This thesis is about the cultural bargain; the balancing relationship between author monopoly and user affect desires, as applying to the ambiguity of characters. Character culture is a hybrid of the characters that are created and sold by authors with artistic and legal concerns, and the character-affect-relationship of the audience users of those characters. This study examines the law and industry practices in the United States and Canada as it relates to character and the limited scope of the law in defining just what exactly a character is. Also, I examine the major issues in the cultural bargain between the ownership of characters of authors, and the appropriation of characters by audiences, through the dominate arguments for both authors and audiences and the issue of privileged accessibility to characters. By "appropriate", I am referring to any act of an audience member, utilizing a character they do not own, in new ways, that the original author of the character did not give permission for, or approve. Finally, I present my analysis of how the cultural bargain may experience a balance between both authors and audience, by defining characters using the audience affect interpretation as criteria.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.33884 |
| Date | January 2001 |
| Creators | Chinappi, Franco. |
| Contributors | Hamilton, Sheryl (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of Art History and Communication Studies.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001875946, proquestno: MQ78998, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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