Browsing by Author "Hansen, Signe"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    From chef to superstar : food media from World War 2 to the World Wide Web
    (2007) Hansen, Signe; Higgins, John
    This thesis examines representations of food in twenty-first century media, and argues that the media obsession with food in evidence today follows directly from U.K. and U.S. post-war industrial and economic booms, and by the associated processes of globalisation that secure the spread of emergent trends from these countries to the rest of the so-called Western world. The theoretical frame for the work is guided in large part by Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle (1967), which follows a Marxist tradition of examining the intersection between consumerism and social relationships. Debord's spectacle is not merely something to be looked at, but functions, like Marx's fetishised commodity, as a mechanism of alienation. The spectacle does this by substituting real, lived experience with representations of life. Based on analyses of media representations of food from the post-war period to the present day, the work argues against the discursive celebration of globalisation as a signifier of abundance and access, and maintains, instead, that consequent to the now commonplace availability of choice and information is a deeply ambiguous relationship to food because it is a relationship overwhelmingly determined by media rather than experience. It further argues that the success of food media results from a spectacular conflation of an economy of consumerism with the basic human need to consume to survive. Contemporary celebrity chefs emerge as the locus of this conflation by representing figures of authority on that basic need, and also, through branded products (including themselves), the superfluity of consumerism. The subject of the work, therefore, is food, but the main object of its critique is media. Food media from World War 2 to the World Wide Web is about the commodification of history and politics, through food, and the natural (super)star of this narrative is the modern celebrity chef.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Open Access
    Truffaut Un-Sutured : a psychogeographical reading of The 400 Blows
    (2002) Hansen, Signe; Higgins, John
    In its application to cinema, suturing denotes the process by which film narrative is rendered seamless. This enables the identification required for a spectator to become the subject of a film and also functions to conceal the film’s ideological mechanisms. In a critical survey of existing criticism of Francois Truffaut's films in general, and The 400 Blows in particular, the dissertation argues that the majority of this scholarship colludes with the textual suturing process by neglecting to pose ideological questions of the films. An application of the Situationist theory of psychogeography to The 400 Blows serves as a counter to this critical trend. The concept is not only thematically pertinent to the film, but also provides an analytical tool to un-suture the filmic text and thereby to situate The 400 Blows ideologically. By focusing on the interaction between individuals and a socially conditioned environment, a psychogeographical reading combines a psychoanalytical and materialist analysis of the film. This critical perspective departs from most existing scholarship by insisting on the film as a discursive response to a particular socio-historical context. Based on a reading of the film’s conclusion as signifying Trufauts un-suturing of his own text, the dissertation argues that the director’s discourse challenges hegemonic codes by asserting the desire for a self-determined situation. Contending that this is commensurate with a rejection of the passive subjecthcod dictated by consumerist culture, it concludes that the film represents a form of discursive psychogeography. This supports the argument for situating Truffaut and the Situationists together in what Raymond Williams terms a structure of feeling, the shared ideological context that finally serves to validate a psychogeographical reading of The 400 Blows.