By Sita Balani
Since the mid 2010s, analyses of the cultural politics of the far right have focussed on irony, humour, trolling, and other nihilistic or deflationary habits of online cultures. The ‘manosphere’ has been a prominent object of concern, with 2014’s ‘Gamergate’ acting as an inflection point, bringing the aggression and misogyny incubating in gamer culture into mainstream awareness. More recent interventions, in particular those made by Richard Seymour, capture the ways in which the resentments of these digital worlds find realisation in the libidinal currents of networked mob violence: in the tempo of what Seymour calls ‘disaster nationalism,’ moments of elation are punctuated by melancholic or depressive episodes.1 While ressentiment, conspiracism, and hallucinatory obsessions may dominate far right online cultures, authoritarian projects make highly effective use of other vectors of emotion, particularly when attempting to speak to a broader base and via the still-powerful domains of legacy media. I propose that we need to give greater attention to sincere, high emotion of the kind we associate with melodrama in order to grasp the full cultural range of the right more effectively, not least for its capacity to communicate across gender.
Further, in thinking about melodrama, we should attend to its slippery political promiscuity. While suffering is certainly not a sufficient basis for left politics, its recognition is nonetheless a necessary component: as Gargi Bhattacharyya observes in their meditation on heartbreak, ‘brokenheartedness thins our skins so we become open to others.’2 In their capacity to generate this openness, narratives of suffering are not only available to liberatory politics but essential to the development of left wing movements. Screen melodramas may provide the cultural resources for left politics through their use of the ‘double gesture’ which both polarises and offers the possibility of reconnection or affirmation.3 While melodrama can simply turn on the exclusion of the villain, in other iterations of the genre, the possibility of reconciliation is built into the narrative structure, thus gesturing towards a horizon of social transformation. When used to tell stories from below, melodrama may have a distinctive capacity to channel the ‘heartbreak’ that Bhattacharyya observes as the ‘class consciousness of racial capitalism.’
The dominance of Bollywood films in India, telenovelas across Latin America, and the international popularity of South Korea’s ‘K-dramas’ attest to the global purchase of melodrama as a genre which focuses on family stories. The regional variations on this global meta-genre are particularly notable given the ways in which family stories function as national allegories. The persistence of dynastic politics in the Global South is well documented (the Marcoses in the Philippines, the Gandhis in India), and echoed in North America (the Trudeaus in Canada; the Clintons and Bush families in the USA). Indeed, the involvement of Trump’s children in American politics suggests a new political dynasty may be in the making. Though beyond this short essay, there is scope for a comparative analysis of how melodrama as a mode operates in the theatre of nationalism.
To elaborate on this distinction between genre and mode: As a genre, melodrama emerges post-Enlightenment, seeking to make moral principles legible within secular narrative. It is in film and television, however, that the mass political use of melodrama can be grasped. Drawing on Peter Brooks, we can see that ‘melodrama becomes particularly important at historical junctures in which marked ideological conflicts must be resolved, and it does so by defining a system of values which achieve a quasi-religious significance: the “moral occult.”’4 Narratives focus on the sufferings of intimate, domestic, and family life subjected to the pressures of ‘evil’ – whether embodied by a character or social force. Melodrama as a mode, however, is more diffuse, developed across media portrayals, speeches, rallies, YouTube videos, reality television appearances, and interviews that construct a Manichean world of victims and perpetrators, innocents and wrongdoers.
