Theses and Dissertations (Film and Television)
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Item "To a land of priests and petrol-heads": the Jeppestown motor ministry(2011-10-19) Duarte, Sergio FernandoThe new motor-car has acquired systems that give it memory, intelligence and senses. Modern motorcars are taking on human attributes and have a religion and following all to themselves. In parallel, Jules Street, in Johannesburg’s original motor district is the place where the motor car goes to, post motor-plan. It is far departed from the glistening showrooms that are scattered over the rest of JHB- it is a place of vacant lots, workshops and passionate petrol-heads. Jules Street is however not a place of the past, the industry of this place is the future of every brand new car being built today. It is a place of necessary after-market vehicle service, although it is struggling to adapt to the evolving technology of the modern motorcar. Jules Street is also the home of a diverse, growing community. This new public has inspired the refurbishment of disused workshops into religious institutions, 11 on the Jules Street motor strip alone. These adapted places of worship provide an opportunity to view this fragile industry from a new perspective; that of a soul. The motor car, from a pristine assembly line to a filthy scrap-yard, has one continuing relationship, with people. This becomes the point of inquiry for this thesis, the life long relationship between cars and drivers, machines and people, industry and culture, beyond the assembly line and showrooms that it is often associated with. The people who design, build, drive, fix, recycle, pimp, admire and inspire cars over their lifespan are the basis for designing the architecture of the ever-enduring motorcar. The conflict between the hi-tech and low-tech, the sophisticated and the raw, define the challenges associated with automobility today, and the opportunities in investigating the auto-tecture that it requires.Item A comparative analysis of the contemporary documentary films Ryan and Waltz with Bashir as animated representations of autobiographical reality(2010-07-30T08:51:15Z) Mills, RobertAbstract This research paper aims to explore the nature and implications of two animated films where graphic depiction is used to document the complexities of an individual’s account of non-fictional events and situations. Within this position of animation and actuality, a “reality”1 is represented2 by the unreal3 in the form of created (not captured) moving picture images, and therefore the elements found in the live action dominated documentary genre are significantly affected. Animation has become a more acceptable form of documentary filmmaking in the context of postmodernist scepticism about the traditional claims of representation. However, its uniqueness in this situation has led to further developments in the dominant mode of discourse creation within this genre. These developments will be explored in relation to contemporary scholarship in the field of animation. Certain theoretical postulates will then be invoked to set up a comparison between the two films chosen for case study, seen as examples of the subjective4 in animated representations of individuals’ realities, so as to identify and describe their contribution to the contemporary documentary genre. The essential research question may thus be posed as follows: how do these two animated films contribute towards the present notion of actuality representation, through a postmodern autobiographical style, within the developing contemporary documentary genre? 1 What we know, understand and share with each other about the external world. 2 A creation that is a visual or tangible rendering of someone or something. 3 Man-made and invented, not merely captured from reality on a medium like film. 4 Indicating a dependence on personal taste or view. More specifically, the use made of verbal audio interviews within the animation processes in the case studies will be compared in order to address this question, because it is the particular use of interviews (and through them, the contributions to collective memory made by the interviewees) that really sets these two films apart from other autobiographical accounts within animation.Item '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, LithekoABSTRACT 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.Item "The Hopeless Continent?" A critical comparative analysis of 2007/2008 representations of Africa in Time, The Economist and Financial Mail(2010-03-29T11:07:38Z) Botes, JaneskeAbstract This study investigates the representations of Africa in three magazines; Time, The Economist and Financial Mail. Time and The Economist are American and European publications, whereas Financial Mail is South African, enabling a comparison of their coverage to be undertaken. The study focuses on representations of politics, economics and HIV/AIDS. A multi-faceted, complementary theoretical framework of critical political economy of the media, theories of news production and cultural studies is utilised. This study triangulates quantitative and qualitative content analysis as a methodological approach. The findings of this study reveal that representations of Africa fall within three typologies: negative, positive and mixed. Negative and stereotypical representations dominate, with very few positive representations detected. Many mixed representations of Africa are presented, which offer both a negative and positive view of the continent and its countries. Overall, local media perpetuate a majority of negative frames of meaning around Africa and so support traditional and current foreign representations of the continent. As much of the language and images used in African stories focus on negative issues, Africa is consequently presented as a largely hopeless continent.Item A defamiliarisation of the naturalised usability of the Photoshop graphical user interface(2009-09-15T10:06:01Z) Lekuntwane, OnicaABSTRACT The graphical user interface of the ubiquitous Photoshop image manipulation software has naturalised image production as selection from a menu of pre-defined options. Before the birth of Adobe Photoshop in 1990, creative arts production was a specialised and predominantly time consuming craft. Today image production has been automated through a system that has democratised previously specialised production skills. New media theorists and practitioners have argued that the GUI has been designed as an environment to be looked through, instead of being looked at, critically. As a dominant postmodern cultural tool, Photoshop has consequently influenced the design of subversive artworks such as HeritageGold and Autoshop, which provide a platform for challenging the presumed universal appeal of the graphical user interface (GUI). Although much research has been conducted around the design of the GUI, and the user experience, there is a lack of critical writing around Photoshop as a cultural tool which has naturalised its usability for a presumably universal target audience. As an African user of technology that is based on graphical interfaces I use Photoshop to defamiliarise this naturalised interpretation and usability of software.Item '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 JabulisileABSTARCT 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.Item "Director of audiences": a study of Alfred Hitchcock's manipulation of his audiences.