Of course, the rule of thumb is that the reader must get to know and care about the character before intense emotions are shown.

Sometimes events in themselves have been characterized this way, sometimes interesting events. Like in Characters and Viewpoint [I don't have the book with me so I am going by imperfect memory], when OSC has the idea session with the elementary students (what happens, and with what result). A student suggest fire. He says, too melodramatic. But then I thought to myself, I want to read about a fire.

I want to read about extraordinary events. And of course, characters will react to these. If the character reacts cold and distant, then that is flagged also.

I guess in American culture there is a male predisposition away from emotion. (The predisposition seems to be away from caring or doing about anyone in need but that's another story). As a male, I wouldn't go see a movie that revolves around emotions and dealing with emotions. I'm more interesting in seeing interesting happenings but I don't exept characters to act like Stoics.

Melodrama is characterized, in my mind, by those devastating events that happen just for the sake of eliciting tears. Let me use, as an example, the movie "Pay it FOrward."

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At the end of the movie, the little boy dies. Why did he die? What was it for? What purpose, other than making the audience cry, did it serve? The movie's message for me remained the same without that ending and it would have been just as good. In fact, that method of ending the movie cheapend the whole story for me. Others may disagree, but then that's why melodrama is so subjective.
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END SPOILER ALERT

Sometimes the melodrama isn't in the events it's in the presenation of them events. A car accident can be dramatic. One of my favorite series, "The Dead Zone," had an episode in which the main character (who can see the future) tries to save a woman from dying in a drunk driving accident. But every time he tries to change it he keeps seeing alternate futures that are even worse, including the drunk driver (who didn't learn his lesson by killing the woman) running into and killing a school bus full of elementary school kids. I flagged it for melodrama. To make the point, it went above and beyond. It wasn't just anyone, it was <twist heart> a schoolbus <twist heart> packed <twist heart> full of innocent children. <gag>

Yep. I would tend to agree that events just for the sake of emotion might not be for the best. But I wonder if the writer thinks, 'I am writing this just for emotion's sake and not for a valid reason.'

quote:

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Stoics can be very interesting, especially when they realize how empy their lives are and commit suicide.

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Oh, now that's just harsh.

Looking around at my friends (and my mirror) I see many different flavors of stoicism. There are some who don't let anything effect them, there are some who simply don't show any emotions (though they may feel them).

P.S. "Oh, now that's just harsh. "
But it really happened...

You see, it's so subjective. How much is necessary? How much is too much? No two people can even agree on whether or not a thing is melodramatic let alone whether or not it is bad to do.

Frankly you don't want to do the bare minimum necessary to elicit an emotional response all the time. sometimes you want that sense of awe, but let me give you another example...

ER. The series. I used to watch it. I stopped. Why? It was too much. They started getting melodramatic and then they had to keep outdoing themselves. Their commercials were all something like, "You won't believe what happens next...!" But I didn't *care* anymore.

That's the true danger of melodrama. Well, that and putting off people by the original events. You see, drama doesn't happen in a vacuum. It happens after something and before something else...putting something comedic just before a dramatic incident makes for a greater impact. There are other ways, too, such as generating true sympathy for a character.

Ead, I think there is a difference between being private and stoic.

Now getting back to the example of the fire, it would depend on the fire. If the story revolved in some way around fire, like a main character is a pyro or firefighter, then it is less likely to be melodramatic. Or if the story is about a kid in a neighborhood making observations on the world around him and the fire is the most exciting thing that ever happened, that could work. It's not that fire is just a literary no-no, it's that melodrama is a balance of relevance and impact. Something can have huge impact, but if it's not relevant, it detracts from the story.

Another device I dislike is the "lost child" device. I've seen several pretty good movies where people are exploring their interpersonal angst or whatever but a child runs away and so everyone has to set aside their differences to find the kid. It works in "Cheaper by the Dozen" because the whole movie is about kids. But where the story seems to be about adults, it is a cheap trick.

P.S. Re: testosterone- a lot of melodramatic things are "hooks" for women. Men get hooked by car chases and technological gadgets. sure there is crossover, but it tends to be the case.

When you are in a keep with no back way out, surrounded by hords of ugly monster that outnumber you 50 to 1 (or something like that) there isn't a man, woman, or child above the age of 9 who's sitting back in a cave and crying. The 9-year-olds are minding the babies while EVERYONE else has a stick, a club, a vase, or whatever they can find to defend their lives. They haven't goa nything else to lose.

They're a cheap trick because the warriors fighting the battle can't see them there, they can only imagine them. Therefore, for us to experience the battle, we should only imagine them as well.

