FILM 4620 - Genre Melodrama: Emotion and Sensation in Film Spring 2016 Prof. Rielle Navitski [email protected] Class: MWF 10:10 – 11:00 am (53 Fine Arts) Screening: M 3:35 – 5:30 (53 Fine Arts) Office Hours: T 1-3 pm, W 11 am-12 pm, F 3:30–4:30 pm or by appointment (260 Fine Arts) Course Description Appearing in a range of narrative forms—theater, literature, cinema, and television— melodrama has played an outsized role in film history and theory. Defining the category in shifting and sometimes contradictory ways, scholars have used it to explore key questions about film style, narrative, the viewer’s experience, and the social and political significance of cinema. How do particular narrative and stylistic strategies move the spectator physically and psychologically, provoking tears, heart-pounding suspense, and other powerful emotions and sensations? How do these feelings speak to specific historical circumstances and social constraints, addressing issues of gender, sexuality, race, and nation? What is melodrama’s relationship to classical Hollywood realism: an over-the-top, potentially subversive exception to the rule, or a basic narrative template for popular film? The first two weeks of this course provide an overview of key debates surrounding melodrama in film studies. In the second unit of the class, we will study diverse examples of pre-classical and classical Hollywood melodrama: sensational film serials starring dynamic female heroines, melodramas by D.W. Griffith that developed classical film language by dramatizing racial difference, the sentimental “woman’s film,” action-packed “masculine” genres (described as melodramas by the trade press of the period) and finally, the stylized family melodramas of Douglas Sirk. In our third unit, we will use melodrama as a framework to explore popular cinemas beyond Hollywood, examining questions of gender, nationalism and modernization in films from Japan, India and Mexico. In our final unit, we will examine how melodrama has been reimagined in films from the late 1970s through the 2010s, from “remakes” of Sirk in New German Cinema and New Queer Cinema to variations on the male melodrama in the 1980s through the 2000s, and melodramatic elements of the contemporary effects-driven blockbuster. This is a challenging, reading- and writing-intensive class. Prior knowledge of film theory and history is helpful, but not required. Due to the nature of the topic, the course includes films with mature themes which some may find upsetting, including violence, sexuality, and racism. Continuing in the class indicates awareness and acceptance of these aspects of the course and a commitment to engage deeply and thoughtfully with all readings and films. Required text: Hard copy of course readings – download from ELC, print and bind at Tate Print & Copy shop. All readings must be completed before class on the date listed on the syllabus. If two dates are listed for a reading, complete the reading before class on the first of the two dates. 1 Course Requirements Paper 1 - Critical Definitions of Melodrama (3-4 pgs.) 10% Paper 2 - Historical Conceptions of Melodrama (3-4 pgs.) 10% Attendance and Participation 15% Midterm Exam (in-class/take-home components) 20% Final Exam 20% Final Paper (7-9 pgs., with required paper proposal) 25% Important Dates 2/15: Paper 1 due 2/29 - 2/28: Midterm (take-home/in-class) 3/14: Paper 2 due 3/28: Paper proposal due 4/25: Final paper due 5/6: Final exam Course Objectives By the end of the course, students should be able to: - make compelling arguments (written and oral) about why and how specific narrative and stylistic techniques in cinema generate powerful emotions and sensations in spectators - develop and defend hypotheses about how the emotions and sensations evoked by film take on social and political significance in relation to specific historical circumstances and social issues - summarize and evaluate critical arguments about the definition of melodrama, and make compelling arguments about the usefulness of these different definitions for understanding individual film texts - analyze how conceptions of melodrama have evolved in different historical periods, distinguishing between the understandings of melodrama developed by the industry, critics and scholar - perform close readings of films that use specific film terms to describe individual scenes, making a persuasive argument about the meaning of specific aesthetic choices - write a compelling research paper that analyzes one or two melodramas in their social, historical, and industrial context, incorporating analysis of film style, analysis of historical reception through research in primary sources, and thoughtful engagement with critical arguments about melodrama 2 Course Schedule UNIT 1 – BASIC CONCEPTS AND DEBATES Week 1: Melodrama as Genre, Melodrama as Mode 1/11 Welcome Screening: Imitation of Life, dir. Douglas Sirk, U.S., Universal, 1959, 125 mins 1/13 Marilyn Fabe, glossary