Melodrama unbound : across history, media, and national cultures /
edited by Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams.
- New York : Columbia University Press, (c)2018.
- 1 online resource.
- Film and culture .
Includes bibliographies and index.
Introduction / Prologue : the reach of melodrama / Unbinding melodrama / The Passion of Christ and the melodramatic imagination / Boucicault in Bombay : global theatre circuits and domestic melodrama in the Parsi theatre / Global melodrama and transmediality in turn of the century Japan / Transnational melodrama, Wenyi, and the orphan imagination / Performing/acting melodrama / Melodrama and the making of Hollywood / Modernising melodrama : the petrified forest on American stage and screen (1935-1936) / One suffers but one learns (melodrama and the rules of lack of limits) / World and time : serial television melodrama in America / Melodrama's "authenticity" in Carl Th. Dreyer's "La Passion de Jeanne D'arc" / "Tales of sound and fury . . ." or, the elephant of melodrama / Repositioning excess : romantic melodrama's journey from Hollywood to China / Melodrama and the aesthetics of emotion / Indian melodrama, Bhava and the orchestration of affect / The sorrow and the piety : melodrama rethought in post-war Italian cinema / Costumes as melodrama : super fly, male costume and the larger-than-life / Melodrama and apocalypse : politics and the melodramatic mode in Contagion / Even more tears : the historical time theory of melodrama / Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams -- Christine Gledhill -- Matthew Buckley -- Richard Allen -- Kathryn Hansen -- Hannah Airriess -- Zhen Xhang -- David Mayer and Helen Day-Mayer -- Hilary A. Hallett -- Martin Shingler -- Carlos Monsiváis ; trans. Kathleen M. Vernon -- Linda Williams -- Amanda Doxtater -- Linda Williams -- Panpan Yang -- Deirdre Pribam -- Ira Bhaskar -- Louis Bayman -- Drake Stutesman -- Despina Kakoudaki -- Jane Gaines.
"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"--
2018027033
Melodrama in motion pictures--History and criticism. Melodrama--History and criticism.