Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Ohio University, 2024, Film

Max Kaplan's thesis explores what it takes to make a standout body horror film, from researching horror's gothic roots to making a compelling and unique horror to the daily tasks of a film director.

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2023, History

Ronald Reagan, conservatism, economics, and the Cold War define many of the historical analyses of 1980s America. Recently, studies on the decade's cultural artifacts, social protests, and the divisive culture wars have finally come into focus. The intersection of film studies and historical analysis of the ‘80s has few comprehensive explorations, which this project seeks to expand. This thesis analyzes the portrayal of youth sexual culture in 1980s American mainstream and independent films while also contextualizing the broader American culture in which these films were made. The use of mainstream and independent films will not only tease out any similarities and differences, but these analyses will also explore how these films reinforced, or complicated, contemporary cultural values. The project will move through the decade by examining the following films and their respective film reviews: Little Darlings, The Last American Virgin, Sixteen Candles, She's Gotta Have It, Dirty Dancing, and Casual Sex? By combining the theoretical frameworks and methodologies from film studies, cultural studies, and historical research, this project will create a unique perspective of 1980s American youth sexual culture while also establishing these films did not exist in a vacuum. The thesis asserts that the space for female-centered conversations on films about sexuality, especially for young girls, existed at the beginning of the 1980s but dwindled as the decade went on. Throughout the 1980s, films about youth sexual culture became male-dominated and reduced the female perspective to a subplot even in cases where these stories centered on the female characters. By the end of the decade, complicated female perspectives on sexuality were reduced to perpetuating patriarchal themes and expectations. As a medium, film failed to encapsulate authentic female voices in the 1980s. Instead, film provided youth audiences access to sexual experiences if they could not easily get them els (open full item for complete abstract)

Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Ohio University, 2021, Film

Barbara Hammer, a trailblazing figure of queer and feminist experimental filmmaking, exemplifies the alternative cinema proposed by Laura Mulvey in her seminal essay, 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.' By breaking down the formal techniques used in Hammer's 1975 film 'Superdyke Meets Madame X,' this paper seeks to emphasize how Hammer's deliberate inclusion of her own queer body calls out and subverts the conventions established by a mainstream cinema dominated by the patriarchy's male gaze.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2015, Slavic and East European Languages and Literatures

Abstract The current study analyzes signs and signifiers that constitute the structural composition of Pushkin's historical works Boris Godunov and The Captain's Daughter and compare them with their Soviet and post-Soviet screen adaptations. I argue that the popularity of these literary works with filmmakers is based on their inexhaustible topicality for Russian society of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods, and therefore reassessment of their film adaptations guides us towards developing a better understanding of the sociopolitical complexities in modern Russia. The analysis employs methods of semiotics of film, which is a relatively young science, but has already become one of the most promising fields in the theory of cinema. The research is based on the scholarship of such eminent theorists and semioticians as Metz, Bluestone, Barthes, Lotman, Bakhtin, and others. By performing semiotic analysis of Russian intermedial transpositions and Pushkin's source texts, the study demonstrates the parallels between the historical periods and contemporary Russia.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2005, Comparative Arts (Fine Arts)

This dissertation re-names and re-defines the process of film adaptation by presenting a theory of appropriation realized in film. The theoretical formulation proposed is further developed and illustrated in its application to William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. The theory of appropriation realized in film is elaborated through interdisciplinary and intertextual approaches. Aiming for the achievement of a contemporary film, for a specific contemporary audience, the theory focuses on the particularities of the film medium and the historical and cultural conditions determining the realization. It is important for this theoretical proposal to emphasize that the reality informing the contemporary process is inherently distinct from the reality informing the material appropriated.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2020, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts)

