“The Left may be dead, Joe, but the fear and hatred of the Left will never die. It’s an American passion.”
—Chris Bachelder, U.S.!

What are they implying by saying that the fear and hatred of the Left is an American passion? And in what ways does this represent the melodrama of the book (in terms of language). 

U.S.! NPR interview

Just thought I would post this quick npr interview with Bachelder on U.S.! I found it interesting to hear him speak on the book.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5257218

Kleinhans in Landy

"In the bourgeoisie era, the family becomes the central area of personal life, a respite from productive life, from the alienated labor most workers must face."

The author begins the chapter discussing the modern failings of marriage (and that most marriages end in divorce, separation, etc.); however backtracks to discuss the domestic melodrama. Seeing that the vision of marriage has changed quite dramatically since this time, I would like to discuss the evolution of the domestic melodrama. How is it portrayed differently? (i.e. Friends with Benefits, No Strings Attached, movies with live in relationships that reject the ideals of a traditional relationship.)

Poletta and The First Legion

"But since, "every coin has two sides, every argument has its opposite arguments," there is still plenty of room for ideological maneuver." (Poletta 142)

I would like to put this quote into the framework of the earlier discussion in the paper regarding activists and the church. I find it interesting to think that this could also be applied to religion. Oftentimes, the church in the past has found explanations of phenomena through religion while many scientists find evidence through the scientific method. Are these two things mutually exclusive?

Also, regarding the First Legion, I think it was interesting, at the time, to frame the movie through the eyes of an atheist. In this case, we were also presented with the skepticism of the miracle from INSIDE the church while the reverent belief is expressed by the disabled girl who is not a member of the order.

You're the Worst, Orange is the New Black, and Framing

“Effective frames are “empirically credible,” that is, they are consonant with what their audiences know to be true (Benford and Snow 2000). Those who articulate the frame should be credible as well (Benford and Snow 2000). Effective frames are, in addition, “salient” to their audiences. That is, they call on beliefs that are already strongly held. Frames also should be “experientially com-mensurable” (Snow and Benford 1992: 208; Benford and Snow 2000). They should resonate with people’s everyday experiences.” (Poletta, 489)

“Yeah, I’ve done that.” (Me, watching There is not Currently a Problem and thinking about clinical depression)

“Concerns about stories’ triviality, deceptiveness, and generalizability are more likely to be triggered by lower-status speakers than by higher ones. Indeed, higher-status speakers may be less likely to be heard as telling stories, rather than stating facts or advancing logical explanations.” (Poletta, 499)

Polleta, OITNB

Polleta Quote

"Certainly, one can challenge the conventions of narrative performance. Survivors could have told stories of anger on talk shows and could have recounted moving from shame to pride in courtroom hearings; but doing so would have been risky. Culture shapes strategy in the sense that abiding by the rules of cultural expression yields more calculable consequences than challenging them." Pg. 498

I wanted to highlight this quote because I think it is very relevant to what we have been talking about recently of why we relate to characters in films. Is it because we all have a little Darth in us, or a little Hitler? Maybe. But it's also because, as Nina said, the narratives we hear have been written and planned accordingly to their audiences. "Culture shapes strategy..." I wanted to specifically highlight this line of the quote because this is where stock characters come in. Different genres have different stock characters because each genre has its own conventions and its own culture that it must fit into. We it be okay to be laughing during a documentary about the concentration camps of Nazi Germany? No. Would it be okay to be screaming in horror during a RomCom? No.

Orange is the New Black

This scene seemed to pop at me due to the very controlling and dominating language that was being used by the Officer Mendez but Burset doesn't let him have this moment; instead she takes control with her line "I don't do sausage in my breakfast sandwich." There is a conflict here between good and evil, as in any melodrama, the trick here though is figuring out who is good and who is evil. The black versus white contrast is very strong here so the first assumption we could make would be that Officer Mendez is the good and Burset is the evil- but then this scene shows us that maybe this isn't the case. 

