Broadening the scope of ageing femininities on TV: the evolution of the older woman in two contemporary Catalan soap operas

Abstract

In her work on women and the soap opera, Christine Geraghty argues that the extended form of this TV genre, both in time and consequent plots, has contributed to a wider representation of women in terms of their age, personality traits and social background. Two recent Catalan soaps, Ventdelplà (2005-10) and La Riera (2010—) have started to broaden the spectrum of the older female characters that were present in the first Catalan soap operas, and which were mainly set within the stereotypical role of the caring grandmother. In this article, a textual analysis of the narrative arcs of Dora Parramon and Mercè Riera, two main female characters of Ventdelplà and La Riera, aims to show to what extent a new understanding of age and femininity is reflected and even promoted in contemporary soap operas. Embedded in previous research on the representation of the older woman within popular fictional media, and based on the case studies of two Catalan productions, our article contributes to shedding light into the current development of the soap opera. Even though, as a genre, the soap opera has been somehow neglected in recent research on TV studies, both its long format and the emotional response it elicits from its audience on a daily basis still render it an ideal medium whereby the portrayal of certain stereotypes and their possible transformation can be observed.