Bøger af Amelie Meyer

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject History - America, grade: 1,0, University of Göttingen (Seminar für Mittlere und Neuere Geschichte), course: The "Roaring Twenties": Die Massenkultur der 1920er Jahre in transatlantischer Perspektive, language: English, abstract: For as long as there have been moving pictures, there have also been attempts to regulate their content. The first court case surrounding moving pictures has been recorded as early as 1897 and many more were to follow. While film was thus always subjected to scrutiny from various groups, the 1920s saw a more fervent battle for control over censorship which resulted in the formation of the 1930 Production Code remaining in effect until 1968. Lee Grieveson¿s study Policing Cinema: Movies and Censorship in Early-Twentieth-Century America comprehensively describes long-lasting battles over movie content regulation and the discussion of the function of cinema. Yet, he is among many scholars who sees the 1915 Supreme Court decision in the case ¿Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohiö as the culmination of these struggles as it proved ¿the validity of state censorship.¿ Justice McKenna is quoted ruling that ¿the exhibition of moving picture is a business, pure and simple, originated and conducted for profit, like other spectacles, not to be regarded ¿ as part of the press of the country, or as organs of the public opinion.¿ This ruling was not only significant for the increased state and city censorship which followed, but it also fueled censorship demands by various parties including religious groups, social reformers, politicians, and journalists who all called for the elusive concept of morality. The road from this first ruling which titled the film industry as a business to be regulated towards a formal censorship with the aim of restoring morality manifested in the so-called Production Code in 1934 will be the focus of this paper. The first part will consist of an analysis of the various parties involved in the attempt to regulate movie content in order to expose the individual motives behind their requests as well as their practices to reach their goal of censorship. The following part will then deal with the question of how well the reformers were able to realize their goal of censoring the movies during the first years of the 1920s. The questions posed above will mainly be studied on the basis of guiding works written by Gregory D. Black, Francis G. Couvares, Stephen Vaughn, Lee Grieveson and Leonard J. Leff. Analyzed sources will include newspaper articles, state review board standards, studies on audience behavior, and an original text written by a direct participant of the 1920 censorship struggle, MPPDA president William Hays.

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject American Studies - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,3, University of Göttingen (Philosophische Fakultät), course: The American Musical, language: English, abstract: When Mamma Mia! opened in theaters in the summer of 2008, many reviewers were less than enthusiastic about the film adaptation of the popular stage musical. While the storyline of 20-year old Sophie living on a Greek island with her single parent mother and embarking on a quest to find her father was declared to be flat and incoherent, the cinematic realization of the stage version has similarly been regarded as unsatisfactory. In spite of critics¿ dismay, however, Mamma Mia! achieved great box office success.The discrepancy between reviewers¿ predictions and the actual perception of audiences raises the question of the origin of Mamma Mia!¿s popularity. Ashley Elaine York categorizes Mamma Mia!, amongst others, as a ¿new breed of women¿s giants [¿] best be described as `women¿s blockbusters¿ and touted as the newest conglomerate trend¿. While this relatively broad definition of the woman¿s blockbuster and its keys for success is applied by York to different genres and will also be considered, this paper mainly sets out to look at several of its aspects from the point of view of musical studies. Particular emphasis will be put on the use of the well-known ABBA music and its function within the movie and for audience¿s reception and involvement as the categorization of the film as a so called jukebox musical will be discussed. Thus, the following questions will be investigated in the course of this paper: Can Mamma Mia! be classified as a jukebox musical, deriving its success from its nostalgic representation of the much loved ABBA music, or does it go beyond this classification to reinterpret the songs in an innovative fashion?

