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• Title: Melodrama, Social Spectatorship and the Modern Social Problem Film (Essay) ("America: River's Edge", "Falling Down" and "Kids") (Critical Essay)
• Author : Traffic (Parkville)
• Release Date : January 01, 2002
• Genre: Reference,Books,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 379 KB

Description

This article concerns research pertaining to my PhD, and is an attempt to apply a contractual reading to three recent examples of the social problem film in America: River's Edge (Tim Hunter, 1986), Falling Down (Joel Schumacher, 1993) and Kids (Larry Clark, 1995). I suggest that the modern social problem film obligates its audience to perform a morally responsible act of spectatorship as a means of resecuring the social bond within the collective realm of the audience. This is contrasted with a second contractual reading of the films, in which the realm of moral responsibility and 'vision' is seen to be limited to the narrative rather than the social domain represented by the viewing of the spectator. By outlining the different contractual effects created by melodrama and social spectatorship in relation to Kids, River's Edge and Falling Down, this article seeks to complicate the kinds of contracts and 'gifts' offered by these contemporary social problem films. During my time as a doctoral candidate in the Cinema Studies program at the University of Melbourne, my research interests have centred on three recent examples of the 'social problem film' in America. Why the interest in these three films? Primarily, I wanted to understand the contradiction that seemed to mark each of the films in its address to the audience. How, I wondered, could these social problem films that address themselves to wider, collective issues also retain a fictional and personalised focus on individual characters and stories? Is it possible for a Hollywood film with a strong, narrative-based emphasis to also gesture beyond the narrative to include the social world of the audience? The three films I chose to explore--River's Edge (Tim Hunter, 1986), Falling Down (Joel Schumacher, 1993) and Kids (Larry Clark, 1995)--all seemed to refer to each of these worlds: to the fictional, narrative space of the film as well as the collective, social space of the audience. As a result, the point of my research became a quest to explain how these two realms could coexist in our engagement with the film. Do these films offer a seamless mix of the social and the personal? Or is there a conflict in terms of how these two domains are referenced by the films in question?

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