Envisioning Feminist Genre Film: Relational Epistemology, Catharsis, and Erotic Intersubjects addresses the ways in which feminist filmmakers create narratives that unravel masculinist power paradigms in order to demonstrate different approaches to knowledge production and subjectivity as established through erotic, relational, and feminist dialogism, which foregrounds an ideology that individually and culturally we shape language through interactive and collaborative methods. This study delves into how these feminist films offer the filmmakers and viewers cathartic and pedagogical experiences to explore trauma as well as navigate expanding conceptions of gender, sexual, and relationship diversities. The focus of this project is to examine the impact of including the diverse voices and experiences of marginalized people into the modes of film production through on- and off-screen roles, arguing that these creators' ontological and experiential frames establish structures for the exploration of feminist and queer theories. While attentive to the prior approaches of feminist and queer theories when applied to film, I articulate the ways feminist filmmakers create specifically feminist films and how constructing narratives based on feminist ideologies unlocks opportunities for undoing and transforming gender and sexuality. Methodologically using close visual textual analsysis of feminist genre films, my dissertation delves into feminist film noir, queer melodrama, horror, and pornography to demonstrate how genre impacts the tools and approaches feminist filmmakers use to interogate and establish relational epistemologies in order to envision erotic intersubjectivity, as a part of the ongoing process of articulating the sovereign sexual subjecthood of the individual.

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2018, English/Literature

This project explores womens aggression in superhero, science fiction, and crime film through a close reading of Wonder Woman, Ghost in the Shell, and Atomic Blonde. All based in genres that are traditionally considered for boys, these films are different from other superhero, science fiction, and crime films because they feature female leads with aggressive tendencies. Using Dana Crowley Jacks theory of womens aggression and Yvonne Tasker and Diane Negras definition of postfeminism, I argue that Diana, Major, and Lorraine revolutionize the image of the lead postfeminist character by offering examples of womens aggression that resist acceptable, palatable representations of womens aggression. Whereas in the past there have been many representations of aggressive women, those past representations have been affected by postfeminism in a way that commodifies and limits their ability to be authentically aggressive. I examine how these new films, Wonder Woman, Ghost in the Shell, and Atomic Blonde, play into and ultimately resist postfeminist representations because of their aggression and how that aggression is played out on the female body. In the following chapters I analyze how the heroines in Wonder Woman, Ghost in the Shell, and Atomic Blonde disrupt postfeminist notions and prior images of womens aggression by explicitly examining aggressive women who are not domesticated or justified by rape.

BA, Oberlin College, 2017, Music

With a career spanning almost forty years, Canadian composer Howard Shore has become one of the most respected and sought after film composers working in the industry today. Much of his work, in particular his scores for the Lord of the Rings films, have received much academic attention; his longstanding working relationship with Canadian horror filmmaker David Cronenberg, however, has not yet benefited from such academic inquiry. Using the films The Brood, Videodrome, The Fly, and Naked Lunch as case studies, this thesis examines the way that Shore uses the arena of Cronenberg's films as a laboratory for personal musical experimentation. Examples include Shore's use of electronic synthesizer sounds alongside a string orchestra for Videodrome, implementations of against-the-grain writing for The Fly, and the incorporation of free-jazz aesthetics in Naked Lunch. Using as sources Howard Shore's words and what academic inquiry exists in this field, but more often utilizing my own analysis and observations of the music and films, I argue that Shore's scores incorporate such musical experimentation to work in tandem with Cronenberg's own experimental art. As such, Shore's scores for Cronenberg's films are a prime illustration of the practical value of experimental composition, showing that there is room for experimental composition in music outside of the realm of academia and indeed that such music can have commercial potential.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2017, Interdisciplinary Arts (Fine Arts)

This dissertation argues that the alternative digital movies that emerged in the early 21st century Malaysia have become a part of the Malaysian national cinema. This group of movies includes independent feature-length films, documentaries, short and experimental films and videos. They closely engage with the unique conditions of Malaysia's economic development, ethnic relationships, and cultural practices, which together comprise significant parts of the nationhood of Malaysia. The analyses and discussions of the content and practices of these films allow us not only to recognize the economic, social, and historical circumstances of Malaysia, but we also find how these movies reread and rework the existed imagination of the nation, and then actively contribute in configuring the collective entity of Malaysia.

