This volume condenses elements of theory on melodrama by bringing into focus what it recognizes to be the locus for subjective identification within melodramatic narratives: the victim.

• Acknowledgements 6
• Contents 8
• Introduction 10
• Melodrama and Victimhood: Modern, Political and Militant 36
• I. Cultures of Suffering and Cinematic Identities 36
• When Is Melodrama “Good”? Mega‑Melodrama and Victimhood 54
• Melodrama and War in Hollywood Genre Cinema 82
• Race Interactions: Film, Melodrama, and the Ambiguities of Colorism 108
• The Purloined Letter: Ophuls after Cavell 128
• III. Collective Traumas and National Melodramas 155
• II. Modernity and the Melodramatic Self 158
• The Melodrama of the Self 158
• Rousseau’s Nightmare 170
• “Emotional Suffering” as Universal Category? Victimhood and the Collective Imaginary 186
• Introduction to W. J. T. Mitchell, “The Abu Ghraib Archive” 206