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Literature - Modern Literature, grade: 1,3, University of Göttingen (Philosophische Fakultät), course: Beyond Principle and Philosophy: Edgar Allan Poe as an American Author, language: English, abstract: In this paper, it will be argued that this emphasis on visual sensations is directly related to the violence against women as it exposes the murderers¿ motives and drives, their course of action as well as their attempt to then distort the reader¿s view of the truth in order to cover their involvement. For the discussion of this thesis Poe¿s short stories ¿The Oval Portrait,¿ ¿Morellä, ¿Berenice¿ and especially ¿Ligeiä will be considered.Many of Edgar Allan Poe¿s short stories deal with a fixation on dying women as he famously states in ¿The Philosophy of Composition: ¿death, then, of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetical topic in the world¿ (1621). The death of those women is often violent as they are murdered by a male character as a result of an ¿emotional estrangement between the male protagonist and a fated female¿ (Kennedy 118). Interestingly, the characters and the circumstances surrounding those deaths are described with an emphasis on the ¿lexical field of sight¿ (Marín-Ruiz 58) so that already ¿a cursory exposure to Poe¿s fiction leaves a strong impression of his recurrent emphasis on the eye¿ (Scheick 80). Detailed accounts of eyes, glances, gazes and vision keep reappearing in the selected stories, so that sight becomes one of the key elements of the tales.

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2011 in the subject American Studies - Miscellaneous, grade: 2,3, University of Göttingen (Philosophische Fakultät), language: English, abstract: At the turn of the nineteenth century, the city of New York underwent a tremendous change that is regarded as a complete ¿transformation of American culture¿ (Zurier). An abundance of scholarly works have been devoted to those developments that were of a geographic, economic or social nature. An equally great focus has been on the rise of a new kind of consumer culture which, according to Tottis, rang in an ¿age of Amusement¿ which included the advent of the department store, popular entertainment and advertisement (Zurier). Recent scholars, among them Rebecca Zurier, have concentrated on the role of public display within this consumer culture. People were not only there ¿to buy, but merely to ¿see¿ the things¿ they desired to purchase (Bowlby, ¿Looking¿). The display and constant ¿visuality¿ of the outer look of the city on the one hand and the mutual gazing of city people on the other hand caused the need for a ¿new skill of urban viewing¿ people had yet to learn (Manthorne). Thus, new ways of seeing developed. Within this context of a heavily pictorial and visual consumer culture, scholars have examined the works of the Ashcan School, a group of artists known for their ¿common¿ city depictions. Up to the present, few scholars did not concentrate on the Ashcan artists¿ portrayal of poor living conditions, toil and tenements. Instead, they began to analyze the consumerist scenes of the Ashcan School¿s oeuvre: they contemplated the issues of public display, its effects on New York¿s citizen and they also scraped the surface of the gender issue within consumerism. This bachelor thesis is intended to extent this study in order to provide a coherent picture of how consumerism, gender and new ways of seeing play together in a number of Ashcan works. The portrayals of Everett Shinn and John Sloan have been chosen for their depicted content of entertainment, shopping and urban viewing.

Master's Thesis from the year 2014 in the subject American Studies - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,0, University of Göttingen (Philosophische Fakultät), language: English, abstract: At the beginning of the year 2010, movie critic Bob Mondello triumphantly declared ¿It's going to be another musical decade,¿ noting the way the previous ten years have prompted a movie musical ¿resurgence¿ paving the road for a bright music-filled future. When looking at the history of musicals over the course of time, this does not always seem to be the case. In spite of the fact that the film musical was an audience favorite during its ¿Golden Age¿ era (1927 until the mid-1950s) and celebrating great successes such as 42nd Street (1933) or Singin¿ in the Rain (1952), it seems to have deteriorated in quality and reputation. Since recent movie musicals apparently have hit a different, more successful, nerve with audiences, the question is why the genre now sees an uplift in box office numbers. Which elements of recent movie musicals keep audiences glued to the screen? How do they work in tapping into audiences¿ emotions, prompting them to participate? This thesis will be influenced by the methodology of reception study scholar Janet Staiger. Staiger¿s 1992 Interpreting Film: Studies in the Historical Reception of American Cinema and Perverse Spectators (2000) reconsider the way audiences make sense of films. With her historical materialist approach taking into account all ¿traces¿ of audiences interacting with filmic material, she sets out to find an understanding of why certain films prove to be successful with audiences at certain times (Kemper). She investigates the ¿modes of address and exhibition,¿ ¿establishes the identities and interpretative strategies and tactics brought by spectators to the cinemä and acknowledges cultural groups such as fans who ¿produce their own conventionalized modes of reception¿ (23; emphasis in original). It is the purpose of this thesis, then, to take up the approach of looking at the ¿contact zone¿ (Kemper) between films and audiences in order to investigate filmic addresses fostering audience engagement. In doing so, an assortment of recent film musicals that have achieved considerable box office success including Moulin Rouge!, Across the Universe, Hairspray, and Mamma Mia! will be analyzed with regard to particular addresses picked up by audiences, thereby creating the ¿event¿ of movie-going. The central question investigated here then asks: Which elements of a particular film are focused on by critical reports and how do these elements shape the movie-going experience, participation, and engagement of viewers?

