The “Melodramatic Body” in Action Cinema

The “Melodramatic Body” in Action Cinema.

Topic The “Melodramatic Body” in Action Cinema

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Background: In the films we have screened this semester, the bodies of both heroes and villains have served as sites of dramatic revelation, as places where identity is both anchored and revealed. In stories about becoming something special (and discovering who we really are), it might be said that the body itself is both the means of the journey and its destination. Wider moral conflicts in a narrative—often stated in stark, Manichaean terms—become transposed onto bodies engaged in spectacular, purposeful action (to borrow a phrasing from Lisa Purse). “The melodramatic body,” it might be termed, is the place where narrative stakes are invested, where the fates of both characters and communities are decided, and where conflict is settled once and for all. In these films, the body serves as a major focal point for onlookers, for diegetic audiences to initially misrecognize (underestimate, mistreat, dismiss, ignore) a character’s virtue. Inauspicious origins, initial disappointments, and deceptive appearances figure largely into this stitching of the body into narrative. And when that character’s body dramatically performs beyond expectations, onlookers undergo a stunned reversal of this initial misrecognition and finally acknowledge that character’s true value. Such onlookers in the story may or may not reflect or cue actual audience reactions (it is important not to speculate about actual audiences). What is clear is how carefully staged reactions from diegetic audiences mark the hero’s (and villain’s) bodies, as if branding them with special words, names, and thoughts, emphasizing and rendering truly legible the role these bodies play during key moments in plot. Such moments of dramatic recognition are often melodramatic in the stricter, historical sense intended by Brooks and Williams (a recognition or naming of virtue and villainy in a post-sacred world). However, we can also trace a pattern where what is recognized or clarified takes on more precise meanings in each modern narrative context. Themes of strength, specialness, the ability to endure, to exceed expectations, and to push beyond limits, run throughout the media we analyze in this course.

One wider question is what these texts seem to be saying about sources of moral uncertainty in our culture today. Identifying what a melodramatic action film is posturing as truly virtuous requires thinking about how moments of revelation are framed or situated in key action sequences as well as what wider narrative conflicts are being worked through during those moments. Whissel’s model of the emblem, when applied to a film’s use of bodies in action sequences, is 1 especially helpful towards illuminating the dialectic (or temporal imbrication) of pathos and action in these films. Though you are not required to use it, the conceptual model of the emblem may provide a way to think about the relation between wider narrative concerns and action sequences which are marked with significance (i.e.: the tripartite coconstitution of meaning Whissel identifies in image, epigram, and text). In our readings and discussions during this unit, action cinema that centers around melodramatic bodies is identifiable for how it renders those bodies legible in their purposeful action—“legible” both in kinetic terms (the aesthetics of bodily movement) as well as moral terms (a key attribute of melodramatic narration). It might be said, even, that in this cinema, kinetic legibility subtends moral legibility. Prompt: With these themes in mind, please choose one film from the following: Incredibles 2 (2018), Kung-Fu Hustle (2004), Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), or Rumble in the Bronx (1995). Drawing on carefully organized details from your film as well as key passages from at least three syllabus readings, explore your film’s use of melodramatic bodies with an original, thesis-driven essay. How are the bodies in your film situated at key turning points in plot? How are the bodies framed (literally and figuratively) by wider narrative concerns? How is identity anchored in the body? What moral truth or moral clarity is generated through this film’s use and staging of bodies in conflict (in dramatic, purposeful action)? These are only a few unordered potential approaches to your topic. Ultimately, you must think about your film and find some way to focus and organize your argument (i.e., it would not be possible to discuss every named character’s body in your film). You will be evaluated on the strength and originality of your film analysis, as well as your grasp of key course concepts (outlined above). Come to office hours early if you are struggling with any of the central readings, either on melodrama (Brooks, Williams), or on action-body-cinema (Whissel, Brooks, Purse, Bordwell).

The “Melodramatic Body” in Action Cinema

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