The landscapes and aesthetics of soap opera: Townships, television and tourism

Abstract

Abstract The aesthetics of soap opera have been neglected within Television Studies, despite renewed interest in the aesthetics of television. Soap opera has frequently been regarded as a textual object unworthy and incapable of sustaining aesthetic attention, and the limited work that has been done on the cinematography of soap opera focuses on its realism. This article returns to debates on the cinematography of soap opera by focusing on the televisual aesthetic of the South African soap opera, Uzalo (2015–present). The visual pleasures of the landscapes of KwaMashu and KwaZulu-Natal distinguish it from other soap operas and offer new ways of understanding the aesthetics of soap opera. These ‘landscapes of television’ offer new ways of interpreting the conventionally ‘realist’ genre of soap opera through notions of the ‘spectacular’. Uzalo’s cinematography is read as an example of soap opera’s ‘spectacular realism’ that promotes a televisual tourist glance.