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject American Studies - Miscellaneous, grade: 1,0, University of Göttingen (Philosophische Fakultät), course: The American Rhetorical Tradition, language: English, abstract: While this extensive film encompasses a variety of themes and topics, the focus of this paper will be its proposition of progress. It will be argued that Angels in America confirms progress to be inevitable and essential by drawing on, and redefining, American concepts and myths of westward movement and migration, equality and pluralism. Thus, traditional elements of the construct ¿American Dream¿ will be analyzed.The first part will consist of a short overview of different approaches to progress employed in the film: historical, religious and political. Subsequently, the second and third part will focus on a set of selected scenes and investigate how progress, and the lack thereof, is communicated in the depiction of different characters as they are caught in a constant struggle between motion and staying put, between moving on and giving up, between living and death. From this, the redefinition of aforementioned American concepts will be derived.In 2003, playwright Tony Kushner adopted his two-part play premiered in 1991 and 1992, Angels in America, to the screen. The HBO miniseries was directed by Mike Nichols and studded with celebrated actors such as Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Emma Thompson. Set in New York City in the mid 1980s, a time of Reagan¿s politics and the silencing of AIDS, the series revolves around a set of characters differing greatly in ethnicity, religion, worldview and sexual orientation.They include Louis and Prior, a homosexual couple having to cope with Prior¿s AIDS diagnosis, and Harper and Joe, Mormons, who are faced with Joe¿s oppressed homosexuality destroying their marriage. Other characters are Hannah, Joe¿s mother from Salt Lake City, Roy Cohn, a lawyer also diagnosed with AIDS, and Belize, Prior¿s black homosexual friend who is also Roy¿s nurse. Throughout the film, these characters come together in unexpected ways in an attempt to move out of their crises and transform themselves.

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Göttingen (Philosophische Fakultät), course: Theorizing Film Remakes, language: English, abstract: Roald Dahl¿s 1964 novel "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" has been voted the most popular children¿s book of all time. The sometimes violently imposed morality and thereby suitability for children has been a matter of debate amongst disapproving critics for a long time. Others simply see "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" as a cautionary tale depicting children¿s errors ought to be prevented.It did not take long for the first attempt to adapt Dahl¿s tale to the big screen. In 1971, "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory", directed by Mel Stuart and starring Gene Wilder as Wonka, opened in theaters. Although lacking immediate success, the children¿s musical has evolved into a cult classic over the years. In 2005, director Tim Burton took his turn transforming the novel into a movie choosing Johnny Depp for the role as Wonka. Whereas the first movie is said to win over audiences with ¿Gene Wilder¿s twinkling air of mystery,¿ Burton¿s movie is regarded as much darker, capturing the novel¿s mood due to the affinity with the Gothic, as well as fairytale motifs which Dahl and Burton share.When examining both movies with regard to Dahl¿s source material, it is advisable to employ strategic measures of adaptation theories. This paper will attempt to do so and focuses on the interpretation of the character of Wonka, especially concerning his darker side, in both films. The following thesis will then be examined: The joyful and fantastic world described in Dahl¿s novel has an underlying sinister and mysterious side to it and is associated with the character of Willy Wonka and the setting of his chocolate factory.