- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Perspective
- Perspective
- Perspective
- Perspective
- Daytime Budget Cuts
- Agnes Nixon and Soap Opera “Chemistry Tests”
- Giving Soaps a Good Scrub
- The Way We Were
- Perspective
- Perspective
- Growing Old Together
- Perspective
- Perspective
- Of Soap Operas, Space Operas, and Television’s Rocky Romance with the Feminine Form
- The Ironic and Convoluted Relationship Between Daytime and Primetime Soap Operas
- Perspective
- Perspective
- Preserving Soap History
- Did the 2007 Writers Strike Save Daytime’s Highest-Rated Drama?
- “The Rhetoric of the Camera in Television Soap Opera” Revisited
- It’s Not All Talk
- Guiding Light
- The Evolution of the Production Process of Soap Operas Today
- From Daytime to <i>Night Shift</i>
- “What the Hell Does TIIC Mean?”
- The Evolution of the Fan Video and the Influence of YouTube on the Creative Decision-Making Process for Fans
- Soaps for Tomorrow
- Soap Opera Critics and Criticism
- Hanging on by a Common Thread
- Perspective
- The Role of “The Audience” in the Writing Process
- The “Missing Years”
- <i>As the World Turns’</i> Luke and Noah and Fan Activism
- Constructing the Older Audience
- References
- Index
Perspective
Perspective
Scholar Louise Spence on Comparing the Soap Opera to Other Forms
- Chapter:
- (p.130) Perspective
- Source:
- The Survival of Soap Opera
- Author(s):
Abigail De Kosnik
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
This chapter presents Spence’s views about comparisons of soap operas with other texts and forms. Spence believes that the notion of “soap opera” still has cultural meaning. Whether we are referring to the essential features of the genre or not, we are still able to communicate when using the term. In most cases, what we are communicating is that a film, TV show, story, or telling of an event that is referred to as “a soap opera” is in unsuccessful competition with some other narrative form that is privileged and valued by the comparison. This tendency to contrast other narrative forms with soap operas draws on deeply entrenched dissonances in our discourses on popular culture and asks us to consider the worth we place on originality and realism in telling stories.
Keywords: soap operas, television serials, cultural meaning, realism, popular culture
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- Title Pages
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Perspective
- Perspective
- Perspective
- Perspective
- Daytime Budget Cuts
- Agnes Nixon and Soap Opera “Chemistry Tests”
- Giving Soaps a Good Scrub
- The Way We Were
- Perspective
- Perspective
- Growing Old Together
- Perspective
- Perspective
- Of Soap Operas, Space Operas, and Television’s Rocky Romance with the Feminine Form
- The Ironic and Convoluted Relationship Between Daytime and Primetime Soap Operas
- Perspective
- Perspective
- Preserving Soap History
- Did the 2007 Writers Strike Save Daytime’s Highest-Rated Drama?
- “The Rhetoric of the Camera in Television Soap Opera” Revisited
- It’s Not All Talk
- Guiding Light
- The Evolution of the Production Process of Soap Operas Today
- From Daytime to <i>Night Shift</i>
- “What the Hell Does TIIC Mean?”
- The Evolution of the Fan Video and the Influence of YouTube on the Creative Decision-Making Process for Fans
- Soaps for Tomorrow
- Soap Opera Critics and Criticism
- Hanging on by a Common Thread
- Perspective
- The Role of “The Audience” in the Writing Process
- The “Missing Years”
- <i>As the World Turns’</i> Luke and Noah and Fan Activism
- Constructing the Older Audience
- References
- Index