The Soap Opera Narrative

By: Laura Onofrio

Soap operas are stories about American life. The central concept of soap operas is the family and life within and between families. The drama of the soap opera is the way that the family in various forms survives the forces that attack it. People watch soap operas for two reasons to escape from their everyday life and to learn to cope with their everyday life (Hobson: 2003:248). Since their days on the radio soap operas have been perceived as either character or issue led. If the characters drive the drama then the issues grow naturally out of the character's personality. Some soaps place more importance on the issues and have the issues, not the characters, guide the story. The issues that are addressed within soaps are the issues that are faced by audience members in the daily lives; therefore, the strength of this genre is in the narratives. Soaps talk to audience members about their lives. All the themes that are present within soap operas are all aspects of social life, emotional life and are examples of the practical elements of life that need to be dealt with (Hobson: 2003:116).

Although every soap addresses issues and develops storylines differently the soap opera genre has certain characteristics that can be found in all soap operas. Births, weddings and death are three crucial events that occur in soap operas and are central to all storylines. Romance is the cornerstone of all soap operas as they traces through the ups and downs of the personal relationships of the characters and tap into the emotions of their audience. The daily narrative of the soap opera allows for social issues to be dealt with. A storyline examining rape, drug abuse, or HIV will take several months to develop and will examine the causes and consequences surrounding the issue. Finally all soap operas have villains who sustain the audience's interest and create all the twists and turns in the storyline (www.mtr.org/exhibit/wwe/wwe4.htm). These events and themes are unique to the soap opera genre and have remained constant throughout its evolution.

There are several unique features of the soap opera genre. Its most distinguishing feature is that they never begin and are never-ending. They are made up of continuing stories with plotlines that compete against one another and often overlap as one storyline generally leads into another preventing any clear resolution. Unlike any other genre on television the soap opera is extremely slow paced as it can take months before a storyline climaxes (Cantor: 1983:23). This is a characteristic that is used to help audiences to understand and keep up with the plot while continuing with the other activities of their lives, such as housework, school, and paid work. "The illusion created that events in the world of the soaps is evolving parallel to those in the sphere of reality (Edmondson & Rounds: 1973:38)." Flashbacks and repetitive dialogue are devices used to facilitate the audience's understanding of a storyline and a way of ensuring that viewers do not miss any information that is vital to the development of a story (Cantor: 1983:23). Soap operas are driven by dialogue not action. Like its radio predecessors, television soap opera stories are told through conversations not through the physical portrayal of events. There is little of the action-oriented, fast moving violence so common on prime time TV (Cantor: 1983:24). Cliffhangers are the feature of soap operas that draws its audience in everyday. Leaving the audience hanging at the end of an episode is a ploy that is used to get the audience member to tune into the next episode to see what happens next.