In his seminal study Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), French scholar Jacques Ellul observed that "the movies and human contacts are the best media for sociological propaganda in terms of social climate, slow infiltration, progressive inroads, and over-all integration." [1]

Cinema studies has canonised specific films as propaganda, including D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1916), Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin (1926), Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1934). and Peter Watkin's The War Game (1965). These films personified the traditional definitions of covert (black) and overt (white) propaganda, [2] the first defined as stressing "trouble, confusion, and terror," the second stressing "simplicity, clarity, and repetition." [3]

Defining Melodrama Film

Peter Brooks defined melodrama originally as "a drama accompanied by music," and locates its historical genesis within "the French Revolution and its aftermath." [4] Melodrama arose as "a response to the loss of the tragic vision" within European culture, a 'radically democratic' outlet that was deeply concerned with "the location, expression, and imposition of basic ethical and psychic truths." [5]

Melodrama is often deployed by critics as a pejorative, and increasingly problematic label. Brooks noted that this is because it is a "reductive, literalistic version" of the melodramatic mode, which it is a subset of. Although "it provides the expressive premises and the clear set of metaphors" [6] for classical cinema, literature, and cathartic theatre, its function has become increasingly estranged from what Brooks understands as the 'melodramatic mode', as critical perceptions, industry socioeconomic structures, and societal moral codes have changed over the past century. 'Melodrama' is now used disparagingly to describe highly emotional, manipulative, and crude films which do not confirm to a realist aesthetic.

In contrast, many contemporary Hollywood films conform to what Brooks called the 'melodramatic mode': "an intensified, primary, and exemplary version of what the most ambitious art, since the beginnings of Romanticism, has been about." [7]

The melodramatic mode is concerned with exploring heightened awareness of self-consciousness and critically interrogating moral awareness and codes, usually by placing characters in extreme 'fight-or-flight' situations (contrasting the interplay between decision and environmental factors). It may be found historically in Romantic art and Gothic literature, as well as in more subtle post-classical forms (and within neo-realist films) which do not easily fit within the genre confines of traditional melodrama. This manipulation how biology influences the mind, and the viewer's receptiveness to the 'soaring emotion' of Romantic and Gothic motifs, is a hidden key to propaganda film's effectiveness.

Brooks further observed that "the desire to express all seems a fundamental characteristic of the melodramatic mode." [8] Thus, although the terms are differentiated, they are also inter-related: the melodramatic mode describes the grounding impulse, or historical 'deep structure', which melodrama has emerged and drifted apart from.

What Was Melodrama Film Really?

Melodrama film conjures up imagery in the mind's eye of old films with 'obvious' messages and motifs. Archival film scholar Stephen Neale noted that melodrama in 1950s and 1960s film studies criticism was often used as "a pejorative term . . . [it] was opposed, or counterposed, to 'realism' . . ." [9] Critics contended that melodrama exalted "verisimilitude, rather than realism," and that due to its moulding by 19th century popular theatrical productions, "consistent associates were with pathos, romance, domesticity, the familial, and the "feminine" in the woman's films." [10]

When Neale examined trade publications and press reviews, a different picture emerged of how the American trade press utilised the term. He argued that the "occurrence of terms or phrases like "romantic melodrama" or "domestic melodrama" in the trade press is in fact relatively rare," [11] and it was also the exception within woman's films. [12]

Instead, the term "melodrama" was used in war, adventure, thriller, and horror films, and Neale found little correlation of a critical shift during the 1960s. [13] The primary aim of these films was "to give a thrill rather than an edifying emotion." [14] Its usage was not restricted to cinema, for "Variety used the terms "melodrama" and "meller" when reviewing and discussing plays, radio shows, and television programs." [15]

Melodrama films are conventionally understood to have targeted a female audience. Whilst Neale agreed that the "trade press has derived its understanding of melodrama from a distinct and particular tradition," [16] the films described as melodrama in the trade press appealed more in gender terms to male audiences. Neale found that female-centred narratives were a minority to the bulk of the films analysed. He consequently contended that these films offered a womanly "version of the tension and thrills offered putatively to men by more conventional action melodramas and thrillers." [17] The last time that you saw an action-suspense-thriller, you were being lied to.

The Moral Occult Meets The Manichean Universe

The bipolar definitions of black and white propaganda also define the melodramatic mode's Manichean universe, and the descent by the Classical Hollywood film viewer into the world of Peter Brook's 'moral occult.' Brooks defines the term 'moral occult' very precisely, and his definition is worth quoting in full: it "is not a metaphysical system, it is rather the repository of the fragmentary and desacralized remnants of sacred myth. It bears comparison to unconscious mind, for it is a sphere of being where our most basic desires and inner dictions lie, a realm which in quotidian existence may appear closed off from us, but which we must accede to since it is the realm of meaning and value. The melodramatic mode in large measure exists to locate and to articulate the moral occult." [18]

Melodrama texts in particular are well-suited, since "propaganda tries to surround man by all possible routes, in the realm of feelings as well as ideas, by playing on his will or on his needs, through his conscious and his unconscious, assailing him in both his private and his public life" [19] Ellul made explicit the susceptibility of melodrama to coercive use when he noted the "illogical yet coherent, Manichean universe of propaganda." [20]

The Manichean universe "involves the confrontation of clearly identified antagonists and the expulsion of one of them." [21] The universe is bipolar, the ur-structure of our moral folklore, that demands our involvement: "melodrama discovers evil as a component of mankind which cannot be denied or ignored, but must be recognized, combated, driven out." [22] The Manichean universe "represents both the urge toward resacralization and the impossibility of conceiving sacralization other than in personal terms. Melodramatic good and evil are highly personalized: they are assigned to, they inhabit persons who indeed have no psychological complexity, but who are strongly characterized." [23] The Ellulian propagandist perverts this characterization to a pre-selected sociopolitical ideology, embedding it within the unspoken cultural assumptions and cognitive filters of the target audience.

Propaganda manipulates "the realm of inner imperatives and demons," [24] thus it undermines the 'moral occult.' One version of this is the daemonic "content of the depths" which individual protagonists uncover, "the realm of inner imperatives and demons." [25] In 3:10 to Yuma (1957), cattle rancher Ben Ford (Glenn Wade) becomes the town's conscience (its 'moral voice') after a stagecoach robbery, facing off villain Van Heflin (Dan Evans) in a psychological battle of wits and stamina. Throughout the climatic afternoon with Van Heflin guarded in a saloon bedroom, Ford uncovers his own flaws, yet stays focused whilst others desert him. His personal 'rite of passage' illustrates the principal that the rediscovery of the 'moral occult' "would then be the task of the individual ethical consciousness in struggle with an occult domain" [26] (symbolised by Van Heflin).