Katie Kapurch
Texas State University, English, Faculty Member
- Katie Kapurch, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of English at Texas State University. As a scholar of icons and the iconi... moreKatie Kapurch, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of English at Texas State University. As a scholar of icons and the iconic in pop culture, she has written widely about Disney, the Beatles, and other major phenomena. See more at www.katiekapurch.comedit
"Come Together" is the first track on Abbey Road (The Beatles 1969), the last album the Beatles recorded. Our chapter reveals the song's competing dynamic of invitational playfulness and hope versus violence, dark desire, and... more
"Come Together" is the first track on Abbey Road (The Beatles 1969), the last album the Beatles recorded. Our chapter reveals the song's competing dynamic of invitational playfulness and hope versus violence, dark desire, and disappointment. We shall argue that an obscured distemper-a ghostly disease-suggests an off-color, failed pursuit of bliss born of intangible yet sultry passions. An examination of John Lennon's inspirations for the song leads to a close reading of its tracking process, lyrics, and music. Our discussion concludes with an ear toward the recording's afterlives in Black American artists' covers, including Sheila E.'s collaborations with Ringo Starr (Sheila E. 2017a and 2017b; Starr, 2020).
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The congruous timing of Taylor Swift's and the Beatles' 2021 multiplatform media is an occasion to investigate comparable generic storytelling strategies, especially as they related to gender. Identifying the melodramatic romance of... more
The congruous timing of Taylor Swift's and the Beatles' 2021 multiplatform media is an occasion to investigate comparable generic storytelling strategies, especially as they related to gender. Identifying the melodramatic romance of Swift's All Too Well opens up similar dimensions of the Beatles' media narrative, especially as articulated in
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This chapter argues for the Beatles' gender fluidity is a key ingredient in their multigenerational appeal.
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Just as they did with musical innovation, once the Beatles mastered a fashion, they were on to the next one. The ability to change, to be "in the trend" rather than in front of or behind it, is a key factor in the sustained popularity of... more
Just as they did with musical innovation, once the Beatles mastered a fashion, they were on to the next one. The ability to change, to be "in the trend" rather than in front of or behind it, is a key factor in the sustained popularity of the Beatles and their cultural iconography.
Whether they had matching suits or matching mustaches, the Beatles' fashion choices consistently threatened the status quo. Their now-iconic looks, which evolved as their music did, also invited imitation by fans. As such, the objects associated with their styles have graduated to the rank of iconography, sacred relics whose images stand in for songs, as well as the story of the band. The "mop-top" is the crowning glory of their most famous and most unifying style, whose history explains the radical impact of the hair, suits, and boots. The "Fab," as I term it, is a cohesive look born out of previous fashions, but the style is also a foundation for subsequent Beatles aesthetics. The "Pepper" is another unifying style, at once nostalgic and psychedelic, that reinvents the Beatles. The Pepper look includes one ingredient-Lennon's glasses -that begins to signal the band's end, which is also prefigured in the House of Nutter clothing ( or lack thereof) that appears on the last album the band recorded.
Whether they had matching suits or matching mustaches, the Beatles' fashion choices consistently threatened the status quo. Their now-iconic looks, which evolved as their music did, also invited imitation by fans. As such, the objects associated with their styles have graduated to the rank of iconography, sacred relics whose images stand in for songs, as well as the story of the band. The "mop-top" is the crowning glory of their most famous and most unifying style, whose history explains the radical impact of the hair, suits, and boots. The "Fab," as I term it, is a cohesive look born out of previous fashions, but the style is also a foundation for subsequent Beatles aesthetics. The "Pepper" is another unifying style, at once nostalgic and psychedelic, that reinvents the Beatles. The Pepper look includes one ingredient-Lennon's glasses -that begins to signal the band's end, which is also prefigured in the House of Nutter clothing ( or lack thereof) that appears on the last album the band recorded.
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The Beatles’ White Album is a musical expression of getting naked, revealing anxiety and doubt in songs that fetishize objects and role play while representing impotence and cuckolding. Anxiety and ambivalence about sexual performance... more
The Beatles’ White Album is a musical expression of getting naked, revealing anxiety and doubt in songs that fetishize objects and role play while representing impotence and cuckolding. Anxiety and ambivalence about sexual performance track alongside other attitudes toward time, including nostalgia about the past and an ineffectual desire to move forward, that have biographical significance for the Beatles in 1968. The sexually honest double album strips off the psychedelia of the previous year, and The White Album’s unifying theme is, in fact, voiced explicitly on the record itself – not by a Beatle, but by Yoko Ono.
