The Age of Melodrama
Psychoanalysis and the Age of Melodrama
Dr. Idit Alphandary
Course Description:
This course focuses on the structural, thematic, and performative principles of the melo-drama as the genre of psychoanalysis. We will start with reading Freud’s texts about remembering and working through in order to understand the basic clinical stakes of psychoanalysis. Freud’s founding story of psychoanalysis focuses on Oedipus Rex by Sophocles and turns this tragedy to a personal experience of sorrow and loss that every human being must undergo before s/he can further develop. In melodrama the tragic experiences of woe and wonder become experiences of deadlock and obstacle in one’s personal life. The course will also undertake a classic definition of melodrama. It derives from the Victorian theater, emigrates to the screen during the silent era, and remains with us in the Hollywood talkies and later in crime films, romantic dramas and contemporary political thrillers. First we will engage modern concepts and examine how family melodramas present the everyday aspects of the relationship between man and woman. These relationships are based on the need to give to the other, to receive from the other, and to overcome narcissistic compulsions in relation to the other. The pain embodied in these relationships exists in the affect that reaches the viewer and the character. The characters are in pain, they feel sorrow and woe and these emotions guide their actions in the world. Psychoanalysis examines such pain in ways that are relevant to the understanding of our everyday as melodramatic. Most of our meetings will be devoted to melodramatic and psychoanalytical texts. We will read the melodrama of madness as Foucault understands it and we will continue to study melodramas from the early and the mid-twentieth century in Hollywood. We will focus on a film by Hitchcock, on a documentary film by Werner Herzog and on an opera by Beethoven. We will also examine melodrama in painting. The main subjects that will interest us are the domestic sphere and the life on the family. But we will also pay attention to crime and the relation of the film’s plot to headlines in popular journals. We will concentrate on sensational scenes such as a protagonist eaten by a bear. In each one of these masterpieces we will see that melodrama is related to broadening our democratic outlook and reorganizing the power relations between classes and individuals in the modern society. This is exactly the vision that guides the development of psychoanalysis. We will show how psychoanalysis enhances a democratic outlook that opens up a space of personal change and achievement. The basic forms that melodrama undertakes music, drama and image influence the social theme of the play/film/story. We will also read short stories from the nineteenth century. We will read Balzac who engages melodramatic structures to show that the protagonist’s honesty attains social recognition even if the protagonist does not achieve his goal. Morality is a social not a religious construct. In psychoanalysis as well morality is related to one’s ability to fulfill one’s desires within a social context. Melodrama expresses a struggle between good and evil in which the representation of the good is very powerful. We will also study movies that belong to the genre of melodrama in South Korean film. We will watch films by Hitchcock, King Vidor, Werner Herzog, Reiner Werner Fassbinder, Todd Haynes, and by South Korean Directors. We will read articles by the psychoanalysts Freud, Jacque Lacan, Melanie Klein, and Wilfred Bion and by philosophers that advance psychoanalytical criticism, Michael Fried, Peter Brooks, Thomas Elsaesser, Lynn Huffer, Michel Foucault, and Marshal McLuhan, for example.
Course Policy:
Keep phones turned-off while in class, and turn off all electronic apparatuses.
Course Requirements:
An oral presentation (or a written 3-pages presentation if you do not like to address the class) of one of the texts on the syllabus. A midterm 5-page paper on a subject of your choice. A final 8-page paper on a subject of your choice. The papers have to be related to the course subjects—psychoanalysis as a modern melodrama. The final paper has to include one text not from the syllabus. You have to attend classes and you are allowed only three absences. For each absence you need a written excuse. You are required to read the texts on the moodle website or from the reader and to watch the films streamed on the course moodle website.
Minor assignments:
See above.
Mid Term:
The midterm is a 5 pages paper on the subject of your choice that is directly related to texts on the syllabus.
Final requirement:
Final 8 pages paper to be submitted on June 26th, 2018. The paper is on a subject of your choice that is related to questions that emerge in the second half of the course.
Attendance and Participation:
Grades:
Attendance and Participation 20%
Presentation 20%
Midterm Paper 20%
Final Paper 40%
