Speaking of Soap Operas

by Robert C. Allen

From "Ma Perkins" and "One Man's Family" in the 1930s to "All My Children" in the 1980s, the soap opera has capture the imagination of millions of American men and women of all ages. In Speaking of Soap Operas , Robert Allen undertakes a reexamination of the production and consumption of soap operas through the use of a unique investigatory model based on contemporary poetics and reader-response theory.

Although a considerable amount of research has been conducted on these programs, Allen argues that soap operas remain a phenomenon about which much is said but little is known. Soap operas are different from most other media programming -- they appear formless, refuse to end, require little work on the part of the viewer, and bear no recognizable marks of authorship. For these and other reasons, soap operas resist explanation from both traditional aesthetic and empiricist social science perspectives.

The daytime dramatic serials generate nearly a billion dollars in revenue each year for the three commercial networks. Allen discusses in detail the economic and institutional functions of these programs in addition to the context of their production. He also considers the historical development of the soap opera as advertising vehicle, narrative structure and "women's fiction."

Speaking of Soap Operas is based on the author's own experiences as a soap opera viewer; extensive interviews with soap opera writers, producers, and actors; and the papers of Irna Phillips, creator of dozens of successful ratio and television soap operas. Drawing also upon trade publications, popular periodicals, and broadcast archives, this work is an important contribution to the field of mass communication.

255 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

Reviews

[Abby · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was raised on women’s magazines and soap operas (the High Priestess of Low Culture) and am interested in academic treatments of these phenomena. But I really can’t recommend this book. It’s academic, which is what I wanted, but why does “academic” have to mean “needlessly complex”? (I have almost no background in semiotics and none whatsoever in mass media theory, so that’s on me.) Here’s a sentence from the text: “Building upon Flitterman’s insights, we might see the comparative formal complexity of the soap opera commercial as the investment of it with aspects of the diegetic flexibility and extradiegetic narrational authority formerly possessed by the radio soap opera but displaced in the transition to television.” (Basically, TV commercials provided the structure and “narrational authority” that had been prominent in the radio soap...but I don’t want to read a sentence four times to figure out what it means. Whenever I read stuff like this, I picture the author reveling in an orgy of his own words. Take your word sex somewhere else, weirdo.) Other than what I learned about semiotics and media theory, there wasn’t much new in here. Most of the argument was like, “Yeah, the ‘empiricist’ perspective isn’t adequate...we have to focus more on reader response theory and how the reader interacts with the message...but we haven’t really done that, so check back later.” ??? I’m going to look at some newer work (post-1985) that is hopefully more illuminating--and more readable. The fact that I stuck this one out lets you know how devoted I am to finishing a book once I start it.

[Craven Lovelace · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is probably my favorite book on the subject of soap operas, and one of my favorite books on popular culture in general. The author's approach is essentially a semiotic one, but without much of the jargon and opaqueness that often attends that strategy. Allen makes much of the soap opera's feminist subtext, and of its status as a "decentered narrative." Now that soap operas are on the verge of extinction, I fear the insights this book offers may be lost, although they continue to be pertinent to other cultural phenomena such as literary erotica, comic books, etc.