The artist biopic: a historical analysis of narrative cinema, 1934-2010

The thesis provides an historical overview of the artist biopic that has emerged as a distinct sub-genre of the biopic as a whole, totalling some ninety films from Europe and America alone since the first talking artist biopic in 1934. Their making usually reflects a determination on the part of the director or star to see the artist as an alter-ego. Many of them were adaptations of successful literary works, which tempted financial backers by having a ready-made audience based on a pre-established reputation. The sub-genre’s development is explored via the grouping of films with associated themes and the use of case studies. These examples can then be used as models for exploring similar sets of data from other countries and time periods. The specific topics chosen for discussion include the representation of a single painter, for example, Vincent Van Gogh, to see how the treatment of an artist varies across several countries and over seventy years. British artist biopics are analysed as a case study in relation to the idea of them posing as a national stereotype. Topics within sex and gender studies are highlighted in analysis of the representation of the female artist and the queer artist as well as artists who have lived together as couples. A number of well-known gallery artists have become directors of artist biopics and their films are considered to see what particular insights a professional working artist can bring to the portrayal of artistic genius and creation. In the concluding part of the thesis it is argued that the artist biopic overall has survived the bad press which some individual productions have received and can even be said to have matured under the influence of directors producing a quality product for the art house, festival and avant-garde distribution circuits. As a genre it has proved extremely adaptable and has reflected the changing attitudes towards art and artists within the wider community. It has both encouraged renewed interest in the work of established national artists and also raised the profile of those relatively obscure such as Séraphine de Senlis and Pirosmani.

‘Learning to be Zen’: Women travellers and the imperative to happy

This paper follows the emotional management of lone, independent women travellers as they move through tourist spaces, based on my doctoral research Embodiment and Emotion in the experiences of independent women tourists (2012). Specifically, this paper will focus on ‘gendering happiness’ by arguing that women travellers are significantly compelled to feel and display characteristics of happiness, humour and ‘learning to be Zen’ in order to be successful travellers. The imperative to become, and remain, happy and humorous in the face of embodied, emotional and gendered constraints is a key feature of women’s reflections of their travelling experiences, mirroring the recent emergence of literature into happiness and positive thinking within feminist theory (Ehrenreich 2010, Ahmed 2010). Negotiating ‘bad’ emotions provides a powerful insight into the perceptions of women travellers; to remain happy can mask problematic power relations and other forms of resistance. This is not to say that emotional negotiation is not partly a form of effective resistance, rather, I wish to make room for the freedom to be unhappy and angry in travelling space without feeling failure for not achieving a successful travelling identity.

Before identity, gender and human rights

This is the beginning of an exploration of before as the thesis ‘before’ (temporally) and ‘be-fore’ (spatially) difference. Before denotes the origin and the desired destination. Before (in the double sense of ‘before’ and ‚be-in-the-fore’) opens up a space of pre-difference, of origin and of forgotten memory, as well as a space of desire, objective, illusion of teleology, unity, completion. Applied to the two domains of Human Rights and Sex/Gender, the space of ‘before’ yields two slightly different vistas: in human rights, a premodern, functionally undifferentiated society which had to invent human rights as its safeguards of functional differentiation. In Sex/Gender, 'before' brings a self-referential construction: that of ipseity, as the form of identity beyond comparison that does not play with id but with ipsum. Ipseity is inoperable but not useless. It is inoperable because it cannot be observed from anywhere without suffering rupture. It is not useless because it offers a ground for the reconceptualisation of difference, both through awe and desire.

Gender comparisons in non-acute cardiac symptom recognition and subsequent help-seeking decisions: a mixed methods study protocol

