http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/39094 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/41244 Agent + Image : how the television image estabilizes identity in TV spy series Bidlingmeyer, Lisa Marie This thesis explores the intersection of the television image with the presentation of self-identity. I examine two TV series in the spy genre -- Alias (2001 - 2006) and The Prisoner (1967 - 1968) -- discussing how each employs strategies of visual representation to present its protagonist as decentered or unfixed; in so doing, these programs complicate and problematize within their narratives the terms by which "subject" and "agency" have been traditionally understood and represented to popular TV audiences. This problematizing in turn opens up possibilities for detecting new modes of subject formation. This paper argues that television, communication tool and historical and cultural artifact, must be regarded equally as a visual medium. In fact, the TV image brings the enacted identity theorized by Judith Butler into direct contact with Henri Bergson's formulations of memory and image, creating characters and spaces within TV stories that vividly illustrate the limitations to and potentials for creativity within the domains of action and identity. In addition to Butler and Bergson, this paper turns additionally to Gilles Deleuze for an understanding of cinematic image and time, and to the concept of masquerade developed within feminist theory. In The Prisoner, a modern hero must make sense of a landscape of discontinuities and repetitions that challenge his ability to act, react, move, and escape. In Alias, a postmodern heroine must master the art of changing selves in order to move across spaces that, like her own identity, are conditional and are never what they initially appear. (cont.) In both series, the television image, freed from an obligation to represent only one thing while ruling out others and made multiple by the TV episode format, assumes a resonance over its duration that creates the conditions for the depiction of fluid and changeable spaces and characters. In both cases, the TV image repeated enables a paradigm shift where the depiction of a decentered protagonist, once exceptional, now becomes a normative subject on television. KEYWORDS: Alias -- Bergson -- Butler -- decentered subject -- Deleuze -- feminism identity -- image -- Jennifer Garner -- Patrick McGoohan -- The Prisoner -- spy shows -- television -- visual theory Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-107). Sun, 29 Oct 2006 22:58:59 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/41243 Television 2.0 : reconceptualizing TV as an engagement medium Askwith, Ivan D Television is in a period of dramatic change. As the mass audience continues to fragment into ever-smaller niche audiences and communities of interest, and new technologies shift control over the television viewing experience from network programmers into the hands of media consumers, television's traditional business models prove themselves increasingly untenable. In an attempt to preserve these models, television executives are attempting to shed television's long-standing reputation as a passive medium, which emphasized the viewer's role as a consumer of television content, and which critics often decried as vacuous and mindless. The current discourse suggests that television's future now relies on the industry's success recasting it as an active medium, capable of capturing and holding the audience's attention, and effective at generating emotional investment. The single most important concept in this new industrial discourse is that of audience "engagement", a term that has generated a tremendous amount of debate and disagreement, with television and advertising executives alike struggling to understand what engagement is, how it works, and what its practical consequences will be. This thesis argues that television's future as an engagement medium relies not on inventing new methodologies that define engagement in terms of quantifiable audience behaviors and attitudes, but instead in a new conceptual model of television, better suited to a multi platform media environment and the emerging attention and experience economies, which focuses on the development of television programs that extend beyond the television set. (cont.) Such a model must understand television not as a method for aggregrating audiences that can be sold to advertisers, but as a medium that draws upon media platforms, content, products, activities and social spaces to provide audiences with a range of opportunities to engage with television content. Accordingly, this thesis offers a framework for thinking about viewer engagement as the range of opportunities and activities that become possible when drawing upon an expanded, multi-platform conception of the modern television text. Applying this framework to the innovative and experimental textual extensions developed around ABC's Lost, the thesis indicates both the challenges and opportunities that emerge as television becomes an engagement medium. Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. [169]-174). Sun, 29 Oct 2006 22:58:59 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/40029 Mask and closet ; or, "Under the Hood" : metaphors and representations of homosexuality in American superhero comics after 1985 Mandel, Susannah Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2003. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 174-176). Tue, 29 Oct 2002 22:58:59 GMT http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/40028 We are like this only : Desis and Hindi films in the Diaspora Punathambekar, Aswin, 1977- Thesis (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Comparative Media Studies, 2003. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 96-102). Tue, 29 Oct 2002 22:58:59 GMT