(2008-06-30T08:56:30Z) Webber, RebeccaAbstract This Master’s thesis identifies and elucidates upon the motifs/themes/images, which Hitchcock utilized in his films to ultimately manipulate and thereby direct his audience’s perception and understanding of his films’ narratives. The devices that are described and investigated in detail in this thesis are found to be recurrent in most of Alfred Hitchcock’s films. That highlights the question: why are they recurrent? What purpose do they serve? I believe that the answer to these questions is that these devices were used by Hitchcock to serve the end of manipulating the audience. The efficacy of these devices as used by Alfred Hitchcock is elaborated on in each chapter that addresses each motif in turn. Each chapter which deals with one of the motifs Alfred Hitchcock used in his manipulation of his audience contains examples from films and investigates how the motifs are used within each film to manipulate audience comprehension. These examples are strengthened with theory from academics, theorists and critics who have made a life-long study of Hitchcock. My theoretical framework includes audience research and Metz’s theory of ‘suturing’ which addresses the meaning of camera position and the different point of view that the audience take up. By means of this research I aim to explain the way in which Hitchcock consummately manages to manipulate the audience to follow ‘red herrings’ and ultimately surprise the audience. This thesis acknowledges the premise that all film directors manipulate the audience and does not attempt to persuade the reader that Hitchcock was unique in this. It does aim to explore and explain how Hitchcock’s unique use of specific motifs was utilized in order to manipulate audiences. This thesis resulted in my understanding Hitchcock’s method of directing his audiences as much as his films and I think that in a broader context explains the use and need (both Hitchcock’s and the films narrative’s) for the repetitive devices for which Hitchcock is renowned, rather than merely investigating them as isolated pieces in Hitchcock’s films. I would suggest that there is evidence in these films of a repetition compulsion, as if the films are attempting to solve a conundrum very much in the way that academics have attempted to solve the conundrum that is the work of Alfred Hitchcock. Search words: Hitchcock, director, film, thriller, manipulation, audience, double, Psycho, scatology, voyeurism, auteur, spectator theory, Truffaut, narrative, scopohilia. Abstract This Master’s thesis identifies and elucidates upon the motifs/themes/images, which Hitchcock utilized in his films to ultimately manipulate and thereby direct his audience’s perception and understanding of his films’ narratives. The devices that are described and investigated in detail in this thesis are found to be recurrent in most of Alfred Hitchcock’s films. That highlights the question: why are they recurrent? What purpose do they serve? I believe that the answer to these questions is that these devices were used by Hitchcock to serve the end of manipulating the audience. The efficacy of these devices as used by Alfred Hitchcock is elaborated on in each chapter that addresses each motif in turn. Each chapter which deals with one of the motifs Alfred Hitchcock used in his manipulation of his audience contains examples from films and investigates how the motifs are used within each film to manipulate audience comprehension. These examples are strengthened with theory from academics, theorists and critics who have made a life-long study of Hitchcock. My theoretical framework includes audience research and Metz’s theory of ‘suturing’ which addresses the meaning of camera position and the different point of view that the audience take up. By means of this research I aim to explain the way in which Hitchcock consummately manages to manipulate the audience to follow ‘red herrings’ and ultimately surprise the audience. This thesis acknowledges the premise that all film directors manipulate the audience and does not attempt to persuade the reader that Hitchcock was unique in this. It does aim to explore and explain how Hitchcock’s unique use of specific motifs was utilized in order to manipulate audiences. This thesis resulted in my understanding Hitchcock’s method of directing his audiences as much as his films and I think that in a broader context explains the use and need (both Hitchcock’s and the films narrative’s) for the repetitive devices for which Hitchcock is renowned, rather than merely investigating them as isolated pieces in Hitchcock’s films. I would suggest that there is evidence in these films of a repetition compulsion, as if the films are attempting to solve a conundrum very much in the way that academics have attempted to solve the conundrum that is the work of Alfred Hitchcock. Search words: Hitchcock, director, film, thriller, manipulation, audience, double, Psycho, scatology, voyeurism, auteur, spectator theory, Truffaut, narrative, scopohilia.Item "Troll": dissertation on sexual identity comprising three components(2008-03-07T09:20:14Z) Lotriet, BrettABSTRACT This dissertation explores identity as its central theme. There are three components to the dissertation. The first is the academic essay which explores identity through the perspective of queer theory and proposes a three-dimensional conception of an “identity cloud”. The second component is the creative essay which consists of ten chapters towards a final novella entitled “troll”. The creative component’s central theme is the lead protagonist’s struggle in assimilating the identities of “gay” and “addict” after receiving a liver transplant. The third and final component is an essay detailing the manner in which the creative and academic created and informed one another.