to be continued - representingtheholocaust

TO BE CONTINUED . .
Soap operas around the world
Edited by Robert C. Allen
Ëì
London and New York
.
Contents
First published 1995
bY Routledge
I 1 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
bY Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This collection and editorial material @ 1995 Robert C. Allen;
individual chapters O 1995 individual contributors or
copyright holders (see p. ix for details of copyright
holders other than the authors)
Typeset in Times bY
Ponting-Green Publishing Services, Chesham, Bucks
Printed in Great Britain bY
TJ Press (Padstow) Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by
any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from
List of
Robert C. Allen
p.
cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
l. Soap operas-Social asPects
I. Allen, Robert ClYde.
PN1992.8.54T6 1994
302.23'454c20 94-11394
rsBN 0-415-l 1006-8 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-l 1007-6 (pbk)
"'il
1x
I
narrative
I
of serial
Doubtless to be continued: A brief history
Roger Hagedorn
Z
of feminist television
The role of soap opera in the development
scholarshiP
27
49
Charlotte Brunsdon
3Socialissuesandrealistsoaps:AstudyofBritishsoapsin
66
the 1980s/1990s
Christine GeraghtY
4
soap opera
National and cultural identity in a Welsh-language
5
Global
81
Alison Grffiths
98
Neighbours?
Stephen Crofts
6
postrealist
The end of civilization as we knew ít" Chances and the
soap
the British LibrarY
Líbrary of Congress Cataloging in Publicatíon Data
To be continued: soap operas around the world/edited by
Robert C. Allen.
contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction
opera
122
Ien Ang and Jon Stratton
7
"I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV": Characters' actors
and
acting in television soaP oPera
r45
Jeremy G. Butler
Plotting Paternity: Looking for dad on the daytime
Laura Stempel Mumford
soaps
"They killed off Marlena, but she's on another show now":
Fantasy, reality, and pleasure in watching daytime soap operas
Louise Spence
164
182
INTRODUCTION
ROBERT C. ALLEN
raises any number of interesting and important questions. Among them are:
how does a serial made to "speak" to an audience in one culture manage to
speak to other audiences in other cultures around the world? And what role
does the cultural provenance of a particular serial play in its reception by
"foreign"
audiences?
Open and closed serials
Regardless of their circumstances of production, distribution, or reception,
serials share a distinctive narrative form, one recognized by their viewers
around the world. A brief discussion of that common form and some key
distinctions within it might be helpful as background for reading any of the
chapters that follow.
The term "serial" draws our attention
to the one feature Kewang,
Coronation Street, Guiding Light, Dallas, Ramdyan, Los Ricos Lloran
Tambien, and even the programs that make up Masterpiece Theatre all share
of narrative and
- their seriality. True serialization - the organization
textual display
of
both
suspension
and
regular
narration around the enforced
reader
engagement
mode
of
very
different
produces
a
and reading activity theorist
As
literary
non-serials.
with
experience
we
than
pleasure
and ¡eader
Wolfgang Iser has noted, the act of reading any narrative involves traversing
textual terrain over time, as the reader moves from One wgrd, sentençe,
paragraph, and chapter to the next. O¡ in the case of cinematic or televisual
narratives, from one shot, scene, sequence, or episode to the next. As readers
or viewers we take up what he calls a "wandering viewpoint" within the text
as we move through it, looking back upon the textual terrain already covered
(what Iser calls retention) and anticipating on that basis what might lie around
the next textual corner (protension). Both processes occur in the gaps between
words, sentences, and chapters (or shots, scenes, and sequences) - those
sary textual silences where we as readers/viewers are called upon to
the words, sounds and/or images of the text to form a coherent
ive world.25
serial, then, is a form of narrative organized around institutionallygaps in the text. The nature and extent of those gaps are as important
ng process as the textual "material" they interrupt. Each episode
degree of narrative indeterminancy: a plot question that will
ered until the next episode. In the US, where daytime serials are
onday through Friday, the greatest indeterminancy is left with
t the end of the Friday episode, encouraging her, as the
voice used to say, to "tune in again next time" on Monday.
plenty of time for viewers to discuss with each other both
nings of what has happened thus far as well as what might
regardless of the cultural context of their production and
less of their plot or themes, television serials around the
t7
INTRODUCTION
ROBERT C' ALLEN
provoke talk about
form of programming to
other
any
than
more
and
world seem
o-n teíeuision serials
ui"*"lT'
tr,"i.