Introduction: Coronary heart disease (CHD) is one of the leading causes of death in both men and women worldwide. Despite the common misconception that CHD is a ‘man's disease’, it is now well accepted that women endure worse clinical outcomes than men following CHD-related events. A number of studies have explored whether or not gender differences exist in patients presenting with CHD, and specifically whether women delay seeking help for cardiac conditions. UK and overseas studies on help-seeking for emergency cardiac events are contradictory, yet suggest that women often delay help-seeking. In addition, no studies have looked at presumed cardiac symptoms outside an emergency situation. Given the lack of understanding in this area, an explorative qualitative study on the gender differences in help-seeking for a non-emergency cardiac events is needed. Methods and analysis: A purposive sample of 20–30 participants of different ethnic backgrounds and ages attending a rapid access chest pain clinic will be recruited to achieve saturation. Semistructured interviews focusing on help-seeking decision-making for apparent cardiac symptoms will be undertaken. Interview data will be analysed thematically using qualitative software (NVivo) to understand any similarities and differences between the way men and women construct help-seeking. Findings will also be used to inform the preliminary development of a cardiac help-seeking intentions questionnaire. Ethics and dissemination: Ethical approvals were sought and granted. Namely, the University of Westminster (sponsor) and St Georges NHS Trust REC, and the Trust Research and Development Office granted approval to host the study on the Queen Mary's Roehampton site. The study is low risk, with interviews being conducted on hospital premises during working hours. Investigators will disseminate findings via presentations and publications. Participants will receive a written summary of the key findings.

Feeling Bodies in Marketing: Aesthetics, Emotions and Gender

Gender is deeply embedded in marketing ideology, and it continues to be a topic of concern in the marketing academy. There is little attention paid by marketers, however, to related studies in other fields on aesthetic labour and emotional labour in relation to gender issues, despite the commonalities and intersections between them. This article seeks to incorporate aesthetic labour and emotional labour into the gender and marketing discussion. It concludes by calling for greater critical awareness of gender as a dominant motif in our ideologies, discourses and practices in marketing, offering suggestions for empirical research into this important topic.

Power, Arab media Moguldum & gender rights as entertainment in the Middle East

Discourse is a giant field of research and gender related rights are still a disputed area of thinking. Thus, when Arab transnational satellite televisions produce dialogues, images, stories and narratives about the disputed “universal” gender rights in the Middle East, the big questions remain how and why. According to De Beauvoir (1949), one becomes woman and to Butler (1990) one is not born a gender at all but is “done” and “undone” to become one via discourse. Islamic feminism speaks of a cultural/religious specificity in defending women rights and even gender diversity based on new Quranic interpretations. The gender, “Al-Naw’u”, remains synonym to sex “Al Jins” as gender and queer theories never developed in Arabic in tandem with the European institutions or the theories of the19th century– especially those ideas emerging from studies of the mental asylum. This research tries to understand gender related “rights” and “wrongs” as manifest in the discursive institutions owned by media mogul Prince Al Waleed Ben Talal Al Saud. The trouble of such a study is lexical, ideological and institutional at the same time. Since we lack a critique of the discourses and narratives addressed in the pan-Arab satellite channels, in general it is difficult to understand their significance and influence in everyday life practices. What language is used to speak of gender rights or wrongs? Which ideology is favoured in this practice of legitimisation and/or policing? Using case studies, CDA of social and religious talk shows, narrative analysis of Arabic cinemas, this research adapted triangulation to show the complexity of conversing and narrating gender related content at the micro and macro levels within an institution of power. Using semi-structured interviews from fieldwork in Egypt (2009) and Lebanon (2011), archive research and online ethnography, the research exposes the power structure under which gender discourses evolve. It emerges that gender content is abundant on the Pan Arab satellite space, “manufactured” on talk shows and plotted tactfully in the cinematic “creative-act”. The result is a complex discourse of gender content that scratches the surface calling for interpretation. So how and why do gender rights and wrongs find place on Prince Al Waleed’s Media Empire?

Gender, Nationality and Cultural Representations of Ireland: An Irish Woman's Place?

Ireland has struggled with its ‘feminine’ identity throughout its history. The so-called ‘chasmic dichotomy of male and female' is embedded in colonial and postcolonial constructions of Irishness and it continues to manifest itself in contemporary cultural representations of Ireland and Irishness. This study explores issues of gender and nationality via a reading of a 70-second television advertisement for Caffrey's Irish Ale, titled ‘New York’. The article suggests that, although colonial and postcolonial discourse on Ireland continues to perceive the ‘feminine’ in problematic terms, this is gradually changing as Irish women increasingly, in poet Eavan Boland's words, ‘open a window on those silences, those false pastorals, those ornamental reductions’ that have confined us.