The embodiment of melodrama, the Gilmore Girls utilizes techniques ... The essential paradox of the genre of melodrama exists in the fact that Melodrama endeavors to work within the confines of patriarchy- it attempts to dismantle the master's house with the use of the master's vocabulary- but it remains to be a "gynocentric genre". Melodrama's are "woman's films". They are "weepies". Thus, they cater to an audience and a demographic which not only expect but demand the subversion of phallocentric conventions, they are preaching to the choir. The Gilmore Girls thus exists as revolutionary- it has exploded the genre of melodrama to reach an audience that is in need of exposure to alterity... It invites the heterosexual male gaze without doing violence to the female subject by compromising feminine subjectivity and autonomy. The self-reflexivity of the genre... offers a world in which a strong female and male can coexist, recoding heterosexuality... the solution is here!

Wheras much of feminist film theory denies the heterosexual male gaze as the ultimate oppressor, where does this leave the options for feminine sexuality? In lesbianism? Harkening back to the traditional term of melodrama is it existed before its containment to a single genre- indulges in a realist voacbulary, seizes upon its context, refuses to be denied the tools of patriarchy and instead embraces them to create an alternative language that is not reliant upon the suppression of the Other

The WB

The Encyclopedia of Television (http://www.routledge-ny.com/ref/television/wbnet.html):


"The WB Network is widely recognized as the first television network to capitalize on the trend toward increasingly fragmented television audiences. By targeting programming specifically to teens and to young adults, the WB has established a focused and successful broadcast network... The network, which reaches 88% of the U.S. audience through both broadcast and cable channels"

"The network was able to turn its slide around the following year, and for the first time in 2001, the network reached the coveted 5th place in ratings among overall TV households and in the 18-49 demographic. Adding to the strength of its continuing series, the WB rolled out Gilmore Girls, the critically acclaimed, multigenerational and multiethnic drama about a single mother and her teenage daughter (played by Lauren Graham and Alexis Bledel) created by Amy Sherman-Palladino. Gilmore Girls was the first program developed by the Family Friendly Forum, an initiative launched by Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, IBM, and other major advertisers in cooperation with the WB, in an effort to develop programming that families could watch together...The 2001-2002 season was another strong one for the WB despite the move of two of its programs, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Roswell, to rival network UPN. Gilmore Girls and Angel achieved increased ratings..."

"In addition to its programming focus on teen angst and its strong young female leads, the good fortune of the WB can be attributed to its aggressive, innovative, and largely successful marketing ventures...The WB has also experimented with product placement and advertiser funding for script development. Yet while Gilmore Girls was a successful example of the latter, not all advertiser/network innovations have been so well-received."

"Despite its many successes, the WB is the only network that had not yet received a single Emmy nomination as of 2001. That same year, it was also the only network that had shown growth in every demographic when compared to the 1995-96 season when it was launched, and the only network to show an increase in upfront revenue and ad rates."

Amy Sherman Palladino

American Television Writer and Producer/ Director, most famous for Gilmore Girls. Born in 1966, joined the L.A. comedy group "The Groundings". Also wrote for Roseanne and Veronica's Closet.

http://www.tv.com/amy-sherman-palladino/person/5898/biography.html?tag=mini;content_nav

According to IMDB:
Nominated in 1992 for an Emmy for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Writing in a Comedy Series for Roseanne

Nominated for Humanities Prize in 1993 for the 30 Minute Category for Roseanne

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0792371/awards

The Gilmore Girls Reception

History:

Executive Producer: Amy-Sherman Palladino (seasons 1-6), husband Dan Palladino
Pilot episode received financial backing from the script development fund of the Family Friendly Programming Forum (one of first network shows to get their help)
Was aired on the WB's prime time Thursday 8pm/7 Central time slot
Time slot competing with Survivor and Friends in its first season, ratings were not so successful in first season
Was moved to 8pm Tuesday slot and dominated in the ratings over time-slot competitor, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
By 5th season became WB's second most watched prime time show- fan base grew by double digits in all major demographics

GILMORE GIRLS, which was just named the best new drama by the Viewers For Quality
Television, improved its time period November-to-November in adults 18-34 (1.6), women 18-34 (2.1) and men 18-
34 (1.1) and also succeeded in broadening the network's Thursday audience by achieving its largest gains in adults 18-
49 (+25%, 1.5), women 18-49 (+19%, 1.9), men 18-49 (+11%, 1.0) and men 12-34 (+18%, 1.3) as well as in total
viewers (3.7 million).
... Time Warner Press Release in 2000
(http://www.timewarner.com/corp/newsroom/pr/0,20812,668053,00.html)