Master of Arts, University of Akron, 2014, Theatre Arts-Arts Administration

Film making is expensive. It can be done cheaply, but to raise a film to the level of art it requires an amount of increased integrity. This can be achieved through better cameras, crew, actors, props, locations, editing, and special effects (SFX) – all things that cost money. Film making is possibly more expensive than any other art form, especially when considering that a film must not only be created, but also edited, printed, and distributed in order to reach its target audience. Without backing from a major studio, the task of fundraising for a film can be daunting, unless considering alternatives. This thesis explores and concisely presents ways in which film makers can borrow and adapt strategies from other art forms, as well as non-profit and for-profit business models, to create a diverse funding mix to finance independent films.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2014, Germanic Languages and Literatures

This dissertation explores manifestations of the topos Heimat in East German novels and films of the 1950s and 1960s. In particular, it identifies Heimat as a cultural-anthropological concept taking shape as an individual and social human endeavor, and explores the tensions, that arise between this endeavor and a socialist Heimat as defined by the GDR state. I propose that these tensions were never fully resolved, although it was a core ideal of the socialist society to harmonize them. Analyses of novels by Hans Marchwitza, Anna Seghers, Karl Heinz Jakobs, and Werner Braunig, and feature films and documentary films by Kurt Maetzig, Konrad Wolf, and Winfried Junge reveal different approaches to the understanding of Heimat, as well as conceptions of how to resolve the tensions described above. Their conclusions range from equating Heimat with a societal form, to acknowledging and wrestling with an increasing gap between the individual's grasp of Heimat and that of the state, and to mourning this gap. By employing Heimat as a discursive medium, this dissertation adds a new dimension to the ongoing discussion about the development of real socialism and its discontents in the GDR. It ultimately proposes that their reconciliation remained an utopian promise.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2010, American Culture Studies/Popular Culture

In 2006, journalists began writing about the emergence of a group of young filmmakers who specialized in horror films featuring torture and graphic violence. Because of their gory and bloody movies, these directors came to be known as “the Splat Pack,” and they were depicted by the press as subversive outsiders rebelling against the Hollywood machine. However, what many discussions of the Splat Pack ignore is how the success of this group of directors was brought about and enabled by the industrial structure of Hollywood at the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Drawing from political economy methodology, this study seeks to understand and illuminate the industrial changes and realignments that gave rise to the Splat Pack, first by looking at how industrial changes have affected the content of horror films of the past, and secondly by examining how the advent of DVD technology made way for the gory, “Unrated” films of the Splat Pack. DVD played a major role in the rise of the Splat Pack by changing the way horror films were presented to their potential audiences and by leading to an industry acceptance of “Unrated” films. With this in mind, this study then turns to an analysis of several key films directed by the Splat Pack and uses the commodity form of the DVD as a lens through which to interpret these films. By foregrounding the commodity status of these films, this study resists reading these films as subversive manifestos. Instead, it seeks to use these films as a means of better understanding how commodity form affects content. The ultimate argument is that the films of the Splat Pack are commercial products made particularly salable by the DVD era and must be confronted and understood as such.

Master of Arts (M.A.), University of Dayton, 2025, English

This thesis studies the psychological and emotional tensions embedded in the mother-daughter relationship in Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird through the framework of Sigmund Freud's “The Family Romances.” By examining Lady Bird's narrative arc, this study demonstrates how development and maturity can only be achieved by separating ourselves from the parental figures in our lives. It also shows how the protagonist's desire for autonomy is linked to her turbulent relationship with her mother, who functions as both a mirror and an obstacle.. Through close textual and visual analysis, the paper argues that Lady Bird's rejection of her given name, her fantasies of wealth and belonging, and her eventual geographical and emotional departure from her family home all constitute a Freudian process of individuation known as the “Family Romances”. It is only through this painful detachment that the protagonist begins to view her mother not as a limiting force, but as a complex individual. This understanding marks the emergence of a more integrated and autonomous self.

