The Changing Role of On-Air Women Journalists: Journalists on Local Television News and Digital Influencers on Instagram

This thesis looks at how women journalists are now also digital influencers on Instagram. It analyzes the gendered expectations of women journalists that are also included on their professional Instagram accounts.
Date: August 2021
Creator: Lara, Sarah
System: The UNT Digital Library
Chronicle of the Online Culture Wars: Reactionary Affective Publics in Neoliberal Postmodernity (open access)

Chronicle of the Online Culture Wars: Reactionary Affective Publics in Neoliberal Postmodernity

The Age of Trump witnessed the visible rise of intense culture wars and polarization in the United States. While culture wars are not new phenomena, the current iteration has digital media acting as new discursive structures and mediating battlegrounds for all sides of the cultural conflict. This project chronicles these online culture wars, demonstrating how within a neoliberal and postmodern socio-cultural condition, the rise of ambivalent, profit-driven digital technologies and platforms structure affect and mediate newly networked neo-reactionary populist (sub)cultural ideologies and discourses. The resulting online ecosystems afforded the digital formations of obscure reactionary subcultures (trolls, antifeminists, the alt-right, etc.) with particular personalized and affectively driven memetic communicative logics. These reactionary affective publics eventually began converging under perceived common ideological and social interests as online actions and reactionary discursive (re)formations and (re)networkings were catalyzed by (sub/cross)cultural conflicts and moments of sentimental activation. This led to the emergence of affectively charged and informally networked reactionary publics which began spilling out into the offline world alongside Trump's ascendancy to the White House. The increasing progressive reactions during the Trump Era also faced limitations in combatting reactionary politics due to structural dynamics of digital media and the larger culture war filtering of politics. …
Date: May 2021
Creator: Montalvo, David Rafael
System: The UNT Digital Library
Crying for Change: Examining the Use of Period Melodrama and the Melodramatic Mode in Contemporary Queer Representation (open access)

Crying for Change: Examining the Use of Period Melodrama and the Melodramatic Mode in Contemporary Queer Representation

This thesis illustrates how Melodrama and the melodramatic mode have been adapted within contemporary cinema as both a means of commenting on prior LGBTQI representation, and of exposing mainstream audiences to the issues still faced by many within this spectrum. Through my analyses of Carol (2015), Brokeback Mountain (2005), and A Single Man (2009), I examine how filmmakers have drawn on Melodrama as both an aesthetic form, and as a reference to the broader field of generic history and criticism which ground it as a subversive form of societal critique. By focusing specifically on how these three films portray ideological issues of gender, stereotyping, parenthood, aging, and personal shame, my thesis argues that these films are making a commentary on the damaging effects of these discourses on broader society. I also simultaneously question whether the Period Melodrama as a genre can ever fully escape the conservative nature of this form, as well as the implications of continuing to portray those on the LGBTQI spectrum as victims.
Date: August 2021
Creator: Bonthuys, Justin
System: The UNT Digital Library
Forbidden Pleasures: Queerness and Cannibalism in Film and Television (open access)

Forbidden Pleasures: Queerness and Cannibalism in Film and Television

The trope of the queer cannibal recurs throughout fiction as well as film and television. While literature scholars such as David Bergman and Caleb Crain have written about this figure in American literature, the queer cannibal remains unstudied in the realm of media studies. This thesis analyzes six media texts that feature queer cannibals: Hannibal (2013-2015), Ravenous (1999), The Terror (2018), Yellowjackets (2021-), Raw (2016), and Bones and All (2022). Through these analyses, this thesis establishes a genre termed "queer cannibal texts." These texts function on two different levels: they include a cannibal character who is or can be read as queer, and they in some way cannibalize and queer an existing story or societal script. The presence of a queer cannibal character often signals that the work itself is a queer cannibal text. These texts are built on an awareness of existing power structures and narratives. By cannibalizing these narratives—whether they be a fictional narrative that is being adapted, or societal narratives of white supremacy, heteronormativity, and so on—and interrogating them from a queer perspective, queer cannibal texts create reparative narratives that speak from the margins. Queer cannibal characters act as a textual manifestation of this framework, providing a …
Date: July 2023
Creator: Hadley, Kristen M.
System: The UNT Digital Library
King of the Merchandise: How Showa Era Paratexts Forever Changed the Godzilla Franchise (open access)

King of the Merchandise: How Showa Era Paratexts Forever Changed the Godzilla Franchise

The Godzilla media franchise is one of the longest running media franchises, which means the character himself has gone through many changes throughout the years. However, in American pop culture, the characters of Godzilla is perceived as a hero, a friend of humanity and defender of Earth. This reputation comes from the Showa Era, where Godzilla often fought on the side of humanity, rather than trying to destroy them as depicted in the original Gojira. In recent years, Toho, Godzilla's corporate owners, have been steering the King of the Monsters back into the villain role. Despite this tone shift by Godzilla's owners, American Godzilla paratexts still generally depict Godzilla as a hero. These depictions of Godzilla are used to maintain his status as a family friendly heritage brand and keep a door open for parents to introduce their children to the brand. Such a strategy allows Godzilla to survive into the modern day as an international powerhouse franchise.
Date: May 2021
Creator: Cooper, Dalton
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Mutant Database: Media Franchise Authorship, Creators' Rights, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (open access)

