Popular Melodramas Research Articles

Transforming Islamic entertainment and values in Malaysian films

Building a society with high moral and values is imperative in Islamic teachings. As media technologies have changed the ways of human communication and offered new platforms for media content, it provides many opportunities to produce Islamic entertainment programmes that suit with the nature of various medium. Producing Islamic media content could play a unifying role for representing Muslims’ diverse cultures as well as avoiding a negative picture of Islam. Ideally, Muslim culture is derived from the cultural and communication heritage. Islamic entertainment and values are rich in terms of virtues and can be transformed into various genres of media products including films. This article will examine the debate of the Islamic entertainment particularly by examining al-Ghazali’s views ofal-sama’ (‘entertainment’) and subsequently contextualizing it to the Malaysian Islamic ambiences. Using narrative analysis, two popular melodramas (films) will be examined to manifest the process of transforming Islamic values into entertainment programmes. It is argued that the representation of values is considered essential in Islamic communication perspective. It encompasses social, religious and cultural foundations. Muslims must actively participate in producing media content so that it will strengthen both the form and content for communicating Islamic values across the world. Unity, brotherhood, equality, love and tolerance are part of the key formulas to ensure a better process of disseminating good connotations of Islam via media.

Filmic Imagination as Emotional Homeland: Confronting Callousness, Achieving Home in Post-war Turkey

Abstract This essay explores the centrality of emotions in the Turkish experience of urban modernity during the post-war decades. It draws on cinematic representations of a range of social emotions stirred by the urban condition in 1970s Istanbul. Tracing first the relevance of popular melodramas to post-war Turkish social imaginary, the article then proceeds with an analysis of three narrative tropes that shed light on people’s emotional navigation of tensions and conflicts wrought by rapid urban change: the callous factory owner as a figure of collective resentment, the old wooden family home as a place of emotional refuge, and the rhetoric of righteous anger to cultivate feelings of solidarity. Methodologically, the study argues for a greater use of films as a valuable source for emotions history, particularly in connection with the historical study of the built environment.

Evolution of Dada Uttam Kumar: Performing Masculinity and the Disillusioned Bhadralok Mahanayak in the 1970s’ Popular Melodramas

This essay focuses on a fragment of the Bengali superstar Uttam Kumar’s star text, the dada figure, to analyse the contours of melodramatic enunciations and masculinity that appear in the 1970s’ popular films. This decade is identified with the radical politics associated with the Naxal movement that erupted in varied expressions of rage and anger at institutional and systemic failures. Since Uttam typified a bhadralok masculine subjectivity, his evolution in domestic melodramas especially in male weepies from the period enables me to read the specifics of regional cinema and its response to social and political contexts of the times.

Censorship and the Construction of Homosexual Desire in Mario Camus’s Muere una mujer (1965)

AbstractThe representation of homosexuality and homosexual desire in cinema was strictly banned under Franco’s dictatorship. However, a limited number of filmmakers managed to portray homosexual characters in their films. The popular melodramas of the 1960s were a good chance for these novel representations, and filmmakers of younger generations explored new cinematic discourses on sexuality. This article studies Mario Camus’s Muere una mujer (1965), an important work in the construction of the film discourses on sexual minorities that would flourish during the transition to democracy. This film can therefore be considered a valuable source for understanding future homosexual narratives. Despite the strict demands of the ‘Junta Nacional de Censura’ – the Board of Censors – Camus managed to include homosexual characters who, very exceptionally, expressed their desires. The study of the censorship files, which can be found in the Archivo de Alcalá (Madrid), contribute to the analysis of the complex processes of narration and deletion of homosexual desire.ResumenLa representación de la homosexualidad y del deseo homosexual en el cine estaba estrictamente prohibida durante el Franquismo. Sin embargo, un pequeño grupo de cineastas se las ingeniaron para mostrar personajes homosexuales en sus películas. Los melodramas populares de los años sesenta suponían una buena oportunidad para este tipo de representaciones, y cineastas de generaciones más jóvenes exploraron estos nuevos discursos en el cine. Este artículo estudia Muere una mujer (1965), de Mario Camus. Se trata de un trabajo importante en la construcción de discursos cinematográficos en torno a las minorías sexuales, que proliferarían en la transición a la democracia. Esta película se puede considerar, por lo tanto, una fuente muy valiosa para el estudio de las futuras narrativas homosexuales. A pesar de las estrictas exigencias de la censura, Camus consiguió incluir personajes homosexuales que, excepcionalmente, expresaron sus deseos. El estudio de los expedientes de censura, que se encuentran en el Archivo de Alcalá (Madrid) contribuye al análisis de los complejos procesos de narración y eliminación del deseo homosexual.