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2024, Arts and Sciences: Germanic Languages and Literature

When writing on cinema in the two Germanys during the Cold War scholars have tended to focus on either the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) or the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany). Within that binary, there is an additional tendency to focus on either fiction or nonfiction film. This has resulted in a set of surprisingly isolated “quadrants” that research can be sorted into: West German fiction, West German nonfiction, East German fiction, and East German nonfiction. Few individual works have attempted to address more than one of these quadrants at the same time. This dissertation connects the two nonfiction quadrants of German Film Studies by placing the nonfiction work of two sets of East and West German filmmakers in direct comparison with one another. The results of these comparisons challenge a number of assumptions about East and West German nonfiction cinema. The first comparison pairs West German Werner Herzog with East German Gerhard Scheumann, along with his longtime codirector Walter Heynowski. The comparison reveals the striking similarities between Herzog's and Scheumann's intensely negative reactions to the cinema verite and Direct Cinema movements in Western nonfiction film and how those positions are expressed in both their writing and their filmmaking. Specifically, I look at Herzog's texts Minnesota Declaration and Vom Absoluten, dem Erhabenen und ekstatischer Wahrheit in comparison with Scheumann's contributions to the East German film trade journal Filmwissenschaftliche Mitteilungen, and I look at the films How much wood would a woodchuck chuck... by Herzog and Meiers Nachlass by Heynowski and Scheumann. All of these works establish cinema verité–style filmmaking as an impediment to revealing “deeper” or “hidden” truths through film. Herzog and Scheumann both reject it in favor of their own styles which allow them to present their own truths to their viewers. The second pairing places two films by West Germa (open full item for complete abstract)

Bachelor of Science (BS), Ohio University, 2022, Journalism

This professional project aims to look at Covid-19's impact on the movie theater industry from a global perspective and from a specific, local angle of Athens, Ohio. The feature article - led by the voices of film in Athens - dives into how establishments like The Athena, the Athena Grand, the Athens International Film and Video Festival and the Ohio University School of Film and broader College of Fine Arts weathered the pandemic. The multimedia elements including statistical infographics, story maps and video segments accompany the piece and provide more information and discussion about the larger film and theater industry. Finally, the preliminary essay then gives context about the development and background of the piece as well as its ties to the uses and gratifications theory.

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2021, Popular Culture

In a small town in Mississippi in 1982, eleven-year-old Chris Strompolos commissioned his friends Eric Zala and Jayson Lamb to remake his favorite film, Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). This remake would dominate their summer vacations for the next seven years. Over thirty years later in January 2020, brothers Mason and Morgan McGrew completed their shot-for-shot live action remake of Toy Story 3 (2010). This project took them eight years. Fan remake films such as Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation (1989) and Toy Story 3 in Real Life (2020) represent something unique in fan studies. Fan studies scholars, such as Henry Jenkins, have considered the many ways fans are an example of an active audience, appropriating texts for their own creative use. While these considerations have proven useful at identifying the participatory culture fans engage in, they neglect to consider fans that do not alter and change the original text in any purposeful way. Sitting at the intersection of fan and adaptation studies, I argue that these fan remake films provide useful insights into the original films, the fans' personal lives, and fan culture at large. Through the consideration of fan remake films as a textual object, a process of creation, and a consumable media product, I look at how Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation and Toy Story 3 in Real Life reinforce the fans' interpretations of the original films in a concrete way in their own lives and in the lives of those who watch.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies

