Display Full Text | Download Full Text
459.79 kB PDF file

Degree

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, Popular Culture, 2010.

Abstract

In the past milk has represented white, hegemonic society in the US through its association with middle-American wholesomeness and its red-checked table cloth. The recent shift from the good-guy-drinks-milk motif of films of the past to the villains-drinks-milk motif in films of modernity rejects the ideal society that milk represents through grotesque representations of its consumption and its consumers. In such recent US media as The Strain (2009), The Hills Have Eyes (2006), It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (2005-2009), Mr. Brooks (2007), Inglourious Basterds (2009), and The Professional (1994) milk's representation perverts its myth indicating a souring of society-as-we-know-it. As milk turns “bad” in these films, whiteness and those norms and values associated with whiteness lose their quality of invisibility and can be inspected accordingly. The following pages ultimately investigate representations of milk in the media and suggest that recent changes in those representations subvert the hegemonic image of the virtuous white body, his God-given beverage, and the issues often overlaid with race such as class, normality, cleanliness and morality.

Subject Headings

American studies

Keywords

maternal abject; abjection; monstrous feminine; femininity; milk; whiteness; mimicry; Strain; Hills Have Eyes; Mr. Brooks; Inglourious Basterds; Professional; Always Sunny Philadelphia

Committee / Advisors

Jeff Brown, PhD (Committee Chair)
Maisha Wester, PhD (Committee Member)

Pages

107p.

Document number: bgsu1288363890
Permalink: http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1288363890

This ETD has been downloaded 439 times (through March 2013)