Melodrama
Subtitle: an aesthetics of impossibility
By: Jonathan Goldberg
Series: Theory Q; Theory Q
Publisher: Duke University Press Books
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 205
ISBN-13: 9780822361756; 9780822361916
Subjects: Melodrama; History and criticism
Description: "Offering a new queer theorization of melodrama, Jonathan Goldberg explores the ways melodramatic film and literature provide an aesthetics of impossibility. Focused on the notion of what Douglas Sirk termed the "impossible situation" in melodrama, such as impasses in sexual relations that are not simply reflections of social taboo and prohibitions, Goldberg pursues films by Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Todd Haynes that respond to Sirk's prompt. His analysis hones in on melodrama's original definition--a form combining music and drama--as he explores the use of melodrama in Beethoven's opera Fidelio, films by Alfred Hitchcock, and fiction by Willa Cather and Patricia Highsmith, including her Ripley novels. Goldberg illuminates how music and sound provide queer ways to promote identifications that exceed the bounds of the identity categories meant to regulate social life. The interaction of musical, dramatic, and visual elements gives melodrama its indeterminacy, making it resistant to normative forms of value and a powerful tool for creating new potentials" -- From the publisher.
Notes: "A series edited by Lauren Berlant and Lee Edelman."

Includes bibliographical references (pages 187-195) and index.
Table of contents: title: Agency and identity: the melodram in Beethoven's Fidelio; title: Identity and identification: Sirk, Fassbinder, Haynes; title: The art of murder : Hitchcock and Highsmith; title: Wildean aesthetics: from "Paul's case's" to Lucy Gayheart.