In December 2000, Japanese lawmakers took unprecedented steps to ban Fukasaku Kinji's Battle Royale from theaters prior to its scheduled release. The film was deemed "crude and tasteless" for its portrayal of teen violence in a state run game of kill or be-killed and attempts to ban the film were pursued through the film certification process all the way to the floor of Japanese parliament. This thesis investigates the controversy surrounding the release of Battle Royale and the socioeconomic and cultural factors - in particular, the Japanese recession and widening generation gap of the 1990s - that influenced both the film's message and the extraordinary political reaction in Japan. This thesis argues that the objections to the film were not based solely on the violent content as is often reported, but rather were the combination of adult economic and cultural anxiety regarding themselves and the youth, the anti-authority message of the film that encouraged the youth to reject adult systems, and a political campaign that exploited the adult fears by using Battle Royale as a scapegoat for youth problems. / by Caren Pagel. / Thesis (M.A.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of English Language and Literature, August 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (MA (English))—University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / In this thesis, I examine the way in which Martin Scorsese’s 1976 film Taxi Driver can be read as a critical investigation of post-World War II American masculinity. Drawing on Susan Faludi’s arguments regarding the post-World War II American ‘masculinity crisis’, I highlight specifically how Taxi Driver addresses American masculinity in the context of ideals of heroism, of the myth of the Wild West, of the Vietnam era, and of the increasingly influential role that the popular media play in shaping conceptions of masculinity. In the process I indicate that Taxi Driver exposes, and critiques, an association in modern American society between masculinity and what analysts have termed the ‘myth of regeneration through violence’.

The Western settlement era is only one part of United States national history, but for many Americans it remains the most significant cultural influence. Conversely, the settlement of Canada's western territory is generally treated as a significant phase of national development, but not the defining phase. Because both nations view the frontier experience differently, they also have distinct perceptions of the role violence played in the settlement process, distinctions reflected in the historical record, literature, and films of each country. This study will look at the historical evidence and works of the imagination for both the American and Canadian frontier experience, focusing on the years between 1870 and 1930, and will examine the part that violence played in the development of each national character. The discussion will also illustrate the difference between the historical reality and the mythic version portrayed in popular literature and films by demonstrating the effects of the depiction of violence on the perception of American and Canadian history.

This investigation deals with a change of congressional attitude concerning violence in entertainment media, from noninterference to investigation to initiation of research. The data are primarily from official government records. This study first examines a period of congressional reluctance to interfere with the violent content of movies and radio in 1929-45. Next examined is the period 1945-68, when Congress actively investigated media violence,, focusing on television. Finally, the study examines congressional activity concerning television violence in 1968-74 and the Surgeon General's report on television violence. This report concludes that, by 1955, the pattern of congressional interest in media violence had turned from reluctance to activity, -and discusses the likelihood of future control of television program content.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Over the last four centuries, South Africa has been shaped by the twinned, dialectical histories of violence and resistance to violence. However, because both violence and resistance encompass myriad formations and are underlain with a plethora of ideologies and hermeneutics, studying each - particularly from within critical community psychology - is oftentimes necessarily didactic and reductive. Yet, if this kind of research is to retain emancipatory potential, I contend, it should be both community-oriented and politically committed. In an attempt to understand how violence moves through Thembelihle, a low income community in South Africa, an expansive lens for conceptualising violence and resistance is advanced across this research’s four studies. In Study I, I use discursive psychology to examine how Thembelihle has been constructed in dominant discourse by analysing newspaper reporting on the community. Following this, in Study II and Study III, I draw on multimodal discourse analysis to study representations of quotidian life and political resistance in a participatory documentary film entitled Thembelihle: Place of Hope, which was collaboratively produced by residents of Thembelihle, professional filmmakers and myself. Lastly, in Study IV, I harness the narrative-discursive approach to explore how residents of Thembelihle build community in response to Thembelihle: Place of Hope. It was found that within dominant constructions, Thembelihle was personified as a monolithic and an essentially Other geo-cultural space, made newsworthy principally through its engagement with a broad, often vaguely-conceived, notion of violence. In response to dominant discursive constructions of this kind, community members who featured in and produced the documentary advanced a humanistic conception of Thembelihle which did not accept the different violences to which the community is subject. Following this, audiences of the documentary engaged the affective and political dimensions of community-building in order to advance a democratically conceived notion of collective will. These findings present critical community psychologists and violence scholars with a number of considerations around representation; the multitudinous nature of violence and resistance; psycho-politics; and radical hope. Ultimately, I argue, if such research is to be meaningful, it must be guided by and subordinated to the emancipatory requirements articulated by community members. / Psychology / D. Litt et Phil (Psychology)

Text in English / This study aims to apply the biopolitical theories of Giorgio Agamben on homo sacer to the stereotypical representation of the violent woman. Using feminist methodologies for dismantling and exposing social stereotypes, this research explores the relationship between femininity, violence and the representation of these. By focussing on the influence of traditional narratives as found in ancient mythology and fairy tales, the study investigates the contemporary portrayal of the stereotypical violent woman using acts of dismemberment and dispossession in the work of Quentin Tarantino and Nathalie Djurberg, which serve as examples of the controversial relationship between real and filmic violence. / Art History, Visual Arts & Musicology / M.A. (Art History)

Examining representations of gender from a postcolonial feminist perspective, Patriarchs, Pugilists, and Peacemakers: Masculinity in Irish Film analyzes select works of three popular filmmakers whose careers, taken together, span the period from 1939 to the present.1 I argue that these three artists--John Ford, Jim Sheridan, and Paul Greengrass--explore fundamental questions about patriarchy and violence within Irish and Irish-American contexts, and that, in the process, they upset conventional notions of masculine authority. Investigating alternative conceptions of manhood presented in these films, as well as these filmmakers’ complex engagement with Hollywood film genres, I offer a fuller understanding of their subtle critiques of patriarchy. I contend that their illustrations of socially sanctioned male dominance in the lives of women, as well as their portrayals of male and female resistance to patriarchy, constitute a subversive challenge to traditional order. In the process, I address gendered archetypes that are prevalent in Irish and American cinemas and analyze the ways in which Ford, Sheridan, and Greengrass employ and critique these masculine types through their portrayals of fathers, sons, boxers and pacifists. Ultimately, I argue that the recent Irish films of Sheridan and Greengrass gesture toward future modes of manhood that completely disavow patriarchy and violence. In sum, this project plots a trajectory of Irish cinema during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, charting a progression from ambivalent critique of patriarchy (in the films of John Ford) to outright rejection of patriarchal masculinity (in Jim Sheridan’s work) to reconceptualization of manhood and the family (in the Irish films of Sheridan and Paul Greengrass). / text

Text in English / This study aims to apply the biopolitical theories of Giorgio Agamben on homo sacer to the stereotypical representation of the violent woman. Using feminist methodologies for dismantling and exposing social stereotypes, this research explores the relationship between femininity, violence and the representation of these. By focussing on the influence of traditional narratives as found in ancient mythology and fairy tales, the study investigates the contemporary portrayal of the stereotypical violent woman using acts of dismemberment and dispossession in the work of Quentin Tarantino and Nathalie Djurberg, which serve as examples of the controversial relationship between real and filmic violence. / Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology / M. A. (Art History)