Melodrama As Provocateur

Linda Williams (Author), Christine Gledhill (Edited by), Laura Horak (Edited by), Elisabeth R. Anker (Edited by)

9781478033691

Hardback, published 14 April 2026

342 pages, 28 illustrations
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.2 cm, 0.63 kg

"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

“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

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.

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 MÉ
lodrame 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