Your "thesis" ignores five major strengths of Sirk's melodramas, (not to mention the great films he made outside of that genre):

Yeah, even if you're not carried away by the emotional energy, the films repay second or third viewings. His bitter irony is more easily spotted once you're acquainted with the plot. To the critique of consumerism, I'll just submit that TV set in All That Heaven Allows as the most obvious example, but there are…

"It's the people who treat Sirk as a great subversive and cultural critic that I have a harder time buying."

But the story derives from the Calvinist culture of its setting, where salvation and damnation are preordained and you live in constant anxiety that you may be a fraud— until death makes it clear. Grace is pre-venient and mysterious. Caleb gets it, the twins don't; Katharine may or may not be saved; Thomasin and her…

Puritans were human beings. They loved one another just like you love the ones you love. They wanted the best for their children and believed sincerely in the goodness of their faith. Their conception of the world was punitive and sexist, but it doesn't follow that they all beat their wives and daughters or walked…