The Never-Ending Story

Comic Fred Allen used to call television “chewing gum for the eyes.” And according to both the ratings and the revenues, among the most popular brands of visual chewing gum are soap operas.

Daytime soaps are viewed by more than 30 million Americans—if one trusts the ratings. Very likely the audience is much larger; the stigma attached to soap opera viewing may lead respondents to lie about their television habits. Recent estimates of soap opera viewing have ranged as high as 70 percent of the adult population.

Numerous studies have shown that soap audiences are representative educationally and economically of the overall population. Nor are soaps watched only by women, as the stereotype suggests. Daytime soap audiences are 15 percent male, but evening audiences are nearly half men; these statistics are true of television audiences overall. Nor are soap fans typically older citizens. Over half of all college students watch daytime television serials. (More than a few class schedules have been planned around favorite soap operas.)

Evening soap operas have also been a phenomenal success, beginning with the 1979–80 television season, when “Dallas” rose to fifth in the national ratings. For the next two seasons it was the highest-rated program in the country. By 1983 four of the top eleven prime-time programs were soaps: “Dallas,” “Dynasty,” “Falcon Crest,” and “Knots Landing.”

Stories About Us

Why do so many people tune in to a dramatic world where amnesia is the major ailment and where the most common activity next to sex is blackmail?

Certainly improved soap opera writing and production account for some of the genre’s popularity. Today’s serials use more sophisticated lighting and sets, and the scripts are more imaginative, if not of higher quality. Soaps now reflect the technical standards of the television industry, while for decades they were the fast foods on the medium’s menu.

But there may be more to the ascendancy of the soap opera. Like folk art before it, popular art generally reflects something of the people who enjoy it. A program may gain a large following simply because of its entertaining qualities, but it is likely that the success of an entire genre is evidence of the audience’s values and beliefs. Soaps are not only stories for us, but stories about us. They are part of the “sacred” text of the modern canon of popular storytelling.

Waiting For The End

Popular stories have not always been like the soaps. Throughout history, storytelling has had what literary critic Frank Kermode called “a sense of an ending.” This was true of oral narratives composed around various mnemonic devices and passed on anonymously by thousands of tellers. It was true of the biblical stories, which the church compiled and disseminated to tell the story of redemptive history. It was also true of classical drama, from tragedy to comedy, which assumed that the actions of characters would lead to a conclusion predetermined by the writer.

In the modern world, however, the providential character of storytelling is no longer assumed. Stories still have characters and conflict. They usually include action of some kind, although not necessarily of epic proportion. And dialogue is still the major vehicle for creating conflict. But in both popular and fine art today, some types of stories are told with no apparent ending. A good example would be Samuel Beckett’s drama Waiting for Godot in which the main characters sit about listlessly waiting for a nondescript character who never arrives. They appear to be locked in a world where decisive action is impossible and salvation is inconceivable.

Is it possible that the loss of a sense of an ending in some forms of contemporary storytelling reflects significant changes in the modern view of reality? Admittedly, not all types of narrative today lack an ending; most of what is broadcast on television, depicted in film, and performed on the stage today still leads to a conclusion predetermined by an author. But much of popular and fine art does not. And probably the best example from television is the soap opera.

History As Illusion

Like many types of modern narrative, the soap opera challenges the traditional Western world view rooted in Christian optimism about the predetermined flow of events from God’s history-forming hands. Although the viewer anticipates an ending, or at least the termination of various subplots, the conclusion is always delayed. Sometimes action is even reversed, as occurred this year on “Dallas.” Viewers found out that earlier episodes of the program never really happened. Sue Ellen never quit drinking. Donna never lost her baby. Bobby never died. The previous season had all been a dream! Old conflicts, long ago resolved, returned to the show. History was an illusion. Either God plays jokes, or there is no omnipotent playwright for human history.

