Neighbors
"Before I saw Neighbors, 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 create
more drama for the audience. Such as in Neighbours,
Joel and Sally are in the
beginning stage of their romance (courtship),
however he also has strong
feelings for Libby (love) and Drew is the only one
who knows about it (secret).
Television has become the "major socializing
agent competing with family,
school, peers, community and church". (Kottak
citing Comstock et al.,
1996:135). It is for this reason that the above
themes are so prevalent in Soap
operas such as ‘Neighbours’ as it is
competing with the interest in our
every day lives. Neighbours gives us
"disturbances of the normal and
regular... to give us greater insight into
the normal" (Turner 1974:34).
Unconscious or atemporal structures of what
people believe they do, ought to do,
or would like to do discussed by Turner
helps to explain what Neighbours
portrays, and why it can compete with our
every day lives (Turner citing
Richards, 1974:36). Broadcast serials have
the advantage of a regular time-slot
(often more than once a week), but even
if some viewers miss it, they can easily
catch up with events. Any key
information that might have been missed is worked
into the plot when
necessary. Nevertheless knowledge of previous events can
usefully be brought
to bear by habitual viewers, and doing so is part of the
pleasure of viewing
for them. Viewers also in an omniscient position, know more
than any
character does. The form is unique in offering viewers the chance to
engage
in informed speculation about possible turn of events. Recognising how
soap
operas provide 'a continuing renewal of the familiar', interviews with
and
observation of soap fans show that the sharing of information and opinion
after
the program is over is as important to viewers as the actual following
of the
stories. Soap operas are pleasurable because they do not surprise the
audience
or try to change attitudes. Instead soap operas offer a reassurance
that the
world is not changing as quickly as it seems. Soap operas deal with
the victory
of old fashioned and traditional certainties over evanescent
fashions that
assail them. Unlike a film or a series, there is always a wide
range of
characters in a soap opera (which means that no single character
is
indispensable). The large cast and the possibility of casual
viewers
necessitates rapid characterization and the use of recognizable
'types'. Soaps
are frequently derided by some critics for being full of
clichés and
stereotypes, for having shoddy sets, for being badly acted,
trivial, predictable
and so on. Soap viewers (often assumed to be only women,
and in particular
working-class housewives) are characterized unfairly as
naive escapists. Given
the great popularity of the genre, such criticisms can
be seen as culturally
elitist. Robert Allen (1992, p. 112) argues that ‘to
emphasize what happens
when in soaps (in semiotic terms the syntagmatic
dimension) is to underestimate
the equal importance of who relates this to
whom (the paradigmatic
dimension).’ Some feminist theorists have argued that
soap operas spring from
a feminine aesthetic, in contrast to most prime time
TV. Soaps are unlike
traditional dramas (e.g. sit-coms) which have a
beginning, middle and an end:
soaps have no beginning or end, no structural
closure. They do not build up
towards an ending or closure of meaning.
Viewers can join a soap opera at any
point. There is no single narrative
line: several stories are woven together
over a number of episodes. In this
sense the plots of soaps are not linear. The
structure of soaps is complex
and there is no final word on any issue. A soap
involves multiple
perspectives and no consensus: ambivalence and contradiction
is
characteristic of the genre. There is no single 'hero' where the
preferred
reading involves identification with this character), and the wide
range of
characters in soaps offers viewers a great deal of choice regarding
those with
which they might identify. ‘All this leaves soaps particularly
open to
individual interpretations (more than television documentaries,’
suggests
David Buckingham 1987, p. 36). Tania Modleski (1982) argues that
the structural
openness of soaps is an essentially 'feminine' narrative form.
She argues that
pleasure in narrative focuses on closure, whilst soaps delay
resolution and make
anticipation an end in itself. She also argues that
masculine narratives'inscribe' in the text an implied male reader who becomes
increasingly
omnipotent whilst the soap has 'the ideal mother' as inscribed
reader. Narrative
interests are diffused among many characters and her power
to resolve their
problems is limited. The reader is the mother as sympathetic
listener to all
sides. Soaps make consequences more important than actions,
involve many
complications, and avoid closure. In soaps dialogue blurs and
delays. There is
no single hero in soaps, no privileged moral perspective,
multiple narrative
lines and few certainties. Viewers tend to feel involved
interpreting events
from the perspective of characters similar to themselves
or to those they know.
For example in Neighbours Hannah Martin made a
number of phone calls to a physic
line (action), which cost her father a
great deal of money. However, the
consequence of this has become a plot
thread for many episodes as Hannah not
only has had to get a job to pay for
the bill but also must pay for all of her
local phone calls. This has also
led to problems with her stepmother Ruth
monitoring this consequence. Once
again focussing on the family element of a
soap opera. Not much seems to
'happen' in many soap operas because there is
little rapid action. In soaps
what matters is the effect of events on the
characters, This is revealed
through characters talking to each other. Charlotte
Brunsdon argues that
the question guiding a soap story is not 'What will happen
next?' but 'What
kind of person is this?' (In Geraghty 1991, p. 46). Such a form
invites
viewers to offer their own comments. John Fiske (in Seiter et al. 1989,
p.