Poletta and Orange is the New Black

stories are better able than other kinds of messages to change people’s opinions

There should be a clear “we”—those to whom the injustice is done—and an obvious “they” who are responsible for the injustice (Gamson 1992; Stoecker 1995). Effective frames are “empirically credible,” that is, they are consonant with what their audiences know to be true

To probe the dynamic involved, subjects were asked to circle every “false note” in the story. The more absorbed they were, the less likely they were to see such false notes (Green and Brock 2000). This suggests that when they hear or read stories, audiences suspend their proclivity to counterargue, that is, to raise doubts about the veracity or rele- vance of the information they are hearing 

Constraining and Persuading Narrative Elements in Orange is the New Black

• But telling stories is also risky, for at least two reasons. One is that people understand stories in terms of stories they have heard before. Stories that stray too far from the familiar risk seeming unbelievable, idiosyncratic, or simply strange.

• Even when activists have succeeded in creating a movement, and in gaining access to the venues where they can make their case, familiar stories pose a problem. Here, the problem lies less in the stories activists tell than the stories with which they are heard.

• This is where narrative comes in. Recent research suggests that audiences process stories neither centrally nor peripherally, but rather by a third route. They immerse themselves in the story, striving to experience vicariously the events and emotions that the protagonists experience. Green and Brock (2000) found that subjects who were highly absorbed in a story (indicated by statements like “activity going on in the room around me was not on my mind” while reading the story, and “I could picture myself in the scene of the events described in the narrative”) were likely to report beliefs consistent with those implied in the story.

44:14

Social Movements as Culture

"Narrative’s power, in other words, is unevenly distributed. In this sense, culture may curb challenge less through the canonical limits on what kinds of stories can be imagined than through the social conventions regarding when and how stories should be told."

Persuasion

"Yes, stories are powerfully persuasive rhetorical devices. The research in communication that we will cite shows convincingly that stories are better able than other kinds of messages to change people’s opinions." 487

-displaying different parts of society

-showing different POV

-controversial elements

-provoking viewers to question stereotypes and beliefs

-provoking viewer understanding

Poletta Reading and OITNB

In this reading, Poletta talks about the function stories and narratives have in promoting social action and change. It talks about how stories persuade, constrain, and what they are good for. One of the main focuses of the article is how viewers connect their own personal stories, as well as stories that they have already heard and experienced, to the stories they are hearing. This is both good and bad, it allows people who were not originally invested in a given topic to relate to it and possibly be motivated, but it is also risky. The risk lies in the fact that when an audience hears a story, it is up to them to interpret it and determine its validity. This happens based on the setting, topic and speaker of the story.

In "Orange is the New Black", Season 1:  Episode 3, we are given some backstory into the life of the transgender prisoner at Litchfield. Throughout the episode, the reactions people have to her being transgender both in and out of prison are depicted through interactions both with and about her. It shows a range of tolerance, ranging from her wife, supporting her through her transition, to fellow inmates and guards making derogatory comments to her on a regular basis. There are also comments that refer to the general feeling people have about being gay, specifically about lesbians in this setting.

The show seems to be making a statement about how people view both transgender and lesbian individuals. By showing the background and personal story of a transgender person, the show seems to be using that narrative in order to provoke some sort of awareness in viewers.

Narrative and Social Movements - Polletta

“They immerse themselves in the story, striving to experience vicariously the events and emotions that the protagonists experience… [and] when they hear or read stories, audiences suspend their proclivity to counter argue, that is, to raise doubts about the veracity or relevance of the information they are hearing. They truly suspend disbelief, and they do so in a way that has lasting effects. The attitudinal change brought about by stories tends to persist or even increase over time (Appel and Richter2007). Tell an absorbing story, this research suggests, and you can win people to your cause”

“The other problem lies in the norms governing how stories are heard and evaluated: when they are considered appropriate, believable, serious, and so on. Such norms are historical, but also institutional. This is why activists telling stories of their victimization have fared better in the media than in court. In the media, activists’ stories have been heard as those of “Every person.” Activists have been able to connect their own experiences to a larger normative point. In court, by contrast, storytellers have been expected to hew to familiar images of victims—passive, pitiable, and like all other victims—and then penalized when they have done so”

