Soap Opera Genre Essay -- TV Television Media Essays

Soap Opera GenreBefore I saw Neighbours, I didnt know there was an Australia (Jerry Hall, The Clive James Show, UK, 31 December, 1989) The 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 boob tube genres (e.g. news and quiz shows), the soap opera is a genre to begin with drawn from radio rather than film. Television soap operas are long-running serials traditionally found on the close study of personal relationships within the workaday life of its characters. Soaps are a consistent set of values based on personal relationships, on womens responsibility for the maintenance of these relationships and the pertinence of the family model to structures. In soap operas at least one accounting line is carried over from one episode to the n ext. Successful soaps may hatch 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 infeasible 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 affectionate change through issues of race, class and sexuality. In dealing with what are much perceived to be awkward issues soap operas make good stories on the emotional lines of the characters. Christine Geraghty (1991, p. 147) While it seeks... ...stitute Curran, James & Michael Gurevitch (eds.) (1991) Mass Media and Society. capital of the United Kingdom Edward Arnold Dyer, Richard (ed.) (1981) Coronation Street. London British Film Institute Turner, V (1974) Social Dramas a nd ritual metaphors In V.Turner, Dramas, fields and metaphors symbolic action in human society Cornell University nip Ithaca Hobson, Dorothy (1982) Crossroads - The Drama of a Soap. London Methuen Modleski, Tania (1982) Loving with a requital Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women. Hamden, CT Archon Morley, David (1992) Television Audiences and Cultural Studies. London RoutledgeCoward, Rosalind (1987) Womens Programmes why not? In Boxed in Women and Television Edited by Baehr, Helen, and Dyer, Gillian Pandora Press Tulloch, John and Moron, Allen Women Like Gossip The family audience in A Country Practice Quality Soap