To be Continued. . .: Soap Operas Around the World (Comedia)

409 Pages·1995·3.46 MB·English

by  Robert C. Allen

TO BE CONTINUED . . .
To Be Continued . . . explores the world’s most popular form of television drama, the soap
opera. From Denver to Delhi, Moscow to Manchester, audiences eagerly await the next
episode of As the World Turns, The Rich Also Weep or EastEnders. But the popularity of
soap operas in Britain and the USA pales in comparison to the role that they play in media
cultures in other parts of the world.
To Be Continued . . . investigates both the cultural specificity of television soap operas
and their reception in other cultures, covering soap production and soap watching in the
USA, Asia, Europe, Australia, and Latin America. The contributors consider the nature of
soap as a media text, the history of the serial narrative as a form, and the role of the soap opera
in the development of feminist media criticism.
To Be Continued . . . presents the first scholarly examination of soap opera as global media
phenomenon.
The editor: Robert C. Allen is James Logan Godfrey Professor of American Studies, and
Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill. He is the author of Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture and
Speaking of Soap Operas, co-author with Douglas Gomery of Film History: Theory and
Practice, and editor of Channels of Discourse and Channels of Discourse, Reassembled.

TO BE CONTINUED . . .
Soap operas around the world
Edited by Robert C. Allen
London and New York
First published 1995
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2001.
This collection and editorial material © 1995 Robert C. Allen; individual chapters © 1995
individual contributors or copyright holders (see p. ix for details of copyright holders other
than the authors)
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 the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
To be continued: soap operas around the world/edited by Robert C. Allen.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Soap operas–Social aspects
I. Allen, Robert Clyde.
PN1992.8.S4T6 1994
302.23'45–dc20 94–11394
ISBN 0–415–11006–8 (hbk)
ISBN 0–415–11007–6 (pbk)
ISBN 0-203-13185-1 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-18582-X (Glassbook Format)
Contents
List of contributors vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Robert C. Allen
1 Doubtless to be continued: A brief history of serial narrative 27
Roger Hagedorn
2 The role of soap opera in the development of feminist television
scholarship 49
Charlotte Brunsdon
3 Social issues and realist soaps: A study of British soaps in
the 1980s/1990s 66
Christine Geraghty
4 National and cultural identity in a Welsh-language soap opera 81
Alison Griffiths
5 Global Neighbours? 98
Stephen Crofts
6 The end of civilization as we knew it: Chances and the postrealist
soap 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 145
Jeremy G. Butler
8 Plotting Paternity: Looking for dad on the daytime soaps 164
Laura Stempel Mumford
9 “They killed off Marlena, but she’s on another show now”:
Fantasy, reality, and pleasure in watching daytime soap operas 182
Louise Spence
v
CONTENTS
10 “There’s a queer in my soap!”: The homophobia/AIDS story-line
of One Life to Live 199
Joy V. Fuqua
11 The consumption of soap opera: The Young and the Restless and
mass consumption in Trinidad 213
Daniel Miller
12 Not all “soaps” are created equal: Toward a cross-cultural
criticism of television serials 234
Gabriele Kreutzner and Ellen Seiter
13 Our welcomed guests: Telenovelas in Latin America 256
Ana M. Lopez
14 Memory and form in the Latin American soap opera 276
Jesús Martín-Barbero
15 Montezuma’s revenge: Reading Los Ricos También Lloran in
Russia 285
Kate Baldwin
16 The melodrama of national identity in post-Tiananmen China 301
Lisa Rofel
17 All in the (Raghu) family: A video epic in cultural context 321
Philip Lutgendorf
18 Sacred serials, devotional viewing, and domestic worship: A
case-study in the interpretation of two TV versions of
The Mahabharata in a Hindu family in west London 354
Marie Gillespie
Select Bibliography 381
Shari A. Novek
Index 388
vi
Contributors
Robert C. Allen teaches American studies and media studies at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Ien Ang teaches media studies at Murdoch University in Australia.
Kate Baldwin is a Ph.D. candidate in Comparative Literature at Yale University.
Charlotte Brunsdon teaches film and media studies at the University of Warwick.
Jeremy G. Butler teaches film and media studies at the University of Alabama.
Stephen Crofts teaches film and media studies at Griffith University in Australia.
Joy V. Fuqua is a Ph.D. candidate in media studies at the University of Pittsburgh.
Christine Geraghty teaches media studies at Goldsmiths’ College, University of London.
Marie Gillespie teaches media studies at the University of Cardiff.
Alison Griffiths is a Ph.D. candidate in Cinema Studies at New York University.
Roger Hagedorn teaches film and media studies at the University of South Dakota.
Gabriele Kreutzner is a freelance media scholar based in Germany.
Ana M. Lopez teaches film and media studies at Tulane University.
Philip Lutgendorf teaches in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature at the
University of Iowa.
Jesús Martín-Barbero teaches media studies at the Universidád del Valle Cuidad Universitaria
Meléndez in Cali, Colombia.
Daniel Miller teaches anthropology at University College London.
vii
CONTRIBUTORS
Shari A. Novek is a graduate student in communication studies at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Lisa Rofel teaches anthropology at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
Ellen Seiter teaches film and media studies at the University of Indiana.
Louise Spence teaches film and media studies at Sacred Heart College, Fairfield, Connecticut.
Laura Stempel Mumford is an independent scholar based in Madison, Wisconsin.
Jon Stratton teaches media studies at Edith Cowan University in Perth, Australia.
viii
Acknowledgments
The editor wishes to thank Aaron Hoffman and Sarah Doig for their help with this project.
Permission to reprint copyright material from the following sources is gratefully acknowledged:
An earlier version of Chapter 3 appeared in Dominic Strinati and Stephen Wagg (eds) Come
on Down: Popular Media Culture in Post-War Britain, London, Routledge: 1992. Chapter 4
was originally presented at ITSC 91 and was first published in Phillip Drummond, Richard
Paterson and Janet Willis (eds), National Identity and Europe: The Television Revolution,
BFI: 1993. A shorter version of Chapter 5 has appeared in Tomorrow Never Knows: Soap on
Australian Television, Moving Image no. 3, Melbourne, Australian Film Institute: 1994. A
shorter version of Chapter 6 was first published in Metro, Winter 1993, pp. 8–16. Chapter
7 was first published in Cinema Journal, Vol. 30: 4 (Summer 1991), pp. 75–91, University of
Texas Press, copyright © 1991. By permission of the University of Texas Press. Chapter 8
was first published in Genders, Vol. 12 (Winter 1991), pp. 45–61, University of Texas press,
copyright © 1991. By permission of the University of Texas Press. Chapter 12 was first
published in Screen, Vol. 32, no. 2. Chapter 14 is a re-writing of the first chapters of Televisión
y Melodrama, Jesús Martín-Barbero, Bogota, Tercer Mundo Editores: 1992. Chapter 16 is a
version, with substantial changes, of an article first printed in American Ethnologist, Vol. 21,
no. 4 (1994). By kind permission of the American Anthropological Association. Chapter 17
was originally written for a conference on “Religion and Media in South Asia” sponsored by
the Social Science Research Council and held in Carmel, California in 1989. A longer version
of it appeared under the title “Ramayan: the Video!” in The Drama Review, Vol. 34, no. 2
(summer 1990). The present version also appears in the volume which grew out of the
Carmel conference, Lawrence A. Babb and Susan S. Wadley (eds) New Modulations: South
Asian Religions and Modern Communications Media, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania
Press: in press, and is reprinted here by kind permission of the editors of that volume.
ix