Douglas Sirk: Written With The Wind

"In the strictest definition of the term, melodrama refers to those narrative forms which combine music with drama. Hollywood's use of background music to provide aural dimension and an emotional punctuation to its drama extends back even to the silent era. Live musical accompaniment (usually organ or piano) was standard from the earliest days of theatrical projection" Landy, 148 (Schatz reading)

"Ideally, the family represents a "natural" as well as social collective, a self-contained society in and of itself. But in a melodrama, this ideal is undercut by the family's status within a highly structured socioeconomic milieu, and therefore, its identity as a autonomous human community is denied-the family's roles are determined by the larger social community." Landy,153 (Schatz reading)

Question: How does the music of Written On The Wind play a role in the contribution to the overall 'melodramatic' ideals talked about by Schatz, especially that of the social community?

Schatz & Written on the Wind

"The audience was, on one level, shown formalized portrayals of virtuous, long-suffering heroines whose persistent faith in the American Dream finally was rewarded with romantic love and a house in the suburbs. Beneath this seemingly escapist fare, however, Elsaesser glimpses the genre's covert function 'to formulate a devastating critique of the ideology that supports it.'"

This quote reminded me of the part in Written on the Wind where Lucy and Kyle are first meeting, and Lucy says something along the lines of  "I'll walk down the aisle and end up in a house in the suburbs with some children" and Kyle responds with "no, you are much too smart for that." This is a nice introduction to a critique of the American Dream/Romantic Love plot device.

 

Written on the Wind

"Ideally, the family represents a 'natural' as well as a social collective, a self-contained society in and of itself. But in the melodrama this ideal is undercut by the family's status within a highly structured socioeconomic milieu, and therefore, its identity as an autonomous human community is denied-the family roles are determined by the larger social community. The American small town, with its acute class consciousness, its gossip and judgment by appearances, and its reactionary commitment to fading values and mores, represents an extended but perverted family in which human elements (love, honesty, interpersonal contact. generosity) have either solidified into repressive social conventions or disappeared altogether" (Schatz 153).

  

"The family's status is enhanced by its role within the community, whose economy and social climate it controls either directly or through benign neglect... the socioeconomic lifeblood of the community generates much of the tension" (Schatz 161).

Quote and Question: Schatz

Question: is Elsaesser suggesting that the American Dream is merely an illusion and exploited through film to give people a false sense of hope and security and catharsis?


"Elsaesser recently said that Hollywood's most effective melodramas would seem to function either subversively or through escapism--categories that are always relative to gthe given social and historical context."

The screenshot of my quote keeps on getting taken down, but I will have it in class.

Written on The Wind

Melodrama as Socioeconomic Commentary in the 50's

“First, it is a reestablished constellation whose individuals roles (mother, father, adult, adolescent, child, infant, and so on) carry with them large significance. Second, it is bound to its community by social class (father’s occupation and income, type and location of the family home, etc.). Ideally, the family represents a ‘natural’ as well as a social collective, a self-confined society in and of itself. But in the melodrama this ideal is undercut by the family’s status within a highly structured socioeconomic milieu, and therefore, its identity as an autonomous human community is denied - the family roles are determined by the larger social community”

Schatz & Sirk

Melodrama as subtle social commentary

Schatz in Landy:

-No other genre films, not even the "anti-Westerns" of the same period, projected so complex and paradoxical a view of America, at once celebrating and severely questioning the basic values and attitudes of the mass audience. (150)
-Beneath this seemingly escapist fare, however, Elsaesser glimpses the genre's covert function "to formulate a devastating critique of the ideology that supports it". (151)
-...this is precisely the function I am proposing for popular movies. They permit us to look without looking at things we can neither face fully nor entirely disavow. (152)

Sirk's Written on the Wind:

Written on the Wind

Throughout Written on the Wind, the character of Marylee undergoes so many changes that the first impression we get of her is nearly the complete opposite of her final persona. She is introduced as promiscuous and rambunctious, and as the film progresses she is overcome with jealousy due to her love for Mitch. But in a dramatic moment during the trial, she decides to have mercy on Mitch and tells the truth about her brother's death. We are shown that after all of her scheming, she really is a human and she truly cares for Mitch.
Do these changes make her more or less relatable and appealing to the audience or does it make her character just seem less authentic?

