La machine hollywoodienne se distingue par son emprise sur la consommation internationale de cinéma. Notamment, la récurrence des figures présentées dans le cinéma issu des grands studios de production influencerait non seulement les attentes du public relativement à la forme (durée, structure scénaristique, effets spéciaux), mais aussi la perception de l'histoire, des valeurs, de « l'Amérique » et du trépas. Une de ces figures tient dans les représentations de la mort du héros dans le finale hollywoodien, à laquelle cette recherche se consacre, et ce, à travers la récurrence des figures et leur portée idéologique. C'est sur cette question principale que s'adosse la structuration conceptuelle du mémoire qui est traduite en cadre d'interprétation. Celui-ci s'inspire des concepts de l'École de Francfort sur l'industrie culturelle, des travaux sur l'idéologie du cinéma américain d'Anne-Marie Bidaud, et d'un certain nombre d'auteurs sur les aspects du mythe (Joseph Campbell) et de la représentation de la mort (Louis-Vincent Thomas, Edgar Morin). Nous avons constitué un corpus de 12 films issus de la production hollywoodienne (300, Avatar, Easy Rider, Gladiator, lnglourious Basterds, Pearl Harbor, Public Enemies, Saving Private Ryan, Scarface (1932), Scarface (1983), Titanic, Troy). Ces films, choisis pour leur succès à l'échelle internationale et/ou leurs caractéristiques particulières en regard de la production des grands studios, s'avèrent pertinents pour une analyse s'effectuant sous l'angle des représentations de la mort du héros, particulièrement éloquentes de l'idéologie inscrite dans le finale. On sait que Hollywood produit des films en fonction de marchés donnés, que les productions sont formatées selon des genres précis déclinant leurs propres codes (historique, gangster, drame, péplum, action, fantastique, guerre) et que les finales hollywoodiens, surtout ceux des blockbusters, sont reconnus pour recourir au happy end. Ce schéma récurrent, manifeste dans l'analyse film à film du corpus, est exploré dans la dynamique « mythidéologique » à l'œuvre, mettant en relief des ressorts idéologiques précis, qui traversent les procédés de représentation de la mort et ce qu'en tirent les vivants. Il nous est apparu évident en conclusion qu'en esthétisant la mort, Hollywood renforce une certaine vision de la vie humaine. Peu importe les détours scénaristiques, les films et les héros, les grands studios nous ramènent à une impitoyable finalité : le monde dans lequel nous vivons doit être préservé tel qu'il est. Ceux qui sauront donner leur vie à la reconduction de ce projet de société seront récompensés et les autres, sanctionnés et privés de la rétribution symbolique réservée aux héros. En fait, il ressort nettement que dans les films à l'étude, il n'y a pas de sacrifice du héros sans que la mise en scène le compense par des dispositifs pour évoquer la survivance symbolique du sacrifié, illustrer son immortalité ou justifier son amortalité. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Cinéma, Happy end, Mort, Mythe, Rêve américain

Cette dissertation propose un nouveau récit des expériences de William Faulkner à Hollywood afin de réévaluer la deuxième moitié de son œuvre de fiction. Dans ses premiers projets de scénarios de films, Faulkner a choisi d’adapter des œuvres de fiction qu’il avait publiées antérieurement. À la lumière de l’utilisation du genre —autant des films que des personnes— par les studios d’Hollywood pour organiser la production et le marketing des films, la fiction de Faulkner apparut soudainement comme perverse et ses représentations de la masculinité comme homoérotiques. Dans les premiers jets de Turn About et de War Birds, Faulkner s’approprie les normes du genre hollywoodien pour nier ces connotations sexuelles. Ses révisions ultérieures révèlent un recul systématique par rapport à la perversité d’Hollywood et au genre du woman’s film, au profit de la performance de la masculinité propre aux war pictures. Ses révisions réimaginent également des matériaux qui sont au cœur de son œuvre de fiction. Quand il se remet à écrire de la fiction, Faulkner répète cette approche narrative dans des nouvelles telles que “Golden Land” et “An Odor of Verbena,” deux récits qui rompent avec les pratiques et le style de ses premières fictions majeures. Les conséquences découlant de cette influence hollywoodienne—une volonté d’éradiquer toute connotation sexuelle, l’adoption authentique plutôt qu’ironique du mélodrame générique, et une rhétorique morale explicitement construite comme une négation d’Hollywood—se manifestent plus tard dans des textes aussi divers que The Reivers, Compson Appendix, ou son discours de réception du Prix Nobel. Vues sous cet angle, les dernières fictions de Faulkner deviennent une composante essentielle de son œuvre, fournissant une base nouvelle pour réexaminer la place des genres narratifs populaires, du genre et de la sexualité dans son cycle de Yoknapatawpha. / This dissertation offers a new narrative of William Faulkner’s Hollywood experiences and uses it to initiate a reevaluation of his middle and late fiction. In his earliest screenplay projects, Faulkner chose to adapt his previously published fiction. Read in light of Hollywood studios’ reliance on gender and genre to organize film production and marketing, this fiction suddenly appeared perverse; its portraits of masculinity, homoerotic. In his draft screenplays for Turn About and War Birds Faulkner appropriates Hollywood genre norms to negate these sexual connotations. His revisions reveal a pattern of recoil from Hollywood perversity and the woman’s film; and of an embrace of the war picture’s performance of masculinity. They also re-imagine materials central to Faulkner’s ongoing fictional project. Faulkner later repeats this pattern of response in such stories as “Golden Land” and “An Odor of Verbena,” both of which break from the defining practices and styles of his earlier, major fiction. The consequences that follow from this Hollywood influence—an effort to extinguish sexual connotation, an authentic rather than ironic embrace of generic melodrama, and a moral rhetoric explicitly constructed as a negation of Hollywood—later manifest in texts as diverse as The Reivers, the Compson Appendix, and the Nobel Prize acceptance speech. Viewed in this light, the late fictions become an essential component of his oeuvre, offering a new site for re-examining the place of popular genre , gender and sexuality in the Yoknapatawpha saga.

