Sonic Movie Memories: Sound, Childhood, and American Cinema

Though the trend rarely receives attention, since the 1970s many American filmmakers have been taking sound and music tropes from children’s films, television shows, and other forms of media and incorporating those sounds into films intended for adult audiences. Initially, these references might seem like regressive attempts at targeting some nostalgic desire to relive childhood. However, this dissertation asserts that these children’s sounds are instead designed to reconnect audience members with the multi-faceted fantasies and coping mechanisms that once, through children’s media, helped these audience members manage life’s anxieties. Because sound is the sense that Western audiences most associate with emotion and memory, it offers audiences immediate connection with these barely conscious longings. The first chapter turns to children’s media itself and analyzes Disney’s 1950s forays into television. The chapter argues that by selectively repurposing the gentlest sonic devices from the studio’s films, television shows like Disneyland created the studio’s signature sentimental “Disney sound.” As a result, a generation of baby boomers like Steven Spielberg comes of age and longs to recreate that comforting sound world. The second chapter thus focuses on Spielberg, who incorporates Disney music in films like Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). Rather than recreate Disney’s sound world, Spielberg uses this music as a springboard into a new realm I refer to as “sublime refuge” - an acoustic haven that combines overpowering sublimity and soothing comfort into one fantastical experience. The second half of the dissertation pivots into more experimental children’s cartoons like Gerald McBoing-Boing (1951) - cartoons that embrace audio-visual dissonance in ways that soothe even as they create tension through a phenomenon I call “comfortable discord.” In the final chapter, director Wes Anderson reveals that these sonic tensions have just as much appeal to adults. In films like The Royal Tenenbaums (2001), Anderson demonstrates that comfortable discord can simultaneously provide a balm for anxiety and create an open-ended space that makes empathetic connections between characters possible. The dissertation closes with a call to rethink nostalgia, not as a romanticization of the past, but rather as a reconnection with forgotten affective channels.

The Essentials of Narrative: A Synthesis of the West and the East

This is a study on the nature of narrative in light of a narratological theory inspired by a comparison of narratives in the West and the East, and which tries to reach a deeper understanding of narratives in their particular cultural milieus as well as the nature of narrative per se. The macroscopic structure which the subject itself demands gives coherence to the study of elements which do not solely belong to narrative texts but nevertheless are essential for a text to function as a narrative. The essentials under investigation are the narrator's perspective (which gives a narrative its internal structure), language (which both enables and affects the formation of narrative), and the notion of genre (which plays a crucial role in the interpretation of narrative). These elements were selected after a consideration of theorles postulated by Erich Auerbach, Northrop Frye, Fredric Jameson and Mikhail Bakhtin, as well as of the key properties of narrative as traditionally treated in Chinese scholarship on narrative. After the initial chapter, each chapter consists of a theoretical discussion on the main topic, followed by an analysis of a particular aspect of the subject as revealed in an American novel and in a Chinese novel. These subjects in elude the internal structure of narrative, fictionalization, the objectivity of language and the diversity of voices, the potentiality of language and the elosure of narrative, plot and the ordering of a narrative, and fragmentarity and the perceiving of a narrative. In theoretical discussions, the essay challenges theories proposed by Wayne Booth, Michel Foucault, Umberto Eco, Stanley Fish, Roman Jakobson, Jacques Derrida, Jonathan Culler and Tzvetan Todorov. The major texts discussed are Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady, Luo Guanzhong's Three Kingdoms, William Faulkner's Absalom. Absalom!, Cao Xueqin's Dream of the Red Chamber. Edgar Allan Poe's "Ligeia," and Liu E's The Travels of Laocan. The central idea of the research is to question such assumptions as made by Anthony Burgess in his article on the novel in The Encyelopaedia Britannica (15th ed) that "novelists, being neither poets nor philosophers, rarely originate modes of thinking and expression."

Tratamiento quirúrgico del síndrome de apnea hipopnea obstructiva del sueño en la Clínica Rivas, Bogotá – Colombia

Introducción: El Síndrome de Apnea Hipopnea Obstructiva del Sueño es un trastorno respiratorio del sueño mayor ampliamente conocido, con importantes implicaciones para los pacientes y cuya incidencia ha venido en aumento durante los últimos años; comprende diversas manifestaciones clínicas que varían desde el ronquido hasta consecuencias cardiovasculares importantes. Objetivo: Describir la experiencia de los procedimientos quirúrgicos más utilizados para el tratamiento de pacientes con Trastornos Respiratorios del Sueño en la Clínica Rivas. Diseño: Estudio observacional descriptivo. Métodos: Revisión de 366 historias clínicas de pacientes con diagnóstico clínico y Polisomnográfico de SAHOS intervenidos quirúrgicamente debido al Trastorno Respiratorio del Sueño por rechazo de terapia de presión positiva en 3 años de observación. Resultados: Se evaluaron diferencias en medianas de los cambios del IAH, índice de Saturación de oxigeno basal y mínima, y el índice de microdespertares nocturnos tanto prequirúrgica como postquirúrgicamente. Como medida de evaluación secundaria se evaluaron las complicaciones quirúrgicas. Conclusión: En nuestra institución, como centro de referencia en apnea del sueño, la cirugía ha demostrado que disminuye de forma significativa gravedad del SAHOS y disminuye el riesgo de los pacientes con trastornos respiratorios del sueño que han rechazado el dispositivo de presión positiva.