May December and the Melodrama of Film Twitter

Apologies for trying to leave a link in the comment, I totally forgot about the no-links policy. I wanted to link this article called "Camp, Kitsch & Cheese" on the HiLoBrow website. Not affiliated with the site in any way, it's just an original way of thinking about the concept of camp, so I thought it might be interesting.

Anyway, this is a truly excellent video and it totally made me go back and rewatch the movie. Thanks!

Lee Daniels' 2009 "Precious Based on the Novel 'Push' By Sapphire" (I think the complete title is necessary) is pure, over-the top camp that was received by some critics as if it were a documentary about child abuse -- maybe because it had Oprah's name on it, too. (These were the same critics who thought Paul Haggis's "Crash" was a serious attempt to grapple with racism instead of an pop-artsy, Oscar-baity exploitation of it.) I reviewed "Precious Based on the Novel 'Push' By Sapphire" when it came out and compared it to John Waters -- only to find out months later that director Lee Daniels cites Waters as one of his primary influences (and I believe Waters put "Precious Based on the Novel 'Push' By Sapphire" on his ten-best list that year).

Maybe it's futile to debate what's melodrama and what's camp. But, like Justice Potter Stewart's now-cliched comment about pornography, you probably know it when you see it.

Well, that's what you get when you try to engage in serious discourse on a garbage platform ruled by Elon Musk.

The prefix "melo-" derives from the Greek for "musical phrase" or "song." So, "melodrama" just suggests a heightened form of drama. Neither it nor "camp" should be used pejoratively. They are what they are. Both are degrees of stylization, but with camp the stylization itself becomes the subject.

I think of melodrama as being is up close and personal, without much ironic distance. Camp is at least one step removed, read between quotation marks. It can't be melodrama if it's not sincere on some level, even if it flirts with absurdity. It can't be camp if it's totally in earnest. But it's not a binary choice. It's possible to be both at once, exploring the ambiguity or ambivalence that comes from the stylized expression of emotions. 

Todd Haynes doesn't really do camp. Even "Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story" -- the ORIGINAL "Barbie" movie -- is presented without sniggers. The amazing thing about watching it is how emotionally involved you get in a "true story" (presented with charts and facts about bulimia) enacted by extruded pieces of plastic. You can struggle with what you want to call that, but it's not a burlesque. It takes Karen Carpenter seriously. Joan Crawford in "Mildred Pierce" is melodrama; Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford in "Mommie Dearest" is camp. Douglas Sirk does flamboyant melodrama, but even when he's being making a satirical point (like the TV scene in "All That Heaven Allows," in which the humor emphasizes the pain and vice-versa), it's not over-the-top. King Vidor's "Stella Dallas" is melodrama (Barbara Stanwyck is never camp); Divine in "Female Trouble" is camp. Bette Davis in "All About Eve" is melodrama, winking at camp; Martha's imitation of Bette Davis at the beginning of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" is her attempt at camp, but Edward Albee's play/script is something else.

Could you do a video on the definition of Camp

Fantastic video, babe 👌

This reminds me of how I felt throughout my teenage years and 20's as someone who earnestly thought Freddy Got Fingered was a really good movie. Obviously it was in a very different political climate and there was no Twitter, but everyone had seemingly agreed that this was the worst movie ever made and it was good that this ended Tom Green's career - and it was impossible to get anyone to engage with what I felt, that this wasn't Harold and Kumar Go To Dude Where's My Eurotrip, and while I can't speak for anyone else, I found it challenging and it made me feel things that I couldn't easily articulate. It sucks when you can't talk about something that you found meaningful.

You could sensibly describe The Godfather as melodrama. It was much more commonly used, back in the day.

Justice for Trisha Paytas 😅

It is campy.

People have an issue with gray area. Things need to be completely this or completely that.

The movie is serious. It's thrilling. It's tragic. It's aesthetically beautiful. It's subversive. It's subtextual. It's camp.

Stella Dallas really hits, that funky ass King Vidor was a strange director. A little harder to imagine him also directing the Fountainhead movie with Gary Cooper after watching Stella Dallas.

May December felt very camp. Can't say I laughed at any of it but I think that comes from being very familiar with actual events that the movie represents which are very disturbing and sad/tragic. But unlike movies about Stalin and Hitler that can be very entertaining dark comedies where we laugh evil to scorn, it feels too fresh too vulnerable to laugh at. It's very hard to laugh at a movie about a real pedophile. I'm not shaming anyone from finding the movie comedic just adding to the discussion

This video was top notch. Thank you for making it. Laughed my ass off at the end.

Thank you Broey for opening a locked door in my brain. This movie went totally over my head and now everything makes sense!

Kelly Osbourne has been eating cat shit for money in dubai

Estella Dallas sound a lot like Gilmore Girls …?

It makes me think of movies like but I’m a cheerleader. That movie is a comedy full of camp and it’s ALL ABOUT ABUSE!! dark comedy, camp, melodrama are what make dark stories palatable. sometimes even more understandable for a wider audience.

