More Academic Work on Soaps H-M
sam...@mit.edu
Narrative on All My
Children. Feminist Media Studies 3.2 (2003), 207-228.
Harrington provides important research on understanding the sexual
identifications of characters in soap opera. As a branch of feminist
and gender studies of the soap opera genre, Harrington provides a look
at the lack of homosexual characters in soaps traditionally. Although
soaps have tackled the issue in the past, the genre was very quiet
about gay characters in the 1990s when gay rights issues were at the
forefront of American conversation. However, in October 2000, All My
Children “turned” a young member of a core family into a gay
character. Harrington finds that, “by revealing that a long-term core
character is lesbian, All My Children is thus testing the structural
boundaries of US television’s most enduring genre (as well as the
leniency of its advertising sponsorship) in an unprecedented way.”
She establishes that most of the soaps have still have a predominantly
female audience and that, despite dwindling audience numbers, soaps
are still a key genre for discussing women’s issues. She proceeds to
examine the Bianca narrative in detail to provide a greater
understanding about representing gayness in soaps.
Harrington, C. Lee and Denise D. Bielby. Soap Fans: Pursuing Pleasure
and Making Meaning
in Everyday Life. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1995.
Harrington and Bielby follow the lead of Mary Ellen Brown and the
suggestions and work of several other scholars to move a study of
audience reception toward and understanding of soap viewers as members
of an active and vibrant fan community. In this book, recently picked
up and focused on by several scholars who feel it was ignored somewhat
in the first few years after publication, the authors find that many
scholars had been jumping to agreement with trends in the popular
press ridiculing fan communities and depicting them as crazed and
obsessed or else disconnected from reality. However, then Textual
Poachers and Enterprising Women came along, challenging these long-
held assumptions of fandom. This book takes that argument of Textual
Poachers into the realm of the soap opera, where fans have long been
ridiculed and misunderstood. This book is a key text for me, as, with
Brown’s work serving as a precursor, it establishes the direction of
study on which I hope to plot my point. Harrington and Bielby
establish a nuanced and fleshed out understanding of soap fans and how
they interact with their “stories.”
Hayward, Jennifer. “Consuming Pleasures: Active Audiences and Soap
Opera.” Gender, Race,
and Class in Media: A Text Reader Second Edition. Ed. Gail Dines and
Jean M. Humez.
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2003, 507-521. Originally published in
Hayward’s
Consuming Pleasures: Active Audiences and Serial Fictions from Dickens
to Soap
Opera. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1997.
Jennifer Hayward’s piece on soap opera is a refreshing look at the
soap industry in 1997. She focuses on the historical changes in the
genre and particularly in the effect that the VCR had on soaps,
eliminating much of the existing redundancy used in everyday episodes
on some shows, causing a faster pacing, and trying to make themselves
more appealing so that viewers might be willing to tape the shows and
watch them in the evenings. She then provides a particular example
from ABC’s One Life to Live of the rape storyline and character Todd
Manning to indicate the complicated interactions between the show’s
producers and the audience. Hayward’s study is another one that is of
particular importance to my study, as she focuses briefly on Internet
fan communities and discusses the interaction between show and fan
base and the decisions made in writing the Todd Manning storyline.
Hills, Matt. Fan Cultures. London: Routledge, 2002.
In his book on fan cultures, Matt Hills acknowledges the importance of
Harrington and Bielby’s 1995 Soap Fans book that has been, as Hills
acknowledges, undercited by most authors writing on soap opera or fan
cultures in general. He thus provides a beneficial and nuanced
response to their treatment of soap fans and fan culture, finding that
they accept too wholeheartedly the theories of Winnicott and thus fall
victim to some of the same issues that are present in Winnicott’s
work. Nevertheless, despite his criticism of their work, Hills
incorporates their study into his own broader view of fan culture.
This text is not as directly relevant to my work as Harrington and
Bielby’s but his use of their work provides further context for my
understanding of the importance of Soap Fans.
Hyatt, Wesley. Encyclopedia of Daytime Television. New York:
Billboard, 1997.
This reference book should be valuable for my study, as it provides a
guide to most of the shows that have aired on daytime network
television with synopses of each. The book includes cast lists and
remarks on the social impact of each of these shows on the American
culture. Further, the book provides interesting cross-references if
I’m interested in any counter-programming that aired against soaps at
a particular time period, which may demonstrate what network
executives thought about their audiences. This book will be of
limited use to my study, but, since it was a Christmas present from my
parents, it will set on my shelf as a handy reference.
Intintoli, Michael James. Taking Soaps Seriously: The World of
Guiding Light. New York:
Praeger, 1984.
Continuing in the tradition of Allen and Cantor and Pingree, Intinoli
joins the conversation of scholarship on P&G soap Guiding Light.
