The Melodrama
155
broken family. Her mother doesn’t have time for her, and the bus driver who does have time for her is accused of sexually abusing her.
The Nature of the Main Character’s Struggle Melodramas are marked by a very particular struggle for the main character. Essentially it can be characterized as the struggle of a powerless main character against the power structure. I should add that the definition of powerlessness has to be viewed in a very liberal way. For example, a king may be on the surface very powerful, indeed all-powerful, but if he is as old as King Lear, he will be faced with antagonists who are young, vibrant, and confident that they are “the power structure.” In this sense, an aged King Lear is powerless. A clearer example is the young child in a family drama. Relative to his adult parents, the child is powerless. So too is a woman in a culture where male dominance prevails. Thus, a story like Mike Nichols’s Working Girl is one of a bright woman trying to make her way in a workplace that is a male power structure. To complicate this story, Nichols places a high-status woman at the head of the company. The main character’s working-class roots make class the overlay to the female/male power grid. Consequently the female, working-class main character has two layers of the power structure to contend with. Whether the main character is dealing with gender, class, race, or age, the key element to the melodrama is that the main character’s struggle is always against the power structure. In genres such as the action-adventure and the situation comedy, the plot enables the main character to achieve his or her goal. In the melodrama, the plot is set against the main character and his or her goal. In Breaking Away, the bicycle race that concludes the film offers the main character a chance to win the race, but in doing so he loses the college girl with whom he was infatuated. To win he has to drop his pretense. No longer a foreign student, no longer a college student, he acknowledges his workingclass self. He wins the race (plot) but loses the girl (goal).
The Adaptability of Melodrama Although melodrama tends to be a character-driven proceeding, whether without plot (Truly, Madly, Deeply) or with plot (A Place in the Sun), it is not rigidly so. The form can be adapted if the story benefits. Specific examples will illustrate. George Miller’s Lorenzo’s Oil is a melodrama in which the mother and to an extent, the father, initially believe they are powerless when their son is