Understanding Melodrama: A World of Desires and Complexities
Melodrama presents a fantasy world rooted in desires, with characters facing moral dilemmas and testing the boundaries of right and wrong. Complex narratives, intense emotional situations, and intricate character developments drive the melodramatic genre, showcasing the interplay of love, crime, and family dynamics.
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Melodrama It is a fantasy of a world that operates according to our heart s desires in contrast to the other formula types that are fantasies or particular actions or states of being that counter some of our deepest fears or concentrate on particular wishes for victory or love or knowledge. It doesn t appear to reflect a single overriding narrative or dramatic focus. Cawelti (p.44)
Combination of a number of actions and settings in order to build up the sense of a whole world bearing out the audience traditional patterns of right and wrong, good and evil. It shows how complex ambiguities and the tragedies of the world ultimately reveal the operation of a benevolent, humanly oriented moral order.
Character Has complicated characters It s similar with the tragedy; but in tragedy, the protagonist shows great gap between human desires and limitations of the world. But in melodrama, the gap is bricked over. Suffering (or violence) are means of testing and ultimately demonstrating the rightness of the world order. Example: Godfather: In the scene of Michael Corleone suffering of his father, but he took the action of being the leader of his family gangster.
Narrative Structure The narrative structure is diverse; family, crime, love. Makes people intersect imaginatively with many lives. Sub plots multiply continual shifts in point of view underlying moral process Example: My sister s keeper: We can see the problem of Anna being the spare part of her sister in many different perspectives; her mom, dad, Anna and her sister.
Situation The drama of intensified effects (music, melos) added to the play to increase its emotional power and intensify its hold on the audience. The quest of intensified narrative or dramatic effects is characteristic of the entire range formula types. Example: Godfather I: In the scene of Michael Corleone s nephew christening; while Michael make a vow at the church; his people shoot his enemies.
