Academic Research - Daytime Soaps by Louise Spence

Watching Daytime Soap Operas – The Power of Pleasure Louise Spence

Pages 32 – 63

The book explains how the majority of a Soap Opera audience is women as the use it as an escapism from their real life;

“…takes them into their own problems … or problems worse than their own” (Harpers 1942)

This explains the interest of watching soap operas – people use it as a form of escapism. Soap Operas are based around realism; all aspects within them are kept as realistic as possible including the shots, mis-en-scene and lighting. The realism means that the audience find it easy to relate to the characters and happenings on screen, finding aspects of themselves in the characters and storylines, this makes them attached the soap – increasing the viewing figures for the broadcaster. Watching Soap Opera’s can also be seen as an ego boost to some viewers, highlighting how well their lives are actually going in comparison to some problems people face. As explained in the book, it is a cheaper option of cheering themselves up in comparison to something such as ‘retail-therapy’.

Soap Operas often focus on storylines appropriate to society at the time as explained in the book by a quote from Irna Phillips (1994), they are a “ vehicle that can not only entertain but educate”. Soap Operas often raise awareness for ‘taboo’ subjects in society such as crime and illness. Eastenders raised awareness about AIDS through their character Mark Fowler and were commended for doing so. Coronation Street featured a storyline about teenage pregnancy featuring the young Sarah Platt, beginning all the awareness that has been raised single mothers and teenage pregnancy since. Not only do they educate their audiences about the more taboo subject matters but they deal with more everyday problems such as divorce, falling out with family members or losing your job; without knowing it the audience is being taught how to deal with such situations should they ever occur. As a group we realised this was an important factor of Soap Operas and used our trailer to incorporate to include controversial storylines such as suicide, teenage pregnancy and relationships with age gaps. We chose such issues as we felt these as relevant to modern day as they are constantly referred to in recent media such as newspapers.

Soap Operas also rely upon their audience to have a broad knowledge about society, British culture and the soap itself whilst watching;

“The viewer is required to bring to the viewing experience”.

Without knowledge of what is presumed ‘sociably acceptable’ audiences would not realise how controversial the storyline surrounding a young, lesbian couple in Coronation Street, one girl religious, was. The cultural code, created by Roland Barthes, is important when watching Soap Operas - it is our knowledge of our culture and the world around us that allows us to relate and predict the happenings within a Soap Opera. This is later referred to again whilst the author writes about Dorothy Hobson; “the audience … add their own experience and opinions”.