I learned so much from this video and I'm not sure I agree with every point made--and it's not like i have to to be able to enjoy analysis (purr). BUT I do think its interesting that the survivor from the case that inspired this movie feels disgusted with the film I believe is truly ironic just bc of the subject matter of the movie. I understand he might not have seen the movie and seen the ways it portrays the survivor (Joe), but that doesn't mean his feelings about it are no less valid bc of it. I'm not sure where to sit in that discomfort--having a movie that supposedly is making us uncomfortable and see the horror in this vs. having the actual surivor feel disgusted and exploited to some extent. I'm not making a decision about how i feel besides uncomfortable and i find it very very ironic and cruel in some ways. Not sure I still agree with the concept of Camp here, I feel like we do use it willy nilly and as of now throw it around to any white woman. But that's just me I think. Anyway, thank you for a super interesting video!!! LIke I said learned a lot :)

I actually never laughed at the film. I guess I just took it too seriously lol. I loved it though. Great look at how stories like this attract predators

Categories are for cynics, idiots and cowards. Engage with the content.

it is insane how good your videos are

I hope that this movie will be locked away in the poison cabinet in the next 20 years. Discusting to make a movie-starvehicle for two aging actresses out of a pedophile-crime.

i love stella dallas so much. i cry everytime

The best thing about May December is that Natalie Portman is becoming a real actress now when she gets older. She is now really acting and not just a peace of wood with legs like in her youth. Perhaps she will earn her many awards now with real acting and not just with sensationalism. Seems to me that his role is what Natalie Portman would have become if she never would have met George Lucas or Mike Nichols.

Wow. This channel is a bit up it's own arse

Twitter is a cesspool

The soundtrack made this film camp AH

“…the surrounding characters so artifice in style, so at their center is a core of truth- Joe” was an absolute banger line/point ❤

i find it so interesting that you immediately read it as hyper-self aware and 'winking' at the audience, while that kinda flew over my head. i knew there were certain satirical moments/undertones, but i largely approached the film 'straight' so the question of whether it was camp or not wasn't even something that occurred to me.

you are a master, these essays blow my mind

i watched this whole video wondering just what the fuck ”camp” mean

The more you described melodrama aspects the more i thought to myself: novela, novela, novela, novela... or soap opera as americans say, or telenovela as some latinos say

Great essay ❤ Not that I disagree with it being melodramatic or comedic cos I can definitely acknowledge those elements, but while watching I have to admit I felt a disconnect with the humour. Not to be a downer, but for me lot of Gracie's behaviour just reinforced her lack of care fo those around her, manipulation and need for control. Probably her most revealing scenes for me were ones like when she refused to take ownership of her grooming when Joe confronted her, or when she went hunting the morning of her kid's graduation: they demostrated her abandonment of what she claims to care about in favour of predation. Joe and his kids have all been harmed by Gracie and her words/actions, and I really felt for all of them. I think what also overrode feelings of humour for me was how all the main adult female presences in Joe's life (Gracie, Liz, his Facebook friend) all reveal themselves to want him as a source of sex, "romance" or something else self-serving, when he was looking for comfort and connection. Totally agree that he's not been able to devlop agency and connection... infantalising stuff like Gracie counting how many beers he'd had...making him be her emotional support when she'd consistently denied him emotional and physical safety...or stuff like Liz telling him "that's what grown-ups do" after using him for sex...it all just felt like further reinforcement of his horrible experience. I totally appreciate humour, camp or satire as catharsis or ressistance to tragedy, pain or trauma...but I think Joe's experience overshadowed that for me. Melton's performance was really good, and that also hit me in the gut. I felt for him as a father, too, given the complicated position he's in...especially the juxtaposition between wanting to keep them safe and for them to have happy lives, while they're obviously aware of what their mother did to him. He's a loving father, but he's suffering and clearly the kids have had to grow up too quickly given society's reactions to them. I know all of this is probably pretty obvious, and I'll freely admit that I might feel differently on a re-watch with less of a raw reaction: I watched it alone with no previous research of the film (other than knowing the true crime it was based on). I've also done a lot of work and training with/around survivors of assault and abuse, which I fully appreciate influenced my viewing.

I feel like “I’ve always known it was supposed to be comedy/satire” is like being on in an inside joke, creating a divide between audiences. How was I supposed to know that the melodramatic music they used in some scenes were from a campy tv show from decades ago? I did not watch any trailers or participate in discourse prior to watching a movie, and I went into it expecting it to be a drama - which they did magnificently with Joe’s arc. Anything that was done to satirize the two women, or what you mentioned as “funny” scenes are eclipsed by my disgust at them for being so manipulative and self serving in their predatory behavior. These people think what they’e doing is ok, and many abusers walk through life like that. It wasn’t a ha-ha moment for me, it was purely stating facts.