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Bruce Springsteen's film noir-informed innovations on Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) betray his effort to confront hard truths about powerlessness in working-class American culture. These are the same dark themes available in... more
Bruce Springsteen's film noir-informed innovations on Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) betray his effort to confront hard truths about powerlessness in working-class American culture. These are the same dark themes available in filmmaker David Lynch's contemporaneous 1970s output and that which followed in subsequent decades. Beginning with Springsteen's Darkness and Lynch's Eraserhead (1977) and continuing with examples from subsequent films and television, we reveal an ongoing dialogue between musician and filmmaker. This dialogue demonstrates Springsteen's prescience on Darkness because Lynch's post-1970s oeuvre continues treading the same terrain as that late 70s Springsteen album. Springsteen and Lynch both invoke film noir's fallen-man formula to critique institutional constraints in the late twentieth-century and early twenty-first-century US, especially those related to the family and capitalist economic forces. Attention to the fallen-man formula reveals Springsteen's and Lynch's similar invocation of film noir as they explore the hard truths and moral consequences of institutional powerlessness on individuals.
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This chapter complicates the assumption that the Beatles, particularly with Sgt. Pepper, ceased to appeal directly to girls or to girl culture. When I refer to "girls" and "girl culture," I am informed by girls' studies' approaches to the... more
This chapter complicates the assumption that the Beatles, particularly with Sgt. Pepper, ceased to appeal directly to girls or to girl culture. When I refer to "girls" and "girl culture," I am informed by girls' studies' approaches to the study of girls as female youth, whereby girl culture is both the culture marketed to girls and the culture girls create and choose for themselves (Inness 3-4). True, the Beatles often used conventionally feminine discourse in their early work, and their gendered modes of address do change throughout the 1960s. Some female listeners were alienated by the Beatles' later work, especially as it became un-danceable, but some were indeed turned on by John Lennon's famous invitation in "A Day in the Life." The album's psychedelic sounds signal a new future, while also negotiating work and domesticity. In addition, Beatles fandom, even in response to the group's later output, becomes a catalyst for some girls' and young women's innovation, especially in terms of musical production.
The chapter proceeds as follows: first, I review key ideas about the Beatles' gendered appeals to audiences before I show how girls and young women are addressed and rhetorically constructed by Sgt. Pepper, both through individual songs and the album's concept and cover art. The album does trade in seemingly masculine or adult forms, such as intellectual complexity, psychedelic imagery, and experimental, technological sound. On Sgt. Pepper, however, the Beatles are still invoking popular themes and genres associated with girl culture and presenting androgynous visions of gender, especially as their songs negotiate the tensions between work, domesticity, and experimentation with alternate ways of being.
Along the way, I discuss actual examples of girls and young women who, inspired by the Beatles, eventually "left home" to pursue lives outside of the domestic sphere after the late 1960s. Chronicling their coming-of-age experiences, Ann and Nancy Wilson's Kicking and Dreaming, as well as Chrissie Hynde's Reckless, credit the Beatles as a formative influence on their lives and musicianship. Born in 1951, Hynde, driving force of the Pretenders, is a contemporary of Heart's frontwomen Ann and Nancy, born 1950 and 1954, respectively. The Wilson sisters' and Hynde's memoirs corroborate theories of girls' early Beatles fandom, while also proving that the appeal of the Beatles' androgyny lasted beyond the mid-sixties. The Wilsons' and Hynde's reflections credit the Beatles for their own musical fascination and production, proving that not all girls
broke up with the Beatles when Billy Shears arrived; girls like the Wilsons and Hynde were turned on by musical complexity that changed as the times changed.
The chapter proceeds as follows: first, I review key ideas about the Beatles' gendered appeals to audiences before I show how girls and young women are addressed and rhetorically constructed by Sgt. Pepper, both through individual songs and the album's concept and cover art. The album does trade in seemingly masculine or adult forms, such as intellectual complexity, psychedelic imagery, and experimental, technological sound. On Sgt. Pepper, however, the Beatles are still invoking popular themes and genres associated with girl culture and presenting androgynous visions of gender, especially as their songs negotiate the tensions between work, domesticity, and experimentation with alternate ways of being.
