Don't Talk While My Stories Are On...

Have any of you ever spent some time with your mother, aunt, or grandmother, and there is a certain time of day that they have to be home, exactly at that time, to watch "their stories"? I have grown up with some of these women in my life and heaven forbid if we are not home by 2 pm to watch the newest General Hospital, it was at least recorded. What can drive women (and some men) to these lengths for a television show? Soap Operas.

The reason that these come to mind was recently I was home visiting my mother and there on the television at 2 pm exactly was General Hospital. The next day while visiting my grandmother, at exactly 1 pm she had to have the television on to watch As the World Turns, and her 2 o'clock One Life to Live. I had never really thought much about this phenomenon growing up, until recently, when the woman that I work for watches everyday religiously her Soaps (Young and the Restless is her favorite), and if we had to go about town that day, you bet your life they were being TiVo'd. 

The influences that these Soap Operas have on our lives is binding. My mother still brings up Luke & Laura's wedding day from the 1980s (30 years ago!) as conversation topics from General Hospital.

However, I have found that with watching Soap Operas, I could have watched any episode exactly a year ago, then start watching one today, and know what was happening in the plot. It is a continuous cycle of repetitions in the story line. Why would the writers of these shows continue to repeat themselves with the same stories of love, betrayal, family, resurrection of the dead, comas, and evil twins? A great explanation comes from Theodor Adorno, a Marxist cultural theorist. He blames it on our consumer society, that we have allowed the creativity to be taken out of our lives and dominated by the "producers". "Not only are the hit songs, stars, and soap operas cyclically recurrent and rigidly invariable types, but the specific content of the entertainment itself is derived from them and only appears to change. The details are interchangeable... they are ready made cliches to be slotted in anywhere." (The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception)

These formulas are what keep the writers writing and the viewers watching. Formulas seem to work, so why fix what isn't broken? Well, it's been lovely chatting, but my Stories are on... I mean, the news...