Obviously the most detailed use of textual analysis of a particular
American soap opera at this point, Intinoli’s book branched from a
dissertation on the subject. Intinoli’s approach could be seen as
similar to Peter Buckman’s, as he examines Guiding Light through the
frame of a business, attempting to understand the construction of
meaning and community through economic terms. Intinoli examines the
economic context of the soap opera industry, looking at soap
storytelling as corporate enterprise, the importance of an
industrialized form of cultural production in the prolific
productivity of soap operas, the use of visual, audio, and musical
conventions to express meaning and heighten involvement and action.
He also examines Guiding Light in particular as a symbolic community
and as a socially constructed reality. The most useful part of
Intinoli’s work for my project may be the chapter on the various ways
of looking at the audience—as viewer, as statistic, or as social
being, an approach he takes in which he examines looking at the
audience qualitatively in terms of audience feedback and letters and
looking at the audience quantitatively through television ratings.
Johnson, Sherry. “How Soaps Whitewash Blacks.” American Film 7.5
(March 1982): 36-37.
Although race is briefly mentioned in Newcomb’s work, this brief essay
is the first and one of few essays that look specifically at race in
relation to American soap opera, where the middle-class white family
is usually predominant. This piece criticizes soaps for being too
afraid to focus on black characters in a negative light, instead
finding that the black characters are usually the most boring because
they are hardly ever treated as the murderer or the adulterer.
Johnson acknowledges that bringing black characters onto the show and
into key professional roles was important in expanding the soap
audience and in giving representation to black America but that the
current perfection of black characters does not reflect reality and
does not do much of a service to truly representing black viewers.
Johnson labels this trend “Benevolent Overkill” and finds that blacks
have been relegated to four roles—“The Sidekicks,” “The Dear Abbys,”
The Protectors,” and “The True Tokens.” Although this piece is too
short for anything but brief observations, Johnson’s points are
important for establishing a study of race in the American soap genre.
Kuhn, Annette. “Women’s Genres: Melodrama, Soap Opera, and Theory.”
Feminist Film
Theory: A Reader. Ed. Sue Thornham. New York: New York UP, 1999:
146-156.
Annette Kuhn acknowledges the large volume of current feminist work on
soap operas and joins the conversation by comparing scholarship on
women’s film, melodrama, and soaps, finding that the current practice
of trying to incorporate literary and cinematic approaches to
criticism of these female-perspective genres are somewhat
problematic. Kuhn finds that the soap opera approach to gender and
spectatorship is much different than those observed by film theorists
in the cinema, and Kuhn argues for a separation between the concept of
social audience and that of spectator. Much of the remainder of her
research focuses on the need to distinguish between these two roles of
viewers.
LaGuardia, Robert. Soap World. New York: Priam, 1983.
This book is written for the popular audience but can provide a
concise and general historical overview of specific soap operas.
LaGuardia provides an overview of the broad history of soap operas on
radio and the transition to television. The majority of the book,
however, is committed to a look at the history of each soap opera on
the air in 1983 and the history of each of these programs, complete
with a list of former and current cast members and characters.
Although there is a dearth of actual analysis in the book, Soap World
is meant to be more of a quick guide to understanding soap opera
programming than a work making fresh observations about the genre.
Machin, David. “Why We Watch Soaps.” Ethnographic Research for Media
Studies. London:
Arnold, 2002, 108-113.
David Machin’s book Ethnographic Research for Media Studies serves as
a broad overview of ethnographic research that has been done on mass
media audiences. This short chapter is not of original work but
rather a summary and interpretation of the work of John Tulloch in his
studies of elderly audiences of soap operas. This work is of limited
value, but I found it important again in understanding how Tullcoh’s
arguments—focused on Australian culture in particular—have been
incorporated into an understanding of American and British soaps as
well. This book situates Tulloch’s work in broader views of
ethnography of media audiences.
MacKinnon, Kenneth. “Genre and Gender: Soap Opera and Melodrama.”
Love, Tears, and the
Male Spectator. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2002, 84-103.
MacKinnon studies the female-only aspects of soap opera and melodrama,
finding that soap opera was denigrated in American culture until the
intervention of feminist scholars, potentially because of “a male-
oriented downgrading of concern with the domestic and personal, the
sphere outside waged labor.” MacKinnon also addresses the development
of “male melodrama” and the acceptance of more action-based plots in
soap opera. MacKinnon studies these developments alongside a growing
awareness of a growing number of male viewers of soap operas and
melodrama. Although his argument centers much more on melodrama than
on soaps, MacKinnon acknowledges an important aspect of soaps that are
largely ignored—the presence of male viewers of what is principally
considered a female form, and male viewers in fairly large numbers.
Matelski, Marilyn J. The Soap Opera Evolution: America’s Enduring
Romance with Daytime
Drama. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1988.
