FREE ESSAY ON SOAP OPERA GENRE

SOAP OPERA GENRE

SOAP OPERA GENRE
Before I saw Neighbours, I didn't know there was an Australia
(Jerry Hall, The Clive James Show, UK, 31 December, 1989)
T
he soap opera genre originated in American radio serials of the 1930s, and owes the name
to the sponsorship of some of these programs by major soap powder companies. Proctor and
Gamble and other soap companies were the most common sponsors, and soon the genre of
'soap opera' had been labeled. Like many television genres (e.g. news and quiz shows),
the soap opera is a genre originally drawn from radio rather than film.
Television soap operas are long-running serials traditionally based on the close study of
personal relationships within the everyday life of its characters. Soaps are a consistent
set of values based on personal relationships, on women's responsibility for the
maintenance of these relationships and the applicability of the family model to
structures. In soap operas at least one story line is carried over from one episode to
the next. Successful soaps may continue for many years: so new viewers have to be able to
join in at any stage in the serial. In serials, the passage of time also appears to
reflect 'real time' for the viewers: in long-running soaps the characters age as the
viewers do. Christine Geraghty (1991, p. 11) notes that 'the longer they run the more
impossible it seems to imagine them ending.' There are sometimes allusions to major
topical events in the world outside the programs.
Soap operas have attempted to articulate social change through issues of race, class and
sexuality. In dealing with what are often perceived to be awkward issues soap operas make
good stories along the emotional lines of the characters. Christine Geraghty (1991, p.
147) 'While it seeks to accommodate change, it tries to do so on the basis of suppressing
difference rather than acknowledging and welcoming what it offers.' Soap operas use the
dramatisation of social issues to generate a greater sense of realism for the viewer.
Like the melodrama genre, the soap opera genre shares such features as moral
polarization, strong emotions, female orientation, unlikely coincidences, and excess.
Another related genre is the literary romance, with which it shares features such as
simplified characters, female orientation and episodic narrative. However, soaps do not
share with these forms the happy ending or the idealized characters.
Some media theorists distinguish between styles of TV programs, which are broadly
'masculine' or 'feminine'. Those seen as typically masculine include action/adventure
programs, police shows and westerns; those seen as more 'feminine' include soap operas
and sitcoms. Action-adventures define men in relation to power, authority, aggression and
technology. Soap operas define women in relation to a concern with the family.
For example in Neighbours the love triangle between Karl Kennedy, a married man and his
secretary Sarah. Viewers knew the secret of the affair however; it was not by Susan
Kennedy, or the Ramsey Street community. Therefore allowing the secret to maintain it's
status and continue to be a valid plot thread. Although Karl has attempted to institute
some redressive action, by taking a holiday with his wife, the crisis still exists. As
there has been no redressive action directed towards Sarah the crisis still exists in the
minds of the viewer. This all to common love triangle in soap operas suggests to the
viewer about what is right and wrong in a relationship. Suggesting that infidelity is
wrong and that the family should come first. Bean (1982:163) writes  by creating
situations that violate the ideal order of the family the soap opera will communicate to
its audience about family life.
Recurrent themes in soap opera include love, courtship's, secrets, marriages, divorces,
deaths, scams and disappearances. Gossip is a key feature in soaps (usually absent from
other genres): in part it acts as a commentary on the action. Geraghty notes that 'more
frequently than other TV genres, soaps feature women characters normally excluded by
their age, appearance or status' (1991, p. 17). These themes are reoccurring and
repetitive and become the thread of each story. With each different character going
through all of these themes at one stage, the different stages of social drama get
repeated often.
However, the themes can also be linked to one another to create more drama for the
audience. Such as in Neighbours, Joel and Sally are in the beginning stage of their
romance (courtship), however he also has strong feelings for Libby (love) and Drew is the
only one who knows about it (secret).
Television has become the major socializing agent competing with family, school, peers,
community and church. (Kottak citing Comstock et al., 1996:135). It is for this reason
that the above themes are so prevalent in Soap operas such as 'Neighbours' as it is
competing with the interest in our every day lives. Neighbours gives us disturbances of
the normal and regular... to give us greater insight into the normal (Turner 1974:34).
Unconscious or atemporal structures of what people believe they do, ought to do, or would
like to do discussed by Turner helps to explain what Neighbours portrays, and why it can
compete with our every day lives (Turner citing Richards, 1974:36).
Broadcast serials have the advantage of a regular time-slot (often more than once a
week), but even if some viewers miss it, they can easily catch up with events. Any key
information that might have been missed is worked into the plot when necessary.
Nevertheless knowledge of previous events can usefully be brought to bear by habitual
viewers, and doing so is part of the pleasure of viewing for them. Viewers also in an
omniscient position, know more than any character does. The form is unique in offering
viewers the chance to engage in informed speculation about possible turn of events.
Recognising how soap operas provide 'a continuing renewal of the familiar', interviews
with and observation of soap fans show that the sharing of information and opinion after
the program is over is as important to viewers as the actual following of the stories.
