Soap Opera Research Articles

“All Happy Families”: The Sopranos and Television Culture in the Twenty-First Century

Since the 1980s, Cultural Studies have analyzed television in the context of the present. They have asked how soap operas and TV series contribute to the circulation of meanings and pleasures in everyday contexts. John Fiskes coined the concept television culture in his very successful book with the same title. Taking The Sopranos as an example, this article shows that quality TV is an outstanding contribution to television culture. The show is more complex, more layered and more intertextual than the shows of the 1980s that Fiske interpreted. The Sopranos is a postmodern cultural phenomenon that appeals to different groups of viewers. It is no longer only about the addicted fans, but also about critical viewers who want to better understand themselves and their lives, and also about connoisseurs and art enthusiasts to whom serial reception becomes a distinctive feature. This article comes to the conclusion that popular culture in the sense of Cultural Studies is still of important political significance in the twenty-first century.

Women, soap opera and new generations of feminists

At a time when television (TV) studies was still an emerging subject, the soap opera attracted a number of high-profile studies, largely conducted by feminists, that also set the agenda for TV studies as a whole. While the soap opera no longer finds the same level of attention, the scholarship of that time remains important to the work of feminist TV researchers of different generations. In this dossier, five researchers, three of them emerging and two of them mid-career, reflect on the importance of the scholarship to their own work and careers, how their own work expands on it and what it tells us about problems that feminist TV scholarship might encounter tomorrow.

Ignorance-making in 7de Laan: A Critical Whiteness Studies perspective

ABSTRACTSteyn (2012, 22) contends that at the heart of societies structured in racial hierarchies, such as South Africa, lies an ‘ignorance contract’ described as a ‘tacit agreement to entertain ignorance’. Building on Kellner’s (1996) assertion that media texts highlight the values, social issues and trends of the context in which they are produced, this article interrogates the manifestation of Steyn’s ‘ignorance contract’ in one form of symbolic expression in the media, namely, the Afrikaans television soap opera 7de Laan. Seen against the background of the South African public service broadcasting’s (PSB) commitment to nation-building, 7de Laan is a rich text to analyse with reference to constructions of whiteness, and the perpetuation of white ignorance. The article conducts a narrative analysis of a sample of 7de Laan episodes focusing on the nature of the community and setting; the use of language; and the treatment of diversity within the theoretical framework of Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS), a discipline working to ‘destabilize the assumptions behind whiteness as a cultural norm’ (Foster 2003, 1) with the ultimate goal of contributing to voluntary, critical engagement with normative white subjectivities.

Negotiating difference, imagining intimacy: The role of ‘intermediate’ racial masculinity in Egoli: Place of Gold

ABSTRACTSouth Africa’s entry into democracy was a moment of far-reaching political and cultural transformation. By ‘officially’ departing from a history of institutionalised racial segregation and oppression, a ‘New South Africa’ was born, one that would ‘look’ different. Yet exactly how this new democracy would take shape was still uncertain. The immensely popular television soap opera Egoli: Place of Gold (hereafter Egoli) emerged from this moment of transition and – contrary to the conventional scopic lens of this genre – aimed to actively reflect the changing social world of its viewers. With the reconfiguration of cultural identities necessitated by its temporal backdrop, Egoli served as a utopic tableau for its white middle-class viewers to engage with imaginings of ‘New South Africans’. This article explores Egoli’s use of the characterisation and representation of coloured masculinity as one of the mechanisms with which the programme could negotiate cultural difference on behalf of its viewers. The racial history and discursive intermediacy of colouredness is investigated as a site that holds the potential to limit the possible threats of political change and disarm the potential confrontations of racial and cultural integration.

Bi/multilingual Voices and Audiences? Code-Switching in Zimbabwean Popular Drama, Studio 263

<p class="1"><span lang="X-NONE">Code-switching is an observed common discourse linguistic behaviour in Zimbabwean popular dramas. The motives and effects of the use of code-switching in such communicative contexts is however an understudied area. This article examines the communicative impact/effects on the audience, of code-switching as a communication strategy in <em>Studio 263</em>, one of Zimbabwe’s popular dramas (soap operas). Observing that code-switching has become part and parcel of Zimbabwean everyday discourses – a situation chiefly resulting from the Zimbabwean linguistic situation characterised by bi/multilingual societies – the analysis explores the rhetorical and communicative potential of code-switching as a communication strategy within the communicative contexts that popular dramas represent and in a bi/multilingual society. The Zimbabwean language situation promotes the use of the English language in all formal communicative events while the ‘indigenous’ languages (Shona and Ndebele) do not enjoy similar privileges. Because English is a second language to the majority of the residents of Zimbabweans, this has resulted in the proliferation of bi/multilingual communities. This article critiques the justification of the use of code-switching in <em>Studio 263</em> as well as its use as a tool for communicating to a ‘larger’ audience.</span></p>

