ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses that popular film of the 1970s opened up a space for representing new kinds of social relationships specifically by means of its use of melodramatic formulas. The concept of 'Active kinship' has been criticized by scholars because embedded in the term is the assumption that social relationships are false, as compared to their 'true', biological counterparts. In contrast to contemporary parallel cinema, in which social injustice is described through a harsh realism and original, psychologically probing plots and characters, the social angst of the angry young man is not represented in opposition to formulas but by means of them. The figure is thus often positioned as a son, or a brother, or a lover; familial and romantic structures serve as background against which this more dynamic figure is placed and in relation to which his meaning emerges.
