HOME | FUNNY ARTICLES | TOP NEWS REPORTS | SUBMIT
|
Nov. 8, 2010 I’ve often questioned my love for daytime soap opera, but never could I manage to withdraw myself from my fixation with them. There are many words to describe soapies: exaggerated; unorthodox; sordid. We’ve heard it from our mothers and grandmothers over and over again, “Don’t watch this nonsense it’s going to pollute your mind!” I certainly have heard my share of lectures warning me against them and condemning my interest in it, yet I still cannot seem to stay away. A particular soapie that gets my full attention every weekday is the never-ending Days of our Lives. The storylines are repetitive (love and blackmail), the dialogue is blatant and the characters have no moral compass. Amnesia is more common than a chest cold and hospital security or lack thereof makes it possible for anyone to steal, switch or sabotage DNA/paternity results. Moreover, a five year old boy could grow twelve years in three weeks and still come back only to date Sami just babysat him three weeks ago! All this is happening while soapie super hero John is preparing to renew his wedding vows to Marlena, who just got her memory back again, but will be kidnapped in the next five minutes, AGAIN!
Sometimes it’s funny, other times it’s agonizing to watch. I could go on for hours about my love/hatred for Days of our Lives. So how does this soap opera or any soap opera for that matter, manage to catch viewers hook, line and sinker? It could be the impossible eye candy, or it could be the one reason we are told that it is bad for us: the fact that in soapie world, everyone acts out their urges and hidden desires without thinking of the consequences thereafter. The social norms we live by do not apply in Salem, Forrester Creations or Pine Valley. So in turn we escape from the world that gives us rules and guidelines on what is considered normal behaviour for men and women, into the world of soaps where it is ‘no holds barred’. Women have the power, the smarts and wit. We cannot live in a world where we as women go out and drug, kill or blackmail men, but we can watch it happen on the silver screen. Besides being timelessly beautiful, our soapie heroines are calculating and cunning. Men exist in soapies purely to be used sexually and conned financially. Wedding vows are my personal favourite because even though our heroine says “until death do us part” we all know what she really means is “or at least until your half brother wakes up from his coma”. It is no revelation that women are the majority among soapie viewers. Soapies have a reputation for nonsense because it denies the soap opera spectator the satisfaction of a fantasy that deviates from society’s gendered norms. Soap opera is permitted to exist because it has commercial viability, but it is packaged with cultural instructions that define it as ludicrous, deserving of shame and contempt. Take Sami Brady for instance, a character that will do anything in the name of love, including drugging a man to the altar. Lies and deceit are what the characters in Days of our Lives live by. That is why we have always been told it is bad for us, because it might somehow distort our minds and influence us. Indeed it is a battle of the sexes packed with gendered indifference and social deviance. Politics aside, we the viewers are tuning in religiously everyday with one thought in mind and one thought only: When will they kiss?
Comment on this article here!
|
||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