Soap operas were not always so predictably open-ended. In “Soapland” James Thurber described the early formula: “Between thick slices of advertising, spread twelve minutes of dialogue, add predicament, villainy and female suffering in equal measures, throw in a dash of nobility, sprinkle with tears, season with organ music, cover with a rich announcer sauce, and serve five times a week.”

In these early soaps, such as “The Romance of Helen Trent” and “Our Gal Sunday,” virtuous action was usually rewarded. The story line frequently shifted to hold viewer interest, but along the way evil people were brought to justice or simply left to simmer in the wicked relationships resulting from their misconduct. The heroine’s good deeds usually landed her a handsome husband or an unexpected job offer, while the self-serving actions of villains were implicitly condemned by their consequences. Early soaps had both a sense of justice and an appreciation of virtue.

Moral Ambiguity

Today, however, the outcome of action on the soaps is often morally evil or ambiguous. Virtuous and evil conduct are equally rewarded, depending upon what the producer thinks will hold the interest of viewers. In one of the oddest plot shifts of the soap world, the producer of “General Hospital” instructed the character of Laura that she must fall in love with Luke, who had raped her a year before. It was not a matter of slowly changed hearts and growing reconciliation, but an abrupt shift in the story line.

In modern soaps, infidelities may or may not produce additional dishonesty. Selfless actions could precipitate violence as much as love and gratitude. There is no longer any basis for truly moral and righteous conduct, for the result of human action is entirely unpredictable and often completely inexplicable—except as a device to increase ratings. One female character had a child two years after undergoing a hysterectomy. A man unknowingly married his sister, revealed years before to have been their father’s illegitmate child. The reluctance of the modern soap opera to link virtuous action and just reward reflects many of the values of contemporary society. Moral absolutes seem simplistic and dogmatic, while moral ambiguity appears honest and open-minded.

Similarly, in society there is a widespread sentiment that selfless behavior will not really make a difference in the lives of people, let alone in government, business, or school. Frequently we are more interested in whether or not what we do will “work,” than whether or not it is proper conduct. This kind of pragmatic ethic has spread widely through the culture and through many institutions, including television.

As a result, soap opera characters are inevitably left in an earthly purgatory awaiting a final cleansing that will never come. Their good deeds will eventually be eroded by the capricious effects of time, no matter how hard they try to improve the human condition. And their wicked actions will not be held to a final accounting, for there is no immutable and everlasting overseer of the soap cosmos.

Retreat Into Realism

In one respect, this makes soaps more realistic, because in life virtuous action is not always rewarded, and good things often happen to people who do despicable things. Such claims to realism are made especially of the so-called ensemble programs such as “St. Elsewhere” and “Hill Street Blues,” which in many ways are technically sophisticated reformulations of the soap genre.

But what is behind the realism of the soap opera? In what sense do the soaps actually reflect something of modern life? Unlike the existentialism of a Beckett, the soaps challenge the Christian cosmology by claims to evolutionary naturalism. Soaps do not say that human life has no meaning, but that ultimate meaning is to be found entirely in the natural world. Instead of looking to the beginning or the end of creation for meaning, to the Author of the creation, they look to the creation itself.

In this sense, the soaps belong to the tradition of literary naturalism represented by the works of Zola, Flaubert, and Maupassant, who believed that the artist ought to portray life “as it is” without imposing value judgments. Of course, this is impossible to do, since naturalism is itself a perspective from which to view life. No novel or television program can merely reflect life as it is lived; a story is necessarily someone’s interpretation of experience.

Life Imitates Soap

In an attempt at the utmost in realism, television tried to create a totally naturalistic series—the unusual program, “An American Family,” broadcast on public stations in the early 1970s.

The controversial show chronicled the lives of members of an actual California family in 12 hour-long installments. A producer and two assistants spent seven months with the family, shooting some 300 hours of film. Included were “scenes” where the mother learned of her son’s homosexuality, the wife decided to file for divorce, and the husband moved out of the house. It was all very much like a soap opera and far less like the day-to-day lives that most Americans experience. In fact, members of the family became some of the severest critics of the program, charging that 12 hour-long segments could not capture 300 hours of film, let alone seven months of family life.

