[ecrea] CFP L'Atalante #25: The Endurance of Nostalgia: Melodramatic Narratives in Contemporary Fiction

Colleagues may be interested in the still open call for papers… the call 
for papers of the next issue of L'Atalante: Revista de Estudios 
Cinematográficos which, under the title of “The Endurance of Nostalgia. 
Melodramatic Narratives in Contemporary Fiction”, is open to 
contributions dealing with how contemporary films and television series 
are redefining the genre of melodrama. You can find detailed information 
at: 
http://www.revistaatalante.com/index.php?journal=atalante&page=announcement 
<http://www.revistaatalante.com/index.php?journal=atalante&page=announcement>.

The deadline for article proposals for the Cuaderno section is July 20th
2017. The issue will be published in January 2018.

We sincerely hope that this information may be of your interest. Please 
feel free to share this call among your contacts. Thank you in advance.

L'Atalante. Revista de estudios cinematográficos
http://www.revistaatalante.com <http://www.revistaatalante.com/>
(coordinacion25 /at/ revistaatalante.com) 
<mailto:(coordinacion25 /at/ revistaatalante.com)>
(info /at/ revistaatalante.com) <mailto:(info /at/ revistaatalante.com)>

The Endurance of Nostalgia: Melodramatic Narratives in Contemporary Fiction

It has been said that of all film genres, melodrama has the greatest 
capacity to awaken nostalgia. The passage of time underscores the 
impossible nature of recovering a loss anchored in a bygone era, which 
cannot be brought back except as a memory, and which is embodied in the 
“presence of a melancholy character while the spectator becomes fully 
aware of the wound of time” (Marzal, 1996). Described as the genre of 
genres, melodrama has also been characterised as an especially powerful 
vehicle for desire, sacrifice and pain. Its strength lies “not in the 
plot, but in the subject whose inner wound will still be open even when 
the story closes” (Company, 2002).

The general focus of this monograph is to explore how contemporary films 
and television series are redefining the genre of melodrama. Which 
discursive traditions do they inherit from classical melodrama and which 
traditions do they abandon? What expressive resources endure, either 
explicitly or in veiled form, in the updated version of the genre?

Films like The Hours (Stephen Daldry, 2002), Atonement (Joe Wright, 
2007), Broken Embraces (Los abrazos rotos, Pedro Almodóvar, 2009), Blue 
Valentine (Derek Cianfrance, 2010), The Deep Blue Sea (2011), or The 
Broken Circle Breakdown (Felix Van Groeningen, 2012), and television 
series like Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes, HBO: 2011) or The Affair (Hagai 
Levi, Sarah Treem, Showtime: 2014-) evoke and update certain clichés of 
melodrama, imbuing them with a contemporary narrative complexity. 
Chiefly, these non-linear poetics focusing on nostalgia highlight an 
awareness of the passage of time in a romantic relationship or family 
structure marked by a usually irrecoverable and extremely painful loss. 
The ongoing dialectic between the two time-periods¾a bright, happy past 
and a bitter, hopeless and grey present¾suggests that the romantic 
relationship depicted is not one phenomenon evolving into another but 
both phenomena simultaneously. In this way, extended over the narrative 
is a kind of discursive position on the incomprehensible, the fleeting, 
the unstable and the hurtful associated with the relationship which, in 
a different yet parallel way to classical melodrama, produces a kind of 
atemporality that vests the diegetic time with a multifaceted dimension.

However, catalysing moments still prevail in the narration over 
narrative cores, as shown for example in The Deep Blue Sea, constructed 
around a woman’s anxiety over the impending departure of her lover, or 
Revolutionary Road (Sam Mendes, 2008), built around the promise of new 
beginnings that the Wheeler couple pretends to hold, but which are no 
more than castles in the air that collapse the moment they try to make 
them a reality. Moreover, melodrama continues to be “a drama of signs” 
(Le Vitte, 2002: 102), and this is underscored by examples like Far from 
Heaven (Todd Haynes, 2002) or Mildred Pierce (Todd Haynes, HBO, 2011), 
which pay homage to the symbolic mise-en-scèneof the paradigmatic 
melodramas of Michael Curtiz, and especially Douglas Sirk, through its 
re-presentation.

