This thesis is a study of female authorship that examines the feature films of Jane Campion in order to determine how her preoccupation with the cinematic articulation of 'female experience' is expressed in her films-whether female experience can be aestheticised, and to discover whether her gender can be discerned through the films of a woman director. The exploration of these ideas entails a review of the feminist thinking, methodologies and epistemologies that are relevant to cinema, and that examine relevant theoretical positions within feminism and theories of cinematic authorship. The key lens employed here for theorising Campion's cinema is that of postmodern-feminism. As an approach, this allows an understanding of difference rather than 'Otherness', and an enquiry into gender that is neither essentialist nor constructionist, but facilitates critical thinking about both positions. The central argument of this thesis is that Campion's film practice functions as an investigation into gender difference, how women and men live together in the world-experience that world, and are engendered as female through historic, psychological and cultural experiences. This thesis therefore argues that Campion's aesthetic and perspective is not only feminist, but also, female, and feminine, and her work a cinematic articulation of female experience.

This study examines how women are portrayed in four of Disney’s feature films, withthe focus on the presentation of relations between women. The films examined areSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Sleeping Beauty (1959), The Little Mermaid(1989) and Frozen (2013). The aim is to analyse the development that has taken placefrom a gender perspective, from the earliest film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs(1937), to the latest, Frozen (2013), and to reveal the significance of the femalecharacters for each other. The films’ portrayal of women and female relations isdiscussed in relation to previous criticism of Disney for their stereotyped portrayal ofwomen, and through a thematic comparison with the known fairytales on which thefilms are based. The analysis has been performed with the aid of content analysis basedon Stukát (2011) and Ledin & Moberg (2010). The theoretical foundation is gendertheory, chiefly using Jarlbro (2006), Nilson (2010) and Davies (2003).One finding of this study is that it is only in the recent films that more room has beengiven to a positive relationship between women. In the early films there is more hatebetween women, who are therefore not shown as good objects for young girls toidentify with, whereas the later films often depict relations between women as loving.However, the mother figure and female friends are often absent from Disney’s films.These relationships are often described as being the most important for girls’ identitydevelopment, and therefore the early Disney films can be assumed to lack goodidentification possibilities for girls. Another finding is that the female characters havebecome more complex in the recent films, not following traditional female behaviour.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Communication, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 58-59).

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This thesis examines how contemporary femme fatales operate under patriarchal notions and expectations of gender and femininity to get away with their crimes. Whereas classic femme fatales were relegated to a tragic fate—either through death, incarceration or other forms of subjugation—contemporary femme fatales now have the narrative possibility of using their sexuality, intellect and agency to get away with their crimes at the expense of the male hero. Breaking with the traditional analysis centering around the femme fatale in her relation to men and male anxieties regarding feminine sexual difference, I propose a queer reading of the contemporary femme fatale that accredits the femme fatale for her active cunning and independence through an examination of her enhanced characteristics which make it possible for her to succeed under the continuous constraints of the patriarchy. The films examined are: The Last Seduction (1994), Gone Girl (2014), Body Heat (1981), Nightmare Alley (2021), Bound (1996) and Basic Instinct (1992). While the popularity of the femme fatale continues, there are still relatively few examples of femme fatales who get away with their crimes as well as a continued lack of scholarship that discusses the intricacies of the femme fatale absent from her theorization as a beacon of male anxieties. However, this project remains hopeful and advocates for a more diverse representation and an in increase scholastic conversation surrounding femme fatales in contemporary cinema.

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This thesis is designed to determine the impact of the archetype of the Great Mother on the plot, characterizations, and interpersonal relationships in three contemporary films. Chapter I describes the elements and applications of the archetype and the Jungian analysis employed in the study. Chapter II details the phases of the Great Mother archetype and discusses Jung's process of individuation and how the Great Mother controls this quest. Chapters III, IV, and V focus on The Heretic, Network, and Looking for Mr. Goodbar respectively. Chapter VI summarizes the existence and power of the archetype in the films and postulates that the image of women in film may be stereotyped due to the Great Mother archetype.

