Tears of Joy: Hollywood Melodrama, Ecstasy, and Restoring Meta-Narratives of Transcendence in Modernity

There is critical consensus that modernity is characterized by a lack of meta-narratives, by de-sacralization, by the sequestration of people from the meaning contained in their life experiences, and by a crisis in valuation. This paper argues that Hollywood melodrama compensates for these aspects of modern life by locating the sacred within the secular. Part of the compensatory function served by this genre is effected through the emotional impact that melodramas have on audiences, which can be usefully contextualized in relation to religious ecstasy. A comparative analysis of the two films Broken Blossoms (1919) and American Beauty (1999) reveals how the evocation of ecstasy through film can reinstate meta-narratives, present an alternative means of valuation to capitalism, and manifest an opposite logic to that of investment - that of sacrifice.