Noun
The quality of being melodramatic.
Usage- Uncountable
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More examples (8)
One of the heartbreak Hamlets, the almost great, is Hagar’s Horde, by George Kibbe Turner. The atmosphere, of brooding fear over the coming of the yellow fever into Memphis, is done with the effectiveness of [Edgar Allan] Poe’s best atmosphere stories; only the unneeded melodramaticity of the plot spoils the totality.
Although the drama occupies an important role in the literary creations of Bukharan Jewry in the 1930’s, serious strictures must be levelled against it not only from the point of view of content but also from the artistic aspect. Naivety, melodramaticity, cheap pathetics, the weakness of the dramatic plot, banality of language – these are the main weak points of these creations.
Whether he is conscious of of it or not, [Marián] Milčák sometimes returns to a Baroque asceticism – with a Baroque melodramaticity which confronts the melodramaticity of his neo-Beat contemporaries: ‘I fought for / lines of verse / and the pale lips / of women // compassionately / killed’ or: ‘I held on to / my position / of rejection // before the veiled / cross.’
No one can determine the boundaries between nationalist euphoria, melodramaticity and a statement of hallowed self-perception by a people who had become or just unbecome a subject nation.
Still in the same shot, Selby’s^([sic]) asks Aileen [Wuornos] to touch her face and she accepts. The action is followed by low key lighting and non-diegetic music. The low lighting creates a sense of intimacy between the women and it is intensified by a melodic non-diegetic music which is an instrumental song which heightens the melodramaticity of the scene.
The extract published here concerns two distinct areas of Sabina’s historical fiction: semi-historical fiction from 1837–44 (Hrobník, Msta, Obrazy ze XIV. a XV. věku, and Čech), with an ostentatiously ahistorical treatment in the spirit of the melodramaticity of the gothic novel and earlier popular literature, and Sabina’s historical fiction from the 1860s (in particular, Hyacint), which helped to establish this kind of work in modern Czech belles‑lettres, and also his adventure literature (Ruesswurm), anticipating some later forms as well.
The discussion undertaken by American researcher Linda Williams (2018) acknowledges the works of Thomas Elsaesser (1991), Peter Brooks (1995), and Ben Singer (2001) as precursors. However, Christine Gledhill (1987) is the most revered name because, according to Williams, Gledhill manages to take a small step forward in the discussion about the understanding of melodrama not as a watertight genre but as something endowed with a certain fluidity, modulation or permeability capable of transforming and contaminating several other genres that, at first, would never be considered as endowed with a melodramaticity since they are still seen as classic and realistic works (Williams, 2018, p. 211).
As Juan Piñón observes, Jane the Virgin “manages to create a ‘soapy’ mood that may engage bilingual Latina/os and Latin Americans. […] The audience can safely enjoy the twist without worrying about falling into a presumably lowbrow melodramatic rationale, by using a trap door through comedy” (“Jane the Virgin” 26). In this way, the play upon melodrama becomes an act of self-deprecation, making fun of one’s already assumed melodramaticity, which makes the show palatable to a wider US audience.