This content analysis study of music videos answered questions concerning the amount and severity of violence content during different time periods of the day. A system of classifying violence content as nonviolent, mostly light, neither light nor serious, mostly serious, and extremely serious was used to evaluate music videos from MTV. One hour from each day was randomly selected for evaluation for a period of thirty days. During this time, there were 313 occurrences of music videos which were aired and subsequently evaluated. The results indicated the majority of these music videos contained mostly light or no violence content. This study also revealed that the most likely time of day a viewer would see videos with violence would be from midnight until eight in the morning.

The purpose of this study is to inquire if there are dispositions of any type. of newscast carried by ABC News about Nigeria and if these newscasts are positively or negatively inclined. The analysis quantified and verified that while the broadcast content of ABC News presentations on Nigeria have been objectively covered, the newscasts have taken stereotypical patterns. This, thereby establishes the need for ABC News, being an example of American network news, to diversify and cover stories of social and human interest in Nigeria and other Third World countries. The study concludes that a true maxim of news coverage is needed as a guide to unbiased, unslanted or cliched news presentations.

A survey testing student uses of and attitudes towards traditional broadcast television news and eleven "tabloid" programs was conducted using 300 students enrolled at the University of North Texas. The 10:00 p.m. newscast was most watched by the students. The most watched weekly news magazine was "60 Minutes." The Oprah Winfrey Show" was the daily "tabloid" leader. "America's Most Wanted" led the weekly "tabloid" shows. Students perceived daily newscasts as important sources of information. "USA Today," the weekly news magazines "60 Minutes" and "20/20,1" and "America's Most Wanted" were also cited by students as being "important" information programming. However, the survey showed "tabloid television" was not a major source of informational programming for college students.

The historical development of independent filmmaking has led to a situation in which an independent filmmaker must do two important things to achieve distribution and success. The filmmaker should continue study and mastery of the skills and methodologies needed in development, pre-production, production, post-production, and distribution. These skills and methods help the filmmaker to produce a quality film. The most important thing the filmmaker can do is to see that the film conforms to the Hollywood narrative standard. This standard is ingrained in a majority of the audience and deviation usually meets resistance. The standard not only includes story structure, but the use of name actors and some elements of physical action.

This is a reflexive documentary on the Open School in Los Angeles, an elementary school which is a field research site for Apple Computer, Inc. This videotape explores filmmaker/subject relationships, media perception by children, and issues of representation. An accompanying production book describes the grantwriting process, the pre-production, production, and post-production stages, as well as theoretical implications of the documentary.

This study reviews the changes in Taiwan's newspaper industry during its current period of transition. Contemporary newspaper development in Taiwan after the lifting of martial law in July 1987 is evaluated in relation to transformations in the newspaper marketplace, journalistic practices, labor relations, and freedom of expression. This study concludes that changes in Taiwan's newspaper business are closely related to changes in the country's political atmosphere. The lifting of the Ban of Newspaper brought freedoms for which journalists had fought for decades; however, journalistic quality has not improved at the same speed. Changes will continue in the journalism industry; whether it grows in a healthy way is a topic for future study.

This study is an examination of Lino Brocka's development as a filmmaker of the New Cinema of the Philippines. It provides a close textual analysis of two recent Brocka films, Macho Dancer (1988) and Fight for Us (1989) using a sociocultural approach to the study of the representation of aspects of social reality and their relationship to contemporary Philippine society. The study is divided into six chapters: Chapter I contains the introduction to the study, Chapter II traces the development of Philippine cinema in relation to Philippine socio-political history, Chapter III describes the New Cinema film movement in the Philippines, Chapter IV provides a biographical sketch of Lino Brocka in which the development of his critical attitude, notions of social reality, and significant works are discussed, Chapter V contains the film analyses, and Chapter VI contains the conclusions to the study.

Screenplay for animated feature film. Story and characters are based on a short novel, The Adventures of Hank the Cowdog. first in a series. This adaptation aims to translate the humor and unique dog-centered perspective of the original source into the medium of film. Hank the Cowdog, head of security on an isolated ranch, works undercover inside a pack of coyotes to solve a series of chicken murders. To solve the case, Hank defends his ranch, sheep and chickens from a devious and powerful coyote leader, Scraunch. With help from a variety of friends and a change in attitude, Hank saves the ranch. Screenplay places detective film conventions in an action-adventure cartoon format. Thesis includes notes on adaptation process.

