In Melodrama Revised, an essay from 1998, film theorist Linda Williams suggests melodrama situates the audience in a direct empathetic relationship with a victim, so we emotionally experience the victim’s subjugation and then triumph with their overcoming. Oscillating between pathos and action, this is the dominant mode of popular American cinema (and culture more broadly).
She’s right – but then there’s melodrama and Melodrama, the kind that makes us think of soap operas and damsels tied to train tracks.
