3 Questions

1. Is it ironic that the "villain" in Mickey's Mellerdrammer is the white clansman? Or did Walt Disney do it on purpose? This was created in 1933, a time when racism was still abundant in the country, so what message was Disney trying to get across to his audience?

2. Williams argues "that since the mid-nineteenth century, melodrama has been, for better or worse, the primary way in which mainstream American culture has dealt with the moral dilemma of having first enslaved and then withheld equal rights to generations of African Americans" (pg. 44). Would she argue that nowadays, melodrama is attempting to deal with the prejudice against women/minorities/the LGBT community?

3. Williams says that The Birth of A Nation "generated racial controversies that altered the way white Americans felt about blacks, and how they felt about being white" (pg. 98). It made "the black man into an object of white fear and loathing" (pg. 99). What would Williams say about Mickey's Mellerdrammer? How would she compare the two melodramas? What would she say about the two opposite pieces?