Soap operas: A Potential tool for women empowerment

AbstractThe Eastern society has come a long way in terms of progress and development. Yet, gender inequality is an issue that still needs to be addressed. Although many women in these places have attained greater heights, majority of women in these areas still find education and career development a struggle. In this study, we analyze the media portrayal of the educational qualification and career choices of the female characters of the soap operas. We consider soap operas broadcast by Hum TV during the prime time and analyze the extent to which gender biasing still exists in terms of education and career. We seek to highlight how a positive portrayal of women in soap operas can effectively change perceptions and promote the independence of women with respect to career and education in real situations.

‘Reality’ Television Critique in Israel: How ‘Quality’ Became ‘Morality’

‘Reality’ television is a global and highly popular television phenomenon. Despite its public and academic critique as cultural ‘trash’, the genre enjoys great economic legitimacy. In recent years, other ‘trashy’ television genres, such as soap operas, have gained aesthetic-artistic legitimacy alongside their economic legitimacy. Taking a Bourdieusian approach and using the discourse about Israeli ‘reality’ shows as a case study, this article addresses the question of whether a similar process is evident in television critics’ attitudes towards reality television. Using quantitative and qualitative content analysis of reviews of ‘reality’ shows between 2003 and 2014, the article shows that the main question debated in such reviews is the genre’s morality rather than its aesthetic value: for Israeli critics, it is the moral attributes of these shows, not their aesthetic or artistic worth, which determine their ‘quality’.

Iconography of violence in televised Hinduism: the politics of images in the Mahabharata

Violence and the representation of it in various forms of media have remained an intriguing subject of research particularly since violence occupies some key discursive spaces in the larger realm of media images. It is also often argued that the media promotes violence through repeated use of visuals representing, for example, physical combat or stealth, especially by the way of television programmes such as soap operas and mythological television series, which depict violence inherent in their narratives. The portrayal of violence in the televised version of mythological epics remains of primary concern for two specific reasons. First, epics such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata remain points of reference for everyday teaching and instruction even at the level of the household in India. Second, forms of individual and collective violence represented in the narratives, which include fratricide, attempted murder, molestation and kidnapping, emerge as the pivots on which the epics develop, categorizing them as fantastical tales of violence spawning more violence and bloodshed. The history of Indian television is beset with both the epics having been transformed into well-mounted television extravaganzas, beamed into households every week or weekday. Epic stories such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana have been popular choices among television moguls attempting a portrayal of Hindu mythology through iconography and representation. As such, bringing alive on screen inherent tales of violence emerges as one of the foremost objectives of those behind the televisual epics, at the same time justifying such depictions of violence as necessary for the ultimate common good. Often these descriptions or representations of violence through the narrative of the epics appear to be exaggerated as visual images of violence magnify the impact of the scenario in question. The paper envisages an investigation into the several forms of violence depicted through the epics and the manner in which these instances of graphic violence are mounted as central to the progression of the narrative of the television series. Further, it would base its central arguments on the political narrative of televised versions of the Mahabharata envisioning the inherent violence in several of its themes. Engaging with violence to further its thematic background – the moral necessity of the victory of good over evil and the creation of a just society – remains the centrepiece of the argument even as the paper would attempt to argue that televised versions of the Mahabharata have repeatedly and continually glorified violence and attempted to establish binaries between justifiable and unjustifiable violence.

Luz, Câmera... Segmentação: uma proposta de turismo cinematográfico para a cidade de Niterói-RJ

O turismo cinematográfico é um segmento do mercado turístico, no qual o turista viaja motivado a conhecer um local após tê-lo visto em alguma produção audiovisual, em especial, no cinema. Essas produções podem ser filmes minisséries, seriados ou as novelas. Nesse sentido, o objetivo geral do artigo é apresentar o potencial da cidade de Niterói-RJ para o desenvolvimento do turismo cinematográfico. Os objetivos específicos são: destacar a relação entre o turismo e o audiovisual; apresentar a cidade de Niterói como um destino cinematográfico; e construir um catálogo de locações, que contemple os atrativos que expressam a identidade da cidade. A metodologia consistiu de um levantamento de atrativos turísticos da cidade; levantamento de informações sobre estes; e visitas aos locais para a realização do registro fotográfico e observação sobre possíveis locações para produções audiovisuais. Como principal resultado dessa pesquisa, tem-se a catalogação dos atrativos da cidade organizados na forma de um catálogo de locações, cujo objetivo é apresentar o potencial para produção audiovisual que a cidade tem.

