Theses and Dissertations (Arts)

Permanent URI for this collection

http://hdl.handle.net/10539/35925

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 24

"100 papers": an anthology of flash fiction and prose poetry with a theoretical postscript
(2008-05-30T07:24:40Z) Jobson, Liesl Karen
[NO ABSTRACT PRESENT]
3D animation as a medium of cultural representation and education : a case study of Magic Cellar part 1.
(2011-05-03) Kangong, Roland N.
Post-apartheid South African children are exposed to modern technological entertainment – television, cell phones, video games, TV animations and many other forms of popular art and media. This research report analyzes how well Magic Cellar (hereafter referred to as MC) both represents cultural diversity to a mixed audience of South African children from different ethnic backgrounds and cultures, and educates them more generally. A historical perspective on animation is provided, including animation in South Africa, as well as the technical processes of animation, and how these apply to MC. In so doing, answers to two main questions are sought: can 3D animation be used as an alternative or support to the school classroom in educating children through popular media forms? To what extent can 3D digital art technology in the form of animation be used in representing cultural diversity to children of different cultural backgrounds? Drawing on theoretical concepts, as well as comparing MC to successful programming for children that uses animation to educate, this research report argues that 3D animation, a medium that “seems to attract learners’ attention and increase their motivation to learn”(Khairezan 2), can be used to represent cultural diversity and to educate children.
'African discourses' : the old and the new in post-apartheid isiZulu literature and South African black television dramas
(2009-02-02T11:38:06Z) Mhlambi, Innocentia Jabulisile
ABSTARCT This thesis sets out to explore the problematic perceptions regarding African indigenous language literature. The general view regarding this literature is that it is immature, irrelevant school-market driven and shows no artistic complexities and ingenuity.1 These disparaging remarks resonated persistently after the first democratic elections in 1994. Both local and international critics expected marked shifts in post-apartheid isiZulu literary productions because factors that hampered its development have been removed. The dominant Western and postcolonial critical approaches from which these critics articulated their views, operated on assumptions that failed to look at the role and centrality of the broader concerns usually covered by this literature. Barber (1994: 3) points out that these Western and postcolonial critical approaches, block a properly historical localized understanding of any scene of colonial and postindependence literary production in Africa. Instead it selects and overemphasized one sliver of literary and cultural production…and this is experience’. Furthermore it is the contention of this thesis that these critics used critical tools that are fundamentally mismatched for the types of narratives with which isiZulu literature and African-language literatures in general are engaged. It is the view of the author of this thesis that if a new set of critical tools are used, a paradigm shift may result which allows for revisiting creative conceptualisations involved in the production of these literatures. The primary aim of this thesis is to read post-apartheid isiZulu novels and the black television dramas using theoretical tenets postulated by Karin Barber. Barber’s research on African everyday culture is the key epistemological and cosmological framework with which to study post-apartheid literary and film productions that narrate the everyday life experiences of ordinary South Africans. The basic assumption is that orality which is the maximal point of reference for 1 See Mpahlele, 1992; Kunene, D. P. 1992 and 1994; Kunene, M. 1976 and 1991; and Chapman, 1996 any African work of imagination continues to thrive in black everyday popular culture as manifest in both print and broadcast media. The first part of this thesis deals with the use of oral genres in print media. Six novels are selected to explore the uses of proverbs, folktale motifs and naming as strategies for reading post-apartheid contemporary South African society. The thesis proceeds from an analysis of what these oral forms aim to achieve in the post-apartheid context. It is argued that through these oral verbal art forms the narratives transpose the traditional episteme and re-inscribe it for modern contemporary African society, where traditional morality is made to continue to shape and animate contemporary morality. The second section deals with the implications of some of these traditional epistemologies in broadcast media texts. Four post-apartheid black television dramas are selected. With Ifa LakwaMthethwa and Hlala Kwabafileyo, the thesis, demonstrates how these films position the middle-class as a solution to post-apartheid leadership challenges. The discussion of Gaz’ Lam and Yizo Yizo demonstrates the nature of orality, where oral texts are seen to be endlessly recycling similar themes in different media forms. The emphasis is on how renditions of texts always bring in new elements and topical issues, fresh and precise photographic capturing of key moments in society. In view of the nature of Barber’s theoretical model and that of isiZulu fiction and film, this thesis argues that it is the most appropriate to use for the analysis of Africanlanguages literatures. Barber’s theoretical model has intertextual links with the Black Film theoretical traditions in the Diaspora and the Third Cinema in Africa. These black film traditions, like Barber’s model, centralise the black experience, everyday culture and orality as the basic reference for African work of imagination and aesthetics.
