Although the USSR often claimed to promote equality in relations with other peoples, this has frequently been shown to be untrue. Specifically, in the case of the USSR's relationship with the...Show moreAlthough the USSR often claimed to promote equality in relations with other peoples, this has frequently been shown to be untrue. Specifically, in the case of the USSR's relationship with the Caucasus through the use of Orientalist tropes. So, using Edward Said's theoretical framework of Orientalism, the question "How have constructions of Orientalist discourses of the Caucasus changed from the Soviet Union to the Russian Federation?" was investigated in the context of Leonid Gaidai's 1967 film "Kidnapping, Caucasian Style" and Alexei Uchitel's 2008 film "Captive". These constructions have primarily changed along 5 Orientalist tropes. First, tropes of 'backwardness' have remained, though they have shifted from a focus on lack of modern technologies and customs to tropes of either a disorganized band of people in some cases or a militant and violent group in others. Second, representations of alcoholism, as a means of showing a lack of faith in Islam as well as an overly textual approach to understanding it, have remained largely unchanged over time. Third, portrayals of the Caucasus as a feminized "Other" have changed over time. Although feminine aspects have remained as justifying Soviet and Russian intervention in the region. Fourth, the exotic aspect of the Caucasus, though very present in Soviet portrayals, has largely faded from Russian Orientalist representations. Finally, Soviet and, especially, Russian Orientalism portray the Caucasus as being in a state of nature, as a wild and mysterious land that is inherently hostile to Russians. Thus, although constructions of Orientalist discourse have changed in some aspects and remained similar in others, their use as a means of justifying Soviet and Russian presence remains strongly similar and Orientalist.Show less
This Bachelor's thesis is an analysis of Patricio Guzmán's 1997 film "Chile, La Memoria Obstinada", which he made upon returning from exile to post-dictatorship Chile. The film aimed to show his...Show moreThis Bachelor's thesis is an analysis of Patricio Guzmán's 1997 film "Chile, La Memoria Obstinada", which he made upon returning from exile to post-dictatorship Chile. The film aimed to show his internationally famed 1975 film "La Batalla de Chile", and reconnect the population with the tabooed past of La Unidad Popular and Salvador Allende. It explores how the structure of the film is a metaphor for Guzmán's belief that "a country without documentary cinema is like a country without a photo album." By using theories of collective memory, post-memory, and the powerful trope of the family, the effect of Guzmán's approach to the challenge of re-engaging different generations of Chileans with an obscured past is assessed.Show less
Bachelor thesis | Film- en literatuurwetenschap (BA)
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The question is how the fairytale Sleeping Beauty evolved, changed and is adapted in different adaptations through the years. Is it still the original story?
This study introduces three typologies (bao, baoying and baochou) for the analysis of wuxia films. It proposes a more nuanced way of analysing revenge, punishment and justice in (Chinese) action film.
For this bachelor thesis, I have done research on the subject of the role of Hollywood in US soft power in relation to the fight against Islamic extremist terrorism. The research question I have...Show moreFor this bachelor thesis, I have done research on the subject of the role of Hollywood in US soft power in relation to the fight against Islamic extremist terrorism. The research question I have posed is: ‘Has Hollywood been a tool for North American soft power by contributing to the creation of a Western imagined community against Islamic extremist terrorism since 9/11? If so, how?’. In order to answer this question, I have done qualitative research using a scene from the movie American Sniper and a scene from the movie Lone Survivor which served as case studies. To provide a guiding tool, for each scene I have posed the questions ‘How is the ‘westerner’ portrayed?’, ‘How is the ‘Arab portrayed?’, and ‘Does the scene accord to the biographic book?’. In order to provide answers to these questions, I have used the handbook ‘Film Narratology’ by Peter Verstraten to examine the implicit content of the scenes, the scripts of the movies to support analysis of the explicit content of the scenes, and the biographic books on which the movies were based to check whether the scenes accord to these books. Subsequently, used the concepts of culture and cultural hegemony, soft power, and orientalism to ascribe meaning to the outcomes of the analyses. As a result from these analyses and the application of the concepts, I have found that in both scenes the ‘westerner’ is portrayed as heroic and righteous, while the ‘Arab’ is mostly portrayed as savage, hostile and rogue which is showing that both movies have an Orientalist character. Also, resulting from these analyses I can state that the scenes culturally manipulate and influence the viewers perceptions of the ‘Arab’ and the ‘westerner’, which means that it is contributing to US’ story which is projected to the rest of the world to ‘sell itself’ with the goal to attract other people and states to be on the same page with the US. With these results I have provided with an answer to the research question, which reads that Hollywood has been a tool for US soft power by contributing to the creation of a Western community against Islamic extremist terrorism, albeit unwittingly. This is done by employing Hollywood’s prominent and influential status which makes it possible to manipulate the movies’ watchers into developing a perception of Islamic terrorists as rogue and savage as opposed to heroic and righteous US soldiers. Still, what could be considered as shortcomings of this research are its sensitiveness to time, place and interpretation, and the small amount of analyzed scenes. In order to resolve this in a more extensive research, I firstly recommend to do a comparison with results of analyses on movies within another time frame or from another country. Secondly, I recommend to use diverse means of interpretation. Lastly, I recommend to analyze more scenes or even entire movies to be able to make a more solid argument.Show less
