• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.429-462
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• 2019

This paper argues how the concept of melodrama can be articulated with the Affect Theory and Posthumanism in relation to animal or environment representation which have emerged as the new topics of the recent era. The argument will be made through the discussion of Agustin Zarzosa's book, Refiguring Melodrama in Film and Television: Captitve Affects, Elastic Sufferings, Vicarious Objects. Using a genealogical approach, the book revisits the notion of mode, affect, suffering (hysteria), and excess which have been dealt with in the existing studies of melodrama. In chapter one, he broadens the concept of melodrama as a mode into the means of redistribution of suffering across the whole society in the mechanism of the duo of evil and virtue. It is the opposition of Brooks's argument in which melodrama functions as the means of proving the distinction between evil and virtue. Chapter two focuses on the fact that melodrama is an elastic system of specification rather than a system of signification, with the perspective of Deleuzian metaphysics. Through the analysis of Home from the Hill (Vincente Minnelli, 1959), this chapter pays attention to an 'affect' generated by the encounters between the bodies and the Mise-en-Scène as a flow not of a meaning but of an affect. Chapter three argues that melodrama should reveal an unloved (woman's) suffering, opposing the discussion on the role of melodrama as the recovery of moral order. Safe (Todd Haynes, 1995), dealing with female suffering caused by the industrial and social environment, elaborates on the arguments on melodrama in relation to female hysteria with ecocritical standpoints. The rest of the two chapters discusses the role of melodrama for the limitation and extension of the notion of the human through 'animal' and 'posthuman' melodrama. It argues that the concept of melodrama as 'excess' and 'sacrifice' blurs the boundary between human and inhuman. In summary, although the author Zarzosa partly agrees with Peter Brook's notion of mode, affect and sufferings,he elaborates the concept of melodrama, by articulating philosophical arguments such as Deleuzianism, feminism, and posthumanism (Akira Lippit and Carry Wolf) with the melodrama. Thefore, Zarzosa challenges the concepts of melodrama led by Brooks, which had been canonical in the field.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.9-54
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• 2019

Since the birth of melodrama in the early Enlightenment era, it has flowed through various cultures and media. In order to grasp the principle of differentiation of melodrama and the direction of its change, a developmental approach to the formation process of melodrama is necessary. In this regard, this paper examines the formation process of modern melodrama and its aesthetic features around the time of the French Revolution. The modern melodrama was formed in the period between the end of the 18th century and the start of the 19th century. It was born at the intersectional point of the contradictions of the modern imagination and the political paradox of the French Revolution, which demanded an autonomous citizenship but did not recognize a woman as a citizen. The aesthetic of women's sacrifice and tears reproduced in the modern melodrama is a political aspiration to restore a corrupt society by glamorizing a woman as a moral icon. This was an icon to save a society under divide and crisis and a coordination of emotions to conceal sexist violence in the politics of the exclusion of women. The aesthetic of women's sacrifice and tears reproduced in modern melodrama has consistently been considered under negative evaluation such as a play of moral hypocrisy and vulgar drama. However, the academic interest in melodrama in the 1970s has been amplified due to the "Sirk-melo" which is a transition to the new aesthetic of women's sacrifice and tears, encompassing not only women, but also races and classes. In modern society, entering the era of uncertainty, where various social problems, national disasters, and global disasters have become commonplace, 'the aesthetic of women's sacrifice and tears' are shifting from gender differences to various victim narratives. Reviewing new theoretical trends and changes of recent melodrama as well as analyzing specific works are left as follow-up tasks.Since the birth of the melodrama in the early Enlightenment era, it has flowed through various cultures and media. In order to grasp the principle of differentiation of melodrama and the direction of its change, a developmental approach to the formation process of melodrama is basically necessary. In this regard, this paper examines the formation process of modern melodrama and its aesthetic features around the time of the French Revolution.