"... as far as words can give:" Romantic poetry as displaced mystical experience in William Wordsworth's Prelude
(2011-11-28) Kallenbach, Bradley Dean
This dissertation investigates the ways in which a broad and perennial problem – ‘the problem of dualism’ - is approached by three areas of inquiry, namely, English Romanticism, mysticism and contemporary studies of consciousness. By comparative analysis of key passages in Coleridge’s Biographia Literaria, Huxley’s survey of mystical traditions in the Perennial Philosophy and work by contemporary philosopher Colin McGinn on the ‘mind-body problem,’ I explain how each discipline proposes an ideal state of ‘synthesis’ or ‘coalescence’ between the subjective and objective as a solution to ‘the problem of dualism.’ In turn, each discipline discerns a faculty or means towards such a synthesis. These are the ‘Imagination,’ ‘Third Eye,’ and ‘Bridging Principle’ respectively. Thus, this dissertation has three additional aims. First, I argue that the Romantic ‘Imagination’ and mystical ‘Third Eye’ faculty are conceptually similar in an attempt to show that certain Romantic poets (primarily Wordsworth, Coleridge and Shelley) sought access to a super-sensuous realm via the ‘Imagination.’ However, seminal texts such as Coleridge’s Biographia, Shelley’s Defence of Poetry and Huxley’s Perennial Philosophy imply that the Romantic poet, unlike the mystic, is thwarted from voluntary and veridical access to these realms: the Imagination reaches an impassable threshold which the mystical ‘Third Eye’ traverses. This condition, coupled with an inability to convey mystical experience in language with greater acuity, I argue, may account for the presence of melancholy in key Romantic works such as Wordsworth’s Prelude and Immortality Ode. I thus seek to enhance our understanding of the critical commonplace referred to as “Romantic melancholy.” Second, I aim to illustrate this view by analysis of key passages in Wordsworth’s Prelude and Immortality Ode. Finally, I aim to show that the early Coleridgean understanding of ‘the problem of dualism’ as highlighted in the Biographia can be further elucidated by contemporary theories of consciousness on the ‘mind-body’ problem.
"Bakwena Arts": a case study of arts and culture policy and implementation in the Limpopo Province
(2009-10-13T12:08:16Z) Franks, Daniel Zachariah
Abstract: In this research I examine the legacy of Arts and Culture Administration in the Limpopo Province, specifically with the intention of bringing to light the ways in which the evolution of this administrative structure has been largely framed by a history of domination by manifold colonial states. This fact of history has been shown to have given life to unique phenomena that are the seeming birth right of the new dispensation: corruption, inequality, apologism, blamelessness and rural contempt. The research makes special reference to the difficulties encountered by the emergent Northern Transvaal / Northern Province / Limpopo Province in establishing arts infrastructure and basic delivery. These difficulties are shown to be due to the former Transvaal’s policy of centralized cultural structures, and further compounded by the implications of the transformation of Pretoria’s State Theatre. This specific instance will inform an examination of the disparities between rural and urban realities in postcolony SA. My own practical work is discussed in relation to the above as far as it deals with the everyday production of culture, represented by the intrusion of global modern media into highly disparate social contexts.
Balancing act: An investigation of the in-between space used by selected contemporary artists in South Africa
(2006-11-17T10:46:41Z) Watson, Deirdre
After endless contemplation on the idea of ‘word and image’, the following expression of J.W.T Mitchell in Word and Image (1996: 56) brought insight: ‘[W]ord and image’… a pair of terms whose relations open a space of intellectual struggle, historical investigation, and artistic/critical practice. Our only choice is to explore this space (own emphasis). I shifted my position from the forlorn act of peeling to one of creative exploration. Not necessarily exploring the specific space between word and image, but rummaging ‘the space between’; always hovering amid opposites. This space provides an opportunity to confront and debate the many issues that stem from the relations formed in its fluidity. It is a space that informs my thinking. It is a space of conversation. I see not only my writing, but also the art that I scrutinize as conversation. My conversation is captured in the linear structure of this thesis, but the conversation of art is dynamic. It is informal and flexible – following not one path, offering no answer, giving the potential at each moment for surprises and transformation. The idea is to ponder contemporary art’s dialogue, the manipulators thereof and the indispensable factors constituting this notion: space, grammar, medium, criticism. The notion of dialogue assumes a listener, a participant, an audience. But who is this audience with whom ideas are conversed, and what language do you (presumably) use to communicate the necessary? I have chosen to investigate these questions, the purpose and plan of art, with relation to a selected group of artists: an individual, Terry Kurgan and a collective – Stephen Hobbs, Marcus Neustetter and Kathryn Smith, known as The Trinity Session.