Along the way, I discuss actual examples of girls and young women who, inspired by the Beatles, eventually "left home" to pursue lives outside of the domestic sphere after the late 1960s. Chronicling their coming-of-age experiences, Ann and Nancy Wilson's Kicking and Dreaming, as well as Chrissie Hynde's Reckless, credit the Beatles as a formative influence on their lives and musicianship. Born in 1951, Hynde, driving force of the Pretenders, is a contemporary of Heart's frontwomen Ann and Nancy, born 1950 and 1954, respectively. The Wilson sisters' and Hynde's memoirs corroborate theories of girls' early Beatles fandom, while also proving that the appeal of the Beatles' androgyny lasted beyond the mid-sixties. The Wilsons' and Hynde's reflections credit the Beatles for their own musical fascination and production, proving that not all girls
broke up with the Beatles when Billy Shears arrived; girls like the Wilsons and Hynde were turned on by musical complexity that changed as the times changed.
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In this chapter, we argue that Ella is a "make-do" girl, a discursive construction of girlhood that defies the "can-do"/ "at-risk" binary. The essay is organized around iconic tropes that the 2015 Cinderella borrows from Disney's 1950... more
In this chapter, we argue that Ella is a "make-do" girl, a discursive construction of girlhood that defies the "can-do"/ "at-risk" binary. The essay is organized around iconic tropes that the 2015 Cinderella borrows from Disney's 1950 animation: the introduction of orphaned Ella connected to nature and animals; the stepmother's villainy and stepsisters' absurdity; meeting the prince; the transformation before the ball; and the revelation of the slipper leading to the wedding. Isolating these moments reveals new storylines informed by motifs associated with the maternal melodrama and the family melodrama, additions that construct Cinderella as a make-do girl. Although the 2015 Cinderella may appear to invoke Disney's animated film for the sake of homage and non-ironic nostalgia, the film also alludes to earlier folk-fairy tales. Even when the new Disney film replicates the original animation's narrative beats or iconic imagery, it transforms them in ways that critique postfeminist expressions of neoliberalism through the expression of make-do girlhood. This representation suggests consumerist girl-power princess culture is unsuited to the demands of contemporary economic, political, and social realities, which require an other-oriented disposition that accepts the necessity of less-than-ideal work and acknowledges the futility of trying to control outcomes.
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Tangled and Brave are maternal melodramas, a generic association that reveals the films’ reflection, negotiation, and confrontation with postfeminism, especially as it informs the social construction of girlhood. Although these films are... more
Tangled and Brave are maternal melodramas, a generic association that reveals the films’ reflection, negotiation, and confrontation with postfeminism, especially as it informs the social construction of girlhood. Although these films are produced by Disney, a media conglomerate not known for its progressive expressions of gender, melodrama can work as a critical mode of discourse even when shrouded in a conservative dress. In short, melodrama’s excess allows for a critique of the very things melodrama represents. Paying close attention to mother-daughter interactions, especially over Rapunzel’s and Merida’s excesses of hair, reveal the following postfeminist themes as debilitating for girls and detrimental to their relationships with older women: normative femininity and consumerism as empowerment, competing generational feminisms, and the conflicting pressures to articulate individual identity while belonging to female community.
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This article explores the melodramatic expression of lesbian girlhood and teen romance in Disney's Tangled (2010) and Disney Pixar's Brave (2012), as well as “Meripunzel” femslash, fan-authored romantic pairings of the animations' female... more
This article explores the melodramatic expression of lesbian girlhood and teen romance in Disney's Tangled (2010) and Disney Pixar's Brave (2012), as well as “Meripunzel” femslash, fan-authored romantic pairings of the animations' female protagonists. First, Anne Sexton's poem, “Rapunzel,” offers a literary precedent for exploring lesbian themes in the fairy tale. The next section shows how Tangled and Brave invoke the narrative conventions of the family melodrama. This generic association reveals the films' uses of rhetoric familiar to youth coming-out narratives, as well as other visual and aural coding suggestive of queer styles. The last section shows how Meripunzel femslash taps into the films' existing melodramatic narrative forms and visual aesthetics, rehearsing their coming-out rhetoric while addressing the pleasures of and problems facing lesbian teen romance. I conclude by problematizing the often conventional expressions of lesbian girlhood in femslash, ultimately arguing for their empowering potential, especially as they indicate revised definitions of “princess.”
