Film Bodies: Gratuitous Emotion in Melodrama.

In "Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess", Linda Williams describes her theory of body genres, which are those film genres designed to use excess to create intense emotional reactions in the viewer. The genres in particular that she pinpoints in her work are pornography, horror, and melodrama. In my current work, I am particularly concerned with how these elements impact melodrama, rather than horror or porn.

I feel the need to clarify that Linda Williams is a professor of film studies at University of California, Berkeley. I clarify this because there is another Linda Williams on the administration at Berkeley, and a Linda Ruth Williams doing film studies in the UK. There is a lot of room for confusion in this area if a reader of this blog wished to go about their own research on the topic.

Regardless, Williams writes a compelling argument for the value of melodrama, but examines melodrama in a way that is perhaps far too narrow. She states that melodrama is defined by "lapses in realism, excesses of spectacle, and displays of primal, even infantile emotions, and by narratives that seem circular and repetitive." This is an adequate measure of the sensationalism of melodrama, but she goes on to say that, for the purpose of her thesis, she will look only at those melodramas that concern feminist critics, what she calls "weepies", or what we may characterize as the elements of a Lifetime Original Movie, sad movies made for women stuck in traditional gender roles. She rejects a greater definition of melodrama because it could be argued that all three body genres, pornography, horror, and melodrama, are all really types of melodrama. This misses, then, a greater genre of melodrama not directed at women under patriarchy, the type of movie that uses overly intense sensational emotions without losing it's ability to appeal to a wide audience. The prototypical melodrama play, Under The Gas Light, would struggle to stay in the genre under the feminist critical definition.

A broader definition of melodrama brings in things like crime dramas and dark comedies, but doesn't break Williams's thesis that body genres are designed to excite us through excess. Good Will Hunting, for example, could be argued as a melodrama under a broad definition. The portrayal of weeping that qualifies the film as a "spectacle of a body caught in the grip of intense sensation or emotion", does occur in the female form via Minnie Driver's character, but she is anything but a woman in a traditional gender role, and the more memorable weeping comes from Robin Williams and Matt Damon.

Another element of body genres that Williams looks at is ecstasy, expressed in melodrama as "overppowering sadness" In my film, this will be seen not in tears, as Williams's weepies would show it, but in the alcoholism of Danny Jefferson, who drinks when others might cry. Williams argues that, in all the body genres, women are the "embodiment of pleasure, fear, and pain". In my film, the main character's foil, Beth, is the expression of his pain in the sense that the audience will ask why he is depressed, then her actions will in turn give explanation.