Challenges facing artists and institutions when showcasing and collecting internet art: a comparative study
(2011-11-02) Vezi, Mazwi
Internet Art is an art form that uses the Internet as its primary medium from its production to presentation. Internet Art characteristics and attributes bring about presentation, preservation and colleting challenges to the curatorial practice; especially if presented in a museum or gallery structure. Strategies used by early Internet Artists were influenced by the characteristics of this medium; these are variability and technological obsolescence. Internet Art is inherently process based, ubiquitous, ephemeral and dynamic in nature. This challenges the traditional role of the curator in a gallery and museum structure. The curator is increasingly expected to create platforms of exchange of ideas between the viewer of the artwork and the project itself. Additional the curator also has to provide some insight in the decision making process regarding maintenance, support, contracts and documentation. Internet Art questions the principles in which galleries and museum structures are based; these include objectification, not touching objects and authorship of Internet Art projects. These projects are collaborative in nature and created by more than one artist, normally geographically dispersed. Internet Art demand for new modes of presentation, documentation and preservation that are more suited for online art. These new modes of presentation fundamentally change the role of the curator. If galleries and museums want to start or continue growing their Internet Art collections, they need to start understanding challenges facing the Internet as a medium, develop appropriate presentation and preservation strategies that seek to address identified challenges.
Challenging hierarchies in Anglophone Cameroon literature: women, power and visions of change in Bole Butake's plays
(2011-09-22) Nkealah, Naomi Epongse
Through an in-depth analysis of selected texts, this study engages with the ways in which the Anglophone Cameroonian playwright, Bole Butake, interprets questions of gender, sex and female power. The study traces the evolution of Butake’s vision of women from his first play Betrothal without Libation (1982) to his latest play Family Saga (2005). The analysis focuses on how women construct power in the imaginary worlds of Butake’s writing and how, in turn, power is constructed through them. Questions of femininities and masculinities are probed in an effort to determine the writer’s ideological leanings. Using a feminist framework, particularly that postulated by acclaimed scholar Florence Stratton (1994), this work engages with Butake’s nine published plays with the simple objective of deconstructing the different layers of meanings embedded in the dramatic narratives’ construction of power politics within urban and rural spaces. This study aims to critique not only Butake’s use of imagery, allegory and other narrative techniques in his creative imagining of women’s identities, but also the gender implications of hierarchical formations within the worlds of Butake’s plays. Essentially, the thesis looks at Butake’s constructions of female power and women’s agency and the implications these have on feminist discourses.
A critical investigation of an animated South African advertising campaign: Vodacom's Me to the Meerkat campaign 2005-2007
(2011-11-28) Hoffmann, Kim
This critical investigation of the relationship between animation and advertising in South Africa provides both a historic overview and analysis of Vodacom’s Mo the Meerkat campaign. This campaign is documented as extensively as possible, by investigating all relevant aspects and decisions made by Vodacom, their advertising agency, Draftfcb, as well as the creative influence and participation by the animation studios and film companies involved in the campaign. A textual and stylistic analysis of all six advertisements produced as part of this campaign is conducted and explores issues of personality, performance and brand identity relating to the Mo the Meerkat character. This documentation and analysis establishes that a major South African advertiser chose to use an animated character in their campaign to act as a “spectacle” (as the term is defined by Andrew Darley in his text Visual Digital Culture. Surface Play and Spectacle in New Media Genres).
"Don't Put Words in My Mouth!" To what extent does socio-institutional accessibility create a divide amongst black, female practitioners within the South African Theatre industry?