Genre and mode can work together in authoritarian regimes. In Europe’s twentieth century fascisms, for example, film melodrama was a key technology: indeed, Nazi Germany made ten times as many melodramas as they did war films. In the Philippines, melodrama played a key role in securing authoritarian rule through ‘the melodramatic story of how Marcos rose to power by creating a national family, a political fantasy that was both seductive and treacherous in its claims to transform the nation into a postcolonial utopia via a dictatorship of love.’5 This political fantasy was propelled by the clever use of film. The 1965 film Iginuhit ng Tadhana (Drawn by Destiny) was key to Ferdinand Marcos’ presidential campaign: his love story with Imelda was presented as his romantic destiny, and the rule of this glamorous, powerful couple was then the destiny of the nation. Their cinematic portrayal could then be naturalised by other forms of political communication. A concerted campaign to rebrand the Marcos family and pave the way for their return to power in the twenty-first century has been equally reliant on melodrama, with the telenovela acting as the generic source material through which BongBong Marcos has crafted his image as the underdog protagonist (or bida, in the idiom of the telenovela) in the national drama.6
Here, however, I want to focus on American political aesthetics. An example from Trump’s first presidency is instructive. Following his appointment of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, several women, including Christine Blasey Ford who had met Kavanaugh as a teenager, accused him of sexual assault. Ford’s testimony, given at a televised Senate judiciary committee, was a key inflection point in Trump’s first term in office. Her testimony mirrors a conventional narrative structure from film melodrama in which the plot turns on rape committed by an aristocratic villain. While Trump went on to mock and belittle Ford, his initial response tells us something more complex: ‘‘I think her testimony was very compelling. She looks like a very fine woman to me… a very fine woman. And I thought that Brett’s testimony, likewise, was really something that I haven’t seen before. It was incredible, an incredible moment in the history of our country. But that certainly she was a very credible witness, very good in many respects.’ In this ‘review’ given on television news, Trump models an audience’s response to film melodrama. In these more sympathetic comments on Ford (overshadowed by the later sneering) we catch a glimpse of an underlying cultural logic which channels melodrama’s high emotion, domestic setting, eroticisation of sexual violence, and personalisation of political conflict into the theatre of political communications.
This sense of high sentiment is also expressed in Trump’s verbal ticks (Sad! Beautiful!). While he is often considered as a ‘strong man,’ channelling rage and ressentiment, equally we might view his style as eschewing the sobriety of the statesman in favour of one that privileges intimacy, emotion, and intensity. This dimension of right wing repertoires of masculinity can be seen in the appeal of Jordan Peterson, whose tremulous voice often gives way to sobs when he speaks about the suffering of boys and men. In an extended interview on Piers Morgan Uncensored (which boasts over 4 million YouTube subscribers), Peterson asserts through his tears that what moves him is the ‘paradoxical combination of depth of suffering and ease of rectification.’ Arguably, this description could apply to melodrama, which insists on a certain moral clarity in which the viewer’s compassion is heightened by the wanton, avoidable nature of a character’s pain. Morgan’s response to Peterson is also instructive. Like Trump, he offers a kind of review: ‘I think this has been our best interview.’ His praise for Peterson’s performance turns on its authenticity: ‘the fact it moves you so much […] says it all. If you didn’t genuinely care you wouldn’t get emotional talking about this stuff.’7 As in melodrama, the claim of moral simplicity is tied to the experience of high emotion: sincerity acts as a guarantor of truth.
We can trace the thread of melodrama through seemingly disparate cultural sites. Critics have rightly identified the sports entertainment franchise WWE as a key part of Trump’s ascendency, not only through his participation (as performer and as financial backer), but also in the way he draws from its narrative playbook (alternating between being a ‘face’ and a ‘heel’; always remaining ‘in character’ as per the practice of ‘kayfabe’). If we consider melodrama as a mode rather than a genre, we can detach it from its coding as women’s cinema, and see how professional wrestling ‘describes conflict in a polemical manner, avoiding elaboration of the low-contrast shades of facts and details.’8 A proposed incest storyline in WWE (in which the franchiser owner Vince McMahon was to father his daughter’s child) bears an uncanny resemblance to Trump’s own disturbing remarks (“If Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her”). However tawdry, the appeal of these plot lines goes beyond the particular sexual aggression incubating in these high-profile families and draws on older and more established narrative currents. Where in Greek tragedy, the fate of the realm is at stake, in these sleazy small screen narratives, the blunt narrativisation of incestuous desire only reveals a kind of shamelessness. While we may watch in rapt fascination, we feel neither implicated nor indignant: these are just rich, famous people that know no limits and can be held to no moral or social standard. As Cecilia Lero observes in the Filipino context, ‘the image of politics as exclusive to elite families’ has a demobilizing effect.9 We are invited not to judge, which would imply some relationship of parity, but to spectate, cementing the position of subordination to power that fascistic politics requires.