It's like being a theatrical villain. In melodrama, you use all the cues that make you're role obvious. But in real drama, the villain doesn't always have a long curling mustache and a black cape. The hero doesn't have a square jaw and a plaid shirt, the heroine doesn't have blond braids and a gingham dress. The characters have to be revealed through their own actions, the situation has to be percieved through a perspective that is actually available to some person.

I think that FL hits on an important point by mentioning suspension of disbelief. At the point where you push something to the point where the reader just says "Oh, come on!" you reach melodrama rather than drama.

Ironically, the term "melodrama" as originally coined refers to plays in which musical themes are used to indicate the mood of the scene. Thus, all modern movies are "melodrama" along with almost all television dramas. But this original meaning does tell us something about why the term came to have the associations it has. In real drama, you don't need the "dun dun daah!" to indicate what the audience should feel. The "melo" in melodrama refers to these stock musical themes that are used as a means of affecting the audience's reaction in the place of well-crafted plot, dialogue, and acting.

The thing with melodrama is that it is over the top. It is farcical and cheesy instead of pure and raw.

I love pschological thrillers. I find them challenging and intriguing -- they feel real and evoke legitimate emotions and responses (for the most part). I do not enjoy horror so much. Written horror is easier to take than movie versions, but I often find the things more farcical than anything -- the "emotions" are so off the chart and come off like over-reactions.

This is especially true of teen movies, but it could probably be argued that teens are melodramatic to begin with.

If the tone of a particular work is supposed to be light and entertaining, then melodrama can be quite appropriate for the characters. If the tone is supposed to be serious and truly dramatic, then (imo) melodrama cheapens the delivery.

That one part of The Joy Luck Club, where April finds out the whole story of her mother and the twins, always makes me cry. She did everything, gave everything, and when hope betrayed her utterly, she lived on and kept giving, kept hoping.

At the same time, the other stories left me slightly cold. Not that I don't appreciate them as art, but I don't cry or anything, unless I really try. But even thinking about the heroism it takes for a person to keep hope alive when...there are things that can make me cry.

There are easy, superficial problems like pain and unrequited love and injustice and death. Adults deal with all of these as a matter of course. To watch someone get all emotionally overwrought over such things troubles us when it really happens, but when we see a fictional character doing the same we can only laugh. Where we peg the problem may depend on both our own ability to deal with something and our native empathy.

There are people that will laugh at someone else's suffering when the same suffering would make them curl up and wish to never have been born. There are people that will cry with idiots that have caused their own suffering along with a good deal of suffering for those around them. There are people that haven't learned to deal with a stubbed toe, and those that can face death with equanimity.

So there's a bit of diversity in what constitues "melodrama". The term has come to mean "a cheap attempt to manipulate the emotions using stock themes". I think that last part is important too. We don't call all modern movies melodramas because the music is original. We have to find our own meanings in it, we don't already know what we're supposed to feel. The same is true of dramtic situations. If the situation is treated in such a way that we feel free to respond out of ourselves rather than the way that "everyone" is supposed to respond (little boy dies=audience cries).

That's one reason that the "hopeless odds" at Helm's Deep didn't strike me as melodrama. Because the characters were free to react against our expectations of how they should have reacted. We were encouraged to reinterpret the mood of the scene, so that instead of it being an occasion for despair we could see it as a chance for heroism. Whereas the scenes of women and children were melodramatic, because we're not encouraged to think "hey, potential reserves" (or "mmm, tasty").

[This message has been edited by RavenStarr (edited March 03, 2005).]

Wondering about why the author or director made the stylistic choice that they did is something I shouldn't have to think about if it is done right. But I agree on the story of the one Survivor refers to. As the work is a thematically linked series of vignettes, I guess I can appreciate some without all.

Another example of melodrama: The mimeographed hand in "The Terminal".

If you have to edit more than once, is it rude to get rid of the multiple edit tags?

Looked more like 300-to-1 to me!

Terms of Endearment: They tried to keep it from being melodrama by having the character not be sympathetic, I think. It takes some involvement on the part of the viewer, the viewer has a choice about how to interpret what happenes. Sometimes a work will mean for that to be the case, but it doesn't quite work for everyone. Like in Million Dollar Baby, where the impact of the ending is dependent on the audience's ignorance that the main character could have gotten what she wanted through legal channels. When a viewer is aware of this, I think it makes the ending melodramatic. But for most of the public, it wasn't melodramatic apparently.

maybe i should go back and reread it?

Also I'm so sensitive that I cry during good commercials, and have yet to make it through a single issue of Reader's Digest without crying at least a half dozen times. So it could just be me.