Film has the power to influence the worldview of its audience. This includes shaping the image of countries by including them on the silver screen. Through a case study of five Hollywood films from...Show moreFilm has the power to influence the worldview of its audience. This includes shaping the image of countries by including them on the silver screen. Through a case study of five Hollywood films from the 1970s and 2010s, this thesis takes a diachronic in exploring how the Netherlands is represented in American cinema. The concept of verisimilitude is used to determine how well the images of the Netherlands in the movies correspond to the perception of the country from a Dutch person’s perspective. The main points of focus in the analysis are the environment and people. In these sections, it is evident that the inclusion of traditional clothing and landmarks such as windmills is better contextualised in the older films than in the newer ones. In general, when comparing the results between the films from the different decades, it can be concluded that the degree of verisimilitude is relatively higher in the 1970s. In other words, the representation of the Netherlands in American film has become more stereotypical in recent years.Show less
Bachelor thesis | Film- en literatuurwetenschap (BA)
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Meerdere Amerikaanse films hebben in de nasleep van 9/11 een thema van een zoektocht naar betekenis. In deze scriptie heb ik onderzocht hoe Spike Lee's '25th Hour' (2002) zich in deze discussie...Show moreMeerdere Amerikaanse films hebben in de nasleep van 9/11 een thema van een zoektocht naar betekenis. In deze scriptie heb ik onderzocht hoe Spike Lee's '25th Hour' (2002) zich in deze discussie mengt. Ook wordt er onderzocht hoe New York als stad na de tragedie in Amerikaanse cinema wordt weergegeven. Naar mijn bevindingen is '25th Hour' uniek in dat het een accurater beeld schetst van deze zoektocht dan het gros van de films uit ditzelfde tijdperk die dit als thema hebben. Psychologisch onderzoek heeft uitgewezen dat voor de meeste New Yorkers deze zoektocht een futiele was. De zoektocht naar betekenis is iets wat geen duidelijk eindpunt heeft en dit is wat de film reflecteert. Het laat een punt in de geschiedenis zien waarin het individu in de VS zich bewuster werd van hun plek in de maatschappij; een zeker 'einde van onschuld' waarmee burgers geconfronteerd werden.Show less
Asian Representation in American film productions has long been a topic of discussion. For many years, Asian people were portrayed as the Yellow Peril, the model minority, the perpetual foreigner...Show moreAsian Representation in American film productions has long been a topic of discussion. For many years, Asian people were portrayed as the Yellow Peril, the model minority, the perpetual foreigner and several other stereotypes related to gender. In the recent years, Asian Americans have become more vocal on this topic and they have been asking for more representation in Hollywood, with The Joy Luck Club having been the only film with a fully Asian cast for 25 years. In the last two years, two new American films came out with fully Asian casts, namely Crazy Rich Asians and The Farewell. Not much academic research on Chinese people’s opinions on these films has been done, therefore, in this thesis I went into depth and analyzed the reviews on the Chinese website Douban, to see what the Douban audiences thought of these three films. In this thesis I answered the question: How do Douban users perceive the portrayal of (overseas) Chinese people in American films? Through a discourse analysis on the reviews taken from Douban, I found that the majority of Douban users is content with the representation of Chinese people in these films, however, there are critical notes about stereotyping and the Western perspective on China that they feel is present in these films.Show less
In 2008, the same year Barack Obama got elected president, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) was launched with the release of Iron Man 1. The launch of the MCU introduced a new era with regard to...Show moreIn 2008, the same year Barack Obama got elected president, the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) was launched with the release of Iron Man 1. The launch of the MCU introduced a new era with regard to super hero movies. Likewise, the election of Barack Obama promised a different direction for the United States foreign policy. Obama advocated using soft power and diplomacy in order to solve the challenges he had inherited from the George W. Bush Administration. This paper looks at the extent to which Phase One of the MCU reflects, and as such aids, the approach of the Obama administration to foreign policy.Show less
This thesis researches the representation of East Asian characters and culture in two popular American movie productions that are based on novels; Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) and Crazy Rich Asians ...Show moreThis thesis researches the representation of East Asian characters and culture in two popular American movie productions that are based on novels; Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) and Crazy Rich Asians (2018). To do so, it will examine the use of Asian stereotypes and gender stereotypes in these movies, and will investigate whether the East Asian characters in the productions are three-dimensional. In the end, this thesis will argue that while in Memoirs of a Geisha, East Asian characters are generally portrayed in a stereotypical manner and women are sexualized, Crazy Rich Asians exposes and combats existing stereotypes through exaggeration and clashes between various ethnic Chinese characters, and offers three-dimensional East Asian characters. .Show less
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
This Thesis´ analysis includes both private actors such as society groups and actors related to the US state, and it identifies how the interplay of these actors and their different interests...Show moreThis Thesis´ analysis includes both private actors such as society groups and actors related to the US state, and it identifies how the interplay of these actors and their different interests contributed to the rise of anticommunism in the Hollywood film industry. In doing so, this thesis explores how a combination of actors and factors contributed to the intensification of anticommunism in Hollywood after the Second World War. As a result, it argues that anticommunism in Hollywood did not originate from solely state or private actors with consistent interests, it emerged from an interplay of state and private actors with different interests and ideas.Show less
Hollywood has been the leading film industry in the cinematic universe for the past several decades. China on the other hand, has been one of the fastest rising economies during these same decades....Show moreHollywood has been the leading film industry in the cinematic universe for the past several decades. China on the other hand, has been one of the fastest rising economies during these same decades. China is one of the biggest markets for Hollywood to gain more exposure and income. However, the Chinese government has been known to influence society through the use of censorship. To research how Hollywood film studios cater towards the strict censorship laws of the CCP various (scholarly) sources media are studied. It is important to study the relationship between Hollywood and China because Chinese censorship influences what we see in all kind of films around the world.Show less
I outlined two varieties of Italian-American Englishes used in the eastern part of the US. One is the Super Mario English, which belongs to speakers who have just arrived in the US. The second one...Show moreI outlined two varieties of Italian-American Englishes used in the eastern part of the US. One is the Super Mario English, which belongs to speakers who have just arrived in the US. The second one is the Wiseguy English, which belongs to speakers who have lived in the US for a longer period of time and belong to the Italian-American culture. Three films were selected from a plethora of other films concerning the Italian-American culture. The purpose of this study was to determine whether these varieties of English exists from a linguistically stereotypical basis or whether these varieties are true-to-life representations of the features of the Italian-American English speaking culture. One monologue of every main character in the 3 films has been phonetically analysed. The phonetic analyses were then compared to the theoretical framework analysis of the aforementioned varieties of Italian-American Englishes. The hypothesis is that these three films perpetuate linguistic features in Italian-American Englishes that border among the stereotypical imagery of the Italian-American culture. The results outline the most salient features of Italian-American linguistic stereotypes.Show less