Though I agree now with some of your points (especially with the irony of the ending with the filming scene), I think it simply was a story, and categorizing it as “melodrama” or “satire” distracts us from what the movie was really telling us, that our obsession with sensationalizing true crime cannot fully give justice to what the victims went through.

stomach hurting from the laughter? I watched it with six people and it was so dull and boring we quit halfway. When you watch things in a theater, sometimes small things are heightened but I've been watching reaction videos to the movie and no one is actually laughing the way you claim. The hteater experience is unique. People are buzzing to have a good time. It's half delivered good times just by the synergy in the room. Trust when I say: That synergy is not delivered in a home-setting.

i love ur account

this comment will not be read by anyone but! your take on the movie reminded me of Kafta a bit. He was writing these dark uncomfortable stories and his neighbours use to call the police on him cause he was laughing so loud while writing them. Apparently it is kinda difficult to teach the comedy aspects of Kafta to American students. Because to them comedy is in some sense only entertainment or something you experience to be free of concern. And then i guess there is that element of "the hardest things can only ever be truly talked about through jokes" vibe which i guess could be relevant here too. In the sense that Kafta is comedy id say this film is too. That said i dont really know if Kafta was camp. Maybe part of the confusion is also around the idea of comedy as a whole. In ancient Greece there was only Tragic stories or Comedy Stories and canonically speaking the Bible is a comedy so yeah this question is complicated and also probably not that important lol

HANDMAIDEN MENTION!!!!!!!!!!!!YAHOO!

Another example of a story who is very serious about pedophilia while still has a lot of humour in it : Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov.

Nicely put video. I disagree, however about both calling it a melodrama and a comedy. There's no exaggeration of the drama, but the correct amount of reaction to the twisted situations; and it's satirical but not funny, the examples you cited as funny I find mostly disturbing and not laughing material at all.

Listening to Americans get to grips with art is heartwarming. And hilarious.

Kitsch is the best way to describe May/December

looool the ending

I like the part when Natalie Portman steps on a rake.

When I really want to annoy my friends, I break out one of my favorite bits of my English literature studies, Northrop Frye's definitions of comedy and tragedy. "A comedy is a story in which a protagonist is estranged from their community and ends up being reunited, and a tragedy is a story about a protagonist who is part of a community but ends up being estranged from it."

I like to also say that since the protagonist of Midsommar is very much estranged from the community of women in the beginning of the movie but not so much in the end, Ari Aster's masterpiece vibe horror movie is technically a comedy.

Of course, they can both exist, but I find it strange in my core that someone sat down and said, "How do we make this abuse funny" and that just doesn't sit right with me. Nothing about it is absurd, funny or even remotely entertaining to think about. But then I did sit down to watch it with my mum, who then complained because it was boring, so I shut it off promptly, and I realised it was about the media's perception of them rather than the acts of abuse themselves. So maybe I'll give it another go, and it could be funny, but in my opinion, as it stands, I don't really get it. I think it's odd that we write "comedies" about male-child abuse, and the victim who never thought he was a victim gets to see it play out on screen without his consent as a comedy. He's actively said he is offended by it. I find it strange that we're sat her online, talking about the movie genre while he is in turmoil.

(However, I am autistic and think in Black and White, so... that could also be it.) I like to think I have media literacy from watching your videos on Nebula, watching Intelexual Media and also Khajijah Mbowe.

The “women’s” pictures & screwball comedy films of the 1930s & 1940s have the strongest female characters in the history of American cinema.

As I assume (hopefully not arrogantly) one of your not numerous male subscribers… this movie missed the mark for me. I didn’t find the movie that funny in “haha” way, I guess it was smirky funny. Maybe it’s because I don’t really do the true crime genre (I watched this movie because my gf wanted to watch it). Nat Portman seemed not to take the role seriously nor did her character, obviously mocking J Moore to her face. The few parts of the movie I did like were when the guy (whatever his name was) had moments of awareness of the fact that he was gaslighted and raped, yet he still tries to be a good father, even though his adolescence was robbed from him. I found the main narrative of the tv movie about J Moore to act as more of a b story to the much more complex and compelling story of a young man caught up in something he never could’ve possibly understood when he essentially signed the contract by sleeping with j character. Overall, mediocre movie that isn’t satirical in any accessible way. Is it a satire of true crime? I don’t get it. Maybe it’s me. The movie seemed crass and clumsy for its subject matter. I was left feeling a little disgusted not indignant.

People were getting offended that others found this funny? Wait till they watch a fassbinder film

A quibble.

You use a clip from Showgirls to illustrate “camp that doesn’t know it’s camp”. . . . . . have you seen Robocop and Starship Troopers! Showgirls is the same; absolutely intentional.

film is not self-aware in any way. me too movement was sparked by sexual abuse in the cinema industry, this actress is also being abused, she slept with the director and had to sleep with him, this movie acts unaware of the me too movement, because before such things were natural, but definitely not anymore.
actress tries to erase her abuse by making her role as real as possible, and this couple tries to erase the abuse by making their love real. both of them are trying in vain, there is no way either of them can be real.

ben filme hiç gülmedim, ağlamadım da, sinirli ve gergindim, bir kere bile gülesim gelmedi, sana hayat boş galiba.