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An exploration focused on melodrama offers insight into the Beatles' popularity among girls, especially twenty-first-century fans whose fascination with the Fab Four is remarkably under-theorized. This chapter explores the relationship... more
An exploration focused on melodrama offers insight into the Beatles' popularity among girls, especially twenty-first-century fans whose fascination with the Fab Four is remarkably under-theorized. This chapter explores the relationship between the Beatles and melodrama to argue for the mode's vitality in girl culture and importance to the Beatles phenomenon, specifically addressing two areas of thought. First the Beatles' appeal to girls is, in part, dependent on the way they invoke melodrama, a pervasive mode of discourse in girl culture and one that facilitates our understanding of the Beatles' androgynous gender performance. Second, girl fans' own melodramatic discourse unites girls separated by decades since the Beatles are still vehicles for girls to react to gendered social limitations relevant to distinct historical moments. Identifying melodramatic impulses in Beatle-authored texts and in Beatles fandoms reveals the mode's capacity to promote homosocial and even homoerotic intimacy and to inspire empathy, communicating progressive messages about gender and sexuality in both the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
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A rhetorical analysis of Paul McCartney's Romantic expressions of racial solidarity shines a critical light on the evolution of post-racial attitudes in America from the 1980s to today. His songs, videos, and live performances are... more
A rhetorical analysis of Paul McCartney's Romantic expressions of racial solidarity shines a critical light on the evolution of post-racial attitudes in America from the 1980s to today. His songs, videos, and live performances are reflections of how many in the US have fooled themselves into thinking that racial equality has been achieved.
This chapter begins by exploring McCartney's duet with Stevie Wonder, "Ebony and Ivory" (1982). Released the following year, "Say, Say, Say" (1983), McCartney's collaboration with Michael Jackson, does not specifically reference racial harmony, but the video nonetheless projects a utopian vision of a historical post-racial America.
Solidifying McCartney's penchant for idealistic visions of racial solidarity is his live performance of "Blackbird"; the 2002 story he tells about the song's origins continues to evolve to this day, tracking alongside current events associated with race and reflecting Americans' attitudes back to the audience.
Nevertheless, McCartney's more recent statements and collaborations with popular Black artists Kanye West and Rihanna offer opportunities for the former Beatle to deconstruct his own idealistic post-racial discourse, revealing a progressive and redemptive shift in McCartney's rhetoric.
This chapter begins by exploring McCartney's duet with Stevie Wonder, "Ebony and Ivory" (1982). Released the following year, "Say, Say, Say" (1983), McCartney's collaboration with Michael Jackson, does not specifically reference racial harmony, but the video nonetheless projects a utopian vision of a historical post-racial America.
Solidifying McCartney's penchant for idealistic visions of racial solidarity is his live performance of "Blackbird"; the 2002 story he tells about the song's origins continues to evolve to this day, tracking alongside current events associated with race and reflecting Americans' attitudes back to the audience.
Nevertheless, McCartney's more recent statements and collaborations with popular Black artists Kanye West and Rihanna offer opportunities for the former Beatle to deconstruct his own idealistic post-racial discourse, revealing a progressive and redemptive shift in McCartney's rhetoric.
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As works characterized not only by similar heroines, heroes, and romantic plots, Brontë’s and Meyer’s novels share a melodramatic reader response. An exploration of melodrama’s significance in these female coming-of-age stories yields... more
As works characterized not only by similar heroines, heroes, and romantic plots, Brontë’s and Meyer’s novels share a melodramatic reader response. An exploration of melodrama’s significance in these female coming-of-age stories yields insight into the important relationship between Jane Eyre and the Twilight Saga––while offering some justification for the latter’s appeal––and ultimately works to invigorate scholarly appreciation for melodramatic impulses in contemporary young adult fiction.
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This chapter outlines a "girls' studies" pedagogy for teaching Young Adult literature in the college classroom.
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This article explores the lasting appeal of Jane Eyre through an examination of two neo-Victorian adaptations, the recent televised mini-series Jane Eyre (BBC1, 2006) and April Lindner's young-adult novel Jane (2010), which both call upon... more
This article explores the lasting appeal of Jane Eyre through an examination of two neo-Victorian adaptations, the recent televised mini-series Jane Eyre (BBC1, 2006) and April Lindner's young-adult novel Jane (2010), which both call upon fairy-tale allusions in Charlotte Brontë's novel. These fairy-tale connections function rhetorically to enhance Jane's narrative ownership, promoting empathy with the heroine and defining agency in contemporary girlhood through a dialogue with the Victorian past. The article ultimately gestures toward the larger significance of neo-Victorianism in the representation of contemporary female childhood and adolescence in twenty-first-century popular culture.
