UCLA Film & Television Archive's Research and Study Center (ARSC) is pleased to announce the recipients of the ARSC Student Research Award for the 2008-2009 academic year. This award was made possible by a grant from the Myra Reinhard Family Foundation.
"Mediated Communities: Andy Warhol's Screen Tests and Wendy Clarke's Love Tapes"
By Jonathan Cohn. View a PDF of the essay.
Abstract
Communities of artists are often created around a shared passion for the media that they create and the makeup and organization of these communities is often visible in the media that they collaboratively create. This paper asks the question of whether the media that the artists are using can affect the types of communities that are created by the artists. Specifically, I focus on Andy Warhol's Factory and The Screen Tests (1964-66) that were created there, and Wendy Clarke and her Love Tapes (1978-). The Screen Tests is an extensive collection of three minute/one reel Black and White Bolex films that feature a single person sitting in front of a camera, often sitting still. Warhol forced most everyone who entered the factory to go through this filmic process and it acted as a right of passage into this community. In contrast, Wendy Clarke traveled around the United States asking people to spend three minutes in front of a video recorder and monitor, recording their thoughts on love. While not a community based in a specific location, Clarke still manages to create a community based around a specific topic and the process of being videotaped. These two scenarios are obviously quite different, but they are largely governed by what the recording media allows for and it is important to ask whether the media itself has some affect on the communities which they are organized around.
About the Author
Jonathan Cohn is a Ph.D. Cinema and Media Studies student at UCLA. While he is interested in experimental and amateur filmmaking practices, his dissertation is focused on new modes of self-representation in digital media.
"Surf, Song, and Cricket Blake: Capturing the Emerging Teen Girl Market with Hawaiian Eye"
By Lindsay Giggey. View a PDF of the essay.
Abstract
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, ABC and Warner Bros. discovered the youth audience, especially teenage girls, via its critically-panned but highly-rated detective series, Hawaiian Eye. Though introduced for a general audience, popular response to Connie Stevens' character as well as her offscreen successes in film and music caused the network and studio to relaunch their show for teen audiences. Likewise, Hawaiian Eye is an early example of a television show capitalizing on ancillary products to increase its popular reach.
About the Author
Lindsay Giggey is working towards completing her MA.. degree in Cinema and Media Studies at UCLA. Her broad research interests include television's impact on social and cultural identities, production and industrial studies, gender representation, and popular culture.
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