Core Post #5 - Lilla

What do we mean when we call something a melodrama? Do we mean it’s serialized? That it’s daytime TV? That it’s a soap? That it’s meant for a female audience? That it’s not ‘quality?’ What terms do we use it interchangeably with? In Techno-Soap, Tara McPherson writes about the “generalized diffusion of melodrama” (175). Quoting Joyrich, she argues that “melodrama is the preferred form for television, spreading across the televisual landscape in a diverse array of forms and genres” (175). Indeed, melodrama is often treated as a singular genre, or a derogatory umbrella term, when in fact in current television, most serialized television genres borrow elements from the traditional female melodrama series, to the extent that I would no longer call it its own genre.

Tara writes that 24 is “more than simply melodramatic.” (175) It has the structure of a soap opera, yet refuses to be labelled a melodrama and is defended as “quality,” as if the two terms were in direct contradiction to one another. So I guess my argument is twofold. Firstly, I argue that calling all serialized shows involving the domestic sphere and interpersonal conflicts melodramas dilutes the meaning of the world. The elements of a melodrama do not comprise a whole. 

Secondly, I also feel like the word melodrama is no longer used as a genre, but simply a derogatory word to refer to female-oriented serialized shows that don’t require ‘complexity’ to interpret (Kackman). Feuer argues that both daytime and prime-time serials “concentrate on the domestic sphere,” but only one is considered a melodrama (4). She continues that “male-oriented genres […] did not problematize the reader in the same way as melodrama” (Feuer 7). Using the word ‘melodrama’ implies an audience that does not possess cultural complexity, which is ironic, as, in the words of Kackman, “melodrama’s simultaneous invocation of, and inability to resolve, social tensions, that makes it such a ripe form for serial narrativization, and which makes it a central, and maybe even necessary, component of quality television.” 

tl;dr we should stop using the word melodrama