The Study on the Stereotype of Teacher clothing - Focused on Korean Movies and Soap Operas -

The Study on the Stereotype of Teacher clothing - Focused on Korean Movies and Soap Operas -

Introduction

Abstract This special issue is intended to take forward a sympathetic reconceptualization of the pleasures of popular film and of related forms such as soap operas and pornography. The five articles contained in the special issue vary in length and scope, and are followed by a response piece from a senior scholar. We hope that the dialogic mix of case studies and theoretical or survey approaches brings a liveliness to the treatment of pleasure, and indeed that it encapsulates our sense that pleasure retains a conceptual elusiveness, no matter how often discussed (or experienced). We acknowledge the elusiveness in this introduction, which we have cast in the form of a dialogue to acknowledge our individual motivations and to indicate the different academic and cultural contexts in which we, the two editors, work. We jointly describe the content of the articles at the end of the dialogue.

Caregivers Like Me: An Education Intervention for Family Caregivers of Latino Elders at End-of-Life.

End-of-life (EOL) care delivery to Latinos is a well-documented challenge. The majority of caregivers for Latino patients are family relatives, but because Latino caregivers may spend more hours in the caregiving role than other ethnic groups and are less likely to use additional available health care, caregivers can experience an increased burden. This can result in Latino elders being more vulnerable to receiving aggressive care. "Caregivers Like Me" was created as a source for nonprofessional caregivers to improve their knowledge about Latino caregiving of elders at end-of-life (EOL). This resource aims to educate about caregiver stress and to improve attitudes towards the utilization of EOL services. "Caregivers Like Me" is a bilingual education intervention that includes a video soap opera, or telenovela. The video is followed by discussion of hospice, palliative care, and caregiver stress definitions and ends with an explanation of services available for caregivers (i.e., social services, support groups, adult day care, chore workers, home care with or without palliative care, and respite care under hospice). "Caregivers Like Me" has been demonstrated to improve Latino family caregivers' openness to receiving professional help while caring for their loved ones. Participants in a multisite cross-sectional pilot study among nonprofessional Latino caregivers (N = 145) reported active learning from the intervention and high satisfaction with the overall educational experience. This tool provides an education format that is culturally and literacy-sensitive to Latino caregivers and effective in changing their attitude toward EOL care. It may be used by professional caregivers to educate Latino caregivers about EOL care.

The pleasure of repetition: The Bombay cinema and the South American telenovela

Abstract South American television soap operas (telenovelas) follow the same strand of melodrama as mainstream Hindi cinema, referred to here as Bombay cinema. Characters tend to be archetypes and the emphasis is on generating an emotional reaction. Both types of screen fiction attract legions of loyal fans, with series or films even acquiring cult status. At the same time, the critics and the educated elite of their respective countries brand the forms ‘repetitive’ because telenovelas and Bombay cinema rely on predictable formulae and many productions are remakes or transpositions, especially from foreign sources. I propose that the audiences of telenovelas and Bombay cinema derive pleasure precisely from repetition. Accusations of a lack of originality disregard the influence in their narratives of the oral storytelling tradition, in which what was important was not whether the audience knew the story but how engagingly it was told. Moreover, the predictability of the formula allows audiences to experience intense emotions safely and even to flaunt social rules.

A Prespective Study on Fame of Pakistani Tele-Serials In India

Zindagi TV also know as, Zee Zindagi is an Indian Hindi-Urdu general entertainment channel, owned by Zee Entertainment Enterprises (ZEEL) was started in June 2014. This channel broadcasts Pakistani Soaps to Indian sub-continent. Since its beginning, these shows were attracted by viewers and with increasing TRP, more shows started getting recognized. This research paper tries to analyze the reasons for the rising popularity of these Pakistani soap operas among Indian viewers inspited of different political climate around both the countries. To focus on micro manifestions of visual media, the paper has focused on one show Zindagi Gulzar Hai.

온라인 활동 데이터를 활용한 영상 콘텐츠의 하이라이트와 검색 인덱스 추출 기법에 대한 연구

With the spread of social media and mobile devices, people spend more time on online than ever before. As more people participate in various online activities, much research has been conducted on how to make use of the time effectively and productively. In this paper, we propose two methods which can be used to extract highlights and make searchable media indexes using online social data. For highlight extraction, we collected the comments from the online baseball broadcasting website. We adopted peak-finding algorithm to analyze the frequency of comments uploaded on the comments section of the website. For each indexes, we collected postings from soap opera forums provided by a popular web service called DCInside. We extracted all the instances when a character's name is mentioned in postings users upload after watching TV, which can be used to create indexes when the character appears on screen for the given episode of the soap opera The evaluation results shows the possibility of the crowdsourcing-based media interaction for both highlight extraction and index building.

