What is a soap opera?
A soap opera is an ongoing, open ended, multi-strand, fictionalised, drama serial on radio or television. It can be broadcast daily or twice or more weekly.
The main quality that defines a soap is that it is a serial. A serial narrative is a story told through a series of separate, but linked episodes. British soaps expect to continue broadcasting for the foreseeable future and so have no end as such. Occasionally soaps stop performing well enough for the broadcasting institution and so end – e.g C4 Brookside (1982- 2003)
Each serial episode is multi-stranded and leaves narrative loose ends for the next episode to continue, and usually the episode ends with a narrative cliffhanger that keeps the viewer in suspense until the next episode.
The audience has a special relationship with the major characters in a serial, as it has a chance to get to know them over the weeks and years. Serial characters do change across episodes and they get older and occasionally die.
The main drivers in a modern soap are the relationships between the characters.
On BBC Radio 4 –The Archers is broadcast every week day. On television soaps include ITV's Coronation Street and Emmerdale, BBC's Eastenders and C4's Hollyoaks.
History
Soap operas started on the radio in America and in South America where they were wildly popular in the 1930s. Radio companies developed a serial format of popular fiction that attracted female listeners at home. Commercial companies including detergent manufacturers wanted to advertise their new products to this expanding consumer audience.
The term ‘soap opera’ was coined by the American press in the 1930s to describe these extraordinarily popular melodramatic radio serials, which by 1940, accounted for 90% of commercially-sponsored daytime broadcast hours. The sponsors were usually soap manufacturers, hence the term soap opera.
When commercial television started in the UK in the fifties the ongoing serial seemed an ideal format for attracting large audiences, and so it proved when ITV began broadcasting a serial set in a typical Manchester urban setting Coronation Street.
Definition: Melodrama
A dramatic work where emotions and language are exaggerated, and the characters are portrayed simply and stereotypically. The sensationalised plots are full of emotional conflict with a simplistic morality – good is rewarded and bad behaviour is punished.
Modern soaps aim for realism rather than melodrama, although some plot lines can still be exaggerated, and there is always a good dollop of emotionalism.
Key Conventions of SoapsSoaps can be structured in a complex or a simple way, and are varied in their plotting and characterisation. They do have some general key components:
1. naturalistic settings
2. on-going serial format broadcast frequently
3. each episode has many short scenes – typically less than 2 minutes
4. multiple characters, with strong female characters
5. storylines are fragmented and segmented
6. plot lines address topical issues, currently health, and sexually transmitted diseases (STD)
7. domestic settings and families are important
8. male characters tend to be more stereotypical
9. events take place in a form of real time suggesting action is 24/7.
10. emphasis on dialogue expressing emotional issues and intimate conversations
The Setting and Characters
Much of the attraction of television soaps is the naturalistic settings and the realistic characters.
The main characters are based on the sort of people you would find in any ordinary street in a large town or city.
The best characters are rounded individuals with the sort of humour, jobs, living conditions, habits and mannerisms that are commonplace. The best characters avoid stereotypes and are individualised, for example the family who run the Queen Victoria pub in Eastenders are typical of a working class pub landlord and his family in the London area, but are rounded characters.
The overall setting of a soap is a community contained within a specified boundary, such as a square or street, from where action can develop or move outwards. There are realistic meeting places such as the marketplace, cafe or pub. These are the staples of British soaps as they provide a natural setting for characters to meet and form relationships, and the relationships then become the meat of the drama.
Plots & Storylines
Soaps are multi-stranded with several plots going on at the same time, and several relationships in various forms of turmoil. This attracts large audiences, as if one plot line involving certain characters does not appeal than another one with a remarkably different storyline and different characters is interwoven into the episode.
Life changing dramatic action can be held back for weeks allowing the characters time to discuss the issues and show their personalities as an overtly dramatic climax draws near– such as a pregnancy, car crash, or serious falling out with the family, or the end of a long standing realtionship. As the characters have to flourish week in week out there is little death and destruction in the Hollywood sense. Producers only push forward the seriously dramatic plot lines when the soap as a whole needs refreshing
Audiences
Audiences are invited to make intimate connections with the characters, and see in their ordinariness elements of themselves.
Audiences obtain enjoyment from being able to see the underlying truth of a character’s emotions. For example, in Coronation Street Liam proposes to Maria in Audrey’s hair salon suggesting love blossoms in the most ordinary places. The audience are invited to experience the issues and conflicts with the characters as their emotional representatives. In this way the audience can seek support and possibly solutions to the problems they are experiencing in real life.
Some soaps such as Hollyoaks and Eastenders offer telephone line support for a range of life issues raised in the programmes.
British soaps are realistic with their emphasis on the happenings of everyday life, and their representations of the working classes or people with working class backgrounds who make up the mass of the British population.
Soaps are filmed using the close-up so the audience can focus on a character’s emotions, and to see in the face the character’s mind at work coping with the latest life event to have befallen him or her.
All soaps are about working class people and aim for the very large working class audience, as well as the large audience that is now middle class in financial terms but originates from a working class environment.
What makes a soap successful?
The two main soaps in the UK, Eastenders and Coronation Street are successful in no small measure due to a sentimental historical memory of the shared working class community echoed by the set up of each soap. The historical echoes of working class kinship, collective resistance to deprivation and hardship, and shared responsibilities and aspirations give these soaps an edge that may be the secret of their longevity.
New soaps have tried and failed to find a permanent audience, and the schedules are littered with the histories of failed soaps: Crossroads, The Newcomers, Eldorado and Brookside.
Some soaps reach a particular age related audience, and retain it by appealing to each new generation. C4’s Hollyoaks is a good example. It began in 1995 and is now the most watched soap by a teenage female audience boosted by being on E4 – a C4 channel aimed at young people.
Research suggests that viewers – particularly women - watch soaps that reflect their problems, but rarely watch soaps for advice on how to solve their problems. The anticipation of what will happen next is the main driver in continued viewing as long as the audience can sympathise with the characters. Emphasis on the family, public situations and the community gives viewers a sense of belonging and provides a substitute family and social and emotional life for the lonely.
Even though modern soaps are produced and scheduled in the early evening for family viewing, there is no question that the soap opera was designed to appeal to women. Soaps centre around domesticity, family life and gossip, making them both comforting and appealing to women of all ages, classes and origins. Family relations are always featured. There is typically a mix of dramatic events, for example, a wedding or a death, with ordinary day-to-day happenings such as family rows, petty jealousies, age gap complications, and love stories.
Soap Operas & Needs and Gratifications TheoriesThe main way soaps aim to satisfy viewer needs is to provide a complimentary life style which progresses as our lives do, but with fictional characters and scenarios. The characters and the plot lines mirror our own lives. The closer the audience can identify with the characters and what happens to them, the more they become involved. The viewer’s desire to belong is at the heart of a successful soap. The popularity of a soap depends more on how the audience relates to its characters than to its content.
Richard Kilborn in Television Soaps (1992), suggests that there is a cathartic element to soaps. He suggests the audience lets out emotions as events develop on-screen, making it a pleasurable, and possibly therapeutic process. The intimacy that develops between the viewer and a character allows the viewer to analyse, and reflect upon their own life, and inform their sense of personal identity and worth, which Maslow identifies as being one of our needs.
Escapism is an essential element in how audiences ‘use’ soaps. The strong plot lines encourage viewers to be fully engrossed in the supercharged emotional life styles of the engaging characters, and forget about the difficulties in their own lives. The postmodern, ironic feel to aspects of some modern soaps such as Neighbours, indicate a more aware and less escapist audience than when soaps first began.