Chivers, Sally

Memorable Movie Watching: Viewer Ruminations about Memory in Four Canadian Films and their IMDb User Reviews explores how four Canadian films released in the decade around the turn of the millennium tell stories of memory and remembering, and how User Reviewers writing on the IMDb.com engage with, respond to, and re–remember those narratives filtered through their own remembered personal experiences. It embraces a new form of audience research by analyzing films alongside voluntary viewer contributions in order to bring these viewers' voices into the conversation about memory in film and specifically Canadian film.Lilies (John Greyson, 1996), The Hanging Garden (Thom Fitzgerald, 1997), Marion Bridge (Wiebke Von Carolsfeld, 2002), and My Winnipeg (Guy Maddin, 2007) are each fiction films that focus on the main character's deeply personal childhood memories. A textual analysis of the four films reveals trends in how the filmmakers create memory explorations and memory works [works based on memory] in Canadian film. A further textual and thematic analysis of the IMDb's 117 User Reviews for these four films reveals how viewers engage with what I term memory narratives and the personal memories these films spark. The four films respectively privilege, through narrative and filmic techniques, each protagonist's telling of remembered childhood events. Yet when User Reviewers of the films comment on the protagonist's remembered childhood events, they choose to contest them, citing the unreliability of the remembered and of memory itself. User Reviewers interrogate the film narratives against their own personal experience, all the while asserting that there is significance to be found in the process of remembering. For User Reviewers, this process of remembering involves engaging with the film and then writing about their memories of watching the film and its narrative through their own sparked memories. In this process, they dig for significant meaning even though Users rarely articulate that meaning or specify for whom it is meaningful. In their writing, Users do reveal their own thoughts and beliefs about Canadian film, as well as their knowledge of filmmakers, related texts, Canadian locations, and their own childhood and youth experiences. Key words Memory, Remembering, Canadian Film, User generated content, Audience, Viewer, Thom Fitzgerald, John Greyson, Guy Maddin, Wiebke von Carolsfeld Content Warning Please note: the memory stories depicted in these films, discussed in the User Reviews and in this dissertation are extremely disturbing and may be upsetting to the reader.

Author Keywords: Audience, Canadian Film, Memory, Social Media, User Generated Content, Viewer

Because federal funding for long-term care was not included as part of Canada's publicly-funded universal health care system, provincial governments have been free to determine how much, or how little, they will rely on the for-profit sector to meet the long-term care needs of their senior populations. The proportion of beds in the for-profit sector differs in each province, demonstrating that policy approaches to this type of care have developed according to distinct provincial political contexts. In this dissertation I explain why governments in two provinces, Manitoba and Ontario, have come to rely on the proprietary sector to markedly different degrees. While in the federation Manitoba stands out for its restrained reliance on this form of care, Ontario stands out for its exceptional dependence on commercial provision. In the chapters that follow I employ an historical institutionalist framework of analysis to explain why these neighbouring provinces initially pursued different policy paths in long-term care and how these paths have been sustained over time.

Following an introductory chapter in which I explain the reasons for the marginalization of long-term care within national health policy making, I provide in-depth analysis of these case studies in policy divergence. I argue that contemporary policy differences between these neighbouring provinces cannot be understood in isolation from long-term historical processes. Focusing largely on the period from the 1960s to the 1990s, I emphasize that present differences in ownership are a reflection of the different constellation of actors, events, ideas and institutions that came together at critical junctures in time, and the lasting legacies that these early windows of opportunity for reform have had on subsequent rounds of long-term care policy-making. In each province, diverging ideas about the appropriate role of the for-profit sector in meeting the long-term care needs of an aging population rose to prominence on the political agenda. Over time, rigidities developed in each system, making it difficult for actors advocating for new directions in ownership to realize their ambitions.

In both provinces policies put in place at earlier times greatly influenced future political dynamics, altered the guiding principles of government departments and policy makers, provided incentives for different interest group formations, and led to contrasting public expectations about the proper balance of the for-profit and non-profit sectors in long-term care provision. I conclude this dissertation by arguing that its findings can contribute in important ways to present discussions about long-term care reform in Canada generally and about the future role of for-profit providers specifically.