Season 7 Debut: "Gilmore Girls" built in the second half hour across all key demographics and viewers, increasing 15%
in adults 18-34, 16% in women 18-34 and adding more than 700,000 viewers at 8:30PM." Released by the CW...
(http://www.thefutoncritic.com/news.aspx?id=20060927cw01)
Syndication release, airs on ABC Family Network and Soap Net
May 2007 CW announced the series would not be renewed due to finances (apparently reaching deals with main cast members was a problem)
Creator Amy-Sherman Palladino has expressed making a Gilmore Girls Movie
Production Company: Dorothy Parker Drank Here (created by Amy-Sherman Palladino)
Target demographic adults 18-34

Awards:
American Film Institute Award
Named one of 100 best TV shows of all time by Time Magazine
2 Viewers for Quality Television Awards
Named New Program of the Year by the Television Critics Association
Won an Emmy in 2004
Won a Family Television Award for New Series
Named Best Family TV Drama Series by the Young Artist Awards
Listed on Entertainment Weekly end of the decade "best-of" list

Reviews:
http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,439216,00.html

"The WB's standout program" http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/orlandosentinel/access/790176391.html?dids=790176391:790176391&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Feb+08%2C+2005&author=Hal+Boedeker%2C+Sentinel+Television+Critic&pub=Orlando+Sentinel&desc=THE+GILMORE+GIRLS+GET+THEIR+GROOVE+%3B+TONIGHT'S+MILESTONE+EPISODE+SHOWS+WHY+THE+SHOW+IS+SO+POPULAR+AND+REMAINS+THE+WB'S+STANDOUT+PROGRAM.&pqatl=google

soap opera elements- http://www.smh.com.au/news/dvd-reviews/the-gilmore-girls-season-three/2006/07/27/1153816295082.html

Music critic mother and daughter morn of the end of the show- http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/article/213263

"We want to thank Amy for creating and nurturing this wonderful series for the past six years and giving us one of the most memorable mother-daughter relationships in television history," Warner Brothers Television said in a statement. http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/2006-04-20-gilmore-girls-producers_x.htm

INTERESTING FACT: In 2001 a rumor circulated that Aaron Sorkin, writer/producer of the West Wing, was actually writing the Gilmore Girls- that Amy-Sherman Palladino was his pseudonym...

http://www.gilmoregirls.org/news/98.html

Initial Thoughts on The Gilmore Girls

The Independence Inn
Music... self reflexivity of the genre
constant bows to its tradition- the 50's show?
cyclical nature of the show... it starts where it begins, w/ Luke and Lorelai...

Lorelai's Lovers:
Max
Alex
Jason Stile's
Christopher- periodical reconnection but it can never work out... interesting subversion of normative notions of marriage, much to the protest of Christopher who proposes spontaneously in season 1, eventually they do get married but Lorelia refuses a conventional wedding and they elope... problems begin when her parents interfere and insist on vows and such

Female Characters on the Show:
Sherry- breaks conceptions of motherhood, leaves Gigi to go to Paris... (initially falls into trop of business obsessed but eventually transforms)

Soap operas... characters keep reappearing and love lives are ongoing

Rory's lovers:
Dean- confession of "Ive been watching you"- explicit reference to his own voyeurism, Rory looses her virginity to Dean when he is married to Lindsay and yet she is not vilified, pathetic character who marries Lindsay while he is in love with Rory and proceeds to have an affair
Tristan... gets kicked out of school, refers to Rory as "Mary", womanizer
Jess... the "trouble kid", drops out of high school... shows up later and asks Rory to run away with her him, Rory refuses
Logan- a chronic underachiever, born the heir of a newspaper fortune

conventions of marriage in the show.... Emily and Richard (obviously problematic, issue of Richard starting his new business, mustaches and Moby), Lorelai and Chris (brief, elopement, ends in divorce because Chris can't work through his jealousy), Logan and Rory (Logan proposes, Rory refuses to retain her independence regardless of the fact that she loves him), Sookie and Jackson ( he's gay....), as "femme fatale"?- catalyst for stealing the yacht and Rory dropping out of school...

