The Melodramatic Public

The Melodramatic Public
Author: R. Vasudevan
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 471
Release: 2016-04-30
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0230118127

What does it mean to say Indian movies are melodramatic? How do film audiences engage with socio-political issues? What role has cinema played in the emergence of new economic forms, consumer cultures and digital technologies in a globalizing India? Ravi Vasudevan addresses these questions in a wide-ranging analysis of Indian cinema.

The Melodramatic Moment

The Melodramatic Moment
Author: Katherine Hambridge
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2018-07-16
Genre: Music
ISBN: 022656309X

We seem to see melodrama everywhere we look—from the soliloquies of devastation in a Dickens novel to the abject monstrosity of Frankenstein’s creation, and from Louise Brooks’s exaggerated acting in Pandora’s Box to the vicissitudes endlessly reshaping the life of a brooding Don Draper. This anthology proposes to address the sometimes bewilderingly broad understandings of melodrama by insisting on the historical specificity of its genesis on the stage in late-eighteenth-century Europe. Melodrama emerged during this time in the metropolitan centers of London, Paris, Vienna, and Berlin through stage adaptations of classical subjects and gothic novels, and they became famous for their use of passionate expression and spectacular scenery. Yet, as contributors to this volume emphasize, early melodramas also placed sound at center stage, through their distinctive—and often disconcerting—alternations between speech and music. This book draws out the melo of melodrama, showing the crucial dimensions of sound and music for a genre that permeates our dramatic, literary, and cinematic sensibilities today. A richly interdisciplinary anthology, The Melodramatic Moment will open up new dialogues between musicology and literary and theater studies.

Melodramatic Tactics

Melodramatic Tactics
Author: Elaine Hadley
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 326
Release: 1995
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 9780804724036

This pathbreaking work analyzes melodrama as not merely a theatrical genre but as a behavioral paradigm of the nineteenth century, manifest in the theater, in literature, and in society. It shows how the melodramatic mode reaffirmed the familial, hierarchical, and public grounds for ethical behavior and identity that characterized models of social exchange and organization.

Melodrama and Meaning

Melodrama and Meaning
Author: Barbara Klinger
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 226
Release: 1994-08-22
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780253208750

Melodrama and Meaning is a major addition to the new historical approach to film studies. Barbara Klinger shows how institutions most associated with Hollywood cinema—academia, the film industry, review journalism, star publicity, and the mass media—create meaning and ideological identity for films. Chapters focus on Sirk's place in the development of film studies from the 1950s through the 1980s, as well as the history of the critical reception (both academic and popular) of Sirk's films, a history that outlines journalism's role in public tastemaking. Other chapters are devoted to Universal's selling of Written on the Wind, the machinery of star publicity and the changing image of Rock Hudson, and the contemporary "institutionalized" camp response to Sirk that has resulted from developments in mass culture.

Nazi Film Melodrama

Nazi Film Melodrama
Author: Laura Heins
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2013-09-16
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0252095022

Cultural productions in the Third Reich often served explicit propaganda functions of legitimating racism and glorifying war and militarism. Likewise, the proliferation of domestic and romance films in Nazi Germany also represented an ideological stance. Rather than reinforcing traditional gender role divisions and the status quo of the nuclear family, these films were much more permissive about desire and sexuality than previously assumed. Focusing on German romance films, domestic melodramas, and home front films from 1933 to 1945, Nazi Film Melodrama shows how melodramatic elements in Nazi cinema functioned as part of a project to move affect, body, and desire beyond the confines of bourgeois culture and participate in a curious modernization of sexuality engineered to advance the imperialist goals of the Third Reich. Offering a comparative analysis of Nazi productions with classical Hollywood films of the same era, Laura Heins argues that German fascist melodramas differed from their American counterparts in their negative views of domesticity and in their use of a more explicit antibourgeois rhetoric. Nazi melodramas, film writing, and popular media appealed to viewers by promoting liberation from conventional sexual morality and familial structures, presenting the Nazi state and the individual as dynamic and revolutionary. Some spectators objected to the eroticization and modernization of the public sphere under Nazism, however, pitting Joseph Goebbels' Ministry of Propaganda against more conservative film audiences in a war over the very status of domesticity and the shape of the family. Drawing on extensive archival research, this perceptive study highlights the seemingly contradictory aspects of gender representation and sexual morality in Nazi-era cinema.

Mia the Melodramatic

Mia the Melodramatic
Author: Eileen Boggess
Publisher: Bancroft Press
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2008
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9781890862565

Mia is fifteen and during her summer vacation she starts working at a children's playhouse, meets new people (including Eric, who she knew once long ago when he was not so interesting) and continues sibling warfare with her younger brother Chris.