It is no accident that these titles, just like some of Sirk’s “unhappy 
endings”, “transgress the Hollywood pattern that invariably associates 
the closure of the diegesis with the final reunion of the leading 
couple” (Company, 2002: 157). Other conventions of the classical 
American film industry that are subverted in films like Carol (Todd 
Haynes, 2015) or The Danish Girl (Tom Hooper, 2015) are those that place 
the heterosexual couple at the heart of the conflict. While previously 
it was the woman, or more precisely her role of wife and mother that 
guaranteed family cohesion, melodramas today are exploring 
homosexuality, transexuality and the primacy of the individual interests 
of the woman over sacrifice and repression, resulting in endings that 
echo that of Ibsen’s visionary and, in its day, unprecedented A Doll’s 
House (1879).

Put briefly, some of the research questions we propose for the 
development of contributions to the monograph are:

-In view of the complexity that characterises contemporary film and 
television, is it possible to speak of a new model of melodramatic 
narrative?

-How are the structural features of melodramatic narrative evolving? 
What changes can be identified to the organisation of the different 
narrative stages, and what effect do they have on the story as a whole? 
Who is the narrator in contemporary melodrama? Who holds the knowledge 
throughout most of the story and with whom does the mega-narrator 
(Gaudreault) sympathise?

-How is the character in melodrama evolving in the context of the 
questioning of the heterosexual nuclear family as the ethical and 
ideological model that underpins power structures and relations in the 
constellation of characters?

-How is melodrama evolving aesthetically, in terms of its visual motifs, 
mise-en-scèneor cinematography? What intertextualities does it deploy in 
relation to its redefinition of classical melodrama?

-In terms of the convention of the family made up of a heterosexual 
couple and their offspring as a central nucleus and their victory as the 
climax of the happy ending and the guarantee of symbolic closure, what 
clichés are being challenged by contemporary offerings, and what others 
are being revived? How is melodrama opening up to the exploration of 
gender issues?

-Finally, we are particularly interested in the analysis of the above 
questions in the works of filmmakers that best illustrate them, such as 
Todd Haynes, Terrence Davis, Stephen Daldry, Sofia Coppola, Pedro 
Almodóvar and Wong Kar-Wai.

L'Atalante. Revista de estudios cinematográficos accepts submissions of 
unpublished essays on topics related to film theory and/or praxis that 
stand out for their innovative nature. Below are a few aspects to keep 
in mind:

·Submissions must be original and must conform to the submission 
guidelines of the journal 
<http://www.revistaatalante.com/index.php?journal=atalante&page=about&op=submissions> 
and to the standards and scientific rigour expected of an academic 
publication.

·Submissions will be evaluated for the originality of the topic 
explored, especially if it relates to an issue not previously addressed 
in the publication. Submissions dealing with topics previously addressed 
in the journal may be rejected. The content of the issues published to 
date can be consulted on the journal's website 
<http://www.revistaatalante.com/index.php?journal=atalante&page=issue&op=archive>.

·All submissions will undergo an external peer review process that will 
respect the anonymity of both authors and reviewers (double blind peer 
review) in an effort to prevent any possibility of bias. In the event of 
a very high number of submissions, the Editorial Board will make a prior 
selection of the articles to be peer reviewed, choosing the articles 
deemed the most appropriate for the issue. Failure to observe the 
submission guidelines and/or standards of originality and academic 
rigour will result in rejection of the submission by the Editorial Board 
without external review.

·Authors of accepted submissions will be contacted within six months.

·Articles (which should be between 5,000 and 7,000 words including all 
sections) must be submitted via the website of the journal as .rtf, .odt 
or .docx files, using the template provided for the purpose. Files 
containing the author's statement (.pdf) and any images (.psd, .png, 
.jpg, .tiff) must be uploaded to the website as complementary files. A 
detailed version of the submission guidelines can be found at the 
following link 
<http://www.revistaatalante.com/index.php?journal=atalante&page=about&op=submissions>. 
Any articles that fail to meet these requirements will be rejected 
automatically.

·If the L'Atalante team decide to publish the issue in which you article 
will appear in a bilingual edition, you will be required to provide the 
translation and cover the costs of proofreading the text (in some cases, 
this cost may be waived for students and unemployed researchers who 
provide proof of status).

·L'Atalante does not offer any compensation for published articles. For 
more information:(info /at/ revistaatalante.com).

--
/*L'Atalante. Revista de estudios cinematográficos*/
www.revistaatalante.com <http://www.revistaatalante.com>
(info /at/ revistaatalante.com) <mailto:(info /at/ revistaatalante.com)>
---------------
The COMMLIST
---------------
This mailing list is a free service offered by Nico Carpentier. Please
use it responsibly and wisely.
--
To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit http://commlist.org/
--
Before sending a posting request, please always read the guidelines at
http://commlist.org/
--
To contact the mailing list manager:
Email: (nico.carpentier /at/ vub.ac.be)
URL: http://nicocarpentier.net
---------------