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The Soap Opera and Its Affect on Media, Culture, and Society. Mr. Hughes. What is Culture?.
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The Soap Opera and Its Affect on Media, Culture, and Society Mr. Hughes
What is Culture? • Popular culture, or pop culture, is the vernacular (people's) culture that prevails in a modern society. The content of popular culture is determined in large part by industries that disseminate cultural material, for example the film, television, and publishing industries, as well as the news media.
Definition of Soap Opera • A soap opera is an ongoing, episodic work of fiction, usually broadcast on television or radio. They have existed as an entertainment long enough for audiences to recognize them simply by the term soap. • 'Soap' refers to their origins as radio broadcasts in which various soap manufacturers were the show's sponsors. What differentiates a soap from other television drama programs is their open-ended nature. Plots run concurrently, intersect, and lead into further developments.
Definition of Soap Opera • There is some rotation of both storylines and actors so any given storyline or actor will appear in some but usually not all of a week's worth of episodes. Soap operas rarely "wrap things up" story wise, and generally avoid bringing all the current storylines to a conclusion at the same time. When one storyline ends there are always several other story threads at differing stages of development. Soap opera episodes invariably end on some sort of cliffhanger. • Name 5 Daytime Soap Opera’s
Evening soap operas sometimes differ from this general format and are more likely to feature the entire cast in each episode, and to represent all current storylines in each episode. Additionally evening soap operas and other serials that run for only part of the year tend to bring things to a dramatic end of season cliffhanger. Some of the larger, disaster cliffhangers that affect a large proportion of the cast sometimes serve to bring all current storylines together.
Definition of "soap operas" Today, we know many different kinds of soap operas: • Daily soaps (dailies)- broadcasted every day of the week with commercial breaks • Weekly soaps (weeklies)- broadcasted once a week • Docu soaps - soaps with a "documentary touch"; different strands are interwoven like in daily soaps; connecting reality and fiction • Reality soaps- similar to docu soaps, main focus on the network of relationships cut according to narrative structure of daily soaps (e.g. "Big Brother") • Docu reality soaps- similar to docu soaps, real-existing people are the characters (e.g. "The Osbournes") • "Genre" soaps - e.g. medical soaps, teenager soaps etc.
A brief history of the "Soap Opera" • The history of "soaps" roots in works like fairy tales and melodramas of 19th century as well as the serialized novels (cliffhangers) of the 19th and 20th century. • But these are just predeccessors of the soap opera which are long gone but not forgotten since some of the characteristic traits of the formats are still visible today. • The soap opera in its form as we know it today, was first created in the USA.
It started on the radio... • It all started with the first daytime serial or radio soap called "(Oxydol's Own) Ma Perkins" in 1933. • It was a marketing concept of "Procter & Gamble" (P&G) which had the idea of creating radio plays for housewives which were connected with their products. Originally, it was thought to be just a marketing study, but the results were overwhelming. The never-ending stories were soon very popular and millions of housewives identified themselves with the heroines of the stories, they suffered and loved with them.
...but how did the soap operas find their way from radio to TV? How TV changed the soap opera... • The transfer of the format from radio TV is a very interesting "shift" in the history of soap operas. • In 1947, the first TV soap opera appeared which was called "A Women to Remember". • In 1961, CBS discontinued the last radio soap. • The first British soap was "Coronation Street", which was aired for the first time in 1960. • This soap is interesting in many ways. First of all, it broke the tradition of settling in a well-off environment. Coronation Street takes place in the working class. Many British soaps followed (e.g. "Eastenders" and "Brookside") and also included political issues in the story line. • The longest soap opera ever told is "The Guiding Light" (in Germany known as "Springfield Story"- not the Simpsons, of course) which has just recently been cancelled.
'Fables and endless genealogies: soap opera and women's culture' “…In this paper we have attempted to analyse soaps in terms of their position in our own, that is women's culture. Our conclusion is that soaps are an important source of pleasure, and indeed solidarity, among women because they are closely integrated with women's oral culture which values talk itself as a source of pleasure and power. The silencing and discounting of feminine voices and feminine discourse as we have described it is not a new idea, nor is the fact that there are fissures in many types of popular culture enjoyed by women where feminine discourse continues to emerge. Our purpose here is, like soaps, to make public the domestic and thereby to politicise and affirm the centrality of talking in women's lives.” Mary Ellen Brown & Linda Barwick
Therefore… • Soaps then are a part of women's culture. Women construct pleasures and meanings for themselves through their association with soaps. Hobson in analyzing the results of hours spent watching and talking with fans of the British soap Crossroads, concludes that: "The message is not solely in the 'text' but can be changed or 'worked on' by the audience as they make their own interpretation of a programme."
Characters • The grandparent figure • The strong woman • Jack-the-lad: A male character that manipulates others to his own ends • Young couple • Feisty young female • Troublesome oldie • The boss figure
The Appeal of Soaps • Many people watch soaps because it pleases us to see and hear other people's problems, which in turn distracts us from our own. However, a soap opera has no real victims as the characters, of course, are fictional. We become semi-experts on our favourite soaps, and our encyclopaedic knowledge of them, fuelled by the above points, gives us great pleasure. In a voyeuristic manner, we like to watch other people's lives, as, in the case of soap operas, they are just like ours, but more interesting.
From the point of view of broadcasters, soaps are good because they are very cheap to produce, yet have huge audiences and can, therefore, generate huge revenues. They can often run for years without coming to an end - Coronation Street is more than 40 years old. Sets are used again and again, special costumes are not required and little or no location filming is ever needed. They are also quick to produce - each minute of recording taking only one hour to film. This may sound like a lot, but on film sets, it can often take days just to successfully direct a mere few seconds of action. Not all soap operas are successful - there are some which do not catch the interest of the viewers and end up being dropped after a few years (sometimes less).
Channels maintain an unspoken agreement that their soaps are not scheduled for the same time. This is because a planned ratings war would not help either broadcaster, as has been proven by past experience. • Advertising slots in soaps are expensive to purchase, but guarantee large numbers of viewers seeing the advert. There are also numerous opportunities for the programme makers to sell them items based on their soap; this merchandising can be expected to have a very large market.
SOAP OPERAS SEND EDUCATIONAL MESSAGES TO GLOBAL AUDIENCES “The soap opera format of these programs is key to their popularity. The episodic, often every weekday airing of these shows allows producers to repeat educational messages. Dramatic story lines keep audiences enthralled. "Melodrama really is a struggle between opposing forces, good or bad," he says. "The soap opera naturally lends itself to the depiction of prosocial behavior and antisocial behavior." • Arvind Singhal
Conclusion The true fact of the matter is that the addicted soap opera viewers of the world watch simply for the entertainment. We don't take it seriously; it's just a break from the norm. For an hour everyday we can get lost in those fairy-tale, suspenseful lives similar to those that we grew up reading and having read to us.
There's nothing wrong with watching soap operas. In fact, it might even be good for you. There's got to be some good reason why daytime TV is more often viewed than primetime. I think that the reason soap operas are so popular can be summed up in these few words that Carol Williams used to describe them: "amorphous, unset, unsettled from the status quo, unsettling, personal, without canonical meaning, good and bad at once, unfinished, and always open."