(2021) Van Tonder, Hannah
The research seeks to critically engage with the power structures that have a circular flow within the South African Theatre Industry. The work seeks to highlight the dualism of age and accessibility and how this has created unequal power relations amongst black, female theatre practitioners. This research draws on two South African National Theatre Award Shows hosted annually in South Africa: the Naledi Theatre Awards hosted in Johannesburg and the Fleur Du Cap Awards hosted in Cape Town. The research interrogates how award-winning and award nominations bring societal validation and credibility that allows for personal reflection and socio-institutional accessibility to manifest.The aim is to find out whether black, female, theatre practitioners 'feel' the need to excavate these power relations for a different construct to be built; that asks for a shift in the subject to be at the forefront. The research seeks to reveal if the responsibility for change sits in the power and agency of the systemic structures that mediate theatre award spaces as well as the individuals that micro-manage these theatre spaces. This work focuses on Cape Town and Johannesburg based practitioners as these are the only two cities in which theatre awards, on a national level, currently take place. However, every province within South Africa has their own theatres and awards, including Durban, where the voices of Durban based practitioners are still a crucial part of the study. Who gets access to credibility within these socio-institutional spaces will help uncover who gets to speak and how they get to express themselves through such platforms. This work refuses to keep black women separate from the rest of the industry, but instead requests the platform for black women to stand on an even playing field alongside their counterparts when looking at systematic credibility
Fingers in the outlet: a self-reflexive investigation of 'bricolage' as a method of engagement in new media arts, through domestic hacking practices
(2013-09-26) Gates, Nathan Oliver
This research report consists of two components: a written report and a practical body of work. The written component is a theoretical examination of the concept of bricolage as put forward by Claude Lévi-‐Strauss in the text “The Science of The concrete”, as an alternate process of knowledge production in its potential as a methodology for digital arts specifically relating to hardware hacking practices. This first chapter consists of a close reading of this text in which I explore the underlying concepts that bricolage hinges upon to better understand it as a methodology and process of engagement. The second chapter concerns the relationship between digital arts and science in terms of their individual use of ‘method’ and how it affects their conceptualization of ‘knowledge’. This is carried out by examining the philosophical underpinnings of the scientific method, in association with a ‘hacking’ case study looking at art practice as research. In the third chapter I briefly isolate three key characteristics of bricolage as methodology, as a starting point in understanding the movement of bricolage as a process of inquiry. The second component of this report consists of a practical inquiry into the viability of bricolage as method of production within a hardware hacking practice. It is incorporated into my written research in the fourth chapter where I discuss the resulting body of work in relation to bricolage as a model for research based practice, and as a mode of inquiry.
'Giving birth to my breath': an an exploration of self-revelatory performance in facilitating a process of confronting and transforming a negative self-concept of afrikaner identity = 'Ek gee geboorte aan my asem': die gebruik van self-onthullingsteater om die negatiewe self-begrip van afrikaneridentiteit te konfronteer en transformeer
(2017) Meiring, Leané
This multi-lingual autobiographical performance-as-research (PAR) project critically analyses self-revelatory performance as a drama therapy method that can be used to effectively mitigate the lingering effects of a negative self-concept of Afrikaner identity brought on by the collective trauma of our past in South Africa. The research enquires and demonstrates; in what ways the method of self-revelatory performance is effective in mitigating the effects of collective trauma both on intra-psychic and interpersonal levels through the lived experience of the researcher, training drama therapist and client-performer who underwent a process of devising, scripting, rehearsing, and performing a piece of autobiographical theatre in front of an invited audience. The methodology is firmly located within, and founded on the core principles of art-based research and more specifically, PAR; this choice of method of enquiry is as a result of the performative and embodied nature of the method of self-revelatory performance. The findings of the research are a collaborative process of practice (performance), self-reflexivity and theory working together to answer the research question. The research demonstrates the need for performative methods of drama therapy, such as self-revelatory performance, to be explored within our South African context. The research illuminated the need to adapt the methodology when working with collective trauma in our South African context and the need to clearly define the role of the audience, and the conditions of collective witnessing that determine psychological safety and containment, in the method of self-revelatory performance within our socio-cultural context.
"I will not speak" : the socio-political in the music of Albert Nyathi
(2009-02-26T12:05:48Z) Moyo, Nomusa
Abstract The thesis analyses the music of Albert Nyathi to ascertain how he uses the medium of music to engage with the socio- political issues in Zimbabwe. Using theories of popular culture and popular music, the paper examines how Nyathi uses music for the purpose of communicating his sentiments about the challenges facing the country. The songs to be analysed have been selected from the artists’ albums on a thematic basis. The analysis will focus on the message that the songs communicate and also on how the message is communicated. While emphasis has been placed on the lyrics as the main carriers of the message of the songs, the music will also be analysed to ascertain how it is used to enhance the message in the songs.
