Understanding Soaps
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.
SITCOM
Brief Definition
The British TV sitcom is a television series that derives humour from the same characters in a fixed location exploring a variety of comic plotlines including misunderstandings, suspense, disguise, and failed aspirations.
Simply, the sitcom is a close group of associated people gathered in one place relating to each other and reacting to external forces with humour.
The sitcom is one of the most popular and enduring television formats in Britain and at times has commanded larger audiences than soaps.
HOW DOES THE SITCOM WORK?
Successful sitcoms involve audiences with characters and plots that are both reassuringly realistic and comically exaggerated.
An average sitcom has to work in 30 minutes of television time. It has to have a beginning, middle and end, and conform to Todorov’s Equilibrium Theory.
This is a situation comedy so it has to have a happy ending.
The characters are at the centre of a sitcom. Each episode must have an intriguing and engaging plot often initiated by an outside event that is hostile to the group (Dad’s Army) or to the family grouping – we want to suspend our disbelief to know how Del boy will get out of this particular fix that he thinks has been thrust upon him.
GENRE
Sitcom is a genre on its own. It changes and develops like other genres in film and television. A sitcom can be merged with another genre to become a hybrid.
The Thin Blue Line mixes police drama with sitcom. Several sitcoms merge medical drama with sitcom to become what the Americans call comedy-drama, like Scrubs or the Channel 4 hospital series Green Wing which took the hospital sitcom to new heights of fantasy. Third Rock from the Sun creates a very successful sitcom from sci-fi.
The Office manages to make documentary into a ground breaking sitcom. One of the best modern sitcoms is to my mind Ugly Betty. This is a hybrid sitcom, and in the US is known as a dramedy or drama/comedy but they hardly use the term sitcom. Friends was of course the classic American sitcom which reached huge audiences around the world and yet very little actually happens in terms of plot. The genre is pure sitcom conforming to the convention of a close group of people gathered in one place relating to each other and reacting to external forces.
PLOTS & STORYBOARDING
The best sitcoms interweave two types of plotting: episodic and ongoing. This is known in soaps as closed and open, but sitcoms are substantially different from soaps as there is no need for a cliff-hanger at the end of each episode. The audience is drawn to the next week’s instalment by a desire to see how the characters deal with a particular set of circumstances, sometimes brought on by their own fecklessness or character type (Only Fools and Horses).
The plot for each episode of a sitcom is fully worked out by the end of the episode - often in the last two minutes of the show, and the situation returns to the status quo. The narrative is circular. Ongoing plot lines may resolve gradually sometimes over 12 episodes or over a much longer period of years and many series. (The Vicar of Dibley finally got married in the last episode). Think of the marriages and relationships that could have developed but did not over the 13 years of Friends.
The driver of many plotlines is some form of conflict. This does not mean that characters fight each other – as this would mean possible death and casualties and this is not the idea of comedy.
The tension, or conflict based on the age gap and differences in values between Patsy and Saffron in Absolutely Fabulous offers countless opportunities for comedy as the two clash on so many different fronts.
Narrative conflict in sitcoms often arises where characters react differently to each other in typical situations, or react differently to changing circumstances. Conflict can arise from differing expectations, and characters with aspirations beyond their capabilities.
In a traditional sit com the relationships between the characters is an important aspect of the humour, and a driver of plotlines.
Triggers that can ignite a hair-raising plot are an element of suspense, sometimes enigma and sometimes one character’s transgression against the group or a perceived injustice – see Dad’s Army and Blackadder where Baldrick is always coming up with the suspense of a ‘cunning plan’ that of course never works.
SETTING
As the name suggests the setting or situation is a vital part of the sitcom. Most sitcoms are set in an enclosed or controlled environment creating dramatic tension from the entrapment of the situation. At first this was to do with the fact that a sitcom was recorded in a TV studio and for economic reasons there was just one set.
The ideal sitcom setting is the Fawlty Towers hotel.
The fixed cast of hotel owners Basil and Sybil Fawlty are the main protagonists with Manuel as the whipping boy or Fool. The antagonists are the guests in the hotel that week.
The main set of Fawlty Towers is the Reception area of the hotel, with all the main rooms such as the kitchen, dining room and lounge accessible from there. The number of doors and entrances resembles the set on the stage of a Whitehall farce. Much of the humour derives from the tradition of farce. Comedy arises from characters rapidly coming through doors and either just missing each other or bumping into other characters they would rather not meet. Much of the physical and farcical humour of Fawlty Towers is generated in this large multi entrance reception area.
The hotel setting offers a closed situation where any number of diverse characters can come through the door. There is a sense of claustrophobia. The hotel represents a microcosm of communal life.
