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November 1999, Week 3

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Subject:
From:
Sandy Camargo <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Film and TV Studies Discussion List <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Wed, 17 Nov 1999 17:32:57 -0600
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The reasons for the confusion (and conflation) that you rightly notice is
historical, I think. Here's the quick and dirty version, as I understand
it: The first article to really talk about films dealing with so-called
women's issues (i.e., relationships with men, where the love story was the
main plot, not the subplot) was Thomas Elsaesser's "Tales of Sound and
Fury." In that piece he referred to the "family melodrama," which would
link it to and distinguish it from "western melodramas," "crime
melodramas," etc. In the subsequent, feminist-critical discussion of the
form, it came to be called "the woman's film" or the "women's melodrama."
        The other distinction would be that, unlike the heroes of westerns
and other traditional melodramas, the female protagonist is most often
unsuccessful in realising her goals. As soon as she is successful, the film
is assigned to another genre.
        Cheers,
        Sandy Camargo
        Department of English
        University of Missouri

>Could anyone provide a brief definition of "woman's melodrama" as opposed to
>other types of melodramatic films in the 40s (and today), including film
>noir? I've been rereading E. Ann Kaplan's MOTHERHOOD AND REPRESENTATION:
>THE MOTHER IN POPULAR CULTURE AND MELODRAMA. But as a theatre historian,
>it's difficult for me to understand why in film studies the term "melodrama"
>is so often reserved for woman's films of the 40s. Aren't Westerns and
>gangster films, as well as films noir, also melodramas--with clear-cut good
>and evil characters, and with the triumphant violence of the hero over the
>villain justified in the happy ending?
>
>Is that still the paradigm for woman's (or maternal) melodramas, although
>such films speak from a woman's position rather than a man's?
>
>Mark
>
>> ----------
>Elizabeth Haas wrote:
>
>> What's also interesting about that phenomenon (ff's as having no past)is
>> how it differs from the woman's melodrama of that time (40s Hollywood).
>> Whereas noir casts its femme fatale characters as either bad-to-the-bone
>> from the beginning, featuring flashbacks that only reaffirm the ff's
>> present-time venial sexuality (e.g. FILE ON THELMA JORDAN), the melodramas
>> feature references to the past or flashbacks that explain a particular
>> sexual reluctance in the present timeline.
>>
>
>----
>Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite
>http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite

----
Online resources for film/TV studies may be found at ScreenSite
http://www.tcf.ua.edu/ScreenSite

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