among
rhem
u' their defining qualitv:
women, christine G";;;i:;;"ni'
by daytime scheduling
Soap operas . . ' can no
tut uy the presence of
app
clear
a
by
even
or
y that they become the
stories which engage a
subject for Public inter
ffi;å ilJ;å1îiu*t
analYze
th;À;;à;;"stic seri
uoifiu",otY workers
Lisa Rofel
.bY
th
e
Pen
forthediscussionofgende¡theeffectsoftheCultt
issues'
såti"ty' and other contested
of intellectuals in Chin-ese
around
organized
be
to
"
Non-serial popular nuttutiu"'i"nd
aeonist or small grouP
of
-t"tfrl;;;
toward
rñoment of narrative clo
US daytime soap
daytime soap are les
of narrative, and i
ther sense as well' Events in a
ble than they are in other forms
itself, is more mutable' For
example, generally, when a character dies in a fictional narrative (assuming
we are not reading a gothic horror tale or piece of science fiction) we expect
that character to stay dead. In soap operas, it is not unusual to witness the
resurrection of a character assumed to be but not actually dead, even after
s of intervening story.
ra called The Edge of
ent in the Caribbean
out she had been resc
Paris where she
discovered to be suffering from amnesia. She was taken to
to her
returning
and
memory
her
recovering
years
before
lived for five
Roger
character,
Light,
one
Guiding
O¡The
States.
in
the
and family
husband
have now
Thorpe, was killed off twice more than ten years ago, only to
possible
yet
another
presume,
we
awaits,
he
where
show,
the
to
returned
ction is
î':"''!å::lijt'lix;iï::ïäix':,1i:'i':å::"::lä:":ï:i:i:
murder mystery, t" *;;;,
;e-;ovement ñ
" *ij;:#"ï::Hiîïîil
incarcerated or otherwise institutionalized, or are presumed dead. Furthermore, the audience comes to know some of these characters quite literally
over the course of decades of viewing. In the nearly forty years that actress
is each of these ntot ttn"tr"rr,,
(with the possible
exce
is to saY they are th€
impossstrips) predicated upon the
one of
of
episode
an
*u'"tt
one sits dowri''J
tn
episode might be the one
i"o'ni"
iuitity or uttifnut" "tlii
that,this
these program' *itr'"t'" "*p"tiàìion pioblems
;äil;;t
which all individuai;ä
*iu u" sorved
and evervone
Charita Bauer played the role of Bert Bauer on The Guiding Light, het
character evolved from young bride to great-grandmother. Viewers of
Coronatíon Street have followed events in the life of character Ken Barlow
nce he was introduced in the show's first episode in December 1960. Thus,
community of soap opera characters shares with the loyal viewer a sense
collective and individuat history, which, in some cases, has unfolded
and viewing: the viewer who began
The Guiding Light in 195 I as a young mother caring for infants
f now watch with her grandchildren. Truth to tell, writers seldom
itheir characters' or viewers' specific knowledge of story events
both
of storytelling
past, although some viewers are quick to chastise writers when
tly violate that shared history.
the open serial community, the complexity of its character
and the fact that these characters possess both histories and
bine to create an almost infinite set of potential connections
and plots events. As Laura Stempel Mumford discusses in
revelation of hidden parentage - a plot device common, so
ine, to television serials around the world is emblematic
-
INTRODUCTION
ROBERT C' ALLEN
rer ated
of this f eature of
seriar
s,'
i,lllî;îäî:fr ;:,1î:î;"'ååäii
J"
e telling someone else'
acter, who telePhones
es
nothing to advance
comPuter programsocial, solitary, or non-verbal: farmers, factory workers'
viewer might well rega
viewer, who tells
whom
*îliîi"ltl""."i;"å:ïi
..norhing ever.happr
that
ffåtïîiffl;li
:haracters.
