The Virtue of Pandering: Notes Toward an Aesthetics of Melodrama

Most discussions of melodrama, even by those seeking to defend its suitability as a topic for rigorous and serious scholarly discourse, start from the assumption that it is a fundamentally debased art form, one that appeals to the lowest common denominator, sacrificing or jettisoning artistic integrity in exchange for the broadest possible commercial appeal. By looking to nineteenth-century discussions of melodrama in court documents and newspapers, this article attempts to articulate melodrama's aesthetic, in which broad appeal does not come at the expense of artistry but is in fact the mark of artistry itself. The article then looks at the way such an aesthetic might be used to read contemporary cultural phenomena—such as "freemium" mobile games—with greater nuance and appreciation for the complex matrix of aesthetic, ideological, and commercial forces at play in their creation and dissemination.