Over Dramatic Panic!

Okay, so I am not exactly panicking but I have always had a flair for the dramatic and a need for attention.

Just ask my family who spent many a day watching me in plays or at dance recitals.  Till this day any time I look back on my times as a tiny dancer I can see my brother sitting in the audience playing his game boy until it is my class' turn to dance. That is when mom would tell him to pause the game and for the 3-5 minutes I was on stage he patiently watched his younger sister perform.   Or there were the times that I would pester my mom to “look at me” and then jump and turn in a circle. That’s it. Just jump and turn. Jump and turn. I might add arms and say, “number 1, number 2” depend on where my arms were placed.  Man my mom loves me.

But enough memory lane for now.  My current drama queen panic is it has been a month and a half since starting this crazy PhD. thing and I still have no idea what I want to write my dissertation on.  Well I have an idea but I don’t know if it is good. I know in its current form it isn’t narrow enough but I don’t know if I should even bother narrowing it down or just scrap it and start over.  If I tell you what it is do you promise not to laugh?  Pinky swear?

I want to look at the character actress. I want to look at the actress that doesn’t play the sweet ingénue role, that isn’t allowed to perform as herself because she isn’t Hollywood’s standard of beauty. Often these women are comedians or play mostly comic roles. They are the supporting actresses or the best friends to the Julia Robertses, or the Catherine Zeta Jonses of the film industry.  Think Rebel Wilson, Melissa McCarthy, Carol Burnett, etc. 

I find the work that these women put into these roles fascinating because it is so very visible to an audience.  A majority of the roles offered to and performed by leading ladies are roles that on the surface don’t require a lot of intense characterization.  For example, think about Julia Roberts in Notting Hill, Ocean’s 11, Mona Lisa’s Smile, and Pretty Woman.  To my young scholars eye, there is not a lot of change in Ms. Robert’s acting.  Costuming and dialogue help tremendously in creating a character but the level of work put into the characterization is pretty much unchanged.

Contrastingly, Melissa McCarthy’s work is drastically different from project to project.  If you compare her work on Gilmour Girls to Bridesmaids to her new film Identity Thief you see a different person on screen. A different character, a different person is present.

Now I will put a disclaimer up and say that there are exceptions to every rule blah blah blah.  But just humor me till the end of this post.

So as John would put it, So what and why now?   Well I think so what because the 20^th and 21^st centuries are not the only times when character actresses are present.  There is a history in theatre, film and television that should be marked I think.  I answer the why now with,  these women are physically and mentally laboring in a much more noticeable way but are not receiving institutional recognition from the different awards groups.  Historically, comedy has been the crowd pleaser but drama is what wins the awards. Audiences appreciate the work these character actresses do but the performance industries do not recognize it as work.

Anyway that is what I got. Is it a dissertation?  Can it be a book?  I don’t know that I have the answer two those questions yet but I still got time right? 

Feeling less panicked.

Evleen