Soap operas are pleasurable because they do not surprise the audience or try to change
attitudes. Instead soap operas offer a reassurance that the world is not changing as
quickly as it seems. Soap operas deal with the victory of old fashioned and traditional
certainties over evanescent fashions that assail them.
Unlike a film or a series, there is always a wide range of characters in a soap opera
(which means that no single character is indispensable). The large cast and the
possibility of casual viewers necessitates rapid characterization and the use of
recognizable 'types'.
Soaps are frequently derided by some critics for being full of cliches and stereotypes,
for having shoddy sets, for being badly acted, trivial, predictable and so on. Soap
viewers (often assumed to be only women, and in particular working-class housewives) are
characterized unfairly as naive escapists. Given the great popularity of the genre, such
criticisms can be seen as culturally elitist. Robert Allen (1992, p. 112) argues that 'to
emphasize what happens when in soaps (in semiotic terms the syntagmatic dimension) is to
underestimate the equal importance of who relates this to whom (the paradigmatic
dimension).'
Some feminist theorists have argued that soap operas spring from a feminine aesthetic, in
contrast to most prime time TV. Soaps are unlike traditional dramas (e.g. sit-coms) which
have a beginning, middle and an end: soaps have no beginning or end, no structural
closure. They do not build up towards an ending or closure of meaning. Viewers can join a
soap opera at any point. There is no single narrative line: several stories are woven
together over a number of episodes. In this sense the plots of soaps are not linear.
The structure of soaps is complex and there is no final word on any issue. A soap
involves multiple perspectives and no consensus: ambivalence and contradiction is
characteristic of the genre. There is no single 'hero' where the preferred reading
involves identification with this character), and the wide range of characters in soaps
offers viewers a great deal of choice regarding those with which they might identify.
'All this leaves soaps particularly open to individual interpretations (more than
television documentaries,' suggests David Buckingham 1987, p. 36).
Tania Modleski (1982) argues that the structural openness of soaps is an essentially
'feminine' narrative form. She argues that pleasure in narrative focuses on closure,
whilst soaps delay resolution and make anticipation an end in itself. She also argues
that masculine narratives 'inscribe' in the text an implied male reader who becomes
increasingly omnipotent whilst the soap has 'the ideal mother' as inscribed reader.
Narrative interests are diffused among many characters and her power to resolve their
problems is limited. The reader is the mother as sympathetic listener to all sides.
Soaps make consequences more important than actions, involve many complications, and
avoid closure. In soaps dialogue blurs and delays. There is no single hero in soaps, no
privileged moral perspective, multiple narrative lines and few certainties. Viewers tend
to feel involved interpreting events from the perspective of characters similar to
themselves or to those they know.
For example in Neighbours Hannah Martin made a number of phone calls to a physic line
(action), which cost her father a great deal of money. However, the consequence of this
has become a plot thread for many episodes as Hannah not only has had to get a job to pay
for the bill but also must pay for all of her local phone calls. This has also led to
problems with her stepmother Ruth monitoring this consequence. Once again focussing on
the family element of a soap opera.
Not much seems to 'happen' in many soap operas because there is little rapid action. In
soaps what matters is the effect of events on the characters, This is revealed through
characters talking to each other. Charlotte Brunsdon argues that the question guiding a
soap story is not 'What will happen next?' but 'What kind of person is this?' (In
Geraghty 1991, p. 46). Such a form invites viewers to offer their own comments.
John Fiske (in Seiter et al. 1989, p. 68) notes that minimal post-production work on
'realist' soaps (leaving in 'dead' bits) may be cost-cutting, but it also suggests more
'realism' than in heavily edited program's, suggesting the 'now' of the events on screen.
Published stories about the characters in soaps and the actors who play them link the
world of the soap with the outside world, but they also allow viewers to treat the soap
as a kind of game.
Ien Ang (1985, pg45) argues that watching soaps involves a kind of psychological realism
for the viewer: an emotional realism, which exists at the connotative level. This offers
less concrete, more 'symbolic representations of more general living experiences' which
viewers find recognizably 'true to life'. In such a case, 'what is recognized as real is
not knowledge of the world, but a subjective experience of the world: a structure of
feeling' For many viewers of soap operas this was a tragic structure of feeling: evoking
the idea that happiness is precarious.
Viewers familiar with the characters and conventions of a particular soap may often judge
the program largely in its own terms (or perhaps in terms of the genre) rather than with
reference to some external 'reality'. For instance, is a character's current behaviour
consistent with what we have learnt over time about that character? The soap may be
accepted to some extent as a world in its own right, in which slightly different rules
may sometimes apply. This is of course the basis for the 'willing suspension of
disbelief' on which drama depends.
Producers sometimes remark that realistic drama offers a slice of life with the duller
bits cut out, and that long-running soaps are even more realistic than other forms
because less has to be excluded
Jordan (in Dyer 1981) identifies several broad stereotypes used extensively in soap
operas, Grandmother figures; marriageable characters (mature, sexy, women; spinsterly
types; young women; mature, sexy, men; fearful, withdrawn men; conventional young men);
married couples; rogues (including 'ne'er-do-wells' and confidence tricksters).
