Electronic Theses and Dissertations (Masters)

Permanent URI for this collectionhttps://hdl.handle.net/10539/37948

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Start date: 2020Subject: search.filters.subject.SDG-5: Gender equality

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    How can screen dance be used as a tool to reframe the black female body in South Africa?
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Setzin, Sasha-Lee
    Screendance can be used to explore and celebrate the diversity and complexity of the Black female body, highlighting the unique experiences and perspectives of Black women in South Africa. Through experimentation with movement, camera angles, and the manipulation of light and sound, Screendance can be used to create a new visual language that reframes the Black female body in a more nuanced and empowering way. This medium can be used as a tool to reframe the Black female body in South Africa by breaking stereotypes, giving agency to Black female dancers and choreographers, and exploring the diversity and complexity of the Black female experience. Screendance allows for greater creative control and representation of the Black female body, offering a platform for self-expression, experimentation, and the exploration of new perspectives. The research seeks to examine the ability to manipulate and reimagine the image of the Black female body, through digital media which can be a powerful tool in challenging dominant cultural narratives and re-centering the experiences and perspectives of Black women. Additionally, it explores how Screendance can bring attention to the embodied experiences of Black women, and the ways in which their bodies have been subject to historical, cultural, and societal oppression. By making the body visible, Screendance can create a space for resistance, healing, and empowerment for Black women.
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    Responding to trauma: in what ways can an embodied expressive narrative approach, strengthen the agency of women who have experienced abuse?
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Menell, Katherine; Draper-Clarke, Lucy
    Woman abuse is both a human rights issue and serious public health concern, that has not received the aKenPon and acPon proporPonate to its prevalence, globally or locally. It has far-reaching effects, that include the impact of trauma on women’s physical and mental health. A need has been idenPfied for intervenPons that centre women’s voices and mulPplicity of experience, while supporPng their resourcefulness and resistance. This research aimed to develop of a community-based intervenPon that could support the agency of women who have experienced abuse. It proposed that a narraPvely informed, movement-centred expressive arts approach, was well posiPoned to address the effects of trauma and develop resources to build resilience and hope. A parPcipatory arts-based research approach was adopted with two groups of parPcipants, in experienPal workshop series, over three months. ParPcipants’ experience of the groups, in the form of creaPve wriPng, drawing and reflecPon, was analysed using themaPc analysis, as a means to evaluate the impact of the groups. ParPcipants consistently reported feeling relaxed and energised by posiPve and novel experiences. Movements, feelings, imagery and narraPves emerged that supported parPcipants’ preferred idenPPes, as expressed by their behaviour outside of the groups and arPculated hopes for the future. While this demonstrated the potenPal of this approach to support agency, a number of areas emerged in need of further development. These included expanding pracPces for eliciPng relevant themes and ‘thickening alternate narraPves’ and building relaPonal safety with a focus on the role of the witness and co-regulaPon.
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    Womedy and its women: How female comedians confront and perform gender within dress and costume, in their stand-up performances
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Florentino, Gabriella; Ramsay, Fiona
    This research is grounded in gender, comedy and costume and investigates links that weave through humour and gender. Is costume the link? This research grew from the perception that ‘men are funnier than women’ or that ‘women aren’t funny’, as mentioned by Jerry Lewis and Christopher Hitchens. This perception held female comedians out of the comedy industry. However, this is changing as more female comedians are rising to fame. This study examines this perception and stereotypes to explore how female comedians are changing this perception. The research uses the theoretical framework of a semiotic analysis of ten signs and a gender performativity lens inspired by Judith Butler to determine their role in sanctioning these perceptions. Through three case studies, this research examines gender inequalities and differences. I explore the practice of women’s stand-up comedy and its space by comparing three female comedian’s performances to determine whether female comedians perform gender
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    Transgender Character Representation and the Gender Binary: Theorizing a Philosophy for Transgender Character Construction in Video Games.
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Cloete, Stephen
    Transgender characters in video games are often met with negative opinions by the largely heteronormative playerbase which, like in other media, results in a wider negative opinion on transgender people and subjects in reality. In exploring a personal identification with Celeste, I formulate a philosophy concerning the gender binary norm and its role in perpetuating harmful ideas. This philosophy manifests as both an ideology and platformer video game questioning what gender means to story and character. Through exploring gender, metaphor, queerness and game design, a philosophy is constructed to create a transgender character and video game story in a positive light.
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    Short Cut: A Feminist Reflection on the Postcolonial Uncanny
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023) MILLS, ANGELITA VIOLA; Sakota, Tanja
    This research-led praxis Masters interrogates and explores Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic theory on the uncanny to realise a short film text, entitled Short Cut. Specific attributes of the uncanny are applied in the film’s attempt to produce a sensibility of the uncanny, in order to convey the anxiety and fear of femicide experienced by women in South Africa on a daily basis. The film is effectively created through the theoretical considerations of the research. Drawing on primary texts from Sigmund Freud, Homi Bhabha and Teresa De Lauretis, the research deliberates on how the uncanny is a critical register through which to articulate conditions of dread and horror shaping the lives of women navigating the spectre of femicide in South Africa. The uncanny is marshalled as an aesthetic-conceptual tool consciously and intentionally used by filmmakers and as an aesthetic and conceptual tool for filmmakers interested in exploring the experiences and traumas of postcolonial women. In so doing, it seeks to provide new possibilities, insights and expressions of representation on film, through the intersectional conceptual lenses of gender, postcolonial theory and psychoanalysis.
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    Lil_ith- A love story for South Africa’s queer, misfit youth
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-03) de Jager, Robin Claude; Wessels, Christopher
    This project takes the form of an explorative filmic investigation into and reflection on the archetype of the queer misfit in South African cinema. The film and research take the standpoint of the South African misfit archetype being a post-queer-theory subject in relation to the country’s historical, socio-economic, sexual, traditional and technological landscape. I will compare the appearance of the queer misfit through the arrival of the neon and caustic characters of the New Queer Cinema movement of the 1990s to South Africa’s contemporary emergence of this archetype, positioning Queer Theory and the New Queer Cinema movement of the early as the primary emergence of a ‘true’ queer voice. I will engage with the influence of socio-economic, political and technological stimuli as well as the emergence of post-Queer Theory in the West and South Africa and its contribution to the evolution of the queer and misfit in post-colonial South African cinema. Through a practice-led, autoethnographic approach I combined these findings with core theoretical frameworks on post-modern sexuality by Queen and Schimel to inform and fuel the development of the film Lil_ith. The film stands as a creative execution expanding on the South African Misfit archetype in relation to the global history of Queer Misfit representation as well as its relationship with South Africa as a nation in the process of de-lonialisation within a digitised and globalised world.
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    Challenging the Representation of Masculinity & Themes Pertaining to Rape Culture in Film & Televisual Media
    (University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2022-06) Gondo, Jackson Onai; Heatlie, Damon; Dladla, Tiisetso
    This dissertation raises questions around the representation of masculinity and in turn the notion of ‘toxic masculinity’ in film and televisual media, and will result in a project in the form of a screenplay and animated scene that subverts these representations and makes the audience, through viewing the film, question their relationship to toxic masculinity and ‘rape culture.’ The dissertation looks at the narrative and visual conventions pertaining to masculinity that have existed throughout the history of film and television and how they still manifest themselves today. It looks at attempts to subvert these conventions and where these attempts failed. It also looks at literary scholars who have theorized these notions of masculinity and how those ideas have indeed manifested throughout film and television.