The Melodramatic Thread

The Melodramatic Thread
Author: James R. Lehning
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2007-07-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0253117011

“This ambitious undertaking is concerned with the melodramatic form in theatre and film and its impact on French political culture.” —H-France Review In France, both political culture and theatrical performances have drawn upon melodrama. This “melodramatic thread” helped weave the country’s political life as it moved from monarchy to democracy. By examining the relationship between public ceremonies and theatrical performance, James R. Lehning sheds light on democratization in modern France. He explores the extent to which the dramatic forms were present in the public performance of political power. By concentrating on the Republic and the Revolution and on theatrical performance, Lehning affirms the importance of examining the performative aspects of French political culture for understanding the political differences that have marked France in the years since 1789. “In this thoroughly researched and persuasive book, Lehning provides a fascinating reading of public performances in modern France . . . This is an important contribution to the study of French culture and the democratization process . . . Essential.” —Choice “Lehning’s application of the themes of melodrama to French political culture offers new insights into French history. His style is lively, clear, and highly readable.” —Venita Datta, Wellesley College “The analyses in this book make a real contribution to debates about the ways in which art, particularly popular art, and politics interact; how politics itself is theatrical in the French case; and the role of ritual in politics and the function of politics as ritual and ceremony.” —John Gaffney, Aston University

The Fluoride Wars

The Fluoride Wars
Author: R. Allan Freeze
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 395
Release: 2009-04-29
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0470463678

A lively account of fluoridation and its discontents Since its first implementation in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 1945, public drinking water fluoridation and its attendant conflicts, controversies, and conspiracy theories serve as an object lesson in American science, public health, and policymaking. In addition to the arguments on the issue still raging today, the tale of fluoridation and its discontents also resonates with such present concerns as genetically modified foods, global warming response, nuclear power, and environmental regulation. Offering the best current thinking on the issue, The Fluoride Wars presents a witty and detailed social history of the fluoridation debate in America, illuminating the intersection of science and politics in our recent past. This reader-friendly assessment explores the pro- and anti-fluoridation movements, key players, and important events. Full of amusing and vivid anecdotes and examples, this accessible recounting includes: A careful and non-condescending look at the hard science, popular science, pseudo-science, and junk science involved A look at fluoride issues including dosage, cost, financial and funding interests, fluorosis, and problems of risk-cost-benefit analysis The back-and-forth drama between pro- and anti-fluoridation factions, with all its claims, counterclaims, insults, acrimony, and lawsuits Case studies of various cities and their experiences with municipal water fluoridation initiatives Fluorophobia and popular conspiracy theories involving fluoride The colorful characters in the debate including activists, scientists, magicians, and politicians A richly and considerately told tale of American science and public life, The Fluoride Wars offers an engrossing history to both interested general readers and specialists in public health, dentistry, policymaking, and related fields.

Hollywood Melodrama and the New Deal

Hollywood Melodrama and the New Deal
Author: Anna Siomopoulos
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2012-05-04
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 1136463976

While many critics have analyzed the influence of the FDR administration on Hollywood films of the era, most of these studies have focused either on New Deal imagery or on studio interactions with the federal government. Neither type of study explores the relationship between film and the ideological principles underlying the New Deal. This book argues that the most important connections between the New Deal and Hollywood melodrama lie neither in the New Deal iconography of these films, nor in the politics of any one studio executive. Rather, the New Deal figures prominently in Hollywood melodramas of the Depression era because these films engage the political ideas underlying welfare state policies—ideas that extended the reach of government into the private realm. As the author shows, Hollywood melodramas interrogated New Deal principles of liberal empathy—consumer citizenship, the refeudalization of the state, and minimal economic redistribution—only to support welfare-state ideology in the end.

Lexicon of Global Melodrama

Lexicon of Global Melodrama
Author: Heike Paul
Publisher: transcript Verlag
Total Pages: 401
Release: 2022-05-31
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3839459737

This new go-to reference book for global melodrama assembles contributions by experts from a wide range of disciplines, including cultural studies, film and media studies, gender and queer studies, political science, and postcolonial studies. The melodramas covered in this volume range from early 20th century silent movies to contemporary films, from independent ›arthouse‹ productions to Hollywood blockbusters. The comprehensive overview of global melodramatic film in the Lexicon constitutes a valuable resource for scholars and practitioners of film, teachers, film critics, and anyone who is interested in the past and present of melodramatic film on a global scale. The Lexicon of Global Melodrama includes essays on All That Heaven Allows, Bombay, Casablanca, Die Büchse der Pandora, In the Mood for Love, Nosotros los Pobres, Terra Sonâmbula, and Tokyo Story.