Melodrama Essay -- Literary Analysis,Steve Neal, Christine Gledhil

There are many debates in Film Studies over what films count as melodramas. Film scholar Steve Neales essay, Melodrama and the Womans film, describes the paradigm shift that melodrama has experienced from the Silent era to the 70s. On the other hand, Christine Gledhills essay, Rethinking Genre and The Melodramatic Field An Investigation, give notice that melodrama is just a mode and, not, in fact, a genre. While Thomas Elsaessers essay Tales of Sound and Fury Observations on The Family Melodrama, identifies the different types of melodrama. But what is a true form of the melodrama genre? At first, it might be difficult to understand why an animated film such as Curious George make my nephew ask me why he felt like crying when the monkey was separated from his zookeeper, and proceeded to ask why the film made him sad. What my little nephew didnt hold out was that I also cried. Melodramatic films are those that make you cry films that have an essence of verisimilitude, evoke pathos, and use music to accentuate the drama. In this essay, I result take elements of Neale, Elsaesser, and Gledhills discourses on melodrama to support my definition. By the end of this essay, I will give a brief explanation on why the histrionic film as the contemporary drama is important and universally understood. In order for a film to be considered to be a melodrama it has to have a presence of verisimilitude. In other words, a melodramatic film has to mimic real life. According to Elsaessers essay, he says that, even if the situations and sentiments defied all categories of verisimilitude and were totally contrary anything in real life, the structure had a truth and a life of its own, which artists could make part of their material (37... ...ealizes the loss Pita is going to have. By adulthood, champion is familiar with extreme sadness and true suffering. Most adults know the feeling of never being able to say you love someone because they have passed on. Or, losing your fav orite toy. Even if you havent gone through such life changing events, we have all experienced the separation from our mothers womb into the world. Our first cry is our first accidental injury that is implanted into our psyche. Thats why in Melodramatic films are solemnly those of great pathos that make the security guard cry because they familiarizes with the pain (even a five year old can understand), and there are cries of joy at the end for the purpose of catharsis which relieves of trauma of separation. (Why is crying therapeutic? How does it relieve this trauma? Does it cause us to confront the anxiety of separation you are referring to?)