As one of the most influential contemporary film scholars, Linda Williams brought her critical feminist lens to some of society’s most maligned and underappreciated film genres. Melodrama as Provocateur showcases what was to be Williams's last project in which, insisting on melodrama as a cross-generic, cross-media mode, she investigates the divergence between French and American attitudes to film melodrama. A diverse group of scholars respond to her provocations, rethinking melodrama’s transnational, transmedia histories and potential futures. Their contributions examine how melodrama became, as Williams argues, the default mode of contemporary media, and demonstrate how it plays an increasingly powerful role in public discourse and political rhetoric today.
- Cover
- Contents
- Introduction / Christine Gledhill, Laura Horak, and Elisabeth R. Anker
- Part I. Provocations
- 1. The Fortunes of Melodrama in France and America; or, Why Melodrama Is Still Important / Linda Williams
- Part II. Refiguring Melodrama’s Histories as Transnational/Transmedial Form
- 2. On Shifting Ground: Melodrama’s Transcultural, Transmedial, and Transhistorical Genesis / Matthew Buckley
- 3. Hollywood’s Export to the World: Melodramas of Colonial Conquest / Jane M. Gaines
- 4. Feeling Our Way: Melodrama and Emotional Engagement / E. Deidre Pribram
- 5. Strip Thinking: Forms of Intermittent Pictorialization / Carolyn Williams
- 6. “And We Wept, Precious”: Motion Capture and Melodrama / Carla Marcantonio
- Part III. Melodrama’s Fortunes in France and America: Eighteenth to Twenty-First Century
- 7. Seeking Sisterhood: French Melodrama, American Cinema, and the Case of Les deux orphelines / Victoria Duckett
- 8. Searching for Melodrama in French Versus American Cinema, 1908–1912 / Richard Abel
- 9. The Lost Word: Le silence est d’or; or, French (Mis)Recognition of a Mélodrame That Dares Not Speak Its Name / Charles-Antoine Courcoux
- 10. “Grab ’Em by the Pussy”: Donald Trump and the MAGA Melodrama / Elisabeth R. Anker
- 11. Trans Melodramas / Laura Horak
- Part IV. Aesthetics and Politics of Emotion
- 12. Falling in Love and in Art: The Diva Documentary / Dolores McElroy
- 13. Melodrama as Default Mode of Popular Culture: P!nk’s Album Trustfall (2023) / Martin Shingler
- 14. Emotional Legibility: Modernity, Melodrama, and Ambivalent Gender Justice in Bombay Cinema, 1930s–1950s / Ira Bhaskar
- 15. From My Sister’s Bedside: Life and Death in the Shadow of Blossoms Shanghai / Zhang Zhen
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Index
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