Belongingness in Melodrama

This week, I wanted to do some research into the idea of belonging in melodrama, as a sense of familial belonging is an important element in "Four Inches of Danny Jefferson". For a critical analysis, I will discuss my own viewings of "Goodfellas" and "Ali: Fear Eats The Soul". For a scholarly background, I will be looking at Nichola Rehling's essay “It's About Belonging”: Masculinity, Collectivity, and Community in British Hooligan Films".

In Goodfellas, Henry Hill, played by Ray Liotta, finds belonging in his life by joining the mafia, eventually forming a sort of family with Conway (De Niro) and DeVito (Pesci). But Goodfellas is not a melodrama, rather, it is closer to tragedy, due to the fact that, unlike Lester in American Beauty, Henry is unable to choose to preserve the sacred because of his tragic greed. Thus it is my opinion that the difference between tragedy and melodrama is what Aristotle called hamartia, meaning a tragic flaw, that prevents the hero from choosing the sacred over the secular, as per Garry Leonard's essay that I reviewed last week.

In "Ali", the theme of belonging comes from Ali's struggles with racism, and his difficulty finding a place where he belongs, only ever finding happiness when with his eventual wife, Emmi. However, even this is spoiled when they return home from vacation and she begins treating his culture as a novelty for her newly-accepting friends. He only finds belonging when he and Emmi reconcile later on, though by then it is too late, and the stress of being an outsider is killing him at the end.

Rehling's work looks at British hooligan films, the type of film that the greater public knows through Trainspotting. The films discussed use violent crime as a meeting point for masculinity, youth, and identity. Identity, here, is found in the homosocial relationships between hooligans. Ultimately, Rehling's work suggests that the violence of the hooligan films comes from a desire of homophobic young men to be masculine enough to maintain strong homosocial bonds with other men without coming off as gay to anyone. Violence is a bonding point that keeps these men together, while also keeping them secure from their own homophobia.

At the beginning of my film, Danny has no real place in the world, but by the end, his place is clearly with Jenny, as a father to their unborn child. This is both a moment of belongingness, because he has found a place where he can be happy for the first time in his life, and a moment of redemption, because he gets to counter his father's parenting methods with his own.