(The archetypal melodramatic villain: see him here.)
Time: Mondays 14.00-16.00
Room: 2.119, Kroghstræde 3
Lecture 1 Jørgen Riber Christensen 3.9.
Introductory lecture to the course and to the genre. The definitions, conventions
and forms of melodrama
Video lecture
Some definitions of melodrama
Lecture notes
Lecture 2 Bent Sørensen 10.9.
Melodrama in American blockbusters: From Love Story to Titanic
(Love Story, 1970; The Deer Hunter 1978; E.T., 1982; Field of Dreams, 1989; Forrest Gump, 1994; Titanic, 1997
http://www.hum.aau.dk/~i12bent/Melodrama07BS.html
Lecture 3 Camelia Elias NB: Thursday 20.9. 14.00-16.00, Room 2.119, Kroghstræde 3
Whose story? Whose melodrama? Whose mellowing?
Lecture 4 Jørgen Riber Christensen 24.9.
John Waters: Melodrama, cult and "The Prince of Puke" - John Waters'
films are characterized by excess. The lecture will concentrate on Pink Flamingos (1972) to illustrate how the melodramatic form is related to discourses of perversion.
Lecture 5 Gunhild Agger
1.10.
Breaking the Waves
Lars von Trier's Breaking the Waves (1996) is clearly inscribed in the melodramatic genre, but in which ways? That has puzzled critics and raised some interesting questions, discussed in the literature mentioned below. The love story in the film between Bess and Jan is relatively simple. But as it develops after Jan's accident, several complications in the plot arise. How should this development be interpreted? And what about the much debated ending with the heavenly bells? Which cues do the style and the way of narration suggest?
Following Dr. Richardson, the doctor in the film, Bess suffers from goodness, and in interviews Trier has confirmed that it is a film about being good. According to Torben Kragh Grodal, Breaking the Waves represents a "passive melodrama to portray abuse or self-sacrifice" (Grodal 2004: 137). According to Birger Langkjær (1997), a certain distance is part of the music. According to Ove Christensen (2001), we are simultaneously close to the universe of fiction and far from it. Close, due to the way of narration and the moving camera. Distant, due to the intertextual references to Dreyer's films and the metafictional elements in Breaking the Waves.
In this lecture, we shall highlight these questions from the perspective of melodrama. Are both closeness and distance compatible to the melodramatic genre? Or does the film represent a kind of melodramatic pastiche?
Further references
Christensen, Ove (2001): "Realistisk metafiktion - Breaking the Waves og den reflekterende illusion". In Anker Gemzøe & Britta Timm Knudsen & Gorm Larsen: Metafiktion - selvrefleksionens retorik. Holte: Medusa.
Grodal, Torben Kragh (2004): "Frozen Flows in von Trier's Oeuvre". In Torben Kragh Grodal & Bente Larsen & Iben Thorving Laursen: Visual Authorship. Northern Lights, film and Media Studies Yearbook 2004, Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press.
Langkjær, Birger (1997): "Lyden af ny dansk film". In Mediekultur nr. 27, Aarhus: SMID.
Lecture 6 Andrew Fish 8.10.
"TV documentaries are caught between the banality of the 'reality' they
report and the need to provide entertainment. I examine clips from 'serious',
non-sensational TV documentary to uncover some of the devices that contribute
to the construction of 'reality' as melodrama in discourse and picture."
General literature:
Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, Yale University Press, 1976
(in AUB's Studiesamling)
http://www.filmsite.org:80/melodramafilms.html