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Using the Twilight Saga as a representative text, my chapter first explores contradictory depictions of female adolescent agency, particularly in the context of intimate relationships, in popular culture. Noting how Bella's conflicts... more
Using the Twilight Saga as a representative text, my chapter first explores contradictory depictions of female adolescent agency, particularly in the context of intimate relationships, in popular culture. Noting how Bella's conflicts speak to adolescent girlhood, I suggest Twilight addresses tensions consistent with other well-known depictions of "real life" coming-of-age girls and young women; these connections may help teachers appeal to girls in the English classroom. Following this premise, I argue mass-mediated texts function as agential opportunities for girls to create meaning, particularly through artistic works distributed online. These conclusions not only provide insight into the appeal of contemporary works (for example the Twilight Saga), which inspire critical and creative reflection among girls, but also suggest why popular culture should be harnessed to engage girls in the English classroom.
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This chapter explores how sound works along with filmic image in Hardwicke's Twilight, Weitz's New Moon, and Slade's Eclipse to position the viewer in relation to Bella's perspective. Of particular concern are the uses of voiceover as... more
This chapter explores how sound works along with filmic image in Hardwicke's Twilight, Weitz's New Moon, and Slade's Eclipse to position the viewer in relation to Bella's perspective. Of particular concern are the uses of voiceover as Bella's narration, an area illuminated by French scholar Michel Chion's work on cinematic sound. Ultimately, I suggest that the consistent use of narrating voiceover throughout Hardwicke's Twilight maintains Bella's interiority and continually positions the viewer to identify with her perspective, while Weitz's New Moon reduces this identification by changing the nature and function of that type of voiceover; Slade's film diminishes that identification still further by effectively eclipsing Bella's voice through the limited and forgettable use of narrating voiceover.
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From the beginning, the Beatles announced their debt to Black music in interviews, recording covers and original songs inspired by Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, the Shirelles, and other giants of R&B. Blackbird goes deeper,... more
From the beginning, the Beatles announced their debt to Black music in interviews, recording covers and original songs inspired by Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino, the Shirelles, and other giants of R&B. Blackbird goes deeper, appreciating unacknowledged forerunners, as well as Black artists whose interpretations keep the Beatles in play.
Drawing on interviews with Black musicians and using the song “Blackbird” as a touchstone, Katie Kapurch and Jon Marc Smith tell a new history. They present unheard stories and resituate old ones, offering the phrase “transatlantic flight” to characterize a back-and-forth dialogue shaped by Black musicians in the United States and elsewhere, including Liverpool. Kapurch and Smith find a lineage that reaches back to the very origins of American popular music, one that involves the original twentieth-century blackbird, Florence Mills, and the King of the Twelve String, Lead Belly. Continuing the circular flight path with Nina Simone, Billy Preston, Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin, Sylvester, and others, the authors take readers into the twenty-first century, when Black artists like Bettye LaVette harness the Beatles for today.
Detailed, thoughtful, and revelatory, Blackbird explores musical and storytelling legacies full of rich but contested symbolism. Appealing to those interested in developing a deep understanding of the evolution of popular music, this book promises that you'll never hear “Blackbird”—and the Beatles—the same way again.
Drawing on interviews with Black musicians and using the song “Blackbird” as a touchstone, Katie Kapurch and Jon Marc Smith tell a new history. They present unheard stories and resituate old ones, offering the phrase “transatlantic flight” to characterize a back-and-forth dialogue shaped by Black musicians in the United States and elsewhere, including Liverpool. Kapurch and Smith find a lineage that reaches back to the very origins of American popular music, one that involves the original twentieth-century blackbird, Florence Mills, and the King of the Twelve String, Lead Belly. Continuing the circular flight path with Nina Simone, Billy Preston, Jimi Hendrix, Aretha Franklin, Sylvester, and others, the authors take readers into the twenty-first century, when Black artists like Bettye LaVette harness the Beatles for today.
