Analysis Of The Movie Genre

Genre is defined as a specific type of music, film, or writing. How is genre created? Is it through arbitrary critical or historical organization that society sets genre? The answer to ‘how is genre created’ lies in the audience. “Second, as the product of audience and studio interaction, a film genre gradually impresses itself upon the culture until it becomes a familiar, meaningful system that can be named as such” (Casper 274). Genre is conceived once an audience has been exposed to the same ‘type’ of film they are seeing several times. Every time an audience views a certain type of film, the characters and events soon become recognizable. This process is described as iconography. Family melodrama is a genre that uses relationship struggles

between family members and romantic interests to appeal to deeper emotions. Two films that are associated with the Family Melodrama theme are Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and The Last Picture Show (1971). Throughout Hollywood history there have been distinct eras of film. These include the classical, postclassical, modernist, and postmodernist eras. Hollywood is always changing and audiences are always demanding new types of films. Therefore, the Family Melodrama genre adapts to the adjusting Hollywood phases in order to satisfy the audiences of the times.
In order to understand how melodrama came to film one must look back to the 18th century. The word itself can be broken in to two parts: melo, which means music in Greek, and

drame, French for drama. This strictly means acting with subtle music. In the early 18th century, melodrama was the approach of combining spoken dialogue guided by music. This approach quickly was adapted to playwright. Many plays became musicals of a melodrama nature. The melodrama plays became very popular in late 19th century. With the turn of the century and the introduction of the motion camera, melodrama quickly became a trend seen on film. The most famous director of 1950’s melodrama was Douglas Sirk. According to Chuck Kleinhans, Family Melodrama can be tired to the rise of the American Economy. “Since bourgeois domestic melodrama emerges with the ascension of capitalism, and since it deals with the family, it makes sense to look at the family under capitalism to better understand melodrama” (Lacy, 198). In current family melodrama, the economic state of the family plays a role in the plot. This is just one of the aspects of the genre’s iconography.
“In addressing the inherent meaning or intrinsic significance of objects and characters within any generic community, we are considering that genre’s iconography. Family Melodrama is a story of a family’s struggles and relationships. Ben Singer addresses the many characteristics of a family melodrama in, Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts. “Melodrama…is a play of… dire distresses, of hazardous situations, of thrilling rescues, of theatrical and sensational clap-trap, of suspense and surprise” (Singer, 49). The genre has several attributes that can be used to put its characters into tough situations. These difficult situations are often romantic trials as seen with Jim Stark and Judy in Rebel Without a Cause and Duane Jackson and Ruth Popper in The Last Picture Show. Family melodrama not only focuses on romance but it also focusses on inner struggles of the family. The relationships between father and mother, father and child, mother and child, are all part of this genre’s iconography. As well

as focusing on relationships, Hollywood family melodrama also highlights the individual. “Hollywood melodramas hinged on the absence of the element most accentuated in classic stage melodrama- i.e., moral polarization between good and evil. Hollywood melodramas focused not on the battle between good and evil characters, but rather on the pathos of situations of moral antinomy in which two or more morally good (or at least nonvillainous) characters find that their interests are fundamentally incompatible (Singer, 54). In this quote, Singer argues that Family Melodrama is more about situations call into question the morals of certain characters. The iconography of family melodrama is seen in the two films aforementioned. In these two films, Rebel Without a Cause and The Last Picture Show, the traits of the genre are played out. Within these movies the change from each Hollywood era is also seen.
Post Classical Hollywood is an era that came at the tail end of World War II.