Het doel van deze scriptie is het aantonen van verschillen tussen het beeld en de rol van de (alleenstaande) moeder in J-Horrorfilms en diens Amerikaanse remakes. Aan de hand van enkele korte...Show moreHet doel van deze scriptie is het aantonen van verschillen tussen het beeld en de rol van de (alleenstaande) moeder in J-Horrorfilms en diens Amerikaanse remakes. Aan de hand van enkele korte voorbeelden en case studies bestaande uit drie paar films zal er in deze scriptie worden beschreven wat deze verschillen precies zijn. Daarbij zal er worden gerefereerd aan relevante literatuur, waaronder Sarah Arnolds "Maternal Horror Film: Melodrama and Motherhood" (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013). De onderzochte filmparen zijn The Ring en Ringu, The Grudge en Ju-On en Dark Water en Honogurai Mizu no soko kara.Show less
The uprisings of 2011 started in Tunisia and impacted a lot of countries in the Middle East. The consequences can still be seen today. This thesis attempts to approach how these events have...Show moreThe uprisings of 2011 started in Tunisia and impacted a lot of countries in the Middle East. The consequences can still be seen today. This thesis attempts to approach how these events have impacted the cinema industry and in particular the place and representation of women in it.Show less
This thesis explores retranslation in subtitling by analysing and comparing subtitles used by or created for VHS and Netflix. To establish whether Dutch subtitling conventions have changed towards...Show moreThis thesis explores retranslation in subtitling by analysing and comparing subtitles used by or created for VHS and Netflix. To establish whether Dutch subtitling conventions have changed towards a more foreignised and source-oriented approach in the course of the last twenty-five years, extralinguistic cultural references (ECRs) in the films Forrest Gump and Dazed and Confused were analysed and labelled according to translation procedure. Examining two different translations of the same film showed how conventions have indeed changed. In more than one third of the cases, the retranslations appear to be more foreignising than the first translations with regard to their treatment of ECRs. What has caused this change has not been explored in this study, but, as other studies suggested, this may be caused by globalisation, technology, and a better knowledge of the English language and its cultures. One explanation for this, verified by the results, is the many omissions in the VHS versions, which left no room for the retention of ECRs. In contrast, retention is the most common translation procedure in the retranslations. More research into retranslation in subtitling needs to be done to establish whether Dutch subtitles have really become more foreignising.Show less
Bachelor thesis | Film- en literatuurwetenschap (BA)
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Een onderzoek naar de kruisbestuiving tussen Japanse samoerai films en Westerns. Beginnend bij Yojimbo (1961) van Akira Kurosawa wordt er gekeken naar diens invloed buiten Japan. Sergio Leone's A...Show moreEen onderzoek naar de kruisbestuiving tussen Japanse samoerai films en Westerns. Beginnend bij Yojimbo (1961) van Akira Kurosawa wordt er gekeken naar diens invloed buiten Japan. Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964) wordt geanalyseerd als remake van Yojimbo, waarna er wordt gekeken naar de invloed van de Italiaanse Western op Amerikaanse cinema door middel van Back to the Future Part III (1990) van Robert Zemeckis. Er wordt gekeken naar de cinema van Japanse regisseur Takashi Miike, voornamelijk naar Sukiyaki Western Django (2007) als film die de twee genres samenbrengt. Er wordt tevens gekeken naar de receptie van de films binnen eigen land en op internationaal vlak.Show less
In this thesis, two film adaptations of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Kenneth Branagh (1993) and Joss Whedon (2013), are analysed, each film representing a particular cinematic...Show moreIn this thesis, two film adaptations of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Kenneth Branagh (1993) and Joss Whedon (2013), are analysed, each film representing a particular cinematic tradition within the history of cinema. I argue that the main force at work in both adaptations is a complex nostalgia, one intrinsic to the very notion of 'heritage film' and likewise implicit in Whedon's indebtedness to American screwball comedy.Show less
Bachelor thesis | Film- en literatuurwetenschap (BA)
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In dit paper wordt Dishonored bekeken door de lens van cinema door de speler te vergelijken met verschillende rollen in cinema; de kijker, acteur en de cameraman. Met behulp hiervan wordt er...Show moreIn dit paper wordt Dishonored bekeken door de lens van cinema door de speler te vergelijken met verschillende rollen in cinema; de kijker, acteur en de cameraman. Met behulp hiervan wordt er gezocht naar betekenis.Show less
The Zainichi community in Japan faced numerous difficulties in Japan due to their Korean ethnicity. However, the experience of Zainichi women is distinct from Zainichi men because of their...Show moreThe Zainichi community in Japan faced numerous difficulties in Japan due to their Korean ethnicity. However, the experience of Zainichi women is distinct from Zainichi men because of their subordinate position in a patriarchal social structure in their community as well as within Japan. The patriarchal structure in the Zainichi community is the main cause of the predicaments of Zainichi women, such as domestic violence and restrained self-determination. Further, melodrama is an appropriate genre to portray and create awareness on the predicaments of Zainichi women, as its element of tragedy focuses on human suffering to evoke pathos, an emotion of sadness, which is melodrama’s aim. By representing the social problems of Zainichi women, melodrama connects the domestic issues of Zainichi women with the larger social structure of patriarchy and sexism in the Zainichi community. However, melodrama film recreates situations where women are suffering and portrayed as victims, which contributes to their negative stereotypes. Moreover, melodrama’s constant focus on human suffering to emphasize the represented social problems reinforces the cause of the problems rather than criticize it. This thesis therefore aims to analyze the representation of women in film and the political role of melodrama in the representation of the predicaments Zainichi women in the Zainichi film Blood and Bones (2004). Furthermore, this thesis argues that melodrama’s element of tragedy in melodrama fails to criticize the subordinate position of women in the Zainichi community.Show less
