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Browsing by Author "Marx, Nick, advisor"

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    Black like it never left: Black women and representation in contemporary broadcast television
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Taylor, Kirstin, author; Marx, Nick, advisor; Chung, Hye Seung, committee member; Arthur, Tori, committee member
    It is imperative that we recognize that broadcast television is not dead, despite echoing declarations to the contrary, and that it can be a viable platform for presenting Black-led programs telling complex stories. In this project, I argue that current broadcast television shows are harnessing their industrial position and staple generic conventions to reorient depictions of Blackness on broadcast to more complexly and resonantly reflect lived Black experiences. It seems that these stories are being told not just on niche or fringe platforms catering to Black audiences, but also on long established and popular broadcast channels. This project is a limited survey of Black female representation on broadcast television comprised of three case studies: Fox's emergency procedural 9-1-1, The CW's HBCU set drama All American: Homecoming, and ABC's sitcom Abbott Elementary. Guiding this survey is a set of critical questions: First, how do these cases represent Black womanhood? Second, what are the industrial and creative contexts of these cases and how do they influence the texts? How do their creators, showrunners, writers, and actors work within the broadcast parameters and appropriate traditional conventions to display different iterations of Blackness? Finally, what new cultural meanings, if any, are the resulting representations generating?
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    Colorblind love and Black love on purpose: Black feminist thought, casting, and the invisibility/visibility of Black womanhood on television
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2018) Goepfert, Ava, author; Marx, Nick, advisor; Hughes, Kit, committee member; Black, Raymond, committee member
    This thesis interrogates the representations of Black womanhood on television by investigating the production context and text of two contemporary television shows. Both case studies reveal the importance of quality on screen representations and the relationship between production practices and understandings of intersectionality, stereotypes, and cultural specificity. I argue Being Mary Jane's industrial discourse and text intentionally offer a complex image of a Black woman's life while the industrial context surrounding Rachel's journey on The Bachelorette undermines Black female visibility through a colorblind discourse that dismisses Rachel's position and experience as a Black woman. These case studies demonstrate how off screen discourses contribute to representation on screen and create narratives that can exclude or include cultural specificity and racial complexity. Such narratives resonate throughout popular and political discourses with the potential to empower marginalized voices or expose the mechanisms that strive to silence them and reify white supremacy.
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    From parks to presidents: political sensibilities of narrative political fiction
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2016) Willden, Seth J., author; Marx, Nick, advisor; Anderson, Karrin Vasby, committee member; Cloud, Doug, committee member
    This thesis examines the ways televised narrative political fiction can portray political sensibilities. Using the NBC program, Parks and Recreation (2009-2015), and the Netflix streaming service program, House of Cards (2013-2016), I explore how narrative television presents political philosophies to audiences, equipping them to discuss political discourse.
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    Overworked and underpaid: Hollywood gatekeeping in assistant labor and discourse
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2022) Bennett, Kiah E., author; Marx, Nick, advisor; Black, Ray, committee member; Faw, Meara, committee member; Hughes, Kit, committee member
    Ubiquitous, yet unseen, exploited assistants' unseen labor hems the fabric of Hollywood and entertainment industries. In this dissertation, I interrogate the unseen cultural discourses of Hollywood that obfuscate the exploitation of the overworked, underpaid underclass of future creatives and executives: assistants. I argue that the position of an "assistant" – as an entry-level position for Hollywood executive and creative professions – materially, discursively, and socially acts as a gatekeeping mechanism against workers based on class, ability, race, and gender. Meanwhile, Hollywood production and hiring practices must adapt to contemporary demands for accurate representation of diverse positions on-screen and behind-the-scenes diversity. However, Hollywood is inherently white, masculine, middle-to-upper class, and able-bodyminded in its expectations and values. Therefore, I demonstrate how Hollywood uses the position of assistantship to appear diverse, meanwhile the material and cultural conditions of this position gatekeep difference out of Hollywood's creative and executive decision-making roles.
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    Representation and legitimation in streaming television's teenage girl traumedies
    (Colorado State University. Libraries, 2023) Barnes-Nelson, Madison, author; Marx, Nick, advisor; Elkins, Evan, committee member; Wolfgang, David, committee member
    My objects of study for this project are three streaming television series: Hulu's Pen15 (2019-2021), HBO Max's The Sex Lives of College Girls (2021-), and Channel 4/Netflix's Derry Girls (2018-2022). These series comprise a hybrid television genre I term "teenage girl traumedy." I argue that teenage girl traumedies lend teenage girl characters empathy and emotional complexity not historically afforded to them on television. Using these three series as case studies, I argue that the genre is legitimized culturally and industrially in two ways: 1) through textual appeals in narrative and visual form to feminist discourse and 2) paratextual branding in trade press and interviews with creators that centralize these series' feminist messages of teenage girls' trauma as a distinctive, competitive quality in streaming television. My three case studies depict emotional and bodily traumas on different levels, from the intimate and individualized, interpersonal and institutional, to the national. I show trauma growing and spreading as my thesis develops, as a way to show how teenage girl trauma manifests as personal shame and how the coping process for teenage girls bumps up against interpersonal, institutional, and national spheres. Industrially, my thesis explores the tension between creators who produce subversive, feminist art and the commercially driven streaming services that employ them. I am interested in understanding how these creators write television that delves into themes of young women's sexual and psychological trauma, developing out of previous decades of television that portrayed teenage girls as one-dimensional.