The Mutant Database: Media Franchise Authorship, Creators' Rights, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TMNT) is a massive ongoing franchise that began as a 1984 self-published comic book created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird. Its history is intertwined with the creators' rights movement and the Creator's Bill of Rights (CBR), which rejected work-for-hire contracts, wherein creative laborers—creative authors—cede authorial control of their labor. Because the production of comic books and their franchises is highly collaborative, intellectual property (IP) rights are often consolidated in a single rights holder—a corporate author—via work-for-hire contracts. Eastman and Laird, as both creative and corporate authors, initially maintained strict control of TMNT licensees, but allowed their employees to retain IP rights over creative contributions to TMNT. However, in 1992, Eastman and Laird sent retroactive work-for-hire contracts to all current and former employees. This TMNT case study illustrates how the CBR represented the conflicting interests of publishers and creative laborers and ultimately reinforced the individualistic view of authorship that undergirds work-for-hire doctrine. Additionally, because IP legal infrastructure uses individualistic discourse to consolidate control of media franchises in one entity that allows authorized individuals access to a shared database of creative expressions that workers can borrow from or add to, media franchises resemble folklore and are made …
Date: May 2022
Creator: Cardenas, Jen
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Netflix Strategy in France: Local Language Productions, Teen Audiences, and Instagram Marketing (open access)

The Netflix Strategy in France: Local Language Productions, Teen Audiences, and Instagram Marketing

The relationship between France and Hollywood is rooted in a deep history that dates to the late 1800s. French Cultural elites and policymakers have regulated Hollywood to prevent the American ideals that are depicted in Hollywood movies from infringing on French culture, restricting free trade distribution practices to limit audiences' accessibility of imported, non-French media. These import regulations have strengthened French exceptionalism, which is an ideal that recognizes France as being superior to any other culture, region, or market. Yet, the impacts of globalization and the rise of technology have shifted media consumption habits and forced France to regulate new modes of distribution, like digital streaming platforms, to continue to protect the French culture, film industry, and commerce. In 2014, when Silicon Valley-based streaming platform Netflix, entered France, the principles of French exceptionalism impacted the reception of the Hollywood-focused platform. Policymakers imposed a tax system which requires internationally based streamers to invest in the French media industry. Netflix invested their tax into local language, teen productions to target a demographic whose ideals were less rooted in French exceptionalism. Additionally, Netflix utilized the affordances of Instagram to visually appeal to teen users when marketing the local language productions Mortel (2019-2021) and …
Date: May 2023
Creator: Kite, Rachel
System: The UNT Digital Library
Nine Lives: A History of Cat Women, Subversive Femininity, and Transgressive Archetypes in Film (open access)

Nine Lives: A History of Cat Women, Subversive Femininity, and Transgressive Archetypes in Film

The intention of this thesis is to identify and analyze the cat woman archetype as a contemporary extension of the transgressive witch archetype, which rampantly appears over the course of cinema history, working as a signifier of a patriarchal society's fear of autonomous and subversive women. The character of Catwoman is the ultimate representation for this archetype on grounds of her visibility, longevity, and ability to return again and again. More importantly, Catwoman and her sisterhood of cat women work against male creators as a means of female empowerment through trickery. Within this thesis, key films of varying genres are drawn from throughout cinema history and analyzed in order to demonstrate the intertextual network of characters that make up the cat woman archetype, and the importance of the Catwoman character in her many forms.
Date: August 2020
Creator: Barnett, Katrina
System: The UNT Digital Library
Views from the Beach: Spectator Positions and the American International Pictures Beach Party Films (open access)

Views from the Beach: Spectator Positions and the American International Pictures Beach Party Films

The American International Pictures (AIP) Beach Party Films were a major American cultural phenomenon in the early 1960s and continue to play a significant role in the American cultural imagination. The AIP Beach Party Films, despite their popularity and influence, have been largely ignored by academia and a thorough academic examination has yet to be written. This thesis attempts to change such an academic precedent. At first glance, the Beach Party Films are frivolous and chaotic (perhaps explaining the lack of academic inquiry). However, upon closer examination, the Beach Party Films are laden with cultural artifacts, insights into American culture of the late 1950s and early 1960s and provide a view into the tenuous relationship between 1960s American dominant culture and developing countercultures. Further, the Beach Party Films reveal a 1960s cultural lull; a culture that was caught between the dominant culture of 1950s America and the explosive cultural changes of the late 1960s that had yet to occur. By closely looking at the AIP Beach Party Films, and doing so through the lens of various cultural critics, there can be described potential cultural perspectives from early 1960s America.
Date: July 2023
Creator: Leavy, Mark
System: The UNT Digital Library
What Does It Mean to Go Super Saiyan: Gender Identity and Fandom in the Toonami Release of Dragon Ball Z (1998-2003) (open access)

What Does It Mean to Go Super Saiyan: Gender Identity and Fandom in the Toonami Release of Dragon Ball Z (1998-2003)

The intention of this thesis is to analyze the representations of masculinity in the anime series Dragon Ball Z as it aired on Cartoon Network's programming block Toonami, specifically the nature in which they were framed and how oppositional interpretations in the fandom became prevalent as a result. The series emphasizes the evolution of its central characters Goku, Vegeta, and Gohan into performing a sensitive masculinity, but there are a prevalence of images in the series that discredit this. Similarly, the way the series was advertised on Toonami placed emphasis on images of superficial violence and reinforced the masculinity that the series was attempting to move beyond. Understanding the ways fans have interpreted Dragon Ball Z on Toonami helps reveal that there is much more to a media text's influence than its themes and representations of gender.
Date: August 2021
Creator: Liverett, Nicholas
System: The UNT Digital Library