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Browsing by Author "Diffrient, David Scott, advisor"

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    A is for audience: an examination of audience construction, focalization, and politicization in contemporary children's ABC books
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2015) Campbell, Grant, author; Diffrient, David Scott, advisor; Griffin, Cindy, committee member; Coke, Pamela, committee member
    This thesis explores the ways contemporary children's ABC books can politically shape or frame the way audiences interpret and conceptualize content within the books. Using the children's ABC books A is for Activist (2013) and America: A Patriotic Primer (2002), I examine how children's texts can construct audiences, create a unique site of focalization--known as a focalized dialogue--for those audiences, and utilize phenomenological metaphors to politically shape the focalized dialogues that occur between readers of the books. In doing so, contemporary children's ABC books can wield social and political power that can function to characterize contemporary understandings of cultural artifacts and even children themselves.
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    DC unmade: failure, fandom and the Justice League films that could have been
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2024) Greene, Ryan, author; Diffrient, David Scott, advisor; Martey, Rosa, committee member; Burgchardt, Carl, committee member; Elkins, Evan, committee member
    Unmade films have received little attention as a general category, and this is doubly so for unmade superhero genre projects. The fact that these unfilms are failures in otherwise vibrant action franchises has typically led to their elision from canonical narratives. In studying two of the many defunct superhero films in Warner Brothers's DC catalog, it is possible to compare the failures of each in order to discern the industrial and narrative practices that contributed to their collapse. I apply scholarship on failure and comic book film adaptation to the case of George Miller's Justice League: Mortal. I trace the director's grand vision of a franchise juggernaut that was ultimately cancelled due to a confluence of bureaucratic interference and backlash against the promise of unlimited, speculative success. I then turn attention toward WB's second attempt to create a superhero ensemble film, Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon's Justice League (2017). From the ashes of the film's financial under-performance and critical failure rose a dogged fan movement to release an unknown and totally different director's cut. To understand this fan community and its impact on unproduction, I evaluate the Snyder Cut movement's defense of Zack Snyder's unmade DC Extended Universe, their battle against Warner Brothers and their refusal to accept failure. Taken together, these two unproductions demonstrate two divergent visions of failure. One lacked fan backing and so rests inert, its pieces scattered across the internet. The other rose from the unfinished realm of shadow cinema, lifted up by fans who vilified its producer while demanding that executives pay for its release.
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    Liquid communication: how FC Barcelona is spreading Sentiment Blaugrana one drop at a time
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2013) Zapata, Andrea D. Dájer, author; Diffrient, David Scott, advisor; Williams, Elizabeth, committee member; Pedrós-Gascón, Antonio Francisco, committee member
    This thesis explores the digital strategy of the Catalan sports club FC Barcelona. The club has gained global popularity in the last several years due to its success in league and international competitions. FC Barcelona's digital strategy has created a communicative network that allows for the establishment of a global community of fans. Within this strategy, a new form of communication between organizations and a worldwide audience has developed, one that I call "liquid communication." This term refers to a type of communication that can easily go back and forth between the participants involved. It is communication that is neither restricted by time or space, nor dictated by any type of social status. Liquid communication is needed in the new globalized arena where the Internet and social networks are frequently employed, because it is able to fully capture and analyze the bivalent flows of information, feedback and messages that are being deployed throughout the world into a single communicative channel. Taking Paul M. Pederson, Kimberly S. Miloch, and Pamela C. Laucella's Strategic Sports Communication Model as a source of inspiration, I propose a new, more dynamic and up-to-date communication model that can be adapted to different types of organizations and which takes into account the new technologies that have emerged in recent years.