from Closely Watched Films (recommended) John Mercer and Martin Shingler, Melodrama, 4-14, 20-31 (32-37 recommended) 1/15 Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, 11-28 Week 2: Emotion and Affect Across Film Genres 1/18 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day NO CLASS OR SCREENING 1/20 Noël Carroll, “Film, Emotion, and Genre,” 22-47 1/22 Linda Williams, “Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess,” 2-13 UNIT 2 – PRE-CLASSICAL AND CLASSICAL MELODRAMA Week 3: Sensational Melodrama Before Classical Hollywood 1/25 Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity, 149-152, 157-168 (153-156 recommended), 189-203 Screening: The Lonedale Operator, dir. D.W. Griffith, U.S., Biograph, 1911, 17 mins The Hazards of Helen, Ep. 26 “The Wild Engine,” dir. J.P. McGowan, U.S. Kalem, 1915, 14 mins The Perils of Pauline, Ch. 1 “Trial by Fire” (36 mins) and Ch. 4 “A Deadly Turning” (11 mins), dir. Louis Gasnier and Donald MacKenzie, U.S., Pathé, 1914 1/27 Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity, 221-233 1/29 Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity, 44-58 3 Week 4: Race and American Silent Melodrama 2/1 Linda Williams, “The American Melodramatic Mode,” 13-44 Screening: Broken Blossoms, dir. D.W. Griffith, U.S., United Artists, 1919, 90 mins 2/3 Susan Koshy, “American Nationhood as Eugenic Romance” (excerpt), 50-58 2/5 J. Ronald Green, “Micheaux vs. Griffith,” (excerpt) in Straight Lick, 1-6 Week 5: The “Woman’s Film” and Feminist Film Criticism 2/8 Molly Haskell, “The Woman’s Film” (excerpt) in From Reverence to Rape, 153-175 Screening: Stella Dallas, dir. King Vidor, U.S., United Artists, 1937, 104 mins 2/10 - 2/12 Linda Williams, “‘Something Else Besides a Mother’: Stella Dallas and the Maternal Melodrama,” 2-27 Extra credit screening: María Candelaria, dir. Emilio Fernández, Mexico, 1943 Wednesday, 3:35 pm, Room 53 Week 6: Melodrama and Masculinity in Classical Hollywood 2/15 PAPER 1 DUE Steve Neale, “Melo Talk: On the Use of the Term ‘Melodrama’ in the American Trade Press,” 66-81 Screening: Duel in the Sun, dir. King Vidor, 1946, U.S., Selznick, 134 mins 2/17 David Lusted, “Social Class and the Western as Male Melodrama,” 63-69 (70-74 recommended) 2/19 Tom Lutz, “Men’s Tears and the Roles of Melodrama,” 185-204 (186-190 recommended) 4 Week 7: Douglas Sirk in Hollywood: Melodrama, Style, and Politics 2/22 Paul Willemen, “Distanciation and Douglas Sirk,” 63-67 and “Towards an Analysis of the Sirkian System,” 128-134 Recommended: John Mercer and Martin Shingler, Melodrama, 38-43, 48-60 Screening: All That Heaven Allows, dir. Douglas Sirk, U.S., Universal, 1955 2/24 Barbara Klinger, “Selling Melodrama: Sex, Affluence, and Written on the Wind,” in Melodrama and Meaning, 36-68 2/26 Laura Mulvey, “Notes on Sirk and Melodrama,” 75-79 UNIT 3 – MELODRAMA AND GLOBAL POPULAR CINEMA Week 8: Melodrama and Modernity in Japan 2/29 MIDTERM EXAM Screening: Osaka Elegy, dir. Kenji Mizoguchi, Japan, Shochiku, 1936, 71 mins 3/2 Catherine Russell, “Insides and Outsides: Cross-cultural Criticism and Japanese Film Melodrama,” 143-152 3/4 Mori Toshie, “All for Money: Mizoguchi Kenji’s Osaka Elegy (1936),” 37-47 SPRING BREAK Week 9: Melodrama, Motherhood, and Nation in Indian Cinema 3/14 PAPER 2 DUE Screening (during class and screening period) Mother India, Mehboob Khan, India, Mehboob Productions, 1957, 172 mins 3/16 - 3/18 Rosie Thomas, “Sanctity and Scandal: The Mythologization of Mother India,” 11-30 Week 10: Melodrama, Gender and Politics in Mexico’s “Golden Age” 3/21 Ana M. López, “Tears and Desire: Women and Melodrama in the ‘Old’ Mexican Cinema,” 147-163 Screening: Aventurera, dir. Alberto Gout, Cinematográfica Calderón, 1950, 101 mins 3/23 - 3/25 Sergio de la Mora, “‘Midnight Virgin:’ Melodramas of Prostitution in Literature and Film” (excerpt) in Cinemachismo, 21-24, 47-59 5 UNIT 4 – RETHINKING MELODRAMA: FROM EUROPEAN ART CINEMA TO CONTEMPORARY HOLLYWOOD Week 11: Reworking Hollywood Melodrama in New German Cinema 3/28 PAPER PROPSAL DUE Katherine Woodward, “European Anti-Melodrama: Godard, Truffaut, and Fassbinder,” 34-47 Screening: Ali, Fear Eats the Soul, dir. Rainer Werner Fassbinder, West Germany, 1974, 93 mins 3/30 Rainer Werner Fassbinder, “Six Films by Douglas Sirk,” 88-96 Mulvey, “Fassbinder and Sirk,” 40-41 4/1 NO CLASS (SCMS conference) Week 12: Queer Camp, Postmodern Melodrama? 4/4 Barbara Klinger, “Mass Camp and the Old Hollywood Melodrama Today,” 132-156 Screening: Todd Haynes, Far from Heaven, Focus Features, 2002, 107 mins 4/6 – 4/8 Salome Skvirsky, “The Price of Heaven: Remaking Politics in All That Heaven Allows, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, and Far From Heaven,” 90-121 Week 13 – The Action Blockbuster as Male Melodrama, 1980s – 2000s 4/11 Mark Gallagher, “‘I Married Rambo: Spectacle and Melodrama in the Hollywood Action Film,” 199-221 (213-219 recommended) Screening: Die Hard, dir. John McTiernan, U.S.