{"id":664,"date":"2017-08-31T10:51:20","date_gmt":"2017-08-31T10:51:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/sequence\/?p=664"},"modified":"2017-08-31T10:52:40","modified_gmt":"2017-08-31T10:52:40","slug":"presenting-sequence-2-3-mandy-merck-on-carol","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/sequence\/presenting-sequence-2-3-mandy-merck-on-carol\/","title":{"rendered":"Presenting SEQUENCE 2.3: Mandy Merck on CAROL"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In her contribution to SEQUENCE [Two’s]<\/em>\u00a0ongoing discussion of the maternal melodrama, Pam Cook <\/a>considers Todd Haynes\u2019 miniseries Mildred Pierce<\/em><\/span> (HBO, 2011). Noting the genre\u2019s characteristic \u2018textual fluidity \u2019 (Cook 2015: 2), she cites the director\u2019s linking of Michael Curtiz\u2019s 1945 film of Mildred Pierce<\/span>\u00a0<\/em>with Max Ophuls\u2019 The Reckless Moment<\/span> (1949) as crossovers \u2018between crime and melodrama\u2019. Haynes\u2019 attention to this hybridity prompts Cook to review the incoherence of mother-love movies; employing G\u00e9rard Genette\u2019s term \u2018paratextual\u2019, she charts the influence of references outside the film text to this layering of significance.<\/p>\n

The feminist scholarship on Mildred Pierce<\/em><\/span> has undoubtedly influenced how subsequent spectators (including Haynes himself) have viewed the 1945 film. Cook\u2019s 1978 study employs the myth of Demeter and Persephone to elaborate its theme of maternal disempowerment. In the incestuous Greek pantheon, Persephone\u2019s mother Demeter, father Zeus and rapacious uncle Hades are siblings whose quarrel over the powers of fertility divide the seasons into the warmth in which Persephone dwells on earth with her mother and the cold that accompanies her annual departure to her uncle in the underworld. Returning to Cain\u2019s novel, Haynes queers these incestuous relations by bringing out a theme suppressed in the film \u2013 Mildred\u2019s erotic obsession with her daughter Veda. In Curtiz\u2019s adaptation this homosexual implication is displaced onto Mildred\u2019s friendship with Ida. Conversely, Haynes brings mother and daughter together in a kiss. Cook\u2019s interest in this scene lead her to refilm it in sequential video essays, one in which she overlays passages from Cain\u2019s novel onto Haynes\u2019 images, and another in which she slows the kiss and substitutes a different version of the \u2018Casta Diva\u2019 aria played on the soundtrack. In both cases the invocation of these paratexts elicits additional meanings of love and loss in the story\u2019s mother-daughter relationship.<\/p>\n

In the spirit of this \u2018textual interaction and revision\u2019, the essay that follows<\/a> examines another adaptation of a novel filmed by Haynes, Patricia Highsmith\u2019s Carol<\/em><\/span>. It too involves a mother threatened with the loss of her daughter as well as a lesbian relationship with incestuous overtones. And it too, I argue, is a generic hybrid, of the maternal melodrama and the romance. In considering Haynes\u2019 2015 film together with Highsmith\u2019s 1952 novel and the author\u2019s biography, as well as psychoanalytic and feminist theorizations of the maternal homoerotic, I employ a range of paratexts to illuminate the incoherences of Carol<\/em><\/span>.<\/p>\n

[Mandy Merck, \u2018NEGATIVE OEDIPUS: Carol<\/em> as Lesbian Romance and Maternal Melodrama\u2019, SEQUENCE: Serial Studies in Media, Film and Music<\/em>, 2.3, 2017. ISSN 2052-3033 (Online). Online at:\u00a0 http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/sequence2\/archive\/sequence-2-3\/<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We are very happy to announce that the third contribution to\u00a0Issue Two<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0SEQUENCE Serial Studies in Media, Film and Music<\/a>\u00a0We Need to Talk about Maternal Melodrama<\/em>\u00a0has been published. It is by Mandy Merck, Professor of Media Arts at Royal Holloway, University of London, one of the world’s leading scholars in melodrama studies and author of numerous important works on feminist and queer approaches to the cinema and representations of national identity in US film.<\/p>\n

We are continuing to invite sequential responses to the first three entries in this iteration of SEQUENCE. If you\u2019re inspired to respond, especially if you have related research work in progress on any of the topics raised by the first two essays, and\/or the SEQUENCE title, in relation to any relevant cultural or communications medium (not just cinema), please get in touch with us at\u00a0SEQUENCEserial[at]gmail[dot]com<\/a>. Multimedia responses of all kinds are also very much encouraged. But it would be worthwhile to discuss any substantial response with us at an early stage in your planning. All contributions need to comply with UK copyright law and the current understanding of fair dealing.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019d like to offer a shorter response, there is also the option of leaving a comment in the moderated stream at the foot of each SEQUENCE Two entry. SEQUENCES<\/a> may be long and short in all sorts of ways.<\/p>\n

SEQUENCE Two<\/a>\u00a0is\u00a0being edited and produced<\/em>\u00a0by\u00a0Catherine Grant<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Katherine Farrimond<\/a>,\u00a0co-editors of the\u00a0SEQUENCE: SERIAL STUDIES IN MEDIA, FILM AND MUSIC<\/a>\u00a0project (with\u00a0Russell Pearce)<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In her contribution to SEQUENCE [Two’s]\u00a0ongoing discussion of the maternal melodrama, Pam Cook considers Todd Haynes\u2019 miniseries Mildred Pierce (HBO, Continue ReadingPresenting SEQUENCE 2.3: Mandy Merck on CAROL<\/span>→<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/sequence\/files\/2017\/08\/SEQUENCE_CAROL_METASLIDER.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2GJOL-aI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/sequence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/sequence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/sequence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/sequence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/sequence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=664"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/sequence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":666,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/sequence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664\/revisions\/666"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/sequence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/sequence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/sequence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/sequence\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}