,n op"n seriars comprain
ilïiÏffï'Jrïi;;
g'ouna"a in two runda-
ãtto reveals an equallY
and the
se narratives function
;Ïl
'lnm':t,î:Jiîii Jiilin soap
narrat'
I other types of popular as
in open
we
But'
action'
place in
operas is on talk '";;; ''li;t
for viewers not so^much
digmatic
serials take on t"un'n'
*t"
"tt''oke: if' after twenty years'
"r
a syntagmatic chain ;it';il;'i;'ä'Ã'
those events
structure of the commìnity
to be RalPh' th
;;;'t father is revealed revealed:9
b"
,ä ¡"""ir* who is now
^' ts
nemesrs'
his
Jeremy'
i"t*t *i,ft the fact that
re
because he is not a
comPlex Paradigmatic
î:JäïJ,"i',Ë"u""
each ePisode is lo
that his serial
i'
remains, always has and always will remain, neutral with no particular
view or axe to grind. The characters within the programme can be as
extreme in their views as the story, characlerization or reality demands
- although the programme itself must not be seen to take any particular
viewpoint.2e
- at least in the US, Great Britain,
ideological "message" (except
particular
a
not
do
express
broadest sense of supporting the socio-economic status quo - an
äon shared by every other commercial television program) so much
out more general normative territories.
Lter of this normative space are those values, attitudes, and
citly or explicitly believed by producers to be held by the core
viewers: in the case of US daytime serials, middle-class
the ages of l8 and 35. These norms form, for the most part'
givens of the serial social structure. However, in their
rts to keep storylines "current" and interesting to viewers,
y introduce plot lines dealing with controversial social or
narrative structure of open serials enables these plot lines
values they carry to be tried out and allows their fates to be
the most part, the worlds of open serials
Iia
,:îff1,ïi:îï,:.Ti'ï:1:
2l
ROBERT C. ALLEN
tn
ewers lose interest
is
it
which
to
cter(s)
e divested of
it (drug
IDS in US
daYttme
qua discusses in her
to
es is to attach them
keep
systems and thus
ial's normative territorY'
tlY Provides a
ial issues than
t successful television
which ran from 1965 to
s
I
dealt with a wide range
ns of farmworkers'
tranquilizer addiction'
in
se
bringing the major plot lines to some form of resolutron'
and
fã Ni.o Vink, closure rePresents a key difference between Brazilian
privileges
the
telenovela
of
thrust
North American serials. The teleological
exin. Ànuf episodes institutionally, textually, and in terms of audience
promoted'
heavily
is
telenovela
of
a
ending
The
f..,urlo" ;d satisfaction.
becomes the subject of
ãnd, in the case of particularly popular telenovelas,
.,how will everything work out?"
anticipatory public ãnd private discourse:
,,who
win and who will lose?" "who will live and who will die?" Two
a
a soci
the ever
its oPen
stand or
will
But it is imPortant to
US daYtime and other
F
ideololical valences'
a
among characters rn
kinsh
through
"t
"ruð,"t
through romance
etc.)'
o
secret admirer' etc')'
etc')'
enemY'
neighbor,
theie three cate.gories: '
"-i",tr.
eve
as well, the p
newspapers¡ attempted to see in each ending a meaning that extended well
beyond-the nu.ro*iy textual. One critic saw one ending as transforming the
I into an allegory for
,ping among colleagues
irns
*
inv
l"com"
ts
romantically
ùto.t t and homosexuals
the socio-political situation in Brazil.
A viewer
provided moral
¡¡ded bV puUlistrea letter that the alternative ending
of it in the real
lack
the
for
S.e for the world of the text in compensation
never go
powerful
the
reality
"that
in
wrote,
i'iEveryone knows," she
Just for that reason at least a [tele]novela should offer this
"30
are
more because of the
direct consequence
homosexual ch
been
treated like contentio
as a Part of a sPecific
without lasting imPa
amoug u
token gaY character
of
The
endings were shot for Roque santeiro, a telenovela broadcast in 1985.
revelatory
final
its
approached
serial
nature of each was publicized as the
episode and a public opinion poll taken to determine which the audience
preferred. Botb commentators and ordinary viewers (through letters to
a soãP oPera
would call in
heterosexu'al r
;iltl;;fv, ïith int""u"ial
y-'bounds of the soap op-"P "o'*l1t
oper
on soap
ii"""t¿-.tuts"
citizenship
ic discourse surrounding the ending of Roque Santeiro suggests '
also offer viewers an opportunity after closure to look back
text and impose upon it some kind of moral or ideological
sense, closed serials are, as Ana Lopez notes, inherently
ln nature. To use Peter Brooks's phrase, melodramas
"moral occult."3l They offer us worlds in which
are
the
on, the chance encounter, the accidental occurrence, the
all seem connected to some deeper but obscure pattern
hidden moral order. Each twist of the plot implicitly
"what does this mean?" "Why is this happening?" The
23