68) notes that minimal post-production work on 'realist' soaps (leaving in'dead'
bits) may be cost-cutting, but it also suggests more 'realism' than
in
heavily edited program’s, suggesting the 'now' of the events on
screen.
Published stories about the characters in soaps and the actors
who play them
link the world of the soap with the outside world, but they
also allow viewers
to treat the soap as a kind of game. Ien Ang (1985, pg45)
argues that watching
soaps involves a kind of psychological realism for the
viewer: an emotional
realism, which exists at the connotative level. This
offers less concrete, more'symbolic representations of more general living
experiences' which viewers find
recognizably 'true to life'. In such a case,
'what is recognized as real is not
knowledge of the world, but a subjective
experience of the world: a
"structure of feeling"' For many viewers of soap
operas this was a
tragic structure of feeling: evoking the idea that
happiness is precarious.
Viewers familiar with the characters and
conventions of a particular soap may
often judge the program largely in its
own terms (or perhaps in terms of the
genre) rather than with reference to
some external 'reality'. For instance, is a
character's current behaviour
consistent with what we have learnt over time
about that character? The soap
may be accepted to some extent as a world in its
own right, in which slightly
different rules may sometimes apply. This is of
course the basis for the
'willing suspension of disbelief' on which drama
depends. Producers sometimes
remark that realistic drama offers a slice of life
with the duller bits cut
out, and that long-running soaps are even more
realistic than other forms
because less has to be excluded Jordan (in Dyer 1981)
identifies several
broad stereotypes used extensively in soap operas,
Grandmother figures;
marriageable characters (mature, sexy, women; spinsterly
types; young women;
mature, sexy, men; fearful, withdrawn men; conventional
young men); married
couples; rogues (including 'ne'er-do-wells' and confidence
tricksters).
Buckingham refers also refers to the use of the stereotypes of 'the
gossip',
'the bastard' and 'the tart'. Anthony Easthope adds 'the good girl',
and
Peter Buckman cites 'the decent husband', 'the good woman', 'the villain'
and
'the bitch' (in Geraghty 1991, p. 132). Geraghty herself adds 'the
career
woman' (ibid., p. 135ff). Suggesting that soap opera characters and
stories draw
on fundamental human traits Maire Messenger Davies suggests that
'nothing goes
wrong in Neighbours for very long and that's why children like
it' (in Hart
1991, p. 136). Soaps in general have a predominantly female
audience, although
prime-time soaps such as Dallas are deliberately aimed at
a wider audience.
According to Ang, and hardly surprisingly, in Dallas
the main interest for men
was in business relations and problem and the power
and wealth shown, whereas
for women were more often interested in the family
issues and love affairs. In
the case of Dallas it is clear that the program
meant something different for
female viewers compared with male viewers. In
'realist' soaps, female characters
are portrayed as more central than in
action drama, as ordinary people coping
with everyday problems. Watching the
characters in a soap opera deal with
everyday problems allows the viewers a
sense of normality and helps them to deal
with their problems in comparison.
Certainly soaps tend to appeal to those who
value the personal and domestic
world. The audience for such soaps does include
men, but some theorists argue
that the gender identity of the viewer is'inscribed' in programs, and that
typically with soaps the inscribed viewer has
a traditional female gender
identity. And 'the competencies necessary for
reading soap opera are most
likely to have been acquired by those persons
culturally constructed through
discourses of femininity' (Morley 1992, p. 129).
Dorothy Hobson
interviewed women office workers in Birmingham and found that
their free-time
conversation was often based on their soap opera viewing. Some
had begun
watching simply because they had discovered how central it seemed to
be in
lunchtime discussions. It involved anticipating what might happen
next,
discussing the significance of recent events and relating them to their
own
experiences. Hobson argues that women typically use soaps as a way of
talking
indirectly about their own attitudes and behaviour (in Seiter et al.
1989: pp.
150-67). Geraghty (1991, p. 123) also notes that there is some
evidence that
families use soaps as a way of raising and discussing awkward
situations. Most
viewers seem to oscillate between involvement and distance
in the ways in which
they engage with soaps. For example in Home and Away,
the issues of rape,
teenage sex and pregnancy, single parenting, epilepsy,
drug addiction, abortion,
infidelity, and death are all issues in which the
characters have dealt with.
This allows the audience to discuss these
issues without talking about
themselves. This allows many controversial
issues to be discussed in the family
home, to educate the viewers. The viewer
is often engaged in the social drama,
of knowing a breach to come or already
being in a crisis before the characters
of the show are. The viewer wants to
be part of the community of the soap opera
such as Neighbours and Home and
Away, to share their knowledge of the reoccurent
themes that are happening.
If we all lived in Summer Bay or on Ramsey Street, we
would be very
attractive, doing well at school/university, have a great job,
fantastic
children, good at sport, happily married, and no problems for very
long. This
allows the viewer to feel like they could be living in the ideal
world where
you can do anything, and any problems that you may have will not
last too
long.
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