Fawlty Towers is a metaphor for the prejudices and stultifying class structure of post Second World War England. The over weaning power of an individual in a non democratic situation warns of the dangers of a fascist state.
CHARACTERS
Sitcom characters are static. We expect to see each character remain the same in each episode and each series. There is a lack of character development because the inability to change is a source of comedy. Characters do not develop or learn from their mistakes. The fact that they are what they are drives much of the humour. Ben Harper in My Family is always a middle-aged father, a dentist whose main aim in life seems to be alone with his wife in an intimate situation even though he has a family and intrusive friends. He will always do daft and often stupid things. His family grow older but he stays more or less exactly the same, as does his wife even if she does change her hairstyle every series.
Stereotypes are common in sitcoms. Stereotypical characters can be successful if the comedy arises from the audience’s awareness of the stereotypical nature of their behaviour.
The bespectacled Betty with her tramline teeth braces and frumpy dress sense is the main character of the eponymous Ugly Betty. The sitcom plays with a variety of stereotypes including a very camp character, a domineering boss and a useless son who tries to run the cutting edge fashion magazine which is the setting for the sitcom. In many ways Betty is not a modern comic character.
She has very strong morals and values, which she attempts to import into the flagrantly immoral Mode magazine offices. Devoted to her Mexican family, ambitious, smart and very hard working she does not conform to the lazy Hispanic immigrant stereotype. She is taking things very slowly with her boyfriend. She does not sleep around and definitely no drugs and very little alcohol, she is a very upright citizen who is still a lot of fun. This is clever characterisation.
POSTMODERN
Sitcom has for a long time taken on postmodern elements. The Young Ones developed Intertextuality satirising a sitcom within its own sitcom format. Also The Young Ones subverts conventions by including digressions; stand up comedy routines and a musical interlude. This idea of other genres within the sitcom derived from radio sitcoms such as Hancock’s Half Hour. Modern sitcom developed in a self referential way, especially evident in Absolutely Fabulous, and The Vicar of Dibley.
Sitcom uses parody of itself in The Young Ones, and The New Statesman, and parodies the themes and conventions of the traditional sitcom. Blackadder parodies the genre of historical romances and TV period dramas, as well as satirising popular concepts and characters of English history. Its origins lie in the literary satire of Alexander Pope and the extravagance of restoration comedy.
The Office takes the sitcom to new audiences with its inventive postmodern ‘cool’ parodying the working life of white collar Britain. Intertextuality, self reference and a wide range of cultural sampling give this series a depth of 21st century resonance that can at times leave little space for laugh aloud humour.
REPRESENTATION
Characters in sitcom need to engage the viewer immediately using a shorthand of natural, recognisable and clearly defined characteristics. These can be based on stereotypes but the best sitcoms often subvert the stereotype.
Dawn French struggles to be the sort of person the audience would imagine as a vicar in The Vicar of Dibley. Comedy arises from the fact that she subverts audience expectations of the stereotype of an upright, non joke making, dignified clergy figure. She is a feisty, loud, laughing and charismatic member of the clergy who will not be bamboozled into doing anything she does not want to by the very traditional church committee. The comedy often arises from her outlandish ideas for the church or village that would seem to go against everything that is traditional, but may work.
The representation of family life is at the centre of many sitcoms not just BBC’s My Family. The relationship between parents and children can use stereotypical notions of family life to create comedy – impotent husbands, difficult teenagers, trouble with children’s unacceptable friends coming to the house or just the day to day business of family life.
The representation of neighbours is often fraught with tension. Neighbours are either represented as jewels in the human sea – The Good Life – or as stereotypically very obtuse as in To The Manor Born. Recent series of My Family include a revolving cast of neighbours who represent a big range of typically difficult, unusual or helpful neighbours depending on the plot.
Arguably representations in sitcoms highlight behavioural traits and personal failings that can be found in many people. Comedy arises from recognising these traits in yourself and your nearest and dearest, which is why the family is such a potent setting for a sitcom.
The sitcom can explore social issues in a comic way. Steptoe and Son explored what do we do about ageing parents. Gender issues are often central to a successful sitcom.
The representation of men is often contrary to the cinema ideal of the handsome lead character. Men are seen as inadequate like Frank Spencer in Some Mothers Do Have ‘Em or as gay, or ‘put upon’ by women. The hen pecked husband is a popular theme from variety shows of fifty years ago, and later radio comedy.
In British sitcoms the dotty eccentric is a classic character who is often very popular with audiences. Think of the One Foot in the Grave characters, Baldric, Basil Fawlty, Steptoe and Ricky Gervais in The Office.
The way television represents different races and ethnic minorities can be changed by the sitcom.
The ground breaking Goodness Gracious Me not only parodied the British, but showed that an ethnic minority could laugh with and at itself.