Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, June, 2003. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 122-135)

No description available.

Not available / text

This thesis examines two of the female-driven sitcoms from the 2011-2012 season, New Girl and Girls. I analyze both series from a third-wave feminist perspective, looking at how each series portrays its respective lead character, Jess and Hannah, and how each series portrays funny women in general. Through these analyses, I ultimately argue that Jess on New Girl represents a much more promising feminist icon than Hannah on Girls. This is mainly because Jess is driven by self-love and self-confidence while Hannah is so defined by her self-hatred that she becomes difficult for viewers to relate. Most disappointingly, I find that female-driven sitcoms use humor as a weapon to discipline its characters. / Literature review -- Critical orientation -- New girl : feminist role model or just another manic pixie dream girl? -- Girls : the future of television or whiny, selfish, entitled brats? / Department of Communication Studies

No description available.

xii, 214 p. A print copy of this title is available through the UO Libraries. Search the library catalog for the location and call number. / Recombinant television, a common television practice involving recycled, prepackaged formulas, updated to create programming that is perceived as novel, impacts more than industry processes. While the industry uses recombinants to reduce risk by facilitating aspects of production and audience affiliation, the inadvertent outcomes include a litany of narratives and characters that influence our worldview. As did the myths of earlier oral societies, television serves as one of our modern storytellers, teaching what we value and helping us make sense of our culture. This study focuses on how the prevalence of recombinant television limits portrayals of women and the discourse of feminism in three popular, female cast American sitcoms. This study comparatively examines the recombinant narratives and characters in Golden Girls, Living Single , and Sex and the City . While these programs are seemingly about very different modern women, older White women in suburban Florida; twenty-something African-American women in Brooklyn; and thirty-something, White, professional women in Manhattan, respectively, the four main characters in each show represent feminine archetypes found throughout Western mythology: the iron maiden, the sex object, the child, and the mother. First, a content analysis determines if a relationship exists between the characters and archetypes. Then, a comparative textual analysis reveals the deeper meanings the archetypes carry. Finally, a comparative narrative analysis examines the similarities and differences among the series. The findings reveal that a relationship exists between each modern character and her corresponding ancient archetype, reflecting particular meanings and discourses. The iron maiden archetypes, for example, generally bring forth a feminist discourse, whereas the child archetypes exhibit traditional values. While the sex object archetypes are self-absorbed, consumed with their own beauty and sexual conquests, the mother archetypes seek psychological wellness for themselves and those around them, generally providing much of the emotional work for the group. As reflected in these popular U.S. television series, the similarities among the archetypes and narratives depict limited views of women's lives, while the variance indicates differences among age, race, and class demographics. These recombinant portrayals of ancient archetypes as modern women suggest that our understanding of women's lives remains antiquated, reductionist, and conventional. / Adviser: Debra Merskin

The children's television program Teletubbies and its concomitant controversies are analyzed along with the media attention surrounding the program. A textual analysis is presented, including the methodologies of narrative theory, semiotics/structuralism, and poststructuralism. The context is also analyzed, using a cultural studies and historical reception approach, in order to chronicle and analyze the show's controversies and elucidate how these arguments have affected reception and interpretation of the show. Following textual and contextual analysis, a social science approach is utilized, reviewing literature and research that supports or refutes the arguments at hand. Finally, the results of a qualitative, ethnographical study are presented in order to include the child's perspectives on the show and inform the larger, cultural issues of childhood.

Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries / Department: Journalism and Mass Communications.

Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2007. / This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections. / Includes bibliographical references. / The American daytime serial drama is among the oldest television genres and remains a vital part of the television lineup for ABC and CBS as what this thesis calls an immersive story world. However, many within the television industry are now predicting that the genre will fade into obscurity after two decades of declining ratings. This study outlines how the soap opera industry is and could be further adapting to the technological and social changes of a convergence culture to maintain and revitalize the genre's relevance for viewers and advertisers alike. CBS/Procter and Gamble Productions/TeleVest's As the World Turns will serve as a case study for these changes. This project examines how the existing fan base plays an active role in gaining and maintaining new fans by researching historical and contemporary examples of social relationships that fans form with other fans and the show itself. In addition to looking at how these fan communities operate, this thesis focuses on how soap operas have adapted and might adapt to alternate revenue models such as product placement, capitalize on their vast content archives, and tell stories through multiple media formats. The study concludes that soap operas should be managed as brands and not ephemeral television content because of their permanence in the television landscape, that fans outside the target advertising demographic should be empowered as proselytizers for the show, and that a transgenerational storytelling approach best utilizes the power of the genre to tell its stories. / by Samuel Earl Ford. / S.M.

This thesis presents a study on the subtitler's visibility management as manifested by their subtitling approaches. The special textuality and the recent digitization of subtitling practices make the subtitler's visibility management through subtitling an issue that is rather distinctive from the translator's visibility in general. Previous studies that directly investigate subtitler's visibility tend to focus on subtitler's relatively restricted and/or linear social interactions, while relevant discussion that examines their non-linear social interactions such as subtitling is very rare. Almost no study has provided either a conceptualization of subtitler's visibility or a systematic analytical framework specifically for analysing the subtitler's visibility management through subtitling. In the current study, the author examines the subtitler's visibility management through subtitling by comparing WHV industrial subtitlers' and YYeTs fansubbers' subtitling approaches to The Big Bang Theory. Based on Nornes's (2007) notions of corrupt and abusive subtitling and Ortabasi's critiques on the lack of multimodality in these notions, it has been hypothesized that the two groups of subtitlers' approaches differ in two dimensions and three aspects of issues. Accordingly, an analytical framework is constructed to systematically interrogate the two groups of subtitlers' visibility management as reflected by their subtitling approaches: 1) comparing their subtitling approaches to the verbal and nonverbal issues identified in the represented dimension; 2) comparing their subtitling approaches to the technical issues identified in the representing dimension; 3) comparing and discussing how their relatively different approaches in the two dimensions demonstrate their different visibility management. The findings suggest that the ways in which WHV industrial subtitlers and YYeTs fansubbers manage their visibility differently are multifaceted and bidimensional. First, the industrial subtitlers tend to adopt a relatively corrupt approach and the fansubbers tend to adopt a relatively abusive approach in the represented dimension, while the relative differences between their approaches are more drastic in the verbal aspect than in the nonverbal aspect. Second, the above-found relative differences between the two groups of subtitlers' approaches are even more explicitly consistent in the technical aspect of the representing dimension. Third, in both dimensions, the industrial subtitlers gain less visibility through the relatively corrupt approach and the fansubbers acquire more visibility through the relatively abusive approach. More profoundly, by adopting the relatively corrupt approach, the industrial subtitlers perform gatekeepers in the represented dimension and adherents in the representing dimension; by using the relatively abusive approach, the fansubbers present themselves as educators in the represented dimension and as innovators in the representing dimension. Beyond these findings, this thesis also makes broader theoretical and methodological contributions. It has demonstrated how a nonbinary and generative conceptualization of the subtitler's visibility from a sociological perspective, hitherto never provided by previous discussions, can lead to more fruitful investigations on the subtitler's visibility management. This combination of Nornes's (2007) notions of corrupt and abusive subtitling and Ortabasi's (2007) critiques on them offers us a set of analytical tools for thoroughly investigating how subtitlers manage their visibility differently through subtitling.