Melodrama unbound : across history, media, and national cultures / edited by Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams.

"Melodrama is one of the most important and most misunderstood categories in film studies. Challenging what have become conventional readings and attitudes toward melodrama, the contributors to this collection articulate new ways of thinking about melodrama that underscore its pervasiveness in global film culture, and its distinct ability to depict our understanding of the world. Melodrama Unbound includes essays by leading film scholars and historians to provide new approaches to melodrama that challenge some of the most persistent assumptions about the genre: that it is a Western form aimed at women and characterized by overwrought emotions. Thus, the essays examine how melodrama has traveled to and been transformed in new places such as India, China, Japan, and South America; the melodramatic aspects of action genres that appeal to both male and female audiences; how melodrama mixes with other genres such as romance, comedy, and even realism; how melodrama speaks to the realities of everyday life and dramatizes and expresses vital experiences for audiences; and the genre's relationship to history and modernity. Divided into two sections - "Melodrama's Transnational Histories" and "Aesthetics and Politics: Debates in Melodrama Theory"--The book will be a strong mix of film history and theory"--

Includes bibliographies and index.

Introduction / Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams -- Prologue : the reach of melodrama / Christine Gledhill -- Unbinding melodrama / Matthew Buckley -- The Passion of Christ and the melodramatic imagination / Richard Allen -- Boucicault in Bombay : global theatre circuits and domestic melodrama in the Parsi theatre / Kathryn Hansen -- Global melodrama and transmediality in turn of the century Japan / Hannah Airriess -- Transnational melodrama, Wenyi, and the orphan imagination / Zhen Xhang -- Performing/acting melodrama / David Mayer and Helen Day-Mayer -- Melodrama and the making of Hollywood / Hilary A. Hallett -- Modernising melodrama : the petrified forest on American stage and screen (1935-1936) / Martin Shingler -- One suffers but one learns (melodrama and the rules of lack of limits) / Carlos Monsiváis ; trans. Kathleen M. Vernon -- World and time : serial television melodrama in America / Linda Williams -- Melodrama's "authenticity" in Carl Th. Dreyer's "La Passion de Jeanne D'arc" / Amanda Doxtater -- "Tales of sound and fury . . ." or, the elephant of melodrama / Linda Williams -- Repositioning excess : romantic melodrama's journey from Hollywood to China / Panpan Yang -- Melodrama and the aesthetics of emotion / Deirdre Pribam -- Indian melodrama, Bhava and the orchestration of affect / Ira Bhaskar -- The sorrow and the piety : melodrama rethought in post-war Italian cinema / Louis Bayman -- Costumes as melodrama : super fly, male costume and the larger-than-life / Drake Stutesman -- Melodrama and apocalypse : politics and the melodramatic mode in Contagion / Despina Kakoudaki -- Even more tears : the historical time theory of melodrama / Jane Gaines.

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