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Melodrama as Provocateur

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Book

Pages: 342

Illustrations: 28 illustrations

Published: April 2026

Author: Linda Williams

Editors: Christine Gledhill, Laura Horak, Elisabeth R. Anker

Contributors: Richard Abel, Ira Bhaskar, Matthew Buckley, Charles-Antoine Courcoux, Victoria Duckett, Jane M. Gaines, Dolores McElroy, Carla Marcantonio, E. Deidre Pribram, Martin Shingler, Carolyn D. Williams, Zhang Zhen

As one of the most influential contemporary film scholars, Linda Williams brought her critical feminist lens to some of society’s most maligned and underappreciated film genres. Melodrama as Provocateur showcases what was to be Williams's last project in which, insisting on melodrama as a cross-generic, cross-media mode, she investigates the divergence between French and American attitudes to film melodrama. A diverse group of scholars respond to her provocations, rethinking melodrama’s transnational, transmedia histories and potential futures. Their contributions examine how melodrama became, as Williams argues, the default mode of contemporary media, and demonstrate how it plays an increasingly powerful role in public discourse and political rhetoric today.

Praise

“Williams”s Melodrama as Provocateur is a comparative history of melodrama in two societies on both sides of the Atlantic. This collection changes the way we look at contemporary fictional production and challenges the dichotomy between elite and mass culture. It argues against this academic tradition and defends the idea that melodrama is the central form of American fiction, and more broadly of democratic cultures, found in most fictional cinemas around the world.” - Geneviève Sellier, coauthor of The Battle of the Sexes in French Cinema, 1930–1956

“Williams has been one of the outstanding American scholars of cinema, who has written about a whole series of important topics—race, documentary, pornography, melodrama—with a remarkable timeliness as well as insight. Melodrama as a topic continues to be of vital and expanding interest in the film and media studies field, and this team of melodrama scholars is of the highest order.” - Charles Musser, Yale University

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Linda Williams (1946–2025) was Professor of Film Studies and Rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. She authored and edited several books, including Screening Sex and Playing the Race Card. She received the Outstanding Achievement Award from the British Association of Film, Television and Screen Studies.

Christine Gledhill is Visiting Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Leeds.

Laura Horak is Professor of Film Studies at Carleton University.

Elisabeth R. Anker is Professor of American Studies and Political Science and Director of Film Studies at The George Washington University.

Table Of Contents

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Introduction / Christine Gledhill, Laura Horak, and Elisabeth R. Ander  1
Part I. Provocations
1. The Fortunes of Melodrama in France and America; or, Why Melodrama Is Still Important / Linda Williams  15
Part II. Refiguring Melodrama’s Histories as Transnational/Transmedial Form
2. On Shifting Ground: Melodrama’s Transcultural, Transmedial, and Transhistorical Genesis / Matthew Buckley  65
3. Hollywood’s Export to the World: Melodramas of Colonial Conquest / Jane M. Gaines  81
4. Feeling Our Way: Melodrama and Emotional Engagement / E. Deidre Pribram  101
5. Strip Thinking: Forms of Intermittent Pictorialization / Carolyn Williams  119
6. “And We Wept, Precious”: Motion Capture and Melodrama / Carla Marcantonio  137
Part III. Melodrama’s Fortunes in France and America: Eighteenth to Twenty-First Century
7. Seeking Sisterhood: French Melodrama, American Cinema, and the Case of Les deux orphelines / Victoria Duckett  151
8. Searching for Melodrama in French Versus American Cinema, 1908–1912 / Richard Abel  168
9. The Lost World: Le Silence est d’or; or, French (Mis)Recognition of a Mélodrame That Dares Not Speak Its Name / Charles-Antoine Courcoux  182
10. “Grab ’Em by the Pussy”: Donald Trump and the MAGA Melodrama / Elisabeth R. Anker  201
11. Trans Melodramas / Laura Horak  219
Part IV. Aesthetics and Politics of Emotion
12. Falling in Love and in Art: The Diva Documentary / Dolores McElroy  243
13. Melodrama as Default Mode of Popular Culture: P!nk’s Album Trustfall (2023) / Martin Shingler  260
14. Emotional Legibility: Modernity, Melodrama, and Ambivalent Gender Justice in Bombay Cinema, 1930s–1950s / Ira Bhaskar  272
15. From My Sister’s Bedside: Life and Death in the Shadow of Blossoms Shanghai / Zhang Zhen  293
Acknowledgments  311
Contributors  313
Index  317

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Additional Information

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Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-3857-3 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4780-3369-1 / eISBN: 978-1-4780-6218-9 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478062189