- Term is often used
derisively
- Heyday from 1930's-1940's
- Produced at the same rate
as crime, melodrama, and westerns
- Genre
- ranged from
conventional to escapist fantasy
- subversive only
between the lines
- Focuses on issues in the
private sphere
- Function of the weepie
- moved by self-pity
- learns to accept
their lot in life
- Structure
- woman is at the
center of the universe
- friends, lovers
- live for pleasure
- talk about her
constantly
- cease to exist
when she dies
- if two loved ones
unite after heroine's death, they exist in the shadow &
memory of the great woman
- Central notion of middle-classness
- not just as economic
status
- state of mind
- rigid moral code
- Private sphere
- world of the
housewife corresponds to state of women in general
- limited options
- irony, dependent
on institutions (marriage, motherhood) which end her
independent identity
- bound to
morality, demands which are stifling illicit, creative, and
sexual energies to support social code
- deviations
tolerated for husband
DIFFERENT TYPES
- Tensions exist between
classes
- Women as models vs. women
as victims
- Upper class women
- Point of view --
singular, personal
- Call the shots,
transcend the limits of sexual identity
- Emancipation based upon role
as the exceptional
- Weakness -- political value,
unpopular
- "Ordinary"
women
- Point of view -- plural,
politicial
- Options foreclosed by
marriage, income, children, or age
- Subject largest &
lowest denominator
- Act as audience
surrogates
- Defined negatively,
collectively by mutual limitations, rather than talent or
aspirations
- Embraces audience as
victims
- Authors -- Fannie
Hurst, Edna Ferber, Kathleen Norris, Olive Prouty
- Purpose not to
encourage women to rebel, question role, but to reconcile her to
her role, preserve status quo
- Functions against
man, extraordinary women
- Ordinary woman who
becomes extraordinary
- Victim of
discriminatory circumstances, through pain, obsession, defiance
to rise above fate
- Becomes mistress of
fate
- Is accepted by
working class
- All women as victims
- Themes of women's
movies overlap or combine sacrifice, affliction, choice, or
competition
- Films of 30's more social
realism
- Over time, growing
ambivalence, coyness
- Titles
- Laura, The Letter,
Mildred Pierce, Daisy Kenyon, Susan & God, The Women, Johnny
Guitar, Gone with the Wind, Back Street, and Letter from an
Unknown Woman
MELODRAMA--NOW VOYAGER
"Melodrama throws pain and dissatisfaction in our faces,
insists we can do better, and then, in the end, takes it all back,
assuring us that we'll be fine if we only modify desire and deflect pain
somewhere else -- or end it with death" (Kolker 112)
- Combines Oedipal
narrative with Cinderella story
- Sexual foregrounded in
melodrama,
- Primary cause
characters activities
- Clean division of
those with sexual issues, those where sex has no role
- Non-threatening
character(s) serve as mediating force(s)
- Genre demands
physical, emotional & sexual transformation
- Starts with
repressed sexuality
- Apparent goal
liberated sexuality
- Favored closure
moderated sexuality
- Symbolism
- Lighting two
cigarettes (stand in for sex)
- Recurring theme
music
- Structural elements
- Gains goal
- Decline &
dangerous reversal
- Graph emotions in
predictable patterns
- Liberation of
character is also transgression
- Crazy if
repressed, crazy if unrepressed
- Metaphor of sickness
and health overwhelms film
- Cycle passed from
one character to another
- Sacrifice is the key
to endurance
- Insistence on
self-sacrifice or self-denial
- Largely invisible
trait (internal)
SCREENED FILMS
NOW VOYAGER
STAGE DOOR
- All
Movie Guide
- Internet
Movie Database
- Director Gregory La Cava
- Stars Katherine Hepburn,
Ginger Rogers, Adolph Menjou, Lucille Ball, Eve Arden, Ann Miller
- Writer Edna Ferber,
George S. Kaufman, Morrie Riskind, & Anthony Veillier
IT SHOULD HAPPEN TO YOU
(Notes derived from Phillips, William. Film: An Introduction. )
RELATED
RESOURCES--CRITICAL THEORY
Articles/Papers:
Feminism
PopCultures.com
http://www.popcultures.com/articles/feminism.htm
Film
Studies: Film and Gender
Daniel Chandler
Constructivism at Work
The Media and Communications Studies Site
University of Wales
Select Film Studies, then select
and Film and Gender
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Functions/mcs.html
Notes
on "The Gaze"
Daniel Chandler
Constructivism at Work
The Media and Communications Studies Site
University of Wales
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/gaze/gaze.html
SWIRL:
Feminisms
Warren Hedges
English Department
Southern Oregon University
http://www.sou.edu/English/IDTC/Issues/Gender/femin.htm
RELATED RESOURCES--NOW
VOYAGER
Melodrama
Films
Tim Dirks
http://www.filmsite.org/melodramafilms.html
Now
Voyager (extended discussion and review)
Tim Dirks
http://www.filmsite.org/nowv.html
Smokescreen:
Bette Davis and the Cigarette
Angus E. Crane
http://www.reelclassics.com/Actresses/Bette/bette-article.htm
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