According to Thomas Schatz, Hollywood was coming off a massive revenue boom with projects grossing over $1.5 billion. This was a huge financial success that primed Hollywood for the success that would come. Rebel Without a Cause is a movie directed by Nicholas Ray released in 1995. It’s release date puts it in this Post Classical Period. The movie revolves around it’s protagonist, Jim Stark, who is new in town struggling to fit in. Despite Jim having a romance and a best friend, the most important relationship is the one with his parents, specifically his father. A 1955 New York Times review written by Bosley Crowther describes the melodrama as violent, brutal, and disturbing. “Young people neglected by their parents or given no understanding and moral support by fathers and mothers who are themselves unable to achieve balance and security in their homes are the bristling heroes and heroines of this excessively graphic exercise” (Crowther). Family Melodrama of the post classical period in Hollywood Cinema

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heavily on the relationships of parents to child. In Rebel Without A Cause, Jim’s parents are often fighting and conflicting each other. The parents’ introduction comes when they are picking Jim up from the police station. They break into an argument to which Jim lets them know they are breaking him apart. Jim is the way he is because of the lack of guidance from his father. Jim’s father is a weak character with little drive. This relationship is finally resolved during the climax of the film. With the death of Plato, Jim’s closest friend, Jim is left distraught and seeking help. His father rises to the occasion informing Jim that “I will be as strong as you need me to be”. The two embrace and rise up together. This is symbolic of their relationship coming to a new front. Family Melodrama during the post classical period saw familial relationships eventually get resolved over the plot. Singer mentioned that Family Melodrama had aspects of violence, dire distresses, and hazardous situations. This movie delivers those aspects in several different scenes. Early on in the film Jim gets into an altercation with the hotshot in town Buzz Gunderson which involves a knife fight. Along with this knife fight, the entire climax is a complex gunman chase involving Jim and his friends.
Family Melodrama is a genre that depicted the relationships of the family heavily during this Postclassical Period. Unlike the Postclassical Period, the Modernist period had many different traits. According to Casper, Modernism finds it’s roots in the Enlightenment and the belief that man was superior to all things around it. Modernism began roughly around 1963 and lasted until 1976. “Another, related and important, aspect of modernism that needs explaining is the mood of alienation and existential angst that pervades this movement and which comes about as a result of the climate of pessimism generated by the two World Wars” (Casper 335). This general alienation is seen in modernist family melodrama.
Jim Stark was estranged from the rest of his school but that can be attributed to him being new in school.

And despite the fact he was an outsider looking in, he was never truly alienated because of his family and close friends. The Last Picture Show demonstrates this alienation through one of the characters. “As Bogdanovich seldom takes his story very far from Anarene, he sees The Last Picture Show entirely in terms of the maturation of Sonny, in the course of the emotional crises and confrontations that have become the staples of all sorts of American coming-of-age literature” (Canby). The two films both demonstrate characteristics of a melodrama film. The violence and dire situations are noticeable in each of the two films but The Last Picture Show’s portrayal of Sonny shows the adaptation of Family Melodrama to the modernist era of Hollywood. Sonny Crawford, played by Timothy Bottoms, and his friend Duane Jackson, played by Jeff Bridges, are two seniors in highschool. The movie follows Sonny and his friend’s actions to different events around them. As the story goes on, the amount of romances in the film increases, along with it, the drama. A fight between Sonny and Duane breaks out over a girl they both care about, Jacy. Prior to this, Sonny dumps his original girlfriend Charlene in favor of beginning an affair with Ruth, the wife of their highschool coach. Through the conflicts with his friends and relationships and the death of a beloved friend, Sonny develops

throughout the plot. Canby writes, “They are familiar staples, but they are treated with such humor, such sympathy, and with the exception of a few overwrought scenes, reticence that the Last Picture Show becomes an adventure in rediscovery-of a very decent, straightforward kind of movie, as well as of- and I rather hesitate to use such a square phrase- human values” (Canby).
The two films, despite being apart of two different Hollywood film eras, depict the similarities of a family melodrama film. Both films display traits of violence and dire situations. In Rebel Without a Cause there is the knife fight, the car race, and the final gun chase. In The Last Picture Show there is the fight between Duane and Sonny as well as the death of Sam. The two movies also show a change in the way Family Melodrama was presented between the two Hollywood eras. The key change between the two saw less of a focus on the protagonist and their relationship with their family and more of a focus on the protagonist and their development of a character through the interactions with their loved ones.
The melodrama genre has been around for centuries. Dating back into the late 18th century, melodrama was used as a type of acting accompanied by music. Today, melodrama has transpired to the big screen. Family Melodrama is a genre whose iconography is highly recognizable in today’s society.