Georgina Gonsalves- Core Post #4- Genre

 In reference to Feuer and Kackman, melodrama is closely dissected by the determining characteristics of the genre. Both bring into question what determines “quality television”. Personally I was drawn to Jason Mitchell’s opinion in Kackman’s reading- a complex narrative that blends episodic and serial narrative techniques, an operational aesthetic. I agree with his words, quality television “embraces a dream of a more complex world” that audiences crave and find more intellectually stimulating and exciting to have complexity in narrative, especially collision with cultural and gender politics, as he explained.

 Key characteristics of melodrama are narrative that the audience follows and the use of intensification. A tendency in soap operas, (and no other genre in the same way) is the magnification of emotion and intensity consistently throughout the soap. All elements of the production are dramaticized. The camera work makes use of dramatic zooms, log pauses to build emotion and temporary closure between scenes, intense music, and of course, acting that “transgresses the norms of “realistic” TV acting. 

Something I found particularly interesting and present in both readings was the ever-lasting battle of the “moral universe” and the “indefinitely expandable middle”. The lack of closure present in soap operas is also present in the analysis of Lost by Kackman. In soap operas, the good and evil are constantly at war, as Feuer puts it, “the good never receive what they are due or deserve, while the evil never fully triumph.” This creates a continuous back and forth of wins and losses for both the good and the evil, never bringing closure or a happy ending, or an ending at all. This “indefinitely expandable middle” and lack of closure in the case of Lost, is different in context, however, the audience views it structurally similar. The evil being the inner demons the characters face that hold them back from triumph that they may or may not overcome, and the anxiety it brings its viewers not knowing if the characters will prevail or not. Both leave the viewers longing for a sense of peace and closure that may or may not come, or may be short-lived.