principe analogue à celui qu'applique le philosophe Maxime Coulombe dans son essai sur les zombies, de considérer le cadavre fictionnel comme « analyseur de la société contemporaine » et comme « symptôme de ce qui taraude la conscience de notre époque » / Without bodies, no stories. A vehicle of action, a narrative agent, and the support of a strong identification link between the audience and the character, the body is the main figure of cinematographic and television mediums.If cinema has always, from its early stages, glorified the endless liveliness of bodies, the reverse side of this exposure has simultaneously been lingering: the mute threat of death. However, in films or in television series, if the last breath before death is often synonymous with a ultimate communion with life and with a resistance to death, what happens to the body and the character when death has seized them for ever, and the living – characters and audience – are only left facing the corpse? As a parasite figure, the corpse is neither a character nor even an extra. Both an empty sign and a narrative core, the crime plot will indeed develop from the corpse and its examination, during the autopsy or on the crime scene. And whereas the corpse may seem secondary, even minor, if we look at crime fictions from the angle of its fixed and opaque non-look, it still allows us to see something of the crime and of its deeply unfair nature, and of the relations between the living and a death that appears in its most abject features on the autopsy table. In this study, we will examine how crime fictions stage corpses as disturbingly precise reflects of a contemporary lack of perspective in front of death. Similarly to the philosopher Maxime Coulombe in his essay on zombies, we will consider the fictional corpse as an "analyser of contemporary society" and as a "symptom of what is tormenting the consciousness of our time"

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