• Journal of Korean Theatre Studies Association
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• no.49
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• pp.49-71
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• 2013

Melodrama emerged as a form of the moral in the early modern age. As an approach 'the moral' not only means that rewarding virtue and punishing vice, but also refer to a principle of spiritual life and a way of life. -Melodrama theatricalizes a new vision of human life and society through a new type of the virtuous protagonist and sentiment/-ality. -This allows melodrama to be a dominant cultural form in this modern age, beyond the borders of the theater, mass-media, and literature. Virtue and sentiment/-ality are the core elements of melodrama, which differentiate it from tragedy and comedy especially in the structure and effect of the drama. Actually virtue and sentiment/-ality have been a main target of criticism. Virtue has been regarded as a trite quality of the stereotypical protagonist, and sentiment/-ality as a banal emotion which paralyzes an audience's recognition of reality. -However, this thesis regards both virtue and sentiment/-ality as vehicles for showing and sharing the morals of the modern age. First, the virtues of the protagonist included the general and universal ones of the bourgeois -at that times, the bourgeois represented themselves as a human being- such as the responsibility and obedience of a father, a mother, a wife, a husband, a daughter and a son. They also included the professional ethics such as courage, honesty, and justice and so on. The fall or salvation of the protagonist is largely determined by his/her private individual virtue. Second, sentiment/ality is a theatrical device that makes the audience internalize the protagonist's virtue. The protagonist expresses his/her universal virtue sentimentally, and the audience also expresses their virtue by sympathizing with the protagonist's virtue sentimentally. However, the melodramatic protagonist as an individual, is not connected with society, but remains isolated. As a result, s/he has no influence on the society, where s/he can only ends her/his play alone with a happy-ending. S/he is happy alone, or at best happy with his/her own family. On the contrary to this, tragic protagonist usually fixes social disorder through his/her fall. In that sense, we can say that melodrama presents only the half of the human life.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.13 no.12
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• pp.604-613
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• 2013

Advanced research has often discussed that the melodrama genre reproduces typical female image more than any other genre in setting up female image. However, the advanced research is not based on quantitative methods, so it is hard to say that it has verified the conservativeness or typicality of the melodrama genre. This study applies quantitative research methods for the typicality of female image in the TV melodrama genre and intends to prove it through comparative analysis with the overall genre female image. According to the study result, the TV melodrama genre's shows less change than the overall genre female image. About their appearance, the overall genre female image indicates increase of non-femininity and activeness in their relationship with others; however, in the melodrama genre, women with typical feminine appearance and passive female image have been maintained from 1992 till 2012. In the system in which women shared men's capital in their lover or wife's status, their feminine and beautiful appearance was used as women's physical capital that enhances their possibility to be selected by men. Even in the present that women's economic power has been elevated, however, the melodrama genre still maintains typical female image distinctively. Typicality of such female image shown in the melodrama genre of which major viewers are women seems to represent contemporary women's ambivalent and contradictory desire.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.123-161
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• 2019

The popularity of melodrama indicates that melodrama is composed in a historical context. This is the reason why it is necessary to analyze the imagination of melodrama within a sociocultural context rather than asking the essentialistic question of "What is melodrama?". (2016) and (2018) caused sensations while holding unchallenged top positions in terms of viewing rate and popularity. These dramas indicate the popular imagination and desire of Korean society in the 2010s during a period of upheaval. This paper analyzed imagination in melodrama with a focus on nation and emotions of individuals in and . In preexisting dramas, conflicts are often limited to individuals and families; on the contrary, in and , a nation appears as a motif that forms conflicts between individuals. In these intense situations of conflict, people make rational judgments at first; however, they soon dispose of such judgments and reveal value-oriented attitudes through emotions, which drive actions. Both dramas form poésie mainly through poetic rhyming and the mise-en-scène of objects. The dramas also amplify emotions. The main emotions of these dramas are sympathy and sadness. Such emotions are not consumed in itself; instead, they show moral aims through performativity. Consequently, sympathy becomes solidarity, and sadness becomes mourning. Unlike preexisting melodramas whose endings were simply pursuits of love and happiness within the realm of individuals, and demonstrate a moral imagination that simultaneously reminds us of the individual and community through solidarity and mourning.

