Aesthetic Dimensions Measure

A Queer Perspective on Melodrama’s Social Life

“…Most relevant to Goldberg's project is Zarzosa's claim that in capitalist culture melodrama functions to dramatise 'the quality of things and people that should remain beyond exchange, use, and value altogether'. 4 While Goldberg's book offers a distinctive, even idiosyncratic, contribution to film, literature and theatre studies, it is hard not to think that his formally narrow conceptualisation of melodrama is almost unnecessary to the discussion of queer aesthetic potential and impossibility he puts forward. To be sure, his is not a straightforward recuperation of melodrama as art and thus good critical object.…”