Since the introduction of synchronized sound at the end of the 1920s the film musical has had a special place in American film. But even with that special place the interest in the film musical has varied a lot during the 20th century. From the high interest during the  “Golden Age” in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, through low interest in the following decades and then renewed interest in musicals with the animated film musicals from Disney in the 1990s. But what has happened after the millennium? Has there been any development in the American film musical genre or is it just more of the same? This thesis tries to answer the question by analyzing three successful film musicals from the period 2001-2013, Moulin Rouge! (Baz Luhrmann, 2001), The Phantom of the Opera (Joel Schumacher, 2004), and Les Misérables (Tom Hooper, 2012) and comparing them to classical traditional musicals. According to this thesis there is a split answer, some areas of the classical  American film musical have developed while other areas still remains the same.

The thesis seeks to trace the development of the process of &amp / #8216 / reflection as reality&amp / #8217 / through a politico-historical analysis of the intimacies between the United States governments and Hollywood cinema during the Cold War. The working assumption while projecting this study is as follows / the Hollywood cinema and the United States governments enjoyed a close relationship during the period in question. The latter actively involved in the inscription of the wills and desires of US Foreign policymakers into the American popular culture. The thesis will also extend the discussion to a politic cultural assessment of how the United States, through the films, represents and re-presents its superiority, and more importantly, how these films affect and shape the spectators perceptions about its foreign policy.

Monster Business is a feature film project comprising a horror-thriller feature screenplay and an accompanying exegesis. The screenplay is about a best-selling author who is behind on the delivery of the sequel to his money-spinning first novel and is made an offer by an enigmatic stranger to help rearrange his working environment to facilitate the rapid completion of the manuscript. Over the coming hours, then months, the author discovers just how far the stranger will go to complete the terms of this bizarre and brutal new contract. This accompanying exegesis examines a series of 'paratexts' (a logline, a one-pager and a treatment) that the screenplay has given rise to. The thesis argues that the role of the screenwriter does not end with the production of the core text--the screenplay. Instead, in order to support the development and/or the marketing of the script into a feature film, the screenwriter is an ongoing generator of supplemental documents or paratexts. The paper explores the status and function of paratexts (loglines, onepagers, treatments and explanatory development notes). It further argues that developmental paratexts are a necessary evil, providing a sifting or culling mechanism for producers and production executives, and that they are intended to guide a project toward being 'greenlit' but will more often have, at best, benign or, at worst, negative or destructive effects on its development. In this way, developmental paratexts, although ubiquitous and pro forma, are inherently problematic.

Women exert only a modicum of production power in 21st century cinema despite its growing accessibility and spectatorship through the developing technologies of the digital era. In 2007, of the top 250 grossing films in Hollywood, only 10% were written, and 6% directed, by women, and just 16% contained leading female protagonists. Why, after the gains of the film feminist movement, is there such a significant gender imbalance in mainstream film, and an imbalance that is only increasing over time? More significantly, what are the possibilities and limitations for reel woman’s subjectivity and agency, in and on screen, in this male-dominated landscape? As a female filmmaker in this current climate I conduct an autoethnographical scriptwriting-based investigation into female subjectivity and agency, by writing the feature length screenplay Float, which is both the dramatic experiment and the creative outcome of this research. The exegesis works symbiotically with my scriptwriting journey by outlining the broader contexts surrounding women filmmakers and their female representations. In this self-reflexive examination, I use an interdisciplinary methodology to unravel the overt and latent sites of resistance for reel woman today on three interdependent levels. These comprise the historical, political and philosophical background to woman’s treatment both behind, and in front of, the camera; my lived experiences as an emerging writer/director as I write Float; and my representation of the screenplay’s central female character. I use the multiple logic of screenplay diegesis to explore the issues that have a bearing on women’s ability to be active agents in the world they inhabit, including: the dichotomising of female desire, the influence of familial history, the repression of the mother, the dominance of the male gaze, the disavowal of female specificity, and women’s consequent dislocation from their self-determined desire. These obstacles are simultaneously negotiated as I map my process of writing Float and deal with the challenging contexts in which the screenplay was created. In the course of my scriptwriting investigation, film feminist and French poststructuralist paradigms are considered and negotiated as I experiment whether it is possible for female filmmakers, and their female characters, to overcome the seemingly insurmountable odds facing women’s actualisation today. My research brings to light the critical need for more inclusive modes of practice across the film industry, discourse and pedagogy that are cognisant and respectful of reel women’s difference, and allow them to explore their own specificity. The thesis argues that it would be advantageous for female filmmakers to challenge their ‘fixed’ status in phallocentric discourse, and to deconstruct their patriarchal conditioning through engagement with forms of identity and writing resistance that recognise the fluidity of their subjectivity, and the consequent potential for change. I also highlight the importance of an accessible and affirmative feminist cinema pertinent to the 21st century, to integrate feminist ideals into the mainstream, and finally bring reel woman out of the margins.

Thesis (D.Min.)--South Florida Center for Theological Studies, 1992. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph.D) -- University of Western Sydney, 2007. / A thesis submitted to the University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, School of Humanities and Languages, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Includes bibliography.

Zugl.: Zürich, Univ., Diss, 2009

Thesis (M.Soc.Sc.)--University of Hong Kong, 1980. / Also available in print.