Silent Melodrama Background for Redskin and Other Films.

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Silent Melodrama Background for Redskin and Other Films

Transcript of Silent Melodrama Background for Redskin and Other Films.

Silent Melodrama

Background for Redskin and Other Films

Melodrama

• Works primarily on a nonverbal and emotional level, a “common base of feeling that crosses over all linguistic barriers” (Belton 127).

• Primarily concerned with establishing mood or emotion

Two Senses of the Word

• As a genre, melodrama has specific kinds of characters, plots, and so on.

• Melodrama is a “modal” genre: a “melodramatic” style is a means of heightened emotional expression that crosses into genres such as comedies and westerns.

Melodrama, continued

• Tries to make visible and bring to the surface (through images and music) that which is invisible or felt but not recognized

• Often relies on stylistic excess (color, set, costume design, methods of filming)

Melodrama, continued

• Is about the family, connections among individuals, and “the loss and recovery of feelings” (130)

• Children and animals are often touchstones, since they perceive feelings and are less constrained about expressing them.

Classical Tragedy and Melodrama

• Tragedy– Subject matter is the

aristocracy– The restoration of

order, not the questioning of that order, is a primary goal

– The protagonist is identified with the state and the public sphere.

• Melodrama– Subject matter is

middle or lower class– Questioning of the

social order and even rooting for the underdog is the norm.

– The protagonist is identified with the private sphere of home and community.

Tragedy and Melodrama, continued

• Static relationship between individual and social order

• Virtue and wisdom the property of the aristocracy

• Dynamic relationship between individual and social order; individuals can prosper, move up (or down) in class, etc.

• Virtue and wisdom are attainable by anyone

Tragedy and Melodrama, continued

• Classical tragedy relies on inevitability; all is determined and nothing is contingent or variable.

• Melodrama lacks a sense of inevitability; all events are contingent and not inevitable or predetermined

• Its politics are often reformist, populist, and even revolutionary.

Spatialized Representation of Values in Melodrama

• City: associated with modernity, anonymity, isolation, technology, industrialism, corruption

• Country: associated with innocence, nature, abundance, preindustrialism, family—the “Garden of Eden” or a place of respite from modernity.

• Since melodrama often centers on home, a common plot is the threat to the home or family (Fatal Attraction)

Temporalized Representation of Values

• The past: site of values and a place of order before the disruptions of modernity

• The present: fragmented, chaotic, corrupt; the values of the past are often invoked to restore order.

Films for Today

• White Fawn’s Devotion, dir. James Young Deer (1910)

• Ramona, dir. D. W. Griffith (1910)

• Scenes from The Vanishing American, dir. George B. Seitz (1925)