Moral Occult

According to what I have read from Brook's, "The Melodramatic Imagination", I can tell that what he call's the "moral occult" is involved in many melodramas. Peter Brooks mentions that melodrama is a way for the characters of a story to, "...give voice to their deepest feelings, dramatize through their heightened and polarized words and gestures the whole lesson of their relationship"(Brooks pg. 4). I feel that this relates to the moral occult of a melodrama because Brook's defines a moral occult as "spiritual values" that are both hidden and obvious with in the characters' reality. This relates to the way that directors and writers of both television shows and films choose to portray the story to their viewers. For example, in the film, All That Heaven Allows, the main character, Cary, struggles with whether or not she should, Ron Kirby, her gardener of several years. Cary fell in love with Ron, thinking that when she would tell her children that she was going to marry him they would not make as big of a deal out of it as they did. Meanwhile, the audience was able predict that the children would not be approving of their relationship, and they were not. Once Cary finally realized what her reality had to be, she broke off her engagement with Ron. Cary wanted to make her children happy, and that became her reality, until one day Ron was in a horrible accident. Once Cary found out that Ron was hurt, she could no longer push her love for Ron to the back of her mind. With a story like this, a viewer is bound to find this type of ending predictable because of what is known as the "moral occult" of a melodrama.

All That Heaven Allows

In the movie, All That Heaven Allows, the main character Cary finds herself in a dilemma when her children are making her choose between the family's image and the new love in her life, Ron Kirby. Cary cared about her family's image in the small town they called home, so she thought choosing her children over the man she was supposed to marry was the right choice. Cary had to choose between the love of her life and her children because her children did not react well to her desire to marry a much younger and less classy man. The children were worried about their family image and their father's legacy in the small town. The children thought that Cary marrying a lower class man would shame their deceased father and shame their entire family. Cary's children were scared of what the town would think of their mother selling the house their family has lived in for generations to move in to a regenerated mill on Ron Kirby's land. It was not only the children that disapproved of their mother's relationship but it was also Cary's friends and acquaintances that disapproved of Ron. Cary's friends only cared about their appearance and the amount of money they had, but Ron was all about nature and caring for others besides himself.  There was a scene in the movie when Cary comes home from a night out with Ron, and her son Ned is waiting up for her at home. When Cary enters her house in this scene, the lighting is very dark, and the music is very over the top and dramatic. Within this very over dramatized scene Ned tells his mother that he is very disappointed in her and that if she does not choose to break it off with Ron for the sam of the family, he tells her he will never speak to her again. A quote from the book that we are currently reading depicts why dark lighting was chose for this scene, "...extremely artificial lighting effects are achieved that represent the mood of a scene or a character rather than aiming for more naturalistic lighting" (John Mercer, Martin Shingler 56).  This perfectly explains why the scene is so dimly lit.