Marilyn Matelski joins the conversation on soap operas with little
attention paid to the strains of academic study previously listed
here. Instead, she attaches herself to the sociological body of
research on soap opera, going back to 1940s research surrounding the
publicized attacks of psychiatrist Louis Berg, who attacked the soap
genre for causing several mental and emotional problems in female
viewers. She then builds on the research of a few more recent
sociologists who have written on soap opera, some of whom I have
listed here but a couple of whom I still need to examine, to find both
the parallels and the contrasts between the radio soaps of the 1940s
and the televised soaps of the 1980s. Matelski compares plotlines
from both eras, examines soap opera characters based on sociological
status, age, and occupation, from the 1940s to the 1980s, examines
both viewer demographics and the reasons behind watching soaps, and
examines specific plotlines currently on the air at the time of her
writing. The book should be valuable to me as a tool to further
understand the sociological strain of research that I have not looked
into so completely, understanding of examining the audience in terms
of uses and gratifications, etc.
Matelski, Marilyn J. Soap Operas Worldwide: Cultural and Serial
Realities. Jefferson, NC:
McFarland, 1999.
Marilyn Matelski follows up her previous book with this publication 11
years later This work sets out to explore the soap opera genre
worldwide and establish an understanding of the origin of the genre,
the ways in which soaps adapt to outside influences, an aspect of
“cultural landscaping” which provides audiences with correct and
incorrect sociopolitical behaviors, and the ways in which soaps can
become messengers of cultural imperialism. Matelski also outlines
several unique components of American daytime soap operas as compared
to primetime shows—viewer influence through fan mail and magazines; a
unique writing/production schedule; particular cost factors; and
character identification. Matleski provides a brief history of soaps,
identifying As the World Turns as the show that pioneered pushing
soaps from 15 to 30 minutes and then from 30 minutes to an hour.
Matelski examines North America as a whole, focusing on the current
and former daytime soaps in America with a short synopsis of each and
then spending a couple of pages discussing American soaps playing
worldwide. Matelski finds that, even with soaps on a rating decline
with the myriad daytime choices now on American television, soaps
continue to have an avid following in several international contexts.
Matelski concludes that international satellite distribution is
increasing the role of soap opera as cultural ambassador, not just for
American soaps but for soaps in several parts of the world.
Modleski, Tania. “The Search for Tomorrow in Today’s Soap Operas:
Notes on a Feminine
Narrative Form.” Film Quarterly 33.1 (Autumn 1979), 12-21. Reprinted
in Modleski’s
Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women.
Routledge, 1984.
Modleski’s earlier examination of soaps in this essay is one of the
seminal works in the field and one of the most important American-
authored pieces on the genre. Whereas Newcomb focused on the show’s
form, Modleski’s focus is much more on reception and particularly an
audience of female viewers. Her piece is the first scholarly attempt
at examining form exclusively from the audience point-of-view, as
opposed to Newcomb’s more industrial point-of-view, and establishes
what has become an important approach to studying the soap opera—
feminist research of the soap opera. Among Modleski’s key points: the
soap opera excels in the process of making waiting, a key part of life
for the housewife, an enjoyable process; the mother role of the female
spectator, who sees much more than her “children” (the TV characters)
and wants to protect and punish them; split identification amongst
many characters, as opposed to the singular identification prevalent
in nighttime shows; an in-depth study of the villainess; a
juxtaposition of soap opera dialogue and format with the more
masculine and “action” oriented nighttime shows; and a call for
incorporating some aspects of soap opera in a feminist aesthetic.
Although Modleski could acknowledge the male soap viewer (at least a
fifth of the audience, according to Edmonson and Rounds), her piece
establishes an understanding of the soap from the perspective of the
dominant female audience.
Mumford, Laura Stempel. Love and Ideology in the Afternoon: Soap
Opera, Women, and
Television Genre. Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1995.
Laura Stempel Mumford falls in the tradition of scholars who are
simultaneously members of the soap opera fan community and who are
interested in more fully understanding their own involvement with
these texts. This book is another within the feminist strain that
attempts to simultaneously examine audience reception while retaining
the integrity of the idea of a “text” authored principally elsewhere
even if received by active viewers. Mumford’s work attempts to
understand the soap opera genre and many of the hot topics in
discussing soaps—the open-ended nature of the plots, the treatment of
male characters in soaps (a focus of study also published in Robert C.
Allen’s To Be Continued…), and the treatment of public and private
spheres in soap storylines. Mumford lays out distinctions of various
roles within the viewing community—from the incompetent to the expert,
discussing this in relation to specific knowledge within a particular
show and not the knowledge that Brunsdon outlines as being a broader
understanding of “the cultural constructed skills of femininity.”
MarkH
sam...@mit.edu
No problem, Mark! Let me know if you have any questions regarding
these.