Detailed, thoughtful, and revelatory, Blackbird explores musical and storytelling legacies full of rich but contested symbolism. Appealing to those interested in developing a deep understanding of the evolution of popular music, this book promises that you'll never hear “Blackbird”—and the Beatles—the same way again.
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The Beatles are probably the most photographed band in history and are the subject of numerous biographical studies, but a surprising dearth of academic scholarship addresses the Fab Four. New Critical Perspectives on the Beatles offers a... more
The Beatles are probably the most photographed band in history and are the subject of numerous biographical studies, but a surprising dearth of academic scholarship addresses the Fab Four. New Critical Perspectives on the Beatles offers a collection of original, previously unpublished essays that explore 'new' aspects of the Beatles. The interdisciplinary collection situates the band in its historical moment of the 1960s, but argues for artistic innovation and cultural ingenuity that account for the Beatles' lasting popularity today. Along with theoretical approaches that bridge the study of music with perspectives from non-music disciplines, the texts under investigation make this collection 'new' in terms of Beatles' scholarship. Contributors frequently address under-examined Beatles texts or present critical perspectives on familiar works to produce new insight about the Beatles and their multi-generational audiences.
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This book examines melodramatic impulses in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, as well as the series' film adaptations and fan-authored texts. Attention to conventions such as crying, victimization, and... more
This book examines melodramatic impulses in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga, as well as the series' film adaptations and fan-authored texts. Attention to conventions such as crying, victimization, and happy endings in the context of the Twilight-Jane Eyre relationship reveals melodrama as an empowering mode of communication for girls. Although melodrama has saturated popular culture since the nineteenth century, its expression in texts for, about, and by girls has been remarkably under theorized. By defining melodrama, however, through its Victorian lineages, Katie Kapurch recognizes melodrama's aesthetic form and rhetorical function in contemporary girl culture while also demonstrating its legacy since the nineteenth century. Informed by feminist theories of literature and film, Kapurch shows how melodrama is worthy of serious consideration since the mode critiques limiting social constructions of postfeminist girlhood and, at the same time, enhances intimacy between girls—both characters and readers.
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Female villains who function as doubles for the protagonist are an empowering component of melodrama in girl culture—but so is crying. This chapter explores crying as melodrama’s most denigrated convention. Examining the form and function... more
Female villains who function as doubles for the protagonist are an empowering component of melodrama in girl culture—but so is crying. This chapter explores crying as melodrama’s most denigrated convention. Examining the form and function of suffering and tears in both Jane Eyre and the Twilight Saga shows how these melodramatic conventions validate emotional (even erotic) sensations, promote intimacy between girls, and even critique the limitations that produced such affective responses in the first place. And these rhetorical outcomes are expressed directly in girls’ conversations about crying while they read the saga. Girl readers empathize, but they also offer their own critical interpretations as they actively engage the saga’s messages about girlhood.
This chapter makes a case for a theory of melodrama in girl culture, justifying the use of Twilight texts as a vehicle for the investigation. Beginning with Twilight’s relationship to Jane Eyre, the saga’s predecessor and most dominant... more
This chapter makes a case for a theory of melodrama in girl culture, justifying the use of Twilight texts as a vehicle for the investigation. Beginning with Twilight’s relationship to Jane Eyre, the saga’s predecessor and most dominant intertext, I develop a definition of the distinctive nineteenth-century melodrama, which gave rise to a mode that still pervades popular culture today. I discuss the mode’s relationship to girls in the context of feminist theories of melodrama and power, then focus more specifically on Victorian and contemporary girlhood, defining what I mean by “postfeminism” when it comes to discursive constructions of girlhood. I conclude by situating Twilight in a trajectory of melodrama in popular girl culture, a survey that reinforces Twilight’s relationship to girl culture from the nineteenth century to today.
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This chapter introduces the concept of the powerless and victimized heroine in melodrama, situating the literary Jane Eyre and Bella Swan in their historical moments. When they recognize their own inadequacies, the protagonists’... more
This chapter introduces the concept of the powerless and victimized heroine in melodrama, situating the literary Jane Eyre and Bella Swan in their historical moments. When they recognize their own inadequacies, the protagonists’ self-consciousness is a response to restrictive discourses of “successful” Victorian and postfeminist girlhood. And as they aspire for equal footing with their respective Edwards, melodramatic expression makes the protagonists’ lack of social, cultural, political, and economic capital obvious—and sympathetic to girl readers. The first Twilight film amplifies Bella’s awkwardness, especially as the new girl in school, through voice-over, as well as cinematography and even costuming.
