Languages, Literatures, & Cultures Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2785
Browse
3 results
Search Results
Item The Emergence of the Fascist Aesthetic in Early German Cinema(2018) Timmons, Wendy Cassandra Ellen; Baer, Hester; Germanic Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)My thesis explores the development of a fascist aesthetic in German films, examining three significant, active filmmakers between 1922 and 1939 (Fritz Lang, Arnold Fanck, and Leni Riefenstahl), whose works feature an aesthetic continuity before and after 1933. Despite political differences, formal and thematic similarities exist in the works of these filmmakers, which have sometimes been discussed in the context of a “fascist aesthetic” that was initially conceptualized in the Weimar era and became increasingly instrumentalized by filmmakers during the Nazi era. While scholars have long debated the idea and substance of a fascist aesthetic, renewed debates about the concept at the contemporary moment underscore the importance of reconsidering the topic at the point of its origin. I approach the problem by contextualizing this aesthetic in the forms it takes pre- and post-1933 and emphasizing that this aesthetic is comprised of motifs and images that are contextually specific.Item REFASHIONING THE LEGACIES OF LAMPIÃO, CHE GUEVARA, AND BARTOLOMÉ DE LAS CASAS IN LITERATURE AND FILM(2015) Milacci, Andrew Frederick; Harrison, Regina; Spanish Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation focuses on the refashioning of complex legacies of prominent, yet controversial, figures in Latin America in both literature and film: the contemporary Brazilian bandit Lampião, the twentieth-century revolutionary Che Guevara, and the colonial era priest and polemicist Bartolomé de Las Casas. I argue that, like storytelling and collective/social memory, history is a continuing narrative that serves specific ends (Hayden White) and is framed by ideological perspectives (Walter Benjamin). Furthermore, by expanding upon Stephen Greenblatt's concept of Renaissance self-fashioning, I introduce the idea of refashioning--when societies reimagine history, generally apart from or in contrast to dominant narratives--as a postmodern phenomenon of remaking the other. An analysis of the textual origins of the legacies reveals the constraints that genre (cordel, diary, and historical essay) imposed on the writing of their lives. Furthermore, these same texts are reshaped as the film directors adapt the written texts to fit the confines of film and the expectations of the audience. In this manner, we observe how both history and genre become malleable as the individuals' legacies are rendered anew cinematically. Specifically, in the Brazilian sertão, popular lyrical cordel pamphlets merge oral and written traditions, as well as "official" and "popular" history and lore to mythologize the bandit Lampião and refashion the outlaw's legacy in largely positive terms. This legacy, which is developed in the verses of cordel chapbooks, undergirds Glauber Rocha's film Antônio das Mortes (1969) both stylistically and ideologically. Che Guevara's travel "diaries," which are constructed within the conventions of the travel diary and autobiography, reveal that Che, unlike Lampião, very much shaped his own revolutionary image. Walter Salles' film The Motorcycle Diaries (2004) relies heavily on Che's diaries, yet the director weaves a modern interpretation of historical events in the life of this now-iconic revolutionary, and the result is a "filmed diary" that ultimately becomes part of the "official" (auto)biography of Guevara's life. Finally, the sixteenth-century friar Bartolomé de Las Casas provides another example of a man who actively shapes his image via writing. His Historia de las Indias and Brevísima relación de la destrucción de las Indias craft an image of the priest within the context of the conquest of the New World and reveal the controversial nature of his philosophical stance as one who fought for indigenous rights, albeit from the top down. The politics of historicity are played out in Icíar Bollaín's film También la lluvia (2010), as the director incorporates Las Casas' texts into a fictional film script that frames the friar in contemporary terms and situates his legacy in human rights activism for indigenous peoples. Thus, I conclude that these texts and films compose additional nuanced accounts of the three historical figures' legacies: the texts and the filmic representations uncover the complex relationships between "legitimate" or "official" histories and the refashioning of these individuals in popular memory.Item American Blackness and Vergangenheitsbewältigung in Twenty-First Century German Literature and Film(2014) Wall, Christina Noelle; Frederiksen, Elke P; Germanic Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study represents a unique examination of the convergence of constructs of Blackness and racism in twenty-first century novels and films by white Germans and Austrians in order to demonstrate how these texts broaden discourses of Vergangenheitsbewältigung. The increased prominence of minority voices demanding recognition of their national identity within Nazi successor states has transformed white German perceptions of "Germanness" and of these nations' relationships to their turbulent pasts. I analyze how authors and directors employ constructs of Blackness within fictional texts to interrogate the dynamics of historical and contemporary racisms. Acknowledging that discourses of `race' are taboo, I analyze how authors and directors avoid this forbidden discourse by drawing comparisons between constructs of American Blackness and German and Austrian historical encounters with `race'. This study employs cultural studies' understanding of `race' and Blackness as constructs created across discourses. Following the example of Toni Morrison's Playing in the Dark (1992), my textual analyses show how these constructs create a "playground for the imagination" in which authors confront modern German racism. My study begins with a brief history of German-African American encounters, emphasizing the role American Blackness played during pivotal moments of German national identity formation. The subsequent chapters are divided thematically, each one comprised of textual analyses that explore discourses integral to Vergangenheitsbewältigung. The third chapter examines articulations of violence and racism in two films, Oskar Roehler's Lulu & Jimi (2008) and Michael Schorr's Schultze gets the blues (2008), to explore possibilities of familial reconciliation despite historical guilt. The fourth chapter compares the Besatzungskinder protagonists of two novels, Peter Henisch's Schwarzer Peter (2000) and Larissa Boehning's Lichte Stoffe (2007), with the (auto)biographies of actual Besatzungskinder Ika Hügel-Marshall and Bärbel Kampmann, exposing the modern discursive taboo of `race' as a silence stemming from historical guilt. The final chapter demonstrates the evolution of German conceptualizations of historical guilt through the analyses of Christa Wolf's novel Stadt der Engel (2010) and Armin Völckers's film Leroy (2007).