Sentimentality in the Suburban Ensemble Dramedy: A Response to Berlant’s Optimism-Realism Binary

Abstract

Lauren Berlant has famously problematised the sense of communal belonging wrought by sentimental humanism, yet in so doing has presumed a binary between optimism and realism, and tendered new strictures on acceptable affect. In suburban ensemble cinema we find an alternate view: sentimentality as a place of transition, and a more complex taxonomy of human relationality.