Investigating interactions between machines: a case study using facial expression recognition and virtual avatars
(2022) van Rooyen, Keenan Halliday
Computer vision is a field of artificial intelligence which revolves around enabling machines to derive meaningful information from visual inputs (Zafeiriou, Zhang, and Zhang, 2015: 1). Researchers have shown a focused interest on using computer vision to develop a machine which can both interpret and classify human behaviour, movements, and emotions through only visual information (Zafeiriou et al., 2015: 2). What was found through a literature review was that there is a gap in knowledge in computer vision for studies which do not rely heavily on human analysis. The presented research study aimed to work towards filling this gap by investigating an interaction between the goals of computer vision through using virtual avatars from the Animaze library to imitate human emotional expressions that were then analysed by FaceReader’s expression recognition component. This study created a machine-based interaction which analysed how changes of the facial features on a virtual avatar could alter the analysis of a computer vision program interpreting emotional expressions in the face. The results of this experiment were separated into three sections to answer three guiding research questions and to provide a wider scope of analysis. An analysis of FaceReader’s results presented several findings surrounding computer vision and virtual avatar interactions, with the most notable finding being that even slight changes in the shape and size of facial features on a virtual avatar can produce vastly different emotional expression readings. It was also found that it is possible to influence FaceReader’s expression analysis to produce higher, or lower, intensity averages of the emotional expressions through the use of specific facial features. Overall, the presented research found information that one could argue was already proven for human facial recognition, but value was provided in this research being potentially used as a steppingstone towards further development in the use of facial recognition on virtual avatars.
The moral dilemma of amnesty: the dialectic of ubuntu justice in Zimbabwe
(2010) Bouma, Kathlema M. Walther
This research report answers the question, "would ubuntu obligate the people of Zimbabwe to agree to amnesty for Mr. Roberts Mugabe as a means to restore community harmony?" Seen as an ideal social ethic and foundation of African philosophy, ubuntu values community harmony and commands respect for dignity of humanity: [Abbreviated Abstract. Open document to view full version]
"A Munich situation": pragmatic cooperation and the Johannesburg Non-European Affairs Department during the early stages of apartheid
(2012-08-30) Ball, James
This dissertation aims to reveal and explain how the evolving relationship between the Johannesburg City Council and the Native Affairs Department affected urban African administration during the early stages of Apartheid. It will add detail to a selection of key disputes between the levels of Government in the mid 1950s and examine the Department’s onslaught against the Council towards the end of the decade. It will trace the emergence of a culture of pragmatic cooperation during the early 1960s and analyse internal divisions within the United Party group in Council. It will finish by tracing the emergence of the Administration Board system and suggesting that the period of pragmatic cooperation played a role in delaying the ultimate decision to remove urban African administration from local authorities. Throughout this dissertation the influence of key personalities like W.J.P Carr, Manager of the Johannesburg Non-European Affairs Department and Patrick Lewis, the Chairman of the Non-European Affairs Committee, will be explored.
Popular African language art literature(s): cinematic perceptions on Black African middleclassness in South African television series – a myth or reality?
(2021) Mxokozeli, Sive
The aim of the study is to examine South African soap opera narratives as sites for the construction and negotiation of black African middleclass representations in South Africa. The research focuses on South African soap opera texts: Generations (1994); Scandal! (2008); The Queen (2017); Legacy (2020). The study draws from these popular television series cinematic perceptions that have been produced to be consumed by the racially black South African community. Moreover, it evaluates, across time, the ways in which black African middleclassness has been portrayed in the soaps. The study examines the constructions of femininity, masculinity and their positionalities as characterizations in the context of South Africa in the post- apartheid dispensation. Arguably, televisual texts presenting black images do not align themselves to key liberal modes that symbolize an African renaissance that is free from the affirmation of underlying racist motives of representation. Where these texts are guarded by white capital supremacist unchanging structural ideologies of imperialism, soap opera narratives, too, assume an important role around black African middleclassness in South African representations, which serves to construct and reinforce questionable black African middleclass stereotypes and prejudices in the ‘new’ democratic dispensation.