In the Schatz reading, Written on the Wind is mentioned as one of the more unconventional films of the 1950's for stepping outside of the typical romantic narratives that came before it:

Because of a variety of industry-based factors, as well as external cultural phenomena,
the melodrama reached its equilibrium at the same time that certain filmmakers
were heginning to subvert and counter the superficial prosocial thematics and
cliched romantic narratives that had previously identified the genre. No other genre
films, not even the "anti-Westerns" of the same period, projected so complex and
paradoxical a view of America, at once celebrating and severely questioning the basic
values and attitudes of the mass audience.

The mitial success of romantic tearjerkers reflected the collective capacity to stroke the
emotional sensibilities of suburban housewives, but recent analysts suggest that the
'50s melodramas are actually among the most socially self-conscious and covertly
"anti-American" films ever produced by the Hollywood studios

Sirk - Melodrama and Music

"In the strictest sense of the definition, melodrama refers to those narrative forms which combine music (melos) with drama. Hollywood's use of background music to provide a formal aural dimension and an emotional dimension and an emotional punctuation to its drama extends back to the "silent era". (Schatz, 148)"

In the 1950s, though Sirk's melodramas were well received commercially, they were criticized by reviewers who claimed Written on the Wind was boring and predictable, a potboiler designed to cater to popular taste.

How does Sirk's use of music in Written in the Wind work to foreshadow the movie's narrative?

Written on the Wind

Scene

"Quote"

This was written about the same film which German filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who himself has remade several of Sirk's films. Recently termed "a great, crazy movie about life and about death. And about America." It is a film, argues Fassninder. in which "nothing is natural. Ever. Not in the whole film ...

Question

Taking into mind the comments made on melodramatic structure and themes/ideals during the 1950's, the movie seems to be hinting at a theme of uncertainty. How has the film portrayed this, if well?

Suspended Judgement Through Storytelling

"Peripheral processing may lead to an attitudinal change in the moment but it does not last. By contrast, people process stories by immersing themselves in the story, striving to experience vicariously the events and emotions that the protagonist do. They suspend the proclivity to counterargue, to raise doubts about the veracity or relevance of the information they are hearing. Crucially this is true whether they have a stake in the issues featured in the story. Readers suspend disbelief in a way that has a lasting effect" (Polletta, 291).

In Freaks and Geeks the protagonist encounters and interacts with a group of outcasts ("freaks") that would traditionally associated with negative connotations of rebellion and drug use. How does the show work to suspend the audience's judgement upon these individuals in order for us to perceive their "scene" in a positive light?

Affron and Polleta: Questions and Quotes

Dominique MarmenoFilm 392R

Affron:

By standard critical canons the laying out of truth is too excessive and causes melodrama to be looked down upon; why does a complete enlightenment of all of the character’s appeal to the managerial class? Why does the bourgeoisie think they are above the truth? 

Polleta:

What is the purpose of stock characters? Why do we, as an audience, accept the same stories and narratives we have seen and heard before? Is there an advantage to using the same characters that appeals to the managerial class? If we changed up the characters would certain works of film still be melodramatic, examples? 

The Limits of Plot - Quote & Questions

"By contrast, an approach to narrative that privileges dominant status beliefs emphasizes the difficulty of making women the protagonists of classically heroic stories. Tell a story in which a woman responds to a threat assertively and instrumentally, and readers  will probably not like her or identify with her. They will not derive from her story the message that, if they are in a similar situation, they should behave in the same way. They will hear a different story: one not about heroism but about the dangers that women face or the dangers that foolish women face.Dominant  gender norms trump the power of genre in shaping readers' interpretation and evaluation of what happens in the story."

Poletta, 294

Does this idea that gender norms influence viewers/readers more strongly than genre ring true today? In what way is this different now than women in classically heroic stories?

Quote and Question: Poletta and Freaks and Geeks

“What stands in the way of adapting old stories to new circumstances? More generally, how do time and place-specific beliefs shape stories’ interpretation?

