Abstract

The conflict between good and evil at the heart of melodrama is personified through the interactions and conduct of its villains and heroes. Yet these characters are not simply defined by their actions. Instead, their behaviour is often framed as an inherent flaw or positive trait attributable to the characters’ background. This chapter considers the implications of this relationship through a comparative analysis of material from nineteenth-century military melodramas and their cinematic counterpart, the Anglo-American war film. Examining the genealogy of these villainous and heroic archetypes illustrates and expands upon Edward Said’s proposal that television, film and other
media forms have “intensified the hold of nineteenth-century academic and imaginative demonology of the mysterious Orient” (Said 1978: 26).