Rather, melodrama is a peculiarly democratic and American form that seeks dramatic revelation of emotional truths through a dialectic of pathos and action. It is the foundation of the classic Hollywood movie … If emotional and moral registers are sounded, if a work invites us to feel sympathy for the virtues of beset victims, if the narrative trajectory is ultimately more concerned with a retrieval and staging of innocence than with the psychological causes of motives and action, then the operative mode is melodrama.

Linda Williams, “Melodrama Revised,” Refiguring American Film Genres: Theory and History (1998)

I wasn’t going to talk about Lana Del Rey, because after Rob Harvilla, what more can you say? — but I think this, her affinity for melodrama, is the missing link connecting her love of classic Hollywood, her indulgent pathos, and her deployment of the iconography of Americana.

Ah, which I see I sort of hinted at in my original “Video Games” review anyway.

This relates to Tom saying that he likes Born to Die because he is “a sucker for someone turning up with a well-worked-through aesthetic.” I appreciated, say, Everclear, or Placebo, for the same reason. Here’s something I wrote about Everclear a few years back that applies to LDR when her songs work:

To say that [Art] Alexakis romanticized these characters and glorified their lifestyles isn’t a criticism; his pulpy, luridly exploitive treatment is exactly why these albums are so enjoyable.