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Melodrama, Sickness, And Paranoia: Todd Haynes And The Woman’S Film, Linda Belau, Ed Cameron

Literatures and Cultural Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Filmmaker Todd Haynes has claimed that his films do not create cultural artifacts so much as appropriate and recombine the ones that audiences think they already know (MacDonald 2009, 57). This approach seems particularly true of the films in which Haynes puts the woman at the center of a melodrama—the genre traditionally associated with feminine sensibilities.1 He self-consciously returns to generic touchstones like Mildred Pierce and Far From Heaven, for example, to explore the effects of the Motion Picture Production Code prohibitions and the paternal authority on which the classical woman’s film relied (Superstar and Safe).2 How …