Suffering and the edges of melodrama.

Suffering occupies a central place vis-à-vis both melodrama and tragedy, and draws attention to their closeness, despite considerable efforts to distinguish between them. The multiple relations between tragedy and melodrama become clearer when we reflect deeply on the place and role of suffering. My goal in this essay is to cast some light on how suffering works around the edges of melodrama, even as it produces melodramatic performance, in a way that accentuates the tragedy of suffering. I do so by narrating a painful ethnographic vignette from a project on Indigenous displacement, to illuminate how suffering both generates melodrama as well as flickers around its edges, reflecting the multidimensional character of melodrama itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]