This study tested American television effects on Taiwanese Students in uncertainty reduction and stereotype forming. The study consisted of a questionnaire analysis and a focus group discussion. Fifty-five subjects responded to the questionnaires and twenty of them joined two group discussions.

Martin Scorsese's films, GOODFELLAS and CASINO, and Quentin Tarantino's RESERVOIR DOGS and PULP FICTION are examined to determine if the crime film of the 1990s has become increasingly more in the style of film noir. The differences and similarities between the two crime films each director has either written or co-written in the 1990s are delineated to demonstrate this trend. Other crime films of the latter 1990s (SEVEN, THE USUAL SUSPECTS, and MULHOLLAND FALLS) are also examined to aid in defining the latest incarnation of the crime film as "Noir Modernist," a term that is demonstrated to be a more accurate description for the current crime films than B. Ruby Rich's, "Neo-Noir of the 1990s."

Over the past decade, cinema studies scholars have begun to recognize the value of mythographical methodologies for motion picture analysis; however, most of the scholarly research in this field has focused either on mythic archetypal images or on monomythic narrative structure, rather than combining the two approaches into a unified theory. This essay addresses the problem by proposing a mythographical methodology of motion picture analysis based on Carl Jung's theory of archetypal images and Joseph Campbell's theories concerning the monomythic structure of heroic narratives. Combining the two approaches of myth interpretation results in a more comprehensive methodology for interpreting the mythic elements of motion pictures. This essay illustrates the application of this methodology through a detailed analysis of Terry Gilliam's film, The Fisher King.

This study focused on the televisual and cultural practices of Iranians via public access television in Dallas, Texas. It includes analysis of format and content. It combines demographic, structural, and statistical information with a culturalist and interpretive viewpoint in examining the efforts of Iranians, via access television programs, in preserving their culture and the formation of a coherent and active community in the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex.

Post Time is a non-fiction video program depicting some of the careers found at North American horse race tracks. Through the use of videotaped footage taken at eight race tracks and three training farms, the horse racing industry's trainers, jockeys, owners and grooms are profiled in the world they call the backstretch. The video begins with a brief history of horse racing and the origins of thoroughbred horses followed by closer examinations of the economic and social experiences faced by the owners, trainers, jockeys, and grooms as they attempt to prepare horses for racing every week.

This thesis explores the films produced by leftist filmmakers of the 1930s which reflect the contemporary urban life in Shanghai.

This study explores the reasons for the rise in independent film's popularity, which have created a unique Hollywood phenomenon, the successful "mini-major" independent studio, dedicated to both art and commerce. Chapters cover the history of independent film, characteristics of both independent and mainstreamfilms with regards to financing, acquisition, distribution and marketing, trends within independent film in the late 1980s and 1990s, crucial distributors and landmark independent films, and key growth areas in the future for independent film.

This thesis begins by examining the factors that have resulted in the dependent nature of Canada's political and economic structure, and proceeds to examine how this has contributed to the cultural amorphousness of English Canadian identity. The hegemonic authority of American and trans-national interests, established and maintained in the cultural sphere through the extensive monopoly of the distribution of cultural and media products, perpetuates the amorphousness of English Canadian culture through the appropriation of Canadian space by the international image industry. Such categorization of Canadian space reflects and perpetuates the imaginary representation of Canada within the dominant ideology as an indistinct and amorphous entity, and comes to usurp the materiality that constructs the lived identities of English Canadians.

This project is an interrogation of three examples from recent popular culture of girlculture, specifically texts that target young female consumers: the Spice Girls, Scream and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. These examples are fundamentally different than texts from earlier female targeted generic models because they not only reflect the influence of the feminist movement, they work on feminism's behalf. The project's methodology grows out of feminist film theories and cultural studies theories. One chapter is dedicated to each text, and each reading works to reappropriate girlculture texts for a counter-hegemonic agenda by highlighting the moments when each text manages to subvert its mass mediated conservative biases.