Power, sexuality and subversion in Lutsango and Siswati traditional wedding songs
(2009-07-06T10:11:32Z) Dlamini, Nonhlanhla
I. ABSTRACT As a critical field, Anthropology aims to study humankind in all its diversity: past, present and future, physical, psychological, cultural and social, etc. Lienhardt (1967: 1) says, social anthropology “is connected with older and more familiar subjects, particularly with history and sociology, and cannot be neatly distinguished from them”. However, Anthropology has come a long way since the 19th century when the story of modern anthropology begun. During this period, the notion for human progress became the guiding light for anthropological thought. The early anthropological school of this thought contributed to the notion of racial superiority as one can notice that it was around this time that the theory of racial determinism was proposed to account for the differences among various cultures. The differences among people, according to this theory, were attributable mainly to their varying racial background e.g., the Hottentots were considered one-step above the apes. South Africa has a legacy of polarised racial communities that still affect Africa not much less than the other continents with which Africa may be identified. Many of the political, social and economic patterns, structures and attitudes of racism that characterised the apartheid era continue to shape many of the experiences of life in South Africa today. One cannot pretend that racial discrimination, racial prejudice, racial stereotypes, xenophobia and other forms of racism no longer characterise the South African society. Despite rapid progress in race relations and the introduction of positive nondiscrimination and equity legislation in political level, a more systematic programme is required to transform race relations in ordinary people.
South African digital art practice: an exploration of the altermodern
(2012-08-08) Whitaker, Carly
The Altermodern is a critical artistic theory defined by Nicolas Bourriaud, a French theorist and curator. His theory seeks to define a specific way of living and inhabiting in our current globalised state. Bourriaud observes and discusses how artists practise and align this with a global dynamic and via a mobility which he observes through specific concepts. This research report investigates whether this theory of the Altermodern aligns with South African digital artists and their practice and whether this theory can be used as a framework for the South African digital art being produced at present and in the future. Although currently limited, the South African digital art field is developing and a framework is necessary for artists to move forward within the surrounding discourse. This report discusses the various characteristics and nature of the digital medium, such as its interactivity and dynamism, which are then aligned to the Altermodern. This alignment is carried forward into a discussion of digital art in South Africa which is defined and aligned with the Altermodern. The field of South African digital art is expanded to include specific case studies. Interviews conducted with Nathaniel Stern and Marcus Neustetter, practising digital artists, are reported and their respective artworks, Given Time and relation IV, are reviewed, while Tegan Bristow, who curated the show Internet Art in the Global South (2009), discusses her role as a curator and researcher in the field. This report aims to make an initial contribution to the discourse on South African digital art through a critical engagement of the Altermodern and the specific case studies.
'Suddenly the film scene is becoming our scene'! the making and public lives of black-centred films in South Africa (1959-2001)
(2010-06-23T11:18:08Z) Modisane, Litheko
ABSTRACT Through an examination of the making and public lives of a selection of apartheid and post-apartheid black-centred films in South Africa: Come Back, Africa (1959), u’Deliwe (1975), Mapantsula (1988), and Fools (1997), their contexts of production, circulation, appropriation and engagement, I investigate the role of film in the public life of ideas. While my focus is chiefly on film, I introduce a brief comparator with the television series Yizo Yizo (1999-2001), where I deploy the same methodology. To this end, I ask how these films relate to ongoing contemporary discourses about black identity. To explain the making and extended public lives of the films, I combine elements of public sphere theory, literary theory and film analysis to develop a theoretical model that treats film as a circulating text open to appropriation and engagement over time. The results indicate that in ways that shifted throughout the films’ public lives, their genres, modes of circulation as well as contexts of their appropriation, mediate the manner and extent of their relations to critical public engagements of black identity. I argue that through the combination of its nature as a modern form and its specific generic attributes, with the conditions and circumstances of its circulation and engagement, film stimulates critical public engagements of certain types. Film achieves what I have called public critical potency, when its content directly or otherwise, resonates with contemporary social and political struggles. Through its public critical potency, which is the capacity of film to stimulate critical public engagements, film demonstrates its importance in the public life of ideas. However, film also has the potential to fail in that respect. As a result, the margin between its success and potential for failure to achieve public critical potency, makes precarious, the role and status of film in the public life of ideas. In examining film as a circulating text over time, the thesis challenges approaches that investigate the public sphere of film solely in terms of genre and cinematic spectatorship. In the process, it has engaged the concepts of ‘film’ and ‘public’ within film studies in a way that recognizes its wide reach and extensive role in the public sphere. In the final analysis, the thesis is instructive with regard to the ways in which film may or may not relate to the public sphere in repressive and post-repressive societies in particular, and in modernity in general.

Browse

Browsing Theses and Dissertations (Arts) by Title

Results Per Page

Sort Options