Women's Fiction Still? The Study of Soap Opera in Television Studies

Abstract

about television and to academic research, or that soap opera should feature largely in such debates. Defining genres, marking out the boundaries and then crossing them with glee, is a practice engaged with by producers and viewers of television alike while genre definition, in a relatively new discipline like television studies, is a crucial way of mapping the field, of identifying precisely what it is that is there to be studied. The study of soap opera has been particularly important in the discussion of genres and debates about television as a whole. Firstly, defining soap opera was one way of separating the characteristics of television drama from drama in theatre or cinema and of assessing distinctions within television drama itself by setting soap opera against other forms such as the series or serial. More recently, the fictional elements in cross-generic programmes have been described by comparisons with soaps in the development of docu-soaps, for instance, and of the various formats of Reality TV. Secondly, how soap opera has been studied and defined has affected the development of television studies itself and continues to shape the way we look at certain kinds of issues. Work on soap opera allowed an entree for feminist work on television; it has also provided the basis for crosscultural explorations of considerable richness. Finally, in debates about the mass media, soap opera continues to brand television as a whole as a mass medium which produces particular kinds of products. That the term ‘soap opera’ is often used as a metaphor for rather tacky activity in other spheres – politics, sport, business – tells us something about how the pleasures and possibilities of popular television are defined. It could be argued that the notion that soap opera is fiction for women is largely a product of a particular contingency. Work on soap opera was developed by theorists with a strong background in feminist film theory in relation to a very particular mass media product (US daytime soaps) at a time when feminism was having some impact on the academic world and beyond. Asking to what extent soap operas are women’s fiction enables us to look at the various ways this question has Women’s Fiction Still? The Study of Soap Opera in Television Studies