Soap Opera Genre Essays - Soap Opera, Social Realism, Serial

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