... We argue that they do so by way of character. In other words, narrative does limit people’s capacity to imagine alternatives to the status quo, but not by way of canonical plots. The same events can be inserted into different genres of plot, whether heroic or tragic, comedic or ironic, to yield quite different conclusions. But audiences’ expectations of character are more rigid. Time- and place-specific ideas about how people properly behave – about how ambitious women should be, for example, or how emotional men should be – limit audiences’ ability to imagine them playing roles associated with different plot genres. Plots are transposable; characters are less so.” (Poletta 290)

 I’d like to speak on the questions posed in the paper itself. Specifically, “What stands in the way of adapting old stories to new circumstances?” Why do some classic stories that have set a model for future films sometimes flop when story runs too similar to the original? Do people crave originality after seeing the same storyline redone over and over?

"Sam, you want some advice....be a man." 

"It sure would be nice if you guys back me up every once in a while. My sister does and she's a girl"

Freaks and Geeks, Episode 1 (8:14-8:20)

3 Reading Quotes and Freaks and Geeks

"Most important, social change and upheaval became a primary background for melodramatic action. The earlier melodrama, however much it may have advocated some kind of social reform such as the abolition of slavery in Uncle Tom's Cabin, tended to portray society within the story as static. Individuals rose and fell, but society went on in much the same way" (Cawelti 40).



"The family melodrama, by contrast, though dealing largely with the same Oedipal themes of emotional and moral identity, more often records the failure of the protagonist to act in a way that could shape the events and influence the emotional environment let alone change the stifling social milieu. The world is closed. and the characters are acted upon" (Elsaesser 78-79).



"Characters do not have "lives"; we endow them with "personality" only to the extent that personality is a structure familiar to us in life and art ... . Even fantastic narratives require inference, guesses, and expectations according to one's sense of what 'normal persons are like' - understanding normal in its descriptive and evaluative sense. This is where standard role expectations, stereotypes, prejudices, social biases, and dominant ideologies come in. Believable, sympathetic characters are shaped by prevailing beliefs about how people in those circumstances should behave" (Polletta 293-294).



What are the challenges of providing a story with character types with many expectations, stereotypes, and conventional beliefs but ones who break these conventions and act differently to change the status quo?

Freaks and Geeks: Melodrama in the High School Setting

The first episode of Freaks and Geeks establishes character roles with very clear stereotypes of high school students. We were introduced to the jocks, the cheerleaders, the bullies, the burnouts, and of course, the "freaks and geeks". Throughout the first episode, we are shown an initial persona for each of the main characters, but after only one episode, different sides to some of the characters are revealed. The first element of melodrama that I noticed was the use of music in the opening scene of the episode. It opens with a very vanilla, upbeat guitar song as we see the cheerleader and football player talking about their very complex and intense relationship problems, then there is a stark change in the music to the song "Running with the Devil" as the burnouts are introduced. After this, the geeks are introduced with the song "I'm Alright", a reflection of how they feel until the bullies arrive and the music is cut off completely.

In Francesca Polletta's "Limits of Plot", she explains how people respond to stories with different plots, and the results were as follows:

"If the main characters in the story matched dominant expectations about how people of that status typically behaved, then readers relied on a logic of genre in evaluating the characters, filling in missing parts of the story and extracting a moral from the story. If the main characters did not match those expectations, then readers interpreted the story in line with conventional beliefs about how people of that status behaved. In short, dominant status expectations did not preclude a genre-based reading, but they did set the conditions for one. As we show, this poses real difficulties for those who would use stories to challenge the status quo."

In terms of Freaks and Geeks, we are initially presented with highly stereotyped characters that match how we'd expect them to behave, so we continue to expect certain behaviors from them. We can begin to assume certain elements of this genre and think ok, it's another classic high school story of the studious girl who falls in love with the "bad boy". However, as the episode continues, we see some characters in a more complex sense. We are introduced to Nick's passion for his massive drum set, Kim snaps at her friend for making fun of Lindsay's dancing with Eli, and Cindy shares a dance with Sam. This is how the show pulls us in. We may have thought that these were your stereotypical high school characters, but as they reveal that there is more to them, we want to find out what else they may be hiding.