Soap Operas Say So Much

I take a lot of guff from friends and colleagues for my devotion to soap operas, or “stories,” as we afficionados call them.
They cite my Masters degree in English, the study of “high” culture, and cannot understand why I would stoop so "low" as to watch such trite melodrama.
It’s true, the plots are predictable, the dialogue unrealistic and the situations people find themselves in completely implausable.
And yet they are addicting. Nor am I the only student of high culture I know who watches them. I won’t blow anyone’s cover, but I know entire English departments devoted to soap operas. In fact, soap operas generate a gargantuan amount of money. What started as a series of commercials has become a fullblown industry. Whole magazines are devoted to the shows. College courses have dissected them, books have been written about them. And just go ahead and google the term.
One English professor along the way explained their popularity saying people are suckers for a neverending story.
I think people just fall in love with the characters. I am particularly fond of the grande dames of shows: Phoebe Tyler (recently deceased in real life) of All My Children (AMC), the Lila Quartermain (also deceased) of General Hospital (GH), Katherine Chancellor of The Young and the Restless (Y&R).
And then there are the characters you love to hate. I remember Victor Newman from Y&R when he had his wife Julia locked in a cell in the basement (a common story theme, by the way). Now how could a guy like that ever be loved? And yet, I’ve ridden the roller coaster. The bad guy becomes the hero, falls into disrepute again, only to become the victim of unfairness, so one can’t help but sympathize. You hate him, you love him, you hate him again. It’s like Michigan weather, just wait ten episodes and it’ll change.
People who watch them seem to get caught up with predicting the outcomes, or giving the characters advice. Watching once with a friend who was less than enamored, I exclaimed to one of the characters, “No! Don’t trust him. You can’t trust him.” The look on my friend’s face prompted me to explain that that’s what soaps were for. She replied she thought that’s what football was for.
And maybe that’s part of it. These are problems we can solve. Next to the problems these people have, our own seem petty.
They let us vent. The dialogue is unrealistic, but the characters often say things we think and would never dream of sharing.
Perhaps they pull us out of ourselves, a bit of fantasy, a bit of entertainment.
But they can also be educative, or at least they put issues on the map and get people talking. Every soap has at one time dealt with alcoholism. Most dealt with AIDS when it was considered the “gay plague.” The soaps put a face to the disease, easing the public panic.
Soaps expose viewers to the latest fashions, hairstyles, music. Ther've been zig-zag hair parts, and “weedwhacker” haircuts, and seventies "retro."
They oil social interaction. I worked in an office where it was almost a duty to watch the “office” soap opera on your day off and report the next day. It provided a topic of discussion, it bonded workers. It is certainly better to gossip about soap opera situations than real ones!
Soap watchers know this isn’t reality. Babies stay babies for years, and then suddenly come on as teenagers. Then there are the plunging necklines worn to the office, and how people can just leave work when they need to.
Even in their implausibility, soaps, like fairy tales, offer lessons in society. A friend of mine started dating a woman of a higher social class than he. I bit my tongue, but thought, “That’ll never work! Doesn’t he watch the soaps?”
They offer lessons in what not to do. Lovers hide things from each other because they love the other and don’t want to “hurt” them. Of course their secrets backfire and create an even bigger mess. You find yourself saying, “Just tell him/her the truth!” (Though whether we apply this to our own quagmires is debatable!)
Soap watchers learn to speak in terms of the “old” Rosanna vs. the “new” Rosanna. Sometimes an actor joins a soap after playing a character on another soap. It can take some time to adjust. Sometimes you never do. Cliff from AMC joined Y&R, replacing Jack. He’s been Jack for a long time now, but to me he’s still Cliff. And I still miss the”old” Jack.
Many famous stars started on the soaps. I remember David Hasselhoff as Snapper from Y&R. Demi Moore’s character helped Robert Scorpio look for the Ice Princess during the height of the Luke and Laura days on GH.
Not all actors move on. Some stay and become stars of soap operas. The most famous of these is probably Susan Lucci who plays Erica Kane on AMC.
And “stories” are just fun, they aren’t too serious, they tap into our fantasies and lift our spirits.
Lastly, a note about "high" and popular culture: Culture gets passed on through time because it reaches the masses, it becomes popular--they pass it on. Because it survives, we call it “art.” Maybe the Shakespearean plays we think of today as “high art” were nothing more than the soap operas of their time.
So, I try not to think in terms of embracing high culture or popular culture, but more in terms of respecting the former, and keeping up with the current. Now there’s the neverending story.