Nonetheless, I want to insist screen melodrama has no determinate or inevitable relationship with hard right politics. Indeed, I would argue that its potency can be used to more progressive ends, for example in the work of Barry Jenkins (Moonlight, 2016; If Beale Street Could Talk, 2018), in the longstanding BBC drama, Call the Midwife, and the recent A. V. Rockwell film A Thousand and One (2023). The latter is particularly instructive. Set in New York between 1994 and 2005, the film follows Inez, a young woman leaving Rikers Island aged 22, carrying the weight of a life lived in the care system, on the streets, and in prison. Returning to Brooklyn, she is searching for Terry, the child she left behind. Unable to bear the thought of his likely suffering as a ward of the state, Inez takes Terry, and the two escape to Harlem. Later, Inez’ lover (though not the father of Terry) also returns from prison, and the three of them forge a family in the teeth of criminalisation, gentrification, and poverty.
Though the characters bear the deep wounds of abandonment, they seek – and sometimes find – sanctuary in each other. The film allows only brief moments of respite for Inez, Terry, and Lucky – so too for the viewer. More often, we see their bids for connection fail or falter, as each character finds it easier to express affection and desire through anger. Yet though the sequences of joy or intimacy are limited, they act as the film’s core, sustaining its forays into more melodramatic territory. Crucially, however, unlike in authoritarian melodrama, the limits the characters encounter are not attributed to an individual ‘villain’ but a broader set of forces. Gary Gunn’s languid score is punctuated by real audio clips of New York Mayors, Rudi Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, setting out their neoliberal, socially cleansed vision of New York. The characters through which their agenda is enacted – the landlords, teachers, and social workers – are menacing but not ‘evil’. In its use of the double gesture, the film implies that the villains too are products of circumstances – they too could be redeemed. Crucially, the protagonist is no innocent victim: rather, the film’s moral clarity is generated by the complexity of Inez, who Teyana Taylor plays as defiant, ruthless, quick to criticise and even use violence, as well as determined, resourceful, and loyal. She is not always likeable, but we are under no illusions as to why she might have developed a hard exterior, a sharp tongue, and a disdain for authority. As the narrative hurtles towards a devastating revelation, moral clarity is found not in the innocence of the characters but in the abjection, cruelty, and absurdity of the system that condemns them. Watching A Thousand and One as Zohran Mamdani sets out his own vision of urban life – with a programme that would reclaim New York City for Inez, Lucky, and Terry – the film’s political critique is sharpened by the possibility of its activation.
The risk for us, however, is that, even from below, melodrama may invite spectatorship. We are asked to assess the authenticity of another’s tears, to review their pain, to make political judgements based on a performance of emotional depth. Strong feeling is neither inherently communal (as affect theorists insist) nor entirely individualising (as Enlightenment thinking warned). Rather, compassion for suffering pulls in both directions, albeit unevenly. This is less a problem for the right, who largely seek supine spectators. But if one hopes for a left political subject – a subject capable of collective action – we can neither afford to rely on high emotion, nor to avoid it.
- Richard Seymour, Disaster Nationalism: The Downfall of Liberal Civilization (London: Verso Books, 2024) ↩︎
- Gargi Bhattacharyya, “We, the heartbroken,” Pluto Press (blog), posted 2020, accessed September 5, 2025, Pluto Press, https://www.plutobooks.com/blog/we-the-heartbroken ↩︎
- Scott Peeples and Alexandra Schneider, “Melodrama and the Double Gesture,” Journal of Film and Media Studies 12, no. 2 (2024): 130. ↩︎
- Laura Julia Heins, “The Domestic War: Film Melodrama and German Fascism” (PhD diss., Yale University, 2005). ↩︎
- Talitha Espiritu, Passionate Revolutions: The Media and the Rise and Fall of the Marcos Regime (Athens: Ohio University Press, 2017). ↩︎
- Cecilia Lero, “Why Philippine Politics Resembles a Modern-Day Telenovela,” Journal of Democracy, Online Exclusive, July 2024, accessed September 5, 2025, Journal of Democracy, https://www.journalofdemocracy.org/online-exclusive/why-philippine-politics-resembles-a-modern-day-telenovela/ ↩︎
- “Jordan Peterson in Tears During Piers Morgan Interview,” Piers Morgan Uncensored, YouTube video, 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2EGmmoCxro&t=4145s ↩︎
- Heins ↩︎
- Lero ↩︎