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Matinee Melodrama: Playing with Formula in the Sound Serial
Long before Batman, Flash Gordon, or the Lone Ranger were the stars of their own TV shows, they had dedicated audiences watching their adventures each week. The difference was that this action took place on the big screen, in short adventure serials whose exciting cliffhangers compelled the young audience to return to the theater every seven days.
Matinee Melodrama is the first book about the adventure serial as a distinct artform, one that uniquely encouraged audience participation and imaginative play. Media scholar Scott Higgins proposes that the serial’s incoherent plotting and reliance on formula, far from being faults, should be understood as some of its most appealing attributes, helping to spawn an active fan culture. Further, he suggests these serials laid the groundwork not only for modern-day cinematic blockbusters like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, but also for all kinds of interactive media that combine spectacle, storytelling, and play.
As it identifies key elements of the serial form—from stock characters to cliffhangers—Matinee Melodrama delves deeply into questions about the nature of suspense, the aesthetics of action, and the potentials of formulaic narrative. Yet it also provides readers with a loving look at everything from Zorro’s Fighting Legion to Daredevils of the Red Circle, conveying exactly why these films continue to thrill and enthrall their fans.
Matinee Melodrama is the first book about the adventure serial as a distinct artform, one that uniquely encouraged audience participation and imaginative play. Media scholar Scott Higgins proposes that the serial’s incoherent plotting and reliance on formula, far from being faults, should be understood as some of its most appealing attributes, helping to spawn an active fan culture. Further, he suggests these serials laid the groundwork not only for modern-day cinematic blockbusters like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, but also for all kinds of interactive media that combine spectacle, storytelling, and play.
As it identifies key elements of the serial form—from stock characters to cliffhangers—Matinee Melodrama delves deeply into questions about the nature of suspense, the aesthetics of action, and the potentials of formulaic narrative. Yet it also provides readers with a loving look at everything from Zorro’s Fighting Legion to Daredevils of the Red Circle, conveying exactly why these films continue to thrill and enthrall their fans.
217 pages, Paperback
First published February 16, 2016
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April 19, 2016
Higgins offers the first scholarly study of one of classical Hollywood's lucrative products; that of the film serial, a product that has long been overlooked in film studies. Using a combination of David Bordwell's theory of poetics and game theory Higgins analyzes how these films created their own unique formula for storytelling that engaged young and older spectators alike. Written in a manner free of academic jargon and convoluted structure, Higgins' study should elicit further investigations of these films by scholars who might consider their cultural/social importance, branding, use of paratexts, and further discuss the films influence on the narrative models of television, comics, and contemporary spectacle driven Hollywood films. Higgins' intellectual curiosity and passion for these often forgotten films is present on every page and in reading his study it made me want to go back and rematch many of the serial films that I watched on TCM and AMC as a child and a young adult.
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