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The Hollywood Woman's film, retrospectively called “The Weepie,” and now sometimes considered a camp genre, flourished in the 1940s and l950s in American cinema. Typical plot configurations include a wronged woman, often abused or abandoned by a man, who makes her way in the world. She finds success through overcoming financial hardship, sometimes with a “good man.” But that success can be undermined by a “bad” daughter. Mother/daughter relationships, both idealized and difficult, provided many tears for the then Weepie audiences, both tears of joy and triumph and of betrayal and loss. Prime examples of the Weepie include Stella Dallas , Mildred Pierce , and Imitation of Life .
Todd Haynes, considered a master of New Queer Cinema, adapts the Patricia Highsmith novel The Price of Salt (1952/2015) into a complex and fascinating set of variations in plot and relationships in Carol. Drawing from the Hollywood Woman's film and the pulp fiction genre of the Tragic Lesbian novel, Haynes subverts, realigns, and overturns the normative expectations of each narrative form through an inventive use of queer aesthetics. Though the film is called Carol, it is important we understand the significance of the title: Carol is a character who primarily functions as the object of Therese's gaze. Therese is the main character. She establishes the primary point of view — a subjective position later reinforced when she takes up her camera to photograph Carol. Throughout the film, Carol exhibits herself as the object of desire, both as cinematic icon