THE WOMEN OF THE SOAPS
Jennifer Haertling
[Assignment: Consider recent movies (or TV shows, magazines, advertisements, fashions, music, music videos, etc.). Classify them into categories which illustrate something about our attitudes, tastes, beliefs, or values.]
(1) Afternoon soap operas have long been a favorite television choice for women. Not only are ~he story lines steamy and suspenseful, but the cast contains a wide variety of characters ranging from normal to neurotic. Of this variety, the women characters of soap operas can be classified into four groups: the mother image, the victimized female, the career woman, and the evil temptress.
(2) The mother image characters are the women who represent the ideal mother to viewers. Such characters are always ready to provide comfort to the downtrodden, stand up for the rights of those being taken advantage of, and offer refreshments to all who pass by the house. Myrtle Fargate, a character on All My Children, has teken in several lost souls and helped work out their lives. One such case was Kelly who lived in Myrtle's home until Myrtle helped her overcome her drug problem snd get together with Link. On Ryan's Hope, Maive Ryan is a devout Catholic and matriarch of an Irish clan. She fights bad marriages, crooked politics, and New York city crime to hold her family together throughout stressful soap opera situations. Kate Martin of All My Children is the epitome of the mother image. Dressed in heels and apron, Kate perpetually has a batch of cookies in the oven and a pitcher of fresh squeezed--not from concentrate--lemonade in the refrigerator.
(3) The victimized female is an essential element for soap opera story lines. She represents the romantic ideals female viewers dream of while, at the same time, the victim's troubles meke real life struggles seem silly and small. Two sttt:h characters on All My Children were Jenny Gardner and Nina Courtland. Jenny was a poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks who fell in love with Greg, a rich, upstanding young man. Greg's mother did not approve of the relationship and did everything in her power to make the young couple miserable. After years of fighting the odds, Jenny and Greg were married, only to have Jenny blown up in a jet ski accident. Nina fell victim at the opposite end of the spectrum. Nina was a rich girl who fell in love with Cliff, the poor doctor. Though Cliff saved Nina's life several times in surgery, her father continually refused to accept Nina's and Cliff's love for each other.
( 4) The career women of the soap operas are ·role models, what the viewers would like to be like. These
34 characters are in control of their lives. their careers or businesses. and people around them. General Hospital's Bobbie Spenser and One Life to Live's-Vicki; Buchanan are representative of this category. Bobbie works as a surgical nurse at the hospital. runs a boarding house on the side. and helps with police work as a hobby. Vickie is owner and publisher of a newspaper. mother of three young children. and keeps her manipulative powerful father-in-law. Asa. in line. She also deals with a greedy step-sister and fights to keep her own split personality from re-emerging.
(5) The evil temptresses of the soap operas are an emotional release for the women who watch the programs. The characters. who have no scruples. do terrible things to themselves and others that viewers could never do or get away with in real life. Erica Kane of All My Children. and Heather Weber of General Hospital are evil women of the soaps. Erica. a small town girl turned model turned magazine editor. has been married. divorced. and remarried countless times. She longs for what is not hers and does everything in her power. moral or otherwise. to gain what she desires. Erica is not consciously evil •. just possessive and spoiled. Heather is generally a psychopathic. evil person. She escaped from a mental institution by bribing a fellow patient. Heather stole her sister's baby. killed her ex-husband's lover. and framed her mother for the murder.
(6) Not only do these four categories of charac.ters make the story lines interesting. but the women of the soap operas portray images that female viewers wish to identify with in their own lives. '1:'he mother image is the ideal mom. The victimized female is a romantic. tragic scale against which viewers measure their own 1 iv es. The career woman is a role model for female viewers to strive to be like. And the evil temptress is an immoral fantasy that viewers wish they could get away with.
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