There has been a growing research interest in the film-tourism phenomenon and its associated film tourist motivations, expectations and experiences at filmed locations of popular media programmes, in particular, in film and television series. However, with some exceptions, research into non-Anglophone linguistic and cultural settings remains relatively unexplored. There is also a lack of cross-cultural studies of film tourists’ experience in this research area. This current study addresses this gap and contributes to the existing film-tourism literature by examining the impact of nationality on film tourists’ actual experiences. The study looks at those experiences at filmed locations associated with Daejanggeum, a Korean historical television drama in the inter-Asian context. Adopting a structured survey questionnaire, the primary research data were collected at the Daejanggeum Theme Park (the main filming location of Daejanggeum in South Korea) among international visitors mainly from China, Japan, Taiw...

A cross-cultural study of on-site film-tourism experiences among Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese and Thai visitors to the Daejanggeum Theme Park, South Korea

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is a cross‐cultural analysis to compare the profiles of international screen‐tourists by nationalities. Also it investigates the screen‐tourism concept as associated with the Hallyu phenomenon. Owing to the nature of the topic being examined, an instrument with study‐specific items was created.Design/methodology/approach – The objectives of this paper were achieved through the critical review of previous screen‐tourism literature combined with a structured on‐site survey which included both open‐ and close‐ended questions with inbound tourists who were visiting the Daejanggeum Theme Park in South Korea.Findings – The principal value of this study can be seen in its offering of a general overview of the characteristics of screen‐tourists induced by the television drama Daejanggeum. The outcomes of this study concurred with the findings of some previous research which indicated the powerful impact of consuming popular media products including television dramas on destinat...

A cross‐cultural study of screen‐tourists' profiles

Association football fans in the UK often blame the media for ruining the game as an organic community experience. Certainly, this proposition is supported by the substantial levels of complaint that can be found across thousands of online fan message boards. We argue that these complaints embrace online comment and activism as a continuation of football’s traditional culture of communicative exchange between supporters. Yet, online football fan discussion also presents a contradiction, relying upon the same media networks against which fans rail for commodifying ‘the people’s game’. Using cultivation analysis, the case presented is based upon a study of ‘FreeMyFC’ (FMFC), a website ostensibly started to expose the failures of ‘MyFootballClub’ (MFC), the world’s first attempt to manage a football club through a supporter funded and managed website.

Cultures of complaint : online fan message boards and networked digital media sport communities

Extreme art cinema, has, in recent film scholarship, become an important area of study. Many of the existing practices are motivated by a Franco-centric lens, which ultimately defines transgressive art cinema as a new phenomenon. The thesis argues that a study of extreme art cinema needs to consider filmic production both within and beyond France. It also argues that it requires an historical analysis, and I contest the notion that extreme art cinema is a recent mode of Film production. The study considers extreme art cinema as inhabiting a space between ‘high’ and ‘low’ art forms, noting the slippage between the two often polarised industries. The study has a focus on the paratext, with an analysis of DVD extras including ‘making ofs’ and documentary featurettes, interviews with directors, and cover sleeves. This will be used to examine audience engagement with the artefacts, and the films’ position within the film market. Through a detailed assessment of the visual symbols used throughout the films’ narrative images, the thesis observes the manner in which they engage with the taste structures and pictorial templates of art and exploitation cinema. Through this methodological direction, the thesis is able to assess how the films are sold to an audience, how this relates to the historical progression of extreme art cinema, and the way the entire practice is informed by an ongoing tradition of taste fluidity.

Extreme art film : text, paratext and DVD culture

This thesis investigates the children’s horror film in Hollywood cinema. Children are typically thought of as being innocent and vulnerable, and horror – usually considered a genre for adult viewers – is one area of the media from which children are often thought of as needing protection. However, evidence shows that children’s viewership and enjoyment of horror films dates to least as early as the 1930s, while violent imagery has been used as a pedagogical tool in fairy tales, cautionary tales and other children’s stories for centuries. The number of horror films made specifically for and about children in US cinema has been steadily increasing since the 1980s, with recent releases including Coraline (2009), ParaNorman (2012) and Frankenweenie (2012). Despite this, scholarship dedicated exclusively to this rich and intriguing area is scarce. 