Mediação familiar: apropriações, usos midiáticos e socioculturais na telenovela e no bumba meu boi

Este artigo objetiva analisar a constituição das identidades familiares através das relações vivenciadas com o gênero melodramático, exploradas em suas várias dimensões e manifestações, o que inclui a telenovela e o bumba meu boi; tendo como ponto de partida o estudo de uma família em três gerações. O referencial teórico apoia-se nos estudos culturais e nos estudos de recepção. Optou-se pela pesquisa de abordagem qualitativa e trabalhou-se com o método da história oral em seu desdobramento na técnica história de família. Entre outros resultados, destaca-se: a caracterização das práticas culturais evidenciou, na trajetória da família, o contato com as narrativas ficcionais e melodramáticas, isto é, outros modos da família conviver com a novela, com outros formatos que têm por gênero o melodrama; a história de família revelou que a novela (o folhetim, a radionovela e a fotonovela), enquanto tradição popular melodramática antecede à telenovela, isto é, a novela vista na televisão.

A TRANSMIDIALIDADE COMO ESTRATÉGIA DISCURSIVA

O trabalho discute, à luz da semiótica do discurso, os conceitos de transmidiação e intermidialidade, buscando descrever estratégias enunciativas e modos de interação derivados da “convergência” (JENKINS, 2008) entre TV e internet. Elege-se como objeto de investigação telenovelas da Rede Globo e conteúdos a elas relacionados, disponibilizados no portal GShow (http://gshow.globo.com). A partir da formulação de uma “semiótica das práticas” (FONTANILLE, 2005; 2008), as denominadas narrativas transmidiáticas são tomadas como textos construídos em face da congregação de diferentes mídias: TV, computador, celular, livro, e-book, câmera fotográfica etc. Postula-se que esses textos condensam diferentes práticas semióticas e se expandem por meio de estratégias que envolvem múltiplas plataformas.

“Globo, a gente se vê por aqui?” Diversidade racial nas telenovelas das últimas três décadas (1985 – 2014)

Desde sua popularização na década de 1960, as telenovelas da Rede Globo de Televisão tomaram para si a tarefa de representar o Brasil e seu povo. Apesar disso, a participação das personagens pretas e pardas nos elencos desses programas sempre esteve aquém do seu peso demográfico no país. Este texto apresenta os dados gerais de um levantamento que buscou medir a sub-representação de atrizes e atores pretos ou pardos na teledramaturgia da emissora. Nosso objetivo não foi apenas mensurar tal sub-representação, mas entender por meio dela a imagem de nação parcial que as telenovelas produziram e difundiram nas últimas três décadas. Embora os dados detectem uma tímida tendência à diversificação dos elencos, eles demonstram que os elencos das novelas brasileiras ainda são hegemonicamente brancos.

The Association Between Soap Opera and Music Video Viewing and Fear of Crime in Adolescents

The potential impact of mass media has been virtually neglected in the study of adolescent fear of crime. This is remarkable, given adolescents’ heavy media consumption and developmental vulnerability. Music videos and soap operas have been completely overlooked in the TV-fear association, even though they have a large adolescent audience and contain a lot of violence. An online survey of 3,372 adolescents aged 12 to 18 years found that the relationship between exposure to soap operas and music videos on the one hand and fear of crime on the other hand was mediated by perceived personal risk of criminal victimization, perceived ability to control crime, and perceived seriousness of crime. Exposure to soap operas and music videos was associated with these cognitive factors of fear. Some relationships differed by age and sex. Our findings suggest that the age of 14 to 15 is pivotal for the development of media-induced fear.

The economic, social and ontological security of Polish post-accession migrants in popular media narratives

The article is based on extensive analysis of the general assumptions on the Polish post-accession migrants’ trajectories imprinted within the narratives of popular TV programmes. The depiction of migrants in the Polish media is analysed in reference to Alfred Schütz’s figures of the Stranger and the Homecomer as metaphors of the very situation of being a migrant. The empirical data come from two popular Polish productions: the docu-soap ‘Wyjechani’ (The Leavers) and the soap opera ‘Londyńczycy’ (The Londoners) in which we identified 59 migrant characters. The analysis of the narratives of their life trajectory leads one to the conclusion that migration from Poland is depicted as a source of an individual’s feeling of insecurity at the economic, social or ontological level. The article reveals the representations of migrants’ career mobility abroad, the relations to their co-ethnics and the indigenous population, and their sense of cultural identity. The final result of the study is a conceptual map with the general assumptions on migrants’ economic, social and ontological security imprinted in media narratives.