Buckingham refers also refers to the use of the stereotypes of 'the gossip', 'the
bastard' and 'the tart'. Anthony Easthope adds 'the good girl', and Peter Buckman cites
'the decent husband', 'the good woman', 'the villain' and 'the bitch' (in Geraghty 1991,
p. 132). Geraghty herself adds 'the career woman' (ibid., p. 135ff). Suggesting that soap
opera characters and stories draw on fundamental human traits
Maire Messenger Davies suggests that 'nothing goes wrong in Neighbours for very long and
that's why children like it' (in Hart 1991, p. 136).
Soaps in general have a predominantly female audience, although prime-time soaps such as
Dallas are deliberately aimed at a wider audience. According to Ang, and hardly
surprisingly, in Dallas the main interest for men was in business relations and problem
and the power and wealth shown, whereas for women were more often interested in the
family issues and love affairs. In the case of Dallas it is clear that the program meant
something different for female viewers compared with male viewers.
In 'realist' soaps, female characters are portrayed as more central than in action drama,
as ordinary people coping with everyday problems. Watching the characters in a soap opera
deal with everyday problems allows the viewers a sense of normality and helps them to
deal with their problems in comparison. Certainly soaps tend to appeal to those who value
the personal and domestic world. The audience for such soaps does include men, but some
theorists argue that the gender identity of the viewer is 'inscribed' in programs, and
that typically with soaps the inscribed viewer has a traditional female gender identity.
And 'the competencies necessary for reading soap opera are most likely to have been
acquired by those persons culturally constructed through discourses of femininity'
(Morley 1992, p. 129).
Dorothy Hobson interviewed women office workers in Birmingham and found that their
free-time conversation was often based on their soap opera viewing. Some had begun
watching simply because they had discovered how central it seemed to be in lunchtime
discussions. It involved anticipating what might happen next, discussing the significance
of recent events and relating them to their own experiences. Hobson argues that women
typically use soaps as a way of talking indirectly about their own attitudes and
behaviour (in Seiter et al. 1989: pp. 150-67). Geraghty (1991, p. 123) also notes that
there is some evidence that families use soaps as a way of raising and discussing awkward
situations. Most viewers seem to oscillate between involvement and distance in the ways
in which they engage with soaps. For example in Home and Away, the issues of rape,
teenage sex and pregnancy, single parenting, epilepsy, drug addiction, abortion,
infidelity, and death are all issues in which the characters have dealt with. This allows
the audience to discuss these issues without talking about themselves. This allows many
controversial issues to be discussed in the family home, to educate the viewers.
The viewer is often engaged in the social drama, of knowing a breach to come or already
being in a crisis before the characters of the show are. The viewer wants to be part of
the community of the soap opera such as Neighbours and Home and Away, to share their
knowledge of the reoccurent themes that are happening. If we all lived in Summer Bay or
on Ramsey Street, we would be very attractive, doing well at school/university, have a
great job, fantastic children, good at sport, happily married, and no problems for very
long. This allows the viewer to feel like they could be living in the ideal world where
you can do anything, and any problems that you may have will not last too long.
References
Geraghty, Christine (1991)
Sex, Race, and Class : The pressures for Change
In Women and Soap opera: A study of prime time soaps
Polity Press UK
Allen, Robert C. (1992): Channels of Discourse,
Reassembled (2nd edn.). London: Routledge
Ang, Ien (1985):
Dallas and the ideology of mass culture
In Watching Dallas: Soap Opera and the Melodramatic Imagination.
Routledge, NY, London: Methuen
Crofts, Stephen (1994)
Global Neighbours in
Tommorrow Never Knows: Soap on Australian Television
Edited by Bowles, Kate nad Turnbull, Sue
Australian Film Commission
Bean, Susan S (1982)
Soap Operas: sagas of American kinship in J.B. Cole (ed.)
Anthropology for the eighties: introductory readings
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Kottak, Conrad Phillip (1996)
The Media, Development and Social Change
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University of Michigan Press: Ann Arbor
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Mass Media and Society.
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Dyer, Richard (ed.) (1981):
Coronation Street.
London: British Film Institute
Turner, V (1974)
Social Dramas and ritual metaphors
In V.Turner, Dramas, fields and metaphors: symbolic action in human society
Cornell University Press: Ithaca
Hobson, Dorothy (1982):
Crossroads - The Drama of a Soap. London: Methuen
Modleski, Tania (1982):
Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women.
Hamden, CT: Archon
Morley, David (1992):
Television Audiences and Cultural Studies.
London: Routledge
Coward, Rosalind (1987)
Women's Programmes: Why not?
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Edited by Baehr, Helen, and Dyer, Gillian
Pandora Press
Tulloch, John and Moron, Allen
'Women Like Gossip': The family audience
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