Author Keywords: Comparative Politics, Health Policy, Historical Institutionalism, Long-Term Care, Path Dependency, Provincial Politics

My thesis examines anthropomorphism and many avenues in which humans represent nonhumans to evaluate their own lives. Using Isabella Rossellini's Green Porno webseries, a collection of two-minute films starring Rossellini as a multitude of nonhumans with costumes transforming her into nonhuman, I posit that a new form of anthropomorphism -- one that values the nonhuman in all his or her nonhumanity -- is emerging in contemporary media. Rossellini describes the mating, seduction, and maternal instincts of these nonhumans, regularly drawing parallels between nonhuman and human behavior and uncovering crucial intersections in femininity, masculinity, queer theory, and abjection. In more recent films, I see Rossellini performing certain nonhumans to critique particular characteristics of Western human society and incredulously addressing the human viewer as a member of a species that might not be as high in the caste system of living beings as he or she is led to believe. In turning this sense of grotesque Otherness onto the human, I identify Rossellini as engaging in counterabjection, or the reversal of extreme degradation often projected upon nonhuman bodies by humans.

Author Keywords: abjection, animal studies, nonhuman, queer studies

This thesis examines what the term "transgender narrative" represents at this particular time and location. I do this by examining various methods of transgender storytelling through different forms of media production, including autobiography, film, novels, and online platforms such as Tumblr and YouTube. In chapter one, I look at the production of novels and the value system by which they are judged ("gender capital") in transgender publics and counterpublics. In chapter two, I examine the history of the autobiography, along with the medical history closely associated with transgender identity and bodily transformation. The third chapter examines notions of violence and memorial behind the deaths of transgender people and the ways in which certain political revolutions are formed within a counterpublic. I deconstruct varying notions of identity, authorship, and cultural production and critically examine what it means to be transgender and what it means to tell stories about transgender people. I will conclude with how these stories are being shaped through social media to become more innovative and move away from the rigid value system of gender capital previously mentioned.

Author Keywords: autobiography, gender, sex, social media, transgender, transsexual

This thesis is an attempt to explore the role that musical texts played in the development of a public by writing a work of fiction and then applying to it a critical exegesis. Part One, the literary text Some Of This Is True, (re-)creates and remembers punk in its iteration in Regina, Saskatchewan, in the late 1970s. Part two, the critical exegesis, examines how the theories of public formation outlined in Michael Warner's Publics and Counterpublics can partially explain the creation and behaviour of publics, but not entirely. Similarly Mikhail Bahktin's theory of carnival helps explain punk, but not entirely. Some gaps can be filled partly with theory borrowed from art history that reveals useful links between punk and Continental art movements; Michel Foucault's concept of heterotopia fills other gaps. Literature fills the rest.

Author Keywords: Creative Writing, Heterotopia, Michael Warner, Michel Foucault, Mikhail Bakhtin, Punk & Punks

This dissertation seeks to explore and understand how autism, asperger and the autistic spectrum is represented in Canadian culture. Acknowledging the role of films, television, literature and print media in the construction of autism in the consciousness of the Canadian public, this project seeks to critique representations of autism on the grounds that these representations have an ethical responsibility to autistic individuals and those who share their lives. This project raises questions about how autism is constructed in formal and popular texts; explores retrospective diagnosis and labelling in biography and fiction; questions the use of autism and Asperger's as metaphor for contemporary technology culture; examines autistic characterization in fiction; and argues that representations of autism need to be hospitable to autistic culture and difference. In carrying out this critique this project proposes and enacts a new interdisciplinary methodology for academic disability study that brings the academic researcher in contact with the perspectives of non-academic audiences working in the same subject area, and practices this approach through an unconventional focus group collaboration. Acknowledging the contribution of disability studies approaches to representation, this project will also challenge these methodologies on the grounds that the diverse voices of audiences are, at times, absent from discourse focused research. Chapter One offers an explanation of disability studies scholarship and the history of autism as a category of disability and difference. Chapter Two looks at how disability and specifically autistic representations have been understood academically and introduces the rationale and experiences of the focus group project. Chapter Three explores retrospective, biographical diagnosis, the role of autism as technological metaphor, and contemporary biography. Chapter Four looks at the construction of autistic characters in Canadian literature and film. Chapter Five interrogates documentary and news media responses to autism and the construction of autism as Canadian health crisis, and also explores how discourses that surround autism are implicated in interventions and therapeutic approaches to autistic individuals.

