Tracey Moffatt's Muteness

Abstract

In his 1976 book The Melodramatic Imagination, Peter Brooks describes what he calls 'the aesthetic of muteness' in late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth-century theatrical melodrama. This 'expressionistic' aesthetic uses non-verbal means including gesture, elaborate mise-en-sc ne, sound, and music to convey intense feelings and sentiment in an effort to articulate moral issues. This aesthetic was carried over into Hollywood's 1950s family melodramas, which, being obsessed with visual excess, constrained the role of verbal language while heightening the value of mise-en-sc ne. This paper argues that the aesthetic of muteness also operates throughout Tracey Moffatt's work. I will begin by introducing Brooks's work on theatrical melodrama and considering the importance of intermediality and cross-genre intertextuality in film melodrama. I will look closely at two key early Moffatt works her photographic sequence Something More and her film Night Cries: A Rural Tragedy (both 1989) to show how she engages both melodrama's mute aesthetic and its intertextuality. Finally, I will consider the importance of melodramatic aesthetics in her subsequent work.