Browsing by Author "Rijsdijk, Ian"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    'Dominoes'
    (2012) Adriaanse, Jacobus Petrus; Rijsdijk, Ian
    The main component of this dissertation is a creative project and screenplay for a full feature film called 'Dominoes'. It follows the story of an unnamed teacher (referred to in the screenplay only as V) from one of Cape Town's lower income neighborhoods, who, when faced by the gradual and then sudden brutalizing effects of crime on his community and on him personally, become a vigilante. He haphazardly targets his local crime hierarchy, confronting them with the same destructive violence that they terrorize the community with. As things escalate, his friend, a local policeman, as well as one of his students, are drawn into the battle and become entangled in the carnage, thereby altering the course of the vigilante's crusade as he has to juggle friendship, loyalty and duty while navigating this new and dangerous terrain. Additionally I includes a research paper: 'The Fine Line between Vigilance and Anarchy - Unravelling the Paradox of Vigilantism'. This paper broadly outlines the phenomena of vigilantism, drawing on research from experts as well as examples from real life.
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    Father, God and Tyler's ghost : Fight Club as masculine quest and postmodern pastiche
    (2008) Tessendorf, Clint David; Rijsdijk, Ian
    This study seeks to account for the numerous ways critics in reviews, magazine articles, journal articles and books have interpreted David Fincher's Fight Club. It also seeks to account for growing appeal of the film even though it was initially described as a failure at the box-office. The film clearly engages with many provocative ideas, leading to the many ways it has been interpreted. This exploration is facilitated through an exploration of the various labels that have been placed on the film and investigates to what extent the film manages to provide a coherent message beyond its mixed bag of 'hip' allusions.
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    Men on the margin: onscreen outsiders and American masculinity
    (2015) Phillips, Andrew John; Rijsdijk, Ian; Marx, Lesley
    The central purpose of this thesis is to examine ideas of solitude and alienation as they relate to the masculine identity of men - particularly American men as represented in Hollywood films. The subjects include several outsider characters from history and fiction, which are divided into two primary categories: those men who have rejected society and sought solitude for themselves, especially in nature; and those who have been rejected by society, who find themselves on the relative margins of the patriarchal society they expected to embrace them. There is one question at the core of this exploration: If masculine identity is socially determined in accordance with strict normative values, what then of the outsider, who has ostensibly rejected, or been rejected by, society and is in many ways no longer subject to its rules? After a general introduction to psychological and philosophical notions of solitude and alienation, I use the first chapter to develop a theoretical framework for discussing hegemonic American masculinity, which is potently represented on screen by the Hollywood film industry to both reflect and inform the society that funds it.
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    Visualising climate change: the case of the intergovernmental panel on climate change's cover images
    (2016) Claassens, Katrine Brink; Rijsdijk, Ian; Pasquini, Lorena
    Climate change is an increasingly urgent problem. How it is communicated and represented are of interest to those seeking to understand action or inaction on the issue. There is increasing interest on how it is being communicated visually. This research speaks to the growing body of literature on the visual communication of climate change in order to contribute to the wider critical literature addressing the role of images in the communication of climate change. It does so by considering a neglected site of climate change imagery: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) report covers. The IPCC's report covers from the first ones in 1990, to the latest ones of 2014, are investigated in this quantitative and qualitative case study where the subject matter, both literal and symbolic of this (hitherto unexamined) body of images, is interrogated. This dissertation sought to identify and investigate what, exactly, the IPCC is using to visually represent and communicate climate change outside the realm of its scientific graphs and diagrams. It sought to compare these findings with the larger lexicon of climate change imagery and look at how the IPCC negotiates the communicational and representational problems inherent in the visual communication of climate change. The question ultimately asked was whether the IPCC's cover images are effective representations of climate change. What was found was that the IPCC images departed significantly from standard climate imagery. The conclusions drawn from the initial content and thematic analysis was that the IPCC images are frequently too banal, bland and decontextualized to be effective representations or communicators of climate change but do offer some potentially effective avenues overlooked in other representations.