Ownership Claims of Narratives: Soap Fans VS Soap Producers

By: Leanora Addorisio

The role of the female audience member in relation to soap operas has elevated in importance during the past few decades. Previously, women were either consumers of radio soap operas or co-creators (see Irna Phillips) of radio soap serials. Presently, women strive to achieve ownership of soap opera narratives much to the dismay of soap opera producers who also enjoy claiming ownership of soap narratives.

Walter Benjamin expressed the need for consumers to become producers of soap operas when he identified the relationship of the audience member to the soap opera. In perceiving of soap operas as text, he stressed the importance of making a text responsive to its audiences in such a way that audience members could become producers of texts by eliciting the meanings within texts. (Hayward: 1997, p.144) Here the structure of subculture emerges as audience members become active agents in owning and producing textual meanings from narratives.

Opposing Benjamin's idea is the soap producer's ownership claim to soap narrative. Denise Bielby points out the reality that television networks thrive on commercial successes where soap programmers' primary concern is the financial outcome of their products; that their products appeal to a mass demographic not that their audiences can own the values, meanings and significances of the soap serials. (Bielby: 1999, p.35) In this case, soap producers “own their narratives” as long as these narratives remain profitable.

Soap fans take the alternative view of owning narratives as they focus on the social aspect of ownership. Lee Harrington identifies the importance of the soap viewer in relationship to the soap opera by expressing the fact that soap operas depend heavily on the availability of audience and audience investment in viewing soaps. Audience investment includes a commitment to obtain alternative information about soap characters and the fictional worlds that are constructed within soap narratives. (Harrington: 1999, p.36) In this regard, soap opera fans are necessary in the production of soap operas and “own” soap narratives as they determine the longevity and popularity of soaps.

The primarily female audience that constitutes the general aggregate of soap fans use their feminine characteristic of solidarity to claim ownership of narratives as they create fan interaction sites that include fan clubs, daytime magazines and online communities. Harrington is quick to point out the nature of these sites and the relationship they hold to both soap fans and soap producers. She states that although fans would like to achieve optimum information regarding narratives and character information, these sites differ in the degrees to which both producers can control sensitive information, and fans can access actors or production staff. (Harrington: 1999, p.38).

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