Only The Grinding Of The Clock

While naturalism on the tube highlights some of the desires and instincts of mankind, it also paints a world where there typically is no spiritual or supernatural side to life. Behind literary naturalism is the philosophical idea that the whole of reality, including religious truth, can be accounted for in the physical world, which moves along by chance and luck, but never by Providence.

The soap opera depicts an Earth devoid of an imprint from the Creator. There is no clear evidence for the existence of God. There is no unmistakable beauty or order to the creation—only depressing interior sets and an ocassional pass to an outdoor rendezvous. There is little hope for lasting reconciliation among feuding or contentious people—only the sure belief in eventual agony and ongoing uncertainty. There is no cosmic sweep to history—only the grinding movement of the clock. (One woman on a soap spent 17 days in a revolving door while experiencing flashbacks.) Finally, there is no sense of transcendent being in the universe—only the struggle to know and understand other human beings who are similarly unable to hear a voice from heaven.

Naturalism in the soaps is also evolutionary. The soaps locate the significance of human existence in the changes that take place in the natural world, particularly the process of natural selection. Today the only thing that a viewer can count on in a soap is change itself. Change may come slowly, as the frustrated regular viewer of a soap knows, but it will indeed come. New characters and plot shifts will not lead to “progress,” at least in the optimistic sense of the word, but will produce new situations and unpredictable consequences.

In the process of this change, some characters will survive and others will not. Some will avoid nervous breakdowns or adultery, while others will fall victim. Some will gain power over others—through extortion, blackmail, sexual favors—and others will be controlled by those in power. Some soap characters will be killed (and usually not be brought back to life). The world of the soaps, then, is a place of natural change where some fortunate beings will survive, if only for a time, and others will not. Thus, the theme of soap operas is “the survival of the fittest.” (See box below, “Different as Day and Night.”)

Different As Day And Night

The theme of soap operas is “survival of the fittest.” But there is a significant difference between how daytime and evening soaps depict the ongoing struggle.

Most daytime soaps project a world of personal battles between individuals. Lovers fight, tease, deceive, and fornicate. Siblings contend for the attention or inheritance of parents.

In the evening soaps, such as “Dallas” and “Dynasty,” the personal conflicts are typically part of a larger struggle among contending families or businesses. Even J. R.’s wicked sexual advances on “Dallas” are often tied to the vicious competition among oil barons and their corporations. Evening soaps have increased the stakes in the human battle for survival from personal ruin to institutional Survivors: The Darwinian characters of “Dynasty.” destruction. It is not only people who must struggle to survive; all social institutions are part of the evolutionary processes. On the prime-time soap, society itself is part of the natural process of selection.

Wild Kingdom

Soaps are the human equivalent of the nature shows, such as Mutual of Omaha’s “Wild Kingdom” and Marty Stauffer’s “Wild America.” Both soaps and nature shows look to the evolutionary dynamics of the natural world as the meaningful context for the actions of characters. Nature shows do it literally, and soaps do it metaphorically; but the end product is the same—an earthly world of creatures struggling to survive against natural forces. Nature takes its own course, and no individuals or groups will be able to change significantly the direction of history or the destiny of their lives.

On the soaps, there are no heroes whose actions can truly resolve conflict. We might like particular characters more than others. We might even condone the actions of some soap people and detest the nefarious conduct of an adulterer, extortionist, or ungrateful daughter. But all of these characters, regardless of what we think of them, are locked in the same struggle for survival. All actions, whether loving or selfish, virtuous or immoral, are simply attempts to adapt to the social environment.

Like animals on nature shows, soap characters are dramatically impotent; they are unable to mold significantly the natural processes taking place around them. In biblical terms, they worship the lords of money, sex, and social status. And they are thus unable to live in dominion over the creation because they know not the Author of the human story—God himself.

Quentin J. Schultze is professor of communication arts at Calvin College and author of the book Television: Manna From Hollywood?, recently published by Zondervan.

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