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The relentless suffering of the melodramatic heroine opens up space for a critical examination of narrative structure in this chapter. Melodrama’s narrative form positions the heroine as an innocent persecuted by villainy; this narrative... more
The relentless suffering of the melodramatic heroine opens up space for a critical examination of narrative structure in this chapter. Melodrama’s narrative form positions the heroine as an innocent persecuted by villainy; this narrative sequence continues to confirm frustration with powerless social positions. The chapter concludes by briefly considering how powerlessness and anxiety are translated to the screen in Hardwicke’s Twilight through voice-over and symbolic imagery. This film successfully courted girl audiences, who frequently use melodramatic discourse to create safe spaces for their own Twilight fandom.
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As one of melodrama’s most vital expressions, music encourages empathy for a girl character’s desiring, but anxious heterosexual gaze. This chapter explores references to music in Jane Eyre and Twilight. In the literary texts, music... more
As one of melodrama’s most vital expressions, music encourages empathy for a girl character’s desiring, but anxious heterosexual gaze. This chapter explores references to music in Jane Eyre and Twilight. In the literary texts, music simultaneously cues the protagonists’ insecurities and accentuates their sexual longings. Although Bella’s desire for physical intimacy with Edward is consistently thwarted throughout much of the series, music’s circularity validates and even replicates that sexual yearning. In fact, recognizing music’s expression of desire reveals how the cinematic Bella’s sexual desire is articulated—outside of her own spoken narration. Although such passivity has been criticized, this has not prohibited girls from imagining Bella’s sexual desire, as some fans vocalize it in their own musical discourse.
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Following a discussion of sexual agency vis-a-vis music, I explore the intimacy-building consequences of melodramatic confession, along with the agential nature of feelings. This chapter argues that moral feelings function as emotional... more
Following a discussion of sexual agency vis-a-vis music, I explore the intimacy-building consequences of melodramatic confession, along with the agential nature of feelings. This chapter argues that moral feelings function as emotional agency, the consequence of confessional revelations that expose secret social taboos. Bronte’s and Meyer’s female characters rely on feelings to determine a course of action once their Byronic bad boys expose their secret identities. In the first Twilight film, vampiric imagery accelerates the intensity of Bella’s commitment to Edward and, consequently, the viewer’s understanding of the protagonist’s moral feelings. The force of both Jane’s and Bella’s feelings, especially frustration, shines a critical light on social restrictions facing girls.
This chapter continues to show how melodrama exposes postfeminist paradoxes related to female empowerment. In Jane Eyre and Twilight, nightmares and female vampire villains antagonize Jane’s and Bella’s psyches. In the cinematic saga,... more
This chapter continues to show how melodrama exposes postfeminist paradoxes related to female empowerment. In Jane Eyre and Twilight, nightmares and female vampire villains antagonize Jane’s and Bella’s psyches. In the cinematic saga, when this villainy is visualized on-screen, such gothic remnants are externalized in dramatic ways that make the critique all the more obvious. Nightmares validate over-the-top fears about change, especially aging and motherhood, showing the crippling effects of Western culture’s postfeminist emphasis on feminine youthfulness; at the same time, female vampires serve as agential foils to the protagonist’s passivity. Girl readers’ Twilight-themed fantasies and dreams continue to reveal how melodrama encourages alternate subject positions that help girl readers negotiate change in their own lives.
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The final chapter examines closure as a melodramatic device. Facilitated by supernatural coincidence and romantic, heterosexual couplings, the similar endings of Jane Eyre and the Twilight Saga reinforce the relationship between the... more
The final chapter examines closure as a melodramatic device. Facilitated by supernatural coincidence and romantic, heterosexual couplings, the similar endings of Jane Eyre and the Twilight Saga reinforce the relationship between the nineteenth century and contemporary girl culture. The promise of a happy ending is a major point of appeal among girl readers, who resist the ending, promising to reread the series. In fact, through musical and visual flashbacks, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn-Parts 1 and 2 indulge the same impulses, offering closure but “rereading” previous installments of the saga at the same time. In fact, these films render the conventional ending dull, an outcome that critiques the heteronormative message of the novels. Such resistant stances, encouraged by melodrama’s extremes, defy scholarly interpretations that focus too much on the ideological implications of melodrama’s outwardly conventional endings.