“Prestige and Prurience: The Decline of the American Art House and the Emergence of Sexploitation, 1957-1972” presents a historical narrative of the art house theatre during the 1960s and its surrounding years, examining the ways in which art theatres transformed into adult theatres during the 1960s and 1970s. Beginning in earnest in the immediate post-war period, art houses in America experienced a short period of growth before stagnating in the middle 1950s. With the release in 1957 of the erotically charged Brigitte Bardot film …And God Created Woman, a new era of art houses followed, one that is characterized by the emergence of sexualized advertising, content and stars. As the 1960s came, sex films like The Immoral Mr. Teas played on art film marketing strategies and even screened in many art houses. Gradually, sexploitation films began to dominate art house programs and replace European art films and Hollywood revivals. In this transitional period, however, sexploitation films used key strategies to emulate many art film characteristics, and likewise art films used sexploitation techniques in order to maintain marketability for American distribution and exhibition. By studying the promotion and programming used by art house theatres during this period, this thesis identifies and announces a number of key trends within the dynamic period for art houses. The period is distinguished by its convergence of practices related to prestigious and prurient signs, merging art and sex in ways unique to the era and to the circumstances by which sex films infiltrated art houses and art films pandered to salacious interests. It presents a new perspective on the history of art houses, art cinema, American exhibition, sexploitation films, hardcore pornography and censorship. / text

The desire to enhance and make ourselves better is not a new one and it has continued to intrigue throughout the ages. Individuals have continued to seek ways to improve and enhance their well-being for example through nutrition, physical exercise, education and so on. Crucial to this improvement of their well-being is improving their ability to remember. Hence, people interested in improving their well-being, are often interested in memory as well. The rationale being that memory is crucial to our well-being. The desire to improve one’s memory then is almost certainly as old as the desire to improve one’s well-being. Traditionally, people have used different means in an attempt to enhance their memories: for example in learning through storytelling, studying, and apprenticeship. In remembering through practices like mnemonics, repetition, singing, and drumming. In retaining, storing and consolidating memories through nutrition and stimulants like coffee to help keep awake; and by external aids like notepads and computers. In forgetting through rituals and rites. Recent scientific advances in biotechnology, nanotechnology, molecular biology, neuroscience, and information technologies, present a wide variety of technologies to enhance many different aspects of human functioning. Thus, some commentators have identified human enhancement as central and one of the most fascinating subject in bioethics in the last two decades. Within, this period, most of the commentators have addressed the Ethical, Social, Legal and Policy (ESLP) issues in human enhancements as a whole as opposed to specific enhancements. However, this is problematic and recently various commentators have found this to be deficient and called for a contextualized case-by-case analysis to human enhancements for example genetic enhancement, moral enhancement, and in my case memory enhancement (ME). The rationale being that the reasons for accepting/rejecting a particular enhancement vary depending on the enhancement itself. Given this enormous variation, moral and legal generalizations about all enhancement processes and technologies are unwise and they should instead be evaluated individually. Taking this as a point of departure, this research will focus specifically on making a case for ME and in doing so assessing the ESLP implications arising from ME. My analysis will draw on the already existing literature for and against enhancement, especially in part two of this thesis; but it will be novel in providing a much more in-depth analysis of ME. From this perspective, I will contribute to the ME debate through two reviews that address the question how we enhance the memory, and through four original papers discussed in part three of this thesis, where I examine and evaluate critically specific ESLP issues that arise with the use of ME. In the conclusion, I will amalgamate all my contribution to the ME debate and suggest the future direction for the ME debate.