Browsing by Subject "television"
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Item The American West through Representations of the World’s Largest Rattlesnake Roundup(2019-05) Wilson, Sylvia; Seriff, SuzanneThe Sweetwater Jaycees’ World’s Largest Rattlesnake Roundup includes a pageant; a carnival; community dances; guided hunts; bus tours of rattlesnake dens; a gun, coin and knife show; cook-offs; and a flea market, all in addition to the main event—the rattlesnake pits. As the rattlesnakes cycle through the coliseum, they are weighed, milked of their venom, draped over participants’ shoulders for photographs, and finally slaughtered. The Roundup is known globally for its provocative handling of rattlesnakes and resulting imagery which has positioned the event as a captivating subject for photography, film, and television. This project seeks to analyze the ways in which three media representations of the Roundup uphold, construct, and challenge myths of the American West. First, I examine Richard Avedon’s In the American West photography series which tells a story of American isolation, hopelessness, and frightening beauty as depicted in the faces of individuals he encountered at the Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup. Next, I investigate the Simpsons’ “Whacking Day” episode, which was inspired by the Roundup in Sweetwater and uses parody to comment on issues of virility, groupthink, education, religion, and environmental justice in the West, and more broadly, rural, working-class America. Finally, I analyze the Miss Snake Charmer documentary, directed by Rachael Waxler and EmaLee Arroyo, as it depicts coming of age as a woman in the American West. In primarily focusing the film on the preparatory process for the pageant, rather than competition night itself, the documentary emphasizes the ways in which girls are molded into the “ideal” Western woman. Through this work, I investigate how a single event comes to serve as a tool for artists wishing to uphold, build upon, or challenge myths of the American West. Furthermore, as myths of the American West have come to define parts of American national identity, representations of the Rattlesnake Roundup not only sustain or dispute heritage narratives of the West, but of the United States more broadly.Item AMS :: ATX November 2011 Blog Archive(2011-11) Department of American StudiesAMS :: ATX is a blog dedicated to representing the many activities and interests of the department of American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin. Together with the department’s Twitter feed, this blog exists to serve the AMS and Austin communities by acting as a hub for up-to-date information on events and opportunities at UT and beyond. This archive includes the following blog posts: Faculty Research: Randy Lewis' "The Compassion Manifesto" (November 1, 2011); Grad Research: A Map of Classic Arcades (November 3, 2011); Faculty Research: Janet Davis on the Circus (November 4, 2011); Undergrad Research: On Jack Kerouac and Sports (November 8, 2011); 5 Questions with Dr. Janet Davis (November 10, 2011); Watch This: Dr. Julia Mickenberg on Book TV (November 15, 2011); Read this: "Main Currents," American Studies Fall 2011 Newsletter (November 17, 2011); Watch This: Dr. Elizabeth Engelhardt on Fox's Good Day Austin (November 22, 2011).Item A Genealogy of Reality TV and the Ensuing Horror of its Power(2020-10-06) De Los Santos, RamiroItem The LIBERATOR Archive, October 2019(University of Texas at Austin, 2019-10) University of Texas at AustinItem The Mainstreaming of Verbally Aggressive Online Political Behaviors(2015-05) Cicchirillo, Vincent; Hmielowski, Jay; Hutchens, Myiah; Cicchirillo, Vincent; Hmielowski, JayThe purpose of this paper was to investigate the relationship between verbal aggression and uncivil media attention on political flaming. More specifically, this paper examines whether the use of uncivil media programming is associated with the perceived acceptability and intention to engage in aggressive online discussions (i.e., online political flaming) and whether this relationship varies by verbal aggression. The results show that individuals less inclined to engage in aggressive communication tactics (i.e., low in verbal aggression) become more accepting of flaming and show greater intention to flame as their attention to uncivil media increases. By contrast, those with comparatively higher levels of verbal aggression show a decrease in acceptance and intention to flame as their attention to these same media increases.Item Memories on the Big Screen(ORANGE Magazine, 2021-04-21) Chavez, SamanthaItem Netflix & Kill: An Examination of the Anti-hero Through the Lens of Abnormal Psychology(2018-05) Michaels, ChandlerMy thesis examines the question of whether characters advertised as anti-heroes in television shows actually act in ways that are consistent with the definition of an anti-hero. I examined two theories on engagement with anti-heroes (Affective Disposition Theory and Moral Disengagement Theory). I generated two hypotheses based on these theories and tested them using case studies of two anti-hero television shows (House of Cards and Dexter). I found that both theories were consistent with the data, leading to the paradoxical conclusion that anti-heroes display both morally deviant and morally good behaviors. I then discuss the implications of our engagement with anti-hero television shows and possibilities for future research.Item Queering Reality Dating Television(2023-05) Vanden Bout, MariannaThis thesis explores the ways that the reality dating television genre reinforces heteronormativity, with a focus on the role of format in constructing circumstances in which participants must perform heterosexuality in order to succeed. Beginning with a discussion of the conventions of the 2000s and continuing through the 2020s reveals the role that borrowing from established formats has played in the emergence of the reality dating genre, creating representations that continue to reproduce heteronormativity because they are reliant on what has come before. Despite this, reality television has presented unique affordances in terms of queer visibility, because of its internal commitment to authenticity as well as its unscpripted nature. As a result, the relaity dating genre makes for an interesting case to examine the ways relevision has represented queer people and relationships.Item Research + Pizza - Mary Beltrán(2017-02-28) Beltrán, MaryMary Beltrán (Radio-Television-Film) discusses her research on equitable diversity in the age of peak television, and the challenges it poses to imagery, storytelling and employment.Item Susham Bedi: A Literary Life(Hindi-Urdu Flagship) Hindi-Urdu FlagshipItem Using Supervised Learning Techniques to Predict Television Ratings(2020-05) Hassell, JacksonHow well a given TV show does is scored by a metric called “rating,” which denotes the percentage of households watching live TV at the time that are tuned into that particular show. To maximize ratings, being able to reliably predict them is necessary. For my thesis, in collaboration with Austin’s public-television station KLRU-TV, a variety of techniques were tested in order to discern the most accurate model for predicting the ratings of a television-show airing. To accomplish this, I created nine regression models, each using a different algorithm that has been proven to work across many kinds of problems. These were a linear regression model, a k-nearest-neighbors model, a SVM model, a decision tree model, a bagging ensemble model, a gradient boosting ensemble model, two kinds of fully connected neural networks, or MLPs, and a recurrent neural network. I also created several feature sets, which included Nielsen, IMDb, and engineered features. Each model was tested across every combination of feature sets and exhaustively hyperparamatized to find what method produced the best results. Most models did similarly well under at least one combination of hyperparameters and feature set, with the only exception being the linear regression model, which performed poorly across the board. The best model was a tie between the k-nearest-neighbors model and the bagging ensemble model, which both received an R2 score of .64 when run on all features. Though this is not a perfect score, it means the mean average error was just .2, which is small enough to be useful when optimizing program schedules and selling ad space.Item Ward Doesn't Live Here Anymore(Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, 1991) Coleman, Marion Tolbert