At home in estranged dreams: contemporary Hollywood and the uncanny

This study examines contemporary Hollywood by focusing on films made between 1990 and 2010. With chapters on the double, war trauma, the undead, and automata, I delineate evidence of the uncanny within individual films along with the underlying contradictions that symptomatically respond to the larger economic conditions and industrial practices that shape the contemporary period. Each of the four chapters also serve as an occasion to analyze theoretical and thematic concerns drawn from Sigmund Freud’s 1919 essay on the uncanny. Throughout the project there is a strong effort to link Freud’s initial account to subsequent theoretical developments with a particular emphasis on introducing the work of Jacques Derrida. The cumulative aim of these efforts is provide a critical foundation for analyzing the latent disorientation within the practices of contemporary Hollywood and capitalist society more generally. Abstract Approved: _____________________________________________________ Thesis SupervisorApproved: _____________________________________________________ Thesis Supervisor _____________________________________________________ Title and Department _____________________________________________________ Date _____________________________________________________ Thesis Supervisor _____________________________________________________ Title and Department ____________________________________________________ Date AT HOME IN ESTRANGED DREAMS: CONTEMPORARY HOLLYWOOD AND THE UNCANNY by Kevin Patrick McDonald A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Film Studies in the Graduate College of the University of Iowa