Homeless in Hollywood

Abstract

This thesis is an exploration into the ways that homeless people are stigmatized in the media, with particular emphasis on the misrepresentation of homelessness in contemporary Hollywood narrative films. Using a combination of semiotic film theory and ideological analysis, I examine the film language that is used to construct these myths and place them within a larger political context. In doing so, I inspect the relationship between the corporate Hollywood structure and the attitudes they reflect about homelessness. Based on the results of my analysis, I have produced a film that explores an alternative representation to the dominant Hollywood perspective.