Monday, September 8, 2014

Melodrama Encourage the Proletariat Society

One of the basic elements of melodrama is the pathos through revealing the class struggle. Based on capital, the Proletariat  families undergo severe situation as the pace of the communism. "To the Proletariat , the disappearance of class property is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture"(Marx) There is a huge difference between being poor and changing into poor from rich. The hard drop from living without worries of basic needs to loosing all capital and even jobs could  hardly be imagined if not experienced in person. Under this social circumstance, melodrama play the significant role in encouraging.

To a large extent, melodrama is controlled by the government more or less, at least by certain departments affiliated to the official. As a result, the government can not only spread information and create a mainstream social atmosphere through melodrama, but also encourage people who is coping with the "vicissitudes of modern life".

On advantage melodrama has is that people who can not read can understand melodrama. So the range of audience is large. As the Harry Potter and The War Against Evil  pointed, the typical hero in melodrama is usually innocence and misunderstood by others. However, the hero is usually accepted and praised by others towards the end. This encourage typical ending "derive a solid comfort from our certainty that the virtue of the heroine is inviolable"(Singer). When watching the melodrama, people would be sympathetic and devoted to the story since the hero might have the same suffering as the audience had. Then, the audience would related themselves to the heroes. Finally, when the heroes surmount the difficult and defeat the evil, a feeling of encouraging and confidence would appear in the audience. They are moved by the protagonists and gain the faith that they, themselves have bright futures as the melodrama displayed.

Through this method, the government got a way to smooth the raspy Proletariat and make them rally their courage for a new start. This method of propaganda is better than news, speeches, newspapers, etc., as no command of reading is required and melodrama is much more thought-provoking.


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