Soap Operas

Abstract

Initially named after the soap manufacturers who advertised in the program breaks, the soap opera has long attracted among the largest audiences of any broadcast genres while being also widely reviled for its supposedly cheap, trashy, and repetitive content. The soap opera audience has, in consequence, received similar criticism, for being mindless, stereotyped, and vulnerable to mass persuasion. Since the 1970s, however, academic commentary, led significantly by the feminist revalorization of “women's genres,” though drawing also on the rise in active audience studies (or audience reception studies) during the 1980s and 1990s, has resulted in a rethinking of the genre (→ Audiences, Female; Genre; Women's Media Genres). This has permitted recognition of the genre's narrative complexity and depth of characterization, its treatment of the moral dilemmas of daily life, and the many satisfactions that audiences obtain from the soap opera.