“The More You Look, the more THERE IS to see…” From Hinekaro Goes on a Picnic and Blows up Another Obelisk (Christine Parker, Oceania Parker, 1995) In the 1990s New Zealand was in the grip of free market fundamentalism, neo-liberal deregulation of the economy having begun in the mid-eighties. The Maori protest movement was a major source of societal conflict and feminism had become the ‘F’ word. This study examines my writing and directing during the 1990s in New Zealand. It is proposed that the films contributed to national and international conversations around feminism, colonial struggles, spirituality and the supernatural. It is argued that these works offer a social critique of neoliberalism and the divisive effects of it, on women in particular. In the context of this appraisal neoliberalism is understood to be a set of beliefs that support the functioning of the global free market, with minimal government regulation, except to protect the functioning of private enterprise and the ownership of private property. The short films One Man’s Meat (1991), Peach (1993), and Hinekaro Goes on a Picnic and Blows up Another Obelisk (1995) and the feature film Channelling Baby (1999) are located in an oeuvre of female, Gay, and Maori film makers and artists responding to this environment. The recurrence of alternative utopias, the use of magic realism and the representation of the spiritual and supernatural in my work are also considered in relation to other films made in the period. A case is made that the films were part of a small vanguard of films responding to the 1990s status quo by offering alternative modes of discourse to the dominant economic rationalism. Rich in visual intensity and heightened narrative tropes, such as irony and fragmented narratives, my aesthetic choices, together with recurring themes of chance and fate, agency and identity, are considered to link the films together as a coherent study. While the works are located in an evolving feminist tradition in the 1990s, their continued relevance today, particularly in relation to foregrounding marginal voices and the disruption of dominant paradigms and expectations of female behaviour and identity, underpin the claim for originality.

Följande uppsats kommer att fokusera på relationen mellan Quentin Tarantino och blaxploitation, och syftet med uppsatsen är att undersöka huruvida Tarantino väljer att representera sina svarta kvinnliga huvudkaraktärer annorlunda i sina blaxploitation-influerade filmer Jackie Brown (1997) och Django Unchained (2012) i jämförelse med representationen av svarta kvinnliga huvudkaraktärer i två av de mest kända blaxploitationfilmerna från 1970-talet, Coffy (1973) och Foxy Brown (1974). Den grundläggande teorin för uppsatsen är den feministiska filmteorin, men andra texter som berör representationen av kvinnor och specifikt svarta kvinnor på film är lika väsentliga. Mitt tillvägagångssätt för att besvara uppsatsens frågeställningar är att genom närläsning av de utvalda filmerna samt deras respektive kvinnliga karaktärer, med understöd av relevant litteratur och teorier, göra en jämförande analys. Slutresultatet visar att Tarantino i och med filmen Jackie Brown lyckas utveckla den svarta och starka kvinnliga karaktären från blaxploitation dock utan att föra vidare undergenrens problematiska sexualisering av kvinnokroppen. Däremot lyckas han inte lika bra i samband med Django Unchained, där den kvinnliga, ofta hjälplösa, huvudkaraktären främst visas som antingen någonting vackert eller någon som plågas för andras njutning.

This thesis offers an analysis of women in horror film through an in depth exploration of what I term ‘gynaehorror’ – horror films that are concerned with female sex, sexuality and reproduction. While this is a broad and fruitful area of study, work in it has been shaped by a pronounced emphasis upon psychoanalytic theory, which I argue has limited the field of inquiry. To challenge this, this thesis achieves three things. Firstly, I interrogate a subgenre of horror that has not been studied in depth for twenty years, but that is experiencing renewed interest. Secondly, I analyse aspects of this subgenre outside of the dominant modes of inquiry by placing an emphasis upon philosophies of sex, gender and corporeality, rather than focussing on psychodynamic approaches. Thirdly, I consider not only what these theories may do for the study of horror films, but what spaces of inquiry horror films may open up within these philosophical areas. To do this, I focus on six broad streams: the current limitations and opportunities in the field of horror scholarship, which I augment with a discussion of women’s bodies, houses and spatiality; the relationship between normative heterosexuality and the twin figures of the chaste virgin and the voracious vagina dentata; the representation and expression of female subjectivity in horror films that feature pregnancy and abortion; the manner in which reproductive technology is bound up within hegemonic constructions of gender and power, as is evidenced by the figure of the ‘mad scientist’; the way that discourses of motherhood and maternity in horror films shift over time, but nonetheless result in the demonisation of the mother; and the theoretical and corporeal possibilities opened up through Deleuze and Guattari’s model of schizoanalysis, with specific regard to the 'Alien' films. As such, this thesis makes a unique contribution to the study of women in horror film, while also advocating for an expansion of the theoretical repertoire available to the horror scholar.