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    Reckoning with identity: the changing dynamics of television representations in the American South
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Scroggins, Emily, author; Diffrient, David Scott, advisor; Burgchardt, Carl, committee member; Gudmestad, Robert, committee member
    The American South is a continually understudied and misrepresented region of the United States. Televisual representations of the region typically rely on the Southern Imaginary, a collection of predetermined stereotypes and ideas about the South, to inform their depictions of Southerners and their identities. These representations tend to be one-dimensional and inauthentic to those who have and continued to live in the region. Recently, media depictions of the American South are attempting to challenge the Southern Imaginary and present a more nuanced and legitimate representation of Southerners. This project investigates how the nuanced representations of race, gender, and sexuality coupled with the settings of Hart of Dixie (CW, 2011-2015), One Mississippi (Amazon, 2015-2017), and Atlanta (FX, 2016-present) work to influence audiences' perceptions of the Southern region of the United States. Ultimately, I address the question: in what ways are modern television depictions of the South fighting against the Southern Imaginary and how does this influence the audiences' understanding of the South as both an actual regional space and a discursive construct? Investigation into the attempts to alter the Southern Imaginary can shed light on the falsities that television depictions of the region utilize to ensure that the South remains a social and political scapegoat for problems of the entire nation thus stagnating progress for all.
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    Stunting death: affect, attraction and authenticity in Rated-R superhero cinema
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Greene, Ryan Kent, author; Diffrient, David Scott, advisor; Burgchardt, Carl, advisor; Gravdahl, John, committee member
    Stunt work is an ever-present and typically overlooked aspect of film production. The labor goes unseen by design; traditionally, Hollywood studio hierarchies regarded a good stunt performer as one who altogether eluded audience detection. The early star system's stunt performers did not see their names splashed across film industry magazines as happens today. Even contemporarily, studios and surrounding paratextual discourse systematically de-emphasize the stunt even in cases where certain stunt performers become, as Lauren Steimer put it, "hypervisible." The trick works perhaps too well, as Steimer remains one of few scholars to studies stunts. Several of these few have called for stunt work's theoretical and generic expansion. The impetus for doing so is a fundamentally ethical one. How can a society view and engage with entertainment while being unaware of those who willingly risk injury and death to imbue films with authentic action? Stunt scholarship thus far has focused primarily on stunt worker's history—from their origins as human flies, bridge-jumpers and other daredevils to feckless circus clowns and all these characters' eventual absorption into Hollywood sets. Scholars also discuss ways in which stunt work complicates traditional understandings of film diegesis. I further articulate the stunt's relationship with diegetic narrative, tracing its functions through the cinema of attractions, avant-garde spectatorship, documentary space and other story-breaking constructs. In doing so, I hope to heed one particular scholarly call to evaluate this ubiquitous brand of labor within the brightly colored, ultra-violent and action-driven world of R-Rated superhero films. Fox studios recently produced two Deadpool (2016, 2018) films and Logan (2017). Critics hailed them as groundbreaking achievements within a genre that has typically eschewed not only fourth-wall-breaking humor, but gratuitous blood and gore. Something in the characters of Wade Wilson and old man Logan reflects common perceptions of stunt people. They must surely leap back up after any injury, much like the rapidly healing antiheroes they play in these films. Industry dialectic encourages a kind of spectatorship that does not linger on the stunt body's ethereal appearance on-screen. In removing attention from the stunt, such coverage tacitly preserves audience immersion in narrative while distracting attentions from the pain and sacrifice comprising the stunt performer's career. Since these performers give filmgoers authentic-looking affective thrills, I argue for a closer look at what is not meant to be seen.
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    Wonder women in the virtual world: how female Shepard redefined the female hero archetype in video games
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2021) McHenry, Chelsea, author; Diffrient, David Scott, advisor; Marx, Nick, committee member; Martey, Rosa Mikeal, committee member
    AAA video game protagonists typically represent the white, heterosexual male. While standards are changing, there remains a considerable discrepancy between the number of male and female protagonists available. This study intends to examine how video game producers can move forward with creating resonant AAA protagonists by examining one of the first protagonists who presented unforeseen equality. This thesis explores the character of female Shepard from BioWare's video game series Mass Effect (2007-2012) and what elements made her a fan favorite and marketable. Using Jim Bizzochi's video game narrative framework and Shunsuke Nozawa's concept of ensoulment related to voice work, this thesis argues that FemShep redefined the video game landscape. She served to create her own space as a character and not merely a gender-flipped construct of her male counterpart. By examining how she is constructed and handled in-game, the conclusion suggests that when the developmental focus is on creating the character, there is a market for strong heroes who are also female.