“The Frighted Stage”: The Sensational Proliferation of Ghost Melodrama in the 1820s

DIEGO SAGLIA “The Frighted Stage”: The Sensational Proliferation of Ghost Melodrama in the 1820s I N A LETTER OF II SEPTEMBER 1823, MARY SHELLEY INFORMED LEIGH HUNT, then in Italy, that she had attended a performance of Richard Brinsley Peake’s adaptation of Frankenstein as Presumption; or, the Fate ofFrankenstein, which had opened at the English Opera House, the former Lyceum, on 28 July. As is well known, she enjoyed Thomas Potter Cooke’s acting as the nameless Creature (indicated as “__________ ” in the playbill), some­ thing that not only confirms the importance of naming in her novel, but also throws into relief the peculiarly spectral nature of this stage version of Frankenstein’s creation.1 To be sure, Peake’s text constantly refers to its material presence: the doctor initially dubs it “a huge automaton in human form” and then goes on to list its repulsive physical traits by echoing vol­ ume 1, chapter 4, in the novel.2 Yet the play also repeatedly qualifies the Creature through the language of the supernatural, and spectrality in par­ ticular, as Frankenstein’s assistant Fritz calls it “a hob-goblin” and Franken­ stein a “Demon” (in the Larpent version) and a “dreadful spectre of a human form.” Moreover, the Creature’s first and highly spectacular ap­ pearance presents some of the features of evanescence, since it is “discov­ ered at door entrance in smoke, which evaporates,” and then exits by “dis­ appearing] through [a] casement.”3 A year later, on 22 August 1824, Mary Shelley wrote again to Leigh Hunt to tell him that London audiences were in thrall to Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Der Freischutz. She had seen it in the version that premiered This article is dedicated to the memory ofJane Moody and her affection for Italy and all her colleagues and friends there. 1. Shelley, Selected Letters of Mary Wollstonecraj't Shelley, ed. Betty T. Bennett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 136. 2. Peake, Presumption; or, The Fate of Frankenstein, in Seven Gothic Dramas 1789—1825, ed. Jeffrey N. Cox (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1992), 397, 398. 3. Peake, Presumption, 398, 399. SiR, 54 (Summer 2015) 269 270 DIEGO SAGLIA at the English Opera House on 23 July 1824, and gave the following account: . . . the music is wild but often beautiful—when the magic bullets are cast they fill the stage with all sorts of horrors—owls flapping the[ir] wings—toads [hopp]ing about—fierly [szc] serpents darting & the [ ] ghostly hunters in the clouds, while every now & then in the [ ] of a stream of wild harmony comes a crashing discord—all forms I assure you a very fine scene, while every part ofthe house except the stage is invelloped in darkness.4 Offered by several London theaters in competing versions during 1824, Der Freischiitz was filled with superstitions and omens, apparitions and sublime landscapes, while its action, mostly set on a darkened stage, pivoted on the scene of the casting ofthe bullets, a veritable tour de force ofsupernatural ef­ fects. Although Weber’s original was an opera, the earliest of its London adaptations was a straightforward melodrama (The Fatal Marksman; or, the Demon of the Black Forest, Coburg, 26 February 1824), and even operatic versions such as those at the English Opera House and Covent Garden bore a heavily melodramatic stamp.5 While confirming the popularity ofghost plays on the Romantic-period stage, Mary Shelley’s accounts testify to the sustained investments by play­ wrights and managers in new ways of combining spectrality with the acting style and increasingly striking spectacular effects ofmelodrama in the 1820s, the decade that, in Matthew Buckley’s words, saw “the genre’s emergence as a dominant dramatic form. ”6 In this respect, in her groundbreaking work on illegitimate theater, Jane Moody underlines how technical innovations and “monstrous generic hybridity” lay at the center ofthe “dramatisation[s| of supernatural terror” and “[supernatural monstrosity ... as both human and alien” in such popular melodramas from the 1820s (most of them star­ ring T. P. Cooke in their opening run) as Peake’s Presumption, James Rob­ inson Planche’s The Vampire; or, the Bride ofthe Isles (English Opera House, 9 August 1820), Henry Milner...

Traditional oral theatre meets popular middle-class melodrama: the Greek shadow-theatre puppeteer Vasilaros

Vasilaros (1899-1979), a moderately educated Greek shadow-theatre puppeteer, adapted popular melodramas and novels with strong bourgeois morality, such as Oι δύο λοχίοα in 1931, H άγνωστος in 1937, At δύο ορφαναί in 1944, and Οι άθλκη in 1955. The adaptations indicate that by the mid-1930s, the borderline between the traditional oral art of shadow theatre and mainstream culture had become considerably blurred. This article explores the convergence of these two cultures in terms of dramatic structure and ideology.