One intention of the research, explored predominantly in Chapter One, is to chart the development of this subgenre in Hollywood, explore how it differs aesthetically, formally, narratively and thematically from ‘adult’ horror, and how it mediates its content in order to be recognisably ‘horrific’ while remaining ‘child-friendly’. Following the review of scholarly literature in Chapter Two, the thesis is then divided into three case study chapters which focus on how horror films which are both addressed to a child audience and about child characters utilise iconography and conventions of the horror genre to represent specific fears and desires associated with children and childhood. 

Chapter Three examines texts which feature ‘monstrous’ children. These child characters’ ‘monstrosities’ are presented in a way that can be read as pleasurable and potentially cathartic for a child audience. As such, these representations largely subvert the common depiction of children as demonic antagonists in adult horror films. The chapter is also framed by societal fears that children may become ‘monstrous’ threats should they be exposed to horror in order to argue that these films offer critiques upon the relationship between children and the horror genre. Chapter Four explores texts from the late-1980s to early-1990s in which children must protect themselves and their communities from evil vampires, witches, and other monsters. These predatory ‘risky strangers’ are read as reflecting contemporaneous concerns about child abuse which were particularly prevalent during this period in the US. As such, the chapter queries whether these texts address adults’ fears about or for children more than actual children’s fears. Chapter Five examines films set in the home, which is presented as an uncanny and threatening space in which to address childhood fears and anxieties concerning maturation, independence, identity formation and familial relationships. It is argued that by facing their fears, the child protagonists of these films undergo beneficial experiences and emerge better prepared to face life ahead. 

This thesis argues that children’s horror films, by providing safe and pleasurable spaces in which to experience fear, can be read as offering positive and beneficial experiences for child viewers. Far from being ‘unsuitable’ for children, the imagery and conventions of the horror genre are in fact highly suited to addressing the fears and experiences of childhood. Simultaneously, however, this thesis questions the problematic ideological aspects of children’s horror films which may be ‘bad’ for children: that is, in showing children how to overcome their fears, what, or who, do these films imply children should be afraid of?

The children's horror film : beneficial fear and subversive pleasure in an (im)possible Hollywood subgenre

Audiences and Receptions of Sexual Violence in Contemporary Cinema - Report to the British Board of Film Classification

The Same Old Song? Exploring Conceptions of the 'Feelgood' Film in the Talk of Mamma Mia's Older Viewers

This article investigates the banning of Monty Python’s Life of Brian by 39 local councils in the United Kingdom in late 1979 and early 1980. Focusing on three of these local areas – Harrogate, Dud...

‘The Film That’s Banned in Harrogate’: Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), Local Censorship, Comedy and Local Resistance

The Evil Dead DVD Commentaries: Amateurishness and 'Bad Film' Discourse

Egan, K. (2007). The Celebration of a “Proper Product”: Exploring the Residual Collectible through the “Video Nasty”. In C. R. Acland (Ed.), Residual Media: Residual Technologies and Culture. (pp. 200-221). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Kate Egan

Papers

Audiences and Receptions of Sexual Violence in Contemporary Cinema - Report to the British Board of Film Classification

The Same Old Song? Exploring Conceptions of the 'Feelgood' Film in the Talk of Mamma Mia's Older Viewers

‘The Film That’s Banned in Harrogate’: Monty Python’s Life of Brian (1979), Local Censorship, Comedy and Local Resistance

The Evil Dead DVD Commentaries: Amateurishness and 'Bad Film' Discourse

The Celebration of a “Proper Product”: Exploring the Residual Collectible through the “Video Nasty”