Key Terms

Autism; Autistic Spectrum; Asperger; Disability; Representation; Media; Interdisciplinary Research; Focus Group; Retrospective Diagnosis; Biography; Academic Method; Academic and Representational Responsibility; Literature; Film; Diagnosis; Disability Studies; Therapy

Author Keywords: Academic Method, Autism Spectrum, Biography, Disability, Interdisciplinary Research, Representation

The Battle of Maldon: A Medieval Screenplay

History and Heroism in the Cinematic Adaptation of an Old English Poem

The Battle of Maldon is an artistic representation of a historical event whose style lends itself to being adapted into a screenplay. This project examines how the poem presents a recent event in an epic heroic style, mixing history with legend, and how the heroism of the men in the poem is celebrated. These explorations lead to the creation of a screenplay which imitates the ways that the poet combines fact and fiction and situates the screenplay within the larger realm of medieval film.

Author Keywords: Anglo-Saxon history, Byrhtnoth, film, heroism, Maldon, The Battle of Maldon

In this thesis, I explore the question of what would make Peterborough a good or "age-friendly" place to grow old(er) from a diversity of perspectives within and outside the structures of Age-friendly Peterborough (AFP). This research further explores if and/or how AFP and the Age-friendly movement more broadly, can be used as a tool for visioning and enacting more just, equitable, and "age-friendly" aging futures. To answer these questions I used semi-structured interviews with individuals either presently or previously involved with Age-friendly Peterborough, and an intergenerational and arts-based workshop, "Imagining our Futures." From the research findings, I argue that AFP has a significant role to play in making Peterborough a better place to grow old(er), while also outlining how dominant Age-friendly frameworks are limited in their ability to move us towards aging futures that are just, equitable, and "age-friendly."

Author Keywords: Age-Friendly Communities, Age-Friendly Movement, Aging Futures, Arts-Based Research, Interdependence, Successful Aging

Parody has been a strategy within cultural production since the ancient Greeks: "paraodia" referred to a song sung alongside the main narrative thread of a dramatic work; the prefix "para-" also signifies "against." In A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-century Art Forms, Linda Hutcheon offers this core definition: parody is "a form of repetition with ironic critical distance, marking difference rather than similarity … [with] tension between the potentially conservative effect of repetition and the potentially revolutionary impact of difference" (xii). This and other aspects of Hutcheon's theory guide my interpretations of works by three contemporary artists working in Canada: Sybil Lamb's novel I've Got a Time Bomb; Ursula Johnson's (Mi'kmaq) three-part exhibition Mi'kwite'tmn (Do You Remember); and Kent Monkman's (Cree and Irish) exhibition Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience.

I argue that the presence of parodic elements in these artists' works enables them to do two things: to claim spaces that enable recognition of their subject positions, and to critique an aspect of hegemonic norms in contemporary society. I read Lamb's novel as a critique of the heteronormative gender binary via parody of the picaresque genre and of heteronormative discourse/language. Certain pieces in Monkman's exhibition parody the epistemological and display strategies of traditional Eurocentric anthropological museums and archives, as can Johnson's work; her sculptural-installations may also be read as parodying the traditions of Mi'kmaw basket-making. The work of both artists critiques colonial narratives that sought (and may still seek) to denigrate and/or erase Indigenous peoples; such narratives of cultural genocide were both tacitly and directly propagated by museums. I analyze these three artists' works, considering key features of parody (ambiguity; irony and "double-voicedness"; trans-contextualization; and humour), and their effects (defamiliarization; ontological instability; complicity; and laughter). Parody challenges the post-structuralist emphasis on the "decoder," (viewer/reader) reinstating the "encoder" (artist/author) as agent. Decoders recognize their complicity within the context of the hegemonic narrative, whether the heteronormative gender binary or colonialism, and may come to shift perception – as per Hutcheon's "potentially revolutionary impact."

Author Keywords: contemporary art, Indigenous art, museum history, parody, picaresque, transgender literature

This thesis explores Frankenstein's popular culture narrative, contrasting recent Frankenstein texts with the content of Mary Shelley's classic novel and James Whale's iconic films Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935). The research investigates how Frankenstein's legacy of adaptations function intertextually to influence both the production and the consumption of Frankenstein texts, referring to this complicated and contradictory intertextual web as "the Composite Frankenstein."

This thesis present the Composite Frankenstein as a hermeneutic by which to view Frankenstein's collaborative and cumulative identity in popular culture, drawing on the work of other scholars on adaptation and intertextuality. Sarah Milner investigates the context of the key Frankenstein texts, the novel and the 1931 film; this research's goal is to destabilize the perception of authorship as an individual's mode of production and to investigate the various social processes that influence text creation and consumption.

Author Keywords: adaptation, authorship, Frankenstein, intertextuality, James Whale, Mary Shelley