Theatre histories: an introduction

Authors Acknowledgements Preface: Interpreting performances and cultures Part I: Performance and theatre in oral and written cultures before 1700 1. Oral, ritual, and shamanic performance Case studies: Yoruba ritual as and contingency in the ritual process Intepretive approach Theories of and improvisation Korean Shamanism and the power of speech Interpretive approach Speech act theory 2. Religious and civic festivals: Early drama and theatre in context Case studies: Classical Greek theatre: Looking at Oedipus Interpretive approach Cognitive spatial relations Christians and Moors: Medieval performance in Spain and the New World Interpretive approach Cultural hierarchy 3. Early theatre in the court, temple, and marketplace: Pleasure, power, and aesthetics Case studies: Plautus's plays: What's so funny? Interpretive approach, Part I Henri Bergson's theory of laughter Interpretive approach, Part 2 Bergson's theory in historical perspective Kuttiyattam Sanskrit theatre of India: Rasa-bhava aesthetic theory and the question of taste Interpretive approach Reception theory Case study: Kathakali dance-drama: Divine play and human suffering on stage Interpretive approach Ethnography and history The Silent Bell: The Japanese no play, Dojoji Interpretive approach Feminist and gender theory, modified for medieval Japan Part II: Theatre and print cultures, 1500-1900 4. Theatre and the state, 1600-1900 Case studies: Moliere and carnival laughter Interpretive approach Mikhail M. Bakhtin's concept of the carnivalesque Kabuki and bunraku: Mimesis and the hybrid body Interpretive approach Mimesis, hybridity, and the body Shakespearean sexuality in Twelfth Night Interpretive approach Queer theory 5. Theatres for knowledge through feeling, 1700-1900 6. Theatre, nation, and empire, 1750-1900 Case studies: Theatre iconology and the actor as icon: David Garrick Interpretive approach Cultural studies and theatre iconology Theatre and hegemony: Comparing popular melodramas Interpretive approach Cultural hegemony 6. Theatre, nation, and empire, 1750-1900 Case studies: Friedrich Schiller's vision of aesthetic education and the German dream of a national theatre Interpretive approach Studies in national/cultural identity The Playboy riots: Nationalism in the Irish theatre Interpretive approach Cognitive linguistics Part III: Theatre in modern media cultures, 1850-1970 7. Theatres of popular entertainment, 1850-1970 Case studies: Blacking up on the U.S. stage Interpretive approach Reification and utopia in popular culture British pantomime: How bad theatre remains popular Interpretive approach Phenomenology and history 8. Theatres of the avant-garde and their legacy, 1880-1970 Case studies: Psychological and sociological training for the actor Interpretive approach Cognitive psychology Discoursing on desire: Desire Under the Elms in the 1920s Interpretive approach Discourse theory 9. Modernism in drama and performance, 1890-1970 Case studies: Ibsen's A Doll House: If Nora were a material girl Interpretive approach Cultural materialism Modernism in Chekhov, Pirandello, and Beckett Interpretive approach Comparative analysis 10. Theatres for reform and revolution, 1880-1970 Case studies: Social drama in Kerala, India: Staging the revolution Interpretive approach Politics, ideology, history, and performance Brecht directs Mother Courage Interpretive approach Semiotics Part IV: Theatre and performance in the age of global communications, 1950 to the present 11. Rich and poor theatres of globalization Case studies: The vortex of Times Square Interpretive approach Vortices of behaviour Athol Fugard: Theatre of witnessing in South Africa Interpretive approach Social justice and the artist 12. Director, text, and performance in the postmodern world Case studies: The crisis of representation and the authenticity of performance: Antonin Artaud and Jacques Derrida Interpretive approach Deconstruction Global Shakespeare Interpretive approach Postcolonial criticism 13. Interculturalism, hybridity, tourism: The performing world on new terms Case studies: Whose Mahabharata is it anyway? The ethics and aesthetics of intercultural performance Interpretive approach The historian between two views of intercultural performance Imagining contemporary China: Gao Xingjian's Wild Man in post-Cultural Revolution China Interpretive approach Theories of national identity Backstage/frontstage: Ethnic tourist performances and identity in America's Little Switzerland Interpretive approach Sociological theories of tourism and everyday performance Glossary Index

Making Soviet melodrama contemporary: conveying ‘emotional information’ in the era of Stagnation

This article examines Stagnation-era Soviet melodrama. With the re-emergence of the generic category of ‘melodrama’ for the Soviet film industry by the 1960s, critics began re-examining the USSR's own engagement with the form, thus establishing a normalized space for the genre by the mid-1970s. Goskino needed to compete with imported melodramas and demanded that Soviet film-makers work directly in this hitherto forbidden genre. This article explores changes in Soviet melodrama at a moment when it became acceptable in criticism and a generic category for transmitting ‘emotional information’. Through an analysis of critical debates I argue that, in making the genre ‘contemporary’, authorities in the culture industry had to differentiate late-Soviet melodrama both from its ‘bourgeois essence’ and from 1920s debates about the genre. Popular melodramas emerged from, and coincided with, these debates, including The Step-Mother (1973) and Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (1979), which foregrounded the family as the site of affective discourse, even as they constrained the function of the heroic master narrative. Films like The Step-Mother did so without confronting the political exigencies of the Brezhnev era. Such Stagnation-era melodramas provide texts for examining how notions of private and public were re-imagined on the eve of perestroika.

Climbing Boys and Factory Girls: Popular Melodramas of Working Life

(2000). Climbing Boys and Factory Girls: Popular Melodramas of Working Life. Journal of Victorian Culture: Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 28-44.