This written thesis accompanies a sixteen-minute documentary video, Harbor, in which the filmmaker explores her relationship with her father who has suffered a stroke. Detailed accounts of the pre-production, production and post-production of the video allow the reader to understand the challenging and rewarding process of making an autobiographical documentary. Theoretical issues are also discussed, including the validity, criticisms, artistic nature and ethical concerns of autobiographical filmmaking. The filmmaker stresses the universality of her story, and how, despite the film's very personal nature, it is applicable for anyone who has dealt with the illness and/or disability of a parent.

This thesis investigates how hegemonic white masculinity adopts a new mode of material accumulation by entering into an ambivalent existence as a historical agent and metahistory at the same time and continues to function as a performative identity that offers a point of identification for the working class white man suggesting that bourgeois identity is obtainable through the performance of bourgeois ethics. The thesis postulates that the phenomenal transitions brought on by industrialization and deindustrialization of 50's through 90's coincide with the representational changes of white masculinity from paradigmatic cowboy incarnations to the postmodern action heroes, specifically as embodied by Bruce Willis. The thesis also examines how postmodern heroes' "intero-alterity" is further problematized by antiheroes in Tim Burton's films.

This thesis examines the role of Christianity in contemporary American culture using 1990s popular media as cultural artifacts. Building on theories of ideological analysis and hegemony, this project uncovers a balance between progressive and traditionalist ideologies in American culture with progressive ideologies most often superficially acknowledged and incorporated into dominant traditionalist Christian ideologies through hegemonic negotiation. An analysis of the popular Hollywood films The Last Temptation of Christ, Leap of Faith, Michael, City of Angels, Dogma and Keeping the Faith, illustrates this process by addressing Christian dominance in multicultural America, a backlash against feminism constructed through patriarchal and “family values” ideologies, and an integration of popular culture and traditionalist Christianity.

The thesis examines the relationship between Martha Stewart's rendition of domesticity and a broader cultural trend of the late 1990s U.S. domestic retreatism. It argues that the mode of construction and representation of the "domestic dream" in Stewart's programs cannot be examined outside of such concepts as class and ethnicity, whose understanding depends on the cultural, social, and political context of a given era, a context, in which they become transparent as aspects of the Western (white, patriarchal) status quo. Performing a deconstructive reading of these categories as employed by Stewart in the process of creation of her media persona, the thesis examines what the negative as well as positive reactions to "Martha Stewart" convey about the condition of American society of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

No Way Out: A Historical Documentary is the written companion to a forty-minute documentary film entitled "No Way Out". The film deals with a 1974 inmate standoff at a prison in Huntsville, Texas known as the Carrasco Incident. The film examines the prison takeover through the eyes of those who lived through it. Composed of five interviews, "No Way Out" is a compilation of various points of view ranging from former hostages, members of the press, and law enforcement. The written companion for this piece discusses the three phases of the production for this film. These chapters are designed to share with the reader the various intricacies of documentary filmmaking. The thesis also explores theoretical issues concerning collective memory, coping behavior, and the ethics of historical documentary filmmaking.

This thesis is an examination of "paranoid conspiracy" films, a film noir subgenre that emerged in mainstream American cinema in the early 1970s and turns on vast, shadowy conspiracies located within U.S. "power structures" (government agencies, the military, the media) and directed against the American public. Specifically, it focuses on the emergence of these films in the 1970s, their almost complete disappearance during the Reagan presidency, and subsequent reemergence in the early 1990s. Placing representative texts in the context of U.S. political and social reality of the last three decades, it analyzes the relationship between the conspiracy theory genre, the "crisis of confidence" in the American society, and the process of formation of American national identity.

The pilot study used in this thesis examined the attitudes and perceptions of a small group of students at the University of North Texas. The participants in this pilot study (n=22) were administered an online music file sharing survey, a Defining Issues Test (DIT), and participated in a small focus group. This thesis also outlined the history and progression of online music piracy in the United States, and addressed four research questions which aimed to determine why individuals choose to engage in the file sharing of copyrighted music online.