Source number four:

"Film Bodies: Gender, Genre, and Excess"

By Linda Williams

In this essay, Williams discusses Carol Clover's commentary on the "body genres" of horror and pornography (which have excessive amounts of violence and sex, respectively), to include melodrama- a new body genre which includes excesses of emotion.More specifically, she addresses the excessive instances of pathos found in "weepies"/"women's films." She takes the meaning of "body genres" as dealing with bodies beside themselves with emotion (pleasure, fear) and extends it to weepies for their portrayal of bodies beside themselves with sadness.There is a particular degree of attention received by the main women of each film: the helpless victim (sometimes turned unlikely hero) of the horror genre, the female who walks the line of "good girl"/ "bad girl" in pornography, and the woman behind the weeping in melodramas. The nature of the sexuality of these women is discussed in addition by Williams. Contemporary "male weepies" are touched upon, and could be useful in my paper if I decide to analyse gender roles and audiences for music and melodramas.

Mostly, though, I plan on using this source as background info. I'm hoping that it will help me to better understand Leslie Maier's evaluation of the body genres' manifestation in music as well as Linda Williams herself, since I will be using multiple sources written by her. The chart for each of the body genres on page 9 will be useful in organizing my info on the melodrama. Finally, this source is useful because it's all about the excess.One of the main things that will be used to prove the relation between pop music and the melodrama is the idea of emotional excess in both. This article can prove to be very useful in going into the excesses of the melodrama.