Appearance on Norman Mailer on the show... http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/719345951.html?dids=719345951:719345951&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&type=current&date=Oct+22%2C+2004&author=Janelle+Brown&pub=Los+Angeles+Times&desc=Mailer+and+the+'Girls'%3B+Norman%2C+is+that+you%3F+Believe+it+or+not%2C+the+macho+author+pays+a+visit+to+TV's+Gilmores.&pqatl=google

Mulvey Related Ramblings

Since the beginning of my film studies career the greatest emphasis has consistently been placed upon the notion of deconstruction- exposing the apparatus and its working ideology, revealing patriarchy and subsequently the hierarchical structure of gender constructions, etc. While I understand that deconstruction is a prerequisite for reconstruction, I can't help but feeling that it is finally time to rebuild. Feminist film theory appears deeply indebted to Laura Mulvey, whose famous article "Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema" seems to be the fundamental basis for the majority of feminist film theorists in her wake. While Mulvey indeed deserves such triumph, particularly considering her context in comparison to that of her contemporaries, I can't help but feel as if it is well past time to move on...Mulvey's solution, the development of a counter-cinema that offers a genuine female space by refusing the cinematic language of patriarchy in the construction of a cinema that denies all pleasure, first and foremost scopophilia (the pleasure of looking), is neither productive nor has positive implications. A cinema of displeasure has little if no appeal- i am aware of the fact that this is the point- it would exist purely as a novelty and yet again, the feminine would be denied agency and a space within the mainstream- left yet again within the realm of the a-historical margins. I refuse to believe that this is the only option for true alterity...

What is Melodrama?

After having been reading about the genre of Melodrama for the past month and half, I have yet to come across a cohesive and coherent definition of melodrama that describes its generic conventions and tendencies. As such, this is to be an ongoing post in which I shall compile any and all definitions that I find in order to formulate my own, working definition:

"The characteristic 'excess' of the woman's melodrama, for example, is explained by Cook in terms of the genre's tendency to '[pose] problems for itself which it can scarcely contain" (Kuhn, "Women's Genres" 439).

"Much recent feminist film criticism has divided filmic narrative into male and female forms: 'male' linear, action-packed narratives that encourage identification with predominantly male characters who 'master' their environment; and 'female' less linear narratives encouraging indentification with passive, suffering heroines" (Williams, "Something Else Besides a Mother" 480).

"...Melodrama is a form that does not pretend to speak universally. It is clearly addresed to a particualr bourgeois class and often- in works as diverse as Pamela, Uncle Tom's Cabin, or the 'woman's film- to the particular gender of woman" (480) (Williams, "Something Else Besides a Mother, 480).

"ALL THAT HOLLYWOOD ALLOWS" Jackie Byars:

"...A drama in which the spoken voice is used over a musical background... Melodrama, as a mode, pervades many genres and though them presents a way to refuse recognition of a world drained of transcendence" (10,11).

"The tragic hero- indicative, in Greek tragedy, of a social group- became the melodramatic hero, an individual capable of individual error; after all, the myth most basic to the bourgeoisie is the myth of classlessness. The social, in melodrama, came be expressed as the personal " (10)

"Usurping the place of religious education, melodrama has operated since as a site for struggles over deeply disturbing material and fundamental values. Melodrama became for the Western world the ritual through which social order is purged and set of ethical imperatives are clarified... The insistence on the importance of the ordinary at least partially accounts for the melodrama's ongoing popularity and flexibility- first in its theatrical forms and later in its various novelistic, filmic, and televisual forms. Melodrama's primary drive is the identification of moral polarities, of good and evil, and... it speaks in any discourse "that demarcates the desirable from the taboo"" (11)

"Melodramatic characters, generally of a lower social status then tragic characters, confront clearly identified antagonists, and the courageous and psychologically unified protagonist expels the external adversaries" (12)

"Melodrama was generally denigrated and relegated to working-class entertainments" (12)

Characteristics (12):
Fairly constant constellation of characters (the suffering heroine, or hero, the persecuting villain, the benevolent comic)
Extensive mimed action
Music for dramatic emphasis combine to emphasize clear-cut solutions to conflict
Choices are clear, the major characters are not leaders; rather, they take a side and accept choices made by those who formulate policy. The social order is purged, and its ethics are clarified; they are made legible

"Realism, understated and underplayed, come to be associated with the masculine, and melodrama, associated with "feminine" emotionalism, became a term of derision... The western, the gangster film, and the "adult" realist drama were constructed as masculine, while only the romantic and family melodramas maintained a nominative association with their melodramatic heritage. And in them the figure of woman became a primary site for the battling voices that expressed themselves in the overlay of genre and epistemology" (12-13)

"Melodrama, like realism, roots itself in the everyday, but melodrama exploits excessive uses of representational conventions to express that which cannot (yet) be said, that which language alone is incapable of expressing" (13)

