Silent Melodrama

1
Silent Melodrama

• Background for Redskin and Other Films

2
Melodrama

• Works primarily on a nonverbal and emotional
  level, a common base of feeling that crosses
  over all linguistic barriers (Belton 127).
• Primarily concerned with establishing mood or
  emotion

3
Two Senses of the Word

• As a genre, melodrama has specific kinds of
  characters, plots, and so on.
• Melodrama is a modal genre a melodramatic
  style is a means of heightened emotional
  expression that crosses into genres such as
  comedies and westerns.

4
Melodrama, continued

• Tries to make visible and bring to the surface
  (through images and music) that which is
  invisible or felt but not recognized
• Often relies on stylistic excess (color, set,
  costume design, methods of filming)

5
Melodrama, continued

• Is about the family, connections among
  individuals, and the loss and recovery of
  feelings (130)
• Children and animals are often touchstones, since
  they perceive feelings and are less constrained
  about expressing them.

6
Classical Tragedy and Melodrama

• Tragedy
• Subject matter is the aristocracy
• The restoration of order, not the questioning of
  that order, is a primary goal
• The protagonist is identified with the state and
  the public sphere.

• Melodrama
• Subject matter is middle or lower class
• Questioning of the social order and even rooting
  for the underdog is the norm.
• The protagonist is identified with the private
  sphere of home and community.

7
Tragedy and Melodrama, continued

• Static relationship between individual and social
  order
• Virtue and wisdom the property of the aristocracy

• Dynamic relationship between individual and
  social order individuals can prosper, move up
  (or down) in class, etc.
• Virtue and wisdom are attainable by anyone

8
Tragedy and Melodrama, continued

• Classical tragedy relies on inevitability all is
  determined and nothing is contingent or variable.

• Melodrama lacks a sense of inevitability all
  events are contingent and not inevitable or
  predetermined
• Its politics are often reformist, populist, and
  even revolutionary.

9
Spatialized Representation of Values in Melodrama

• City associated with modernity, anonymity,
  isolation, technology, industrialism, corruption
• Country associated with innocence, nature,
  abundance, preindustrialism, familythe Garden
  of Eden or a place of respite from modernity.

10

• Since melodrama often centers on home, a common
  plot is the threat to the home or family (Fatal
  Attraction)

11
Temporalized Representation of Values

• The past site of values and a place of order
  before the disruptions of modernity
• The present fragmented, chaotic, corrupt the
  values of the past are often invoked to restore
  order.

12
Films for Today

• White Fawns Devotion, dir. James Young Deer
  (1910)
• Ramona, dir. D. W. Griffith (1910)
• Scenes from The Vanishing American, dir. George
  B. Seitz (1925)