Melodrama

I have often been accused of being "so melodramatic" that I thought I would do a little research to try and understand the perjorative definition assigned to the term.

Webster's dictionary defines melodrama as "a work (as a movie or a play) characterized by extravagant theatricality and by the predominance of plot and physical action over characaterization". However, it also offers a second definition which is "the genre of dramatic literature constituted by such works". The term 'genre' inherently suggests an identifiable set of parameters to which works of literature can be ascribed. Dr. Eric Trumbull, in his Introduction to Theatre course at Northern Virginia Community College writes that melodrama "[c]omes from "music drama" [in which] music was used to increase emotions or to signify characters (Trumbull). In her lectures at the University of Victoria, Dr. Alanna Lindgren agrees that the genre started as 'melodrame' with Jean-Jacques Roosseau's Pygmalion in which music was used to underscore the text (Lindgren). She also suggests that the genre emerged as a form of musical dumb-show to bypass certain theatrical licensing laws which banned spoken word (Lindgren). Using music as a way of heightening emotional responses is, therefore, a point of departure for a definition of the genre. However, it is clear that the definition evolved to include more than mere emotional music.
Dr. Anthony Vickery, also lecturing at the University of Victoria, outlines several characteristics of the mature theatrical genre. He states that melodrama "depended on visual excitement and the thrill of the moment rather than literary excellence" (Vickery). He also suggests that the genre was most popular with an emerging dominant working class who were partial to a dream-world inhabited by dream-people with dream-justice in which the 'good guy' always wins (Vickery). Vickery includes in his definition a stratified world of good against evil where the basic hero is generally stupid but courageous and faces a villain who is irrationally pre-disposed to effecting the hero's demise, regardless of the consequences to himself. Generally, the villain is male and uses a meek and compromised heroine lover of the hero as the vehicle for his evil plots. Vickery suggests that the heroine is the heart of the melodrama and often motivates the villain in his jealousy of the hero to possess her. Vickery also makes reference to the use of the elderly or young children to heighten emotional responses in their victimization by the villain. He outlines a plot structure in which the heroine, as well as children or elderly are in near constant peril. Dr. Lindgren, touting Beecher-Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin as a paradigmatic example of melodrama, extends the definition of the genre to include what she calls 'pictorial' in which on-stage scenes create an emotional aesthetic, like the finale tableau of the play. For example, the stage direction to close the play reads, "Gorgeous clouds, tinted with sunlight. EVA, robed in white, is discovered on the back of a milk-white dove, with expanded wings, as if just soaring upward. Her hands are extended in benediction over ST. CLARE and UNCLE TOM who are kneeling and gazing up to her. Expressive music. Slow curtain" (Wise 65). Lindgren re-iterates the use of emotionally emphatic music, and includes the use of "high-tech special effects" which Trumbull specifies to include "fires, explosions, drownings, earthquakes" (Trumbull). The musical origin is pivotal, but in its evolution, many academic characteristics are evident.

See you in hell.
Shakes.