"Women's Genres" Annette Kuhn

In her article "Women's Genres" Kuhn endeavors to put television theory and film theory in dialogue with one another in order to examine questions that are central to spectatorship and the subject-object relationship that much of Feminist theory has acutely focused upon. This piece seemed particularly applicable due to my interest in the television series The Gilmore Girls, and interestingly, I have found that much of Film theory tends to ignore television, regardless of the fact that television relies upon many of the classical conventions that film does and seems, in some genres to be congruent with filmic texts. Kuhn draws parallels between Television soap operas and film melodramas- noting that not only have these two genres been pegged as "'gynocentric' genres" (437), but that these gender-specific categories do in fact appeal to a mass audience of women, who continue to respond and engage with these texts. Kuhn claims that "One of the defining generic features of the woman's picture as a textual system is its construction of narratives motivated by female desire and processes of spectatorship identification governed by female point-of-view" (437). Accordingly, while both genres engage with the aforementioned material, albeit in often conflicting ways, their main difference lies in the way in which they are theorized about. "In work on television soap opera as opposed to film melodrama, the dualism of text and context manifests itself rather differently, if only because- unlike film theory- theoretical work on television tended to emphasis the determining character of the contextual level, particularly the structure and organization of television institutions. Since this has often been at the expense of attention to the operation of TV texts, television theory may perhaps be regarded as innovative in the extent to which it attempts to deal specifically with texts as well as contexts" (441). I propose, as Kuhn hints towards at the end of her article (448), that it is essential to begin a more thorough analysis of Television text- considering the universality of the medium and its widespread appeal to a particularly feminine audience, I believe that such an examination would be invaluable to the trajectory of gender studies. Siegfried Kracauer, a philosopher of the Frankfurt School, maintains that popular culture provides a greater and more genuine insight into a society than does its high culture- which, in its awareness as "high" often times feigns authenticity. Accordingly, I believe that television texts, as the prevailing mode of communication and entertainment in today's society, deserve a more significant and profound analysis than is currently being afforded them... thus, I feel more justified than even to prevail with my analysis of The Gilmore Girls!

Kuhn, Annette. "Women's Genres." Feminism and Film. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.

I've Found the Mother!

Lorelai Gilmore of television's series The Gilmore Girls.

"The Mother as a complex person in her own right, with multiple roles to fill and conflicting needs and desires, is absent from patriarchal representations" (Kaplan 467). I have found this to be false in the most ironic of places... amongst patriarchy's televised propaganda.

I've Found the Mother!

Lorelai Gilmore of television's The Gilmore Girls.

"The Case of the Missing Mother: Maternal Issues in Vidor's Stella Dallas" E. Ann Kaplan

Kaplan's article posits that the Mother has been marginalized by both patriarchy and the feminist movement- her position has been limited to that of the spectator, both on and off screen. Hollywood has restricted the Mother to the periphery and when she is represented, it is within the confines of dominant Western mythology, which forces the Mother to occupy one of the following paradigms:

1. The Good Mother
2. The Bad Mother of Witch
3. The Heroic Mother
4. The Silly, Weak, or Vain Mother

Kaplan claims "Narratives that do focus on the Mother usually take that focus because she resists her proper place. The work of the film is to reinscribe the Mother in the position patriarchy desires for her and, in doing so, teach the female audience the dangers of stepping out of the given position" (469). In accordance, a Mother's love must be both "destructive and self-defeating"(475), and any interest expressed in self- development is selfish and neglectful- the Good Mother does not have a sexual appetite, nor is she single. Such a double standard can be witnessed in both Stella Dallas and the film noir, Mildred Pierce. It is my experience that Kaplan's troubling position retains its veracity within the context of contemporary film- particularly within the genre of melodrama, which ironically, is labeled as a "women's genre". How can a genuine feminine space be dominated by a myth ("Mother-as-spectator" 476) that remains central to the phallocentric order, one that deprives the Mother of her autonomy and refuses her literal perspective? Kaplan notes that the "solution" to this problem, as presented by more recent representations of Motherhood, is not in fact a solution at all- while fathers have been allowed to adapt characteristics coded as feminine, i.e. nurturing, the independent Mother who refuses one of the aforementioned roles is labeled "career obsessed" and thus, evil. In exposing this injustice, Kaplan reveals another group discarded by the phallocentric hierarchy as well as its opposition- a group that is in desperate need of reexamination/ repositioning as it seems an inevitable discourse within the universal and individual female trajectory.

Kaplan, E. Ann. "The Case of the Missing Mother." Feminism and Film. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.

To Begin.

Thus far the trajectory of my career as a Film Student has