Domestic Melodrama Since World War II (Lecture)

From Screenpedia

1920s/30s Melodrama supports the status quo

Middle Class Ideology

Post-WW II (after 1945)

American dream begins to erode

The Status Quo is questioned

Women "on the verge of revolt"

Explanations?

Sociological explanation: society in transition

Shift out of wartime culture

Women's position changed from workforce to domestic life

They were forced out of the factories and abck into the home

Men return from war

Have to switch from military life to civilian life

Post-traumatic stress

Influx of Freud into popular consciousness

Initial publication in the early 20th century

Filtered down to popular culture after WWII

      E.g., The Dark Past (1948) A Freudian psychoanalyst is held hostage

Subconscious as the location of hidden drives and desires

Existentialism

superficial use of terms from existential philosophy

futility of life/life as uncertainty

Post-War Melodrama

The family

Cracks in the conventional security of the nuclear family.

     E.g., Rebel without a Cause (1955) Dysfunctional family,  Gender role confusion
     
     E.g., Bigger than Life (1956)  Hypermasculinity/psychosis

Work

Success viewed as superficial, almost decadent

Work seen as exploitative

     E.g., The Best of Everything (1959) Career women as bitter, frigid and unhappy

Notable for auteur theory

Douglas Sirk, Vincente Minnelli and Nicholas Ray

Reinvented the genre in the 1950's

Known for their visual style

1960s

Film melodrama largely replaced by TV soap opera

1970s/80s

Backlash against the women’s movement

Men presented as being superior nurturers to women

     E.g., Ordinary People (1980)