Camp is a critical sensibility and a queer reading practice that allows women to simultaneously critique, resist, and enjoy stereotypes and conventional norms. It is both a performative strategy and a mode of reception that transforms resistance into pleasure. Scholarship on feminist camp recognizes a tradition of women using camp to engage with gender politics and play with femininity. Most of the scholarship focuses on women's camp in mainstream and popular culture and how they talk back to the patriarchy. Little work has been done on feminist camp outside of popular culture or on how women use camp to talk back to feminism. My dissertation adds to conversations about feminist camp by exploring a new facet of camp that talks back to feminism and challenges a feminist audience. I examine the work of three contemporary feminist and queer independent filmmakers: Anna Biller, Cheryl Dunye, and Bruce LaBruce to explore the different ways they subvert cinematic conventions to interrupt narrative, play with stereotypes, and create opportunities for pleasure as well as critique. I argue that these filmmakers operationalize a feminist camp gaze and open up space for a feminist camp spectatorship that engages critically with ideas about identity, sex, and feminism. In addition, I consider the ways in which other types of feminist cultural production, including sketch comedy and web series, use camp strategies to deploy a feminist camp gaze to push back against sexism and other forms of oppression while also parodying feminism, ultimately creating space for resistance, pleasure, and self-reflection.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2020, American Culture Studies

The 1960s was a turbulent time in the United States. The war in Vietnam and the assassinations of leading progressive figures created great cultural anxiety. One response to the divisive war and the rightwing violence was the Hippie movement, which advocated peace, love, and social equality. In American cinema, films touting their cultural relevance or appeal for the lucrative youth market came to include representations of Hippies. Initially, mainstream films failed to capture Hippie style and ideology, but subsequently featured sympathetic portrayals of Hippies. By comparison, exploitation films depicted stylistic elements associated with Hippies even at the outset, but offered sensationalized characterizations of Hippies throughout the 1960s. The study's primary method is textual analysis of films, reviews, marketing materials, and print documents ranging from mainstream news coverage to counterculture manifestos. To provide a context for analyzing the various trends in cinematic representations of Hippies, the study examines cultural events and filmmaking patterns that led to and sustained the Hippie movement and its representation on screen. Studying depictions of the Hippie movement on-screen sheds new light on how dominant American society viewed the Hippie counterculture. Most on-screen representations of Hippies reflect the views of the country's dominant culture, because, in contrast to other Hippie art forms, Hippie films were produced, distributed, and exhibited almost exclusively by companies outside the Hippie movement. At the same time, because certain Hippie films feature verite footage of events such as the Woodstock festival and the 1968 Democratic Convention riots, some on-screen representations offer a window into ways that people sympathetic to the Hippie movement viewed the lifestyle and values associated with Hippies in the 1960s. Analysis of Hippie films illuminates several key distinctions among mainstream, independent, and exploitation f (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2020, American Culture Studies

Focusing on the lived experiences of media producers, this study provides one of the first global and industry-level analyses of the wildlife film industry and represents the first phenomenological and hermeneutic approach to wildlife filmmaking. The author draws on 13 in-depth interviews with a diverse group of freelance wildlife cinematographers, producers, directors, editors, researchers, writers, and narrators in addition to autobiographies and other accounts from professional wildlife filmmakers. Using systematic qualitative analysis of interview texts, the author examines the production of wildlife film from a critical interdisciplinary perspective and answers the following research questions. How are media representations of Nature shaped and conditioned by media forms and conditions production? How does the production ecology of wildlife filmmaking shape the content of specific wildlife films? What are the dominant interests of the wildlife film industry? How do wildlife filmmakers represent themselves and their work in an era of environmental crisis? Finally, how do wildlife filmmakers form communities of shared practices, languages, and cultural understandings of the world? Kennedy ultimately argues that the concept of the production of Nature dovetails with a production studies approach and provides a useful framework for evaluating the symbolic power of media institutions in shaping environmental discourse and cultural understandings of Nature. There is, in fact, nothing natural about the processes by which audiences learn about or understand the concepts of `Nature' and `environment' and studying cultural understandings of nature necessarily involves studying of consciousness and the objects of direct experience in the phenomenological tradition Although, the author demonstrates that the wildlife film industry is the ideal object of study for assessing the widening gap between mass-market Nature imagery and real social and environmental chang (open full item for complete abstract)

Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA), Ohio University, 2020, Film

An exploration into the representation of sex and sexuality in film. Included is a feature-length screenplay involving a sexually repressive cult in which the protagonist must navigate his sexuality into adulthood, as well as a complimentary analysis examining my influences, research and process.