• Cross-Cultural Studies
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• v.33
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• pp.77-94
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• 2013

This article aims at analyzing melodramas in films of Northeast Asia for seeking comparative studies of popular narrative which have been widely favored in Korea, China and Japan since the 1990s. It is explored of expectation and desire of public who have taken pleasure in watching the films in each countries of Northeast Asia as well. It is selected to Letter(1997) made in Korea, The Road Home(1999) in China and Love Letter(1995) in Japan for the research as above Melodrama of each countries has been searched at not only maintaining the traditional melodramatic convention but also corresponding to sociocultural environment of each countries for meeting tastes of public 'in the 1990s' when cultural interchanges have been more active along each countries of Northeast Asia. It will be concretely pursued to the interchanges and influence-reception relation of melodrama for follow-up research as it has been sprightly enjoying as well as transforming common cultural contents at each countries of Northeast Asia since the 1990s.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.9 no.11
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• pp.175-183
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• 2009

This study is the full-scale research of a TV drama writer, who has been out of scholarly pursuits, examining the differentiality and tendency of the most popular TV drama writer, Su-Hyeon Kim. By focusing on her recent melodrama , this study shows that the writer used her own category grammar, 'pursuit of psychology' and 'reversal of dichotomy', which led her to convey the drama's message of the 'self-reflection' on love successfully. This analysis would be the good result of overcoming all the raised melodrama's negative elements in Koran TV such as conventionality, dichotomy, unreality, and excessive emotion. Also this paper presents that the writer showed an advanced tendency on the gender ideology, overthrowing the existing patriarchal gender ideology. This study proposes the further research to analyze what sort of influence is the writer's own category grammar. Also this study proposes the following research on that the writer's advanced tendency in melodrama could applicate the other genre drama of her's, stressing the necessity of sustaining research work on TV drama writer.

• Korean journal of communication and information
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• v.58
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• pp.201-221
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• 2012

The male audience for melodrama, a typical women's genre, has drawn little attention in the audience research. Thus, this paper examines how and in what context they watch it, as well as how they accept and rationalize their 'feminine' taste. And in-depth interviews were conducted with seven middle-aged males. While they acknowledge their feminine taste, they tend to legitimize and re-contextualize it in ways that may not contradict their notion of masculinity. Consequently, they often demonstrate seemingly contradictory attitudes oscillating between enjoying it and distancing themselves from their please of viewing. Yet, their acknowledgement of feminization hardly extends to an acceptance of being labelled 'feminine' men. They attempt to distance themselves from emotional engagement in television viewing, either through emotional self-censorship or under-valuation of the taste for the genre itself. Finally, they hardly connect their taste for the genre to a sort of active post-viewing practices of fandom. The results have considerable implications for understanding how the melodrama-viewing males keep traversing the boundaries of gender-specific genres, and reconstitute the notion of masculinity.

• Journal of Popular Narrative
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.87-122
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• 2019

This paper examines how the melancholia and death drive foregrounded in Kwak Ji-kyun's films have changed the affect and production trend of South Korean melodrama films of the late 1980s and thereafter. It particularly analyzes Kwak's The Home of Two Women (1987) as his exemplary melodrama film. Kwak is not only an auteur filmmaker of the 1980s and 1990s but was also a herald of South Korean New Sentimentalist films back then. The New Sentimentalist filmmakers have aspired to sophisticate the South Korean melodrama film not only by de-sentimentalizing it from the shimpa quality but also separating it from excessive emotion of shimpa that had long dominated the national cinema. This affective sophistication is directly linked to the sense of loss and melancholia/depression of the characters in the film caused by the death of one's beloved. This New Sentimentalist affect is best represented in Kwak's The Home of Two Women through its depiction of the internal conflicts of artists struggling to artistically sublimate the death drive and sense of loss. By textually analyzing The Home of Two Women, this paper not only reevaluates Kwak's film style but also reposition the topology of the New Sentimentalists in Korean film history.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.115-121
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• 2019

The purpose of this study is to analyze the 'Modern Architecture Space' represented in Korean melodrama films of the late 1950s. It is assumed that popular films reflect the residential culture, architectural spaces and human activities of those days. For the analysis, a pool of 5 Korean melodramas of the late 1950s was constructed. In these melodramas, the modern architectural spaces were represented as the following: 1) The modern-style residential spaces were emphasized to reflect the interest and longing of the public for western lifestyle. 2) The western non-residential spaces such as work spaces and commercial spaces were emphasized, especially its interior design of western image.