Soap operas, commonly known as “soaps” or “my stories” depending in the U.S. on where you live and in what economic stratum, started out on radio in the 1930s largely in daytime slots and, because of this, largely pitched to women. It was their sponsorship by manufacturers like Proctor & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive, and Lever Brothers that created the association with soap, an association so strong that in U.S. slang any overly dramatic, romantic story, regardless of whether it is a daytime serial or not, is often referred to as a “soap opera.”
Soaps migrated from radio to television in the U.S. starting in the early 1950s gaining popularity which peaked for daily daytime serials between the mid-1970s and early 1990s and even spawned a group of well-known, highly successful weekly primetime serials that included Dallas, Dynasty, Falcon Crest, and Knots Landing in the 1980s and a second group that included Dawson’s Creek and Beverly Hills 90210 in the 1990s.
The general rule in writing for either television or the movies is that one page of script equals roughly one minute of screen time. In the U.S. the average 60 minute program contains 13 minutes and 52 seconds worth of network commercial messages with some shows giving up as much as 20 minutes to direct advertising.
The average daytime serial produces approximately 40 to 45 pages per day. With five new episodes airing each week, an actor playing a major character in a daytime serial can expect to cover as many as a 100 pages per week. Compare this to the perhaps 20 pages per week an actor in a primetime, hour-long show might have to work with or the 5 to 7 pages per week a film actor might have to deal with an you get an idea of how much is really going on. In very many ways, this volume makes acting on a daytime soap one of the more difficult jobs a professional actor can ever have.
I admit that I grew up watching soaps in the 1970s and 1980s, mostly because the women who took care of me after school until I was old enough to be one of the much maligned “latch-key kids” of the 1980s watched soaps. There is a story, in fact, about my aunt picking me up from my days with Bert, who I remember as a large, soft grandmotherly woman who always sort of smelled vaguely of fried chicken, and asking me what happened on the shows she had missed while she was at work.
I probably watched the cream of the soap opera crop – General Hospital, or GH as we all called it, Another World, Edge of Night, Days of our Lives, One Life To Live, and Ryan’s Hope, which launch the career of, among others, Marg Helgenberger – with my aunt through my formative years. I remember being engrossed in the characters, the drama, and in some cases the mysterious plots.
I’m not sure if that’s because my understanding of the world was less sophisticated then than it is now or if it’s because the writing was better. But somewhere along the line, likely college, I quit watching them and really have never gone back. It wasn’t until I sat waiting at the dentist’s office on Tuesday that I really understood why: Soaps are unintentionally funny.
The whole point of a soap is heightened drama. It’s a little frisson of conflict that feels as if it matters that makes soaps when compared to the daily conflicts we all face, like the guy who stops for the green light or the coworker who is just plain rude, exciting. Without good writing, and in some respects restrained acting and directing, soaps fall easily into parodies of not only the high operas for which they are ironically named but also of themselves. Nothing highlights this problem better than closed captioning.
You don’t know funny until you’re forced to read the dialogue for an episode of The Bold and The Beautiful which features characters with names like Whip, Brooke, and Thorne, and, on Tuesday at any rate, featured the timeless line of dialogue “No, no, no, no, no, no. I won’t allow it, Ridge!”
I don’t suppose I should be making fun. I’ve given characters some strange or trite names. But it was so hard not to just giggle at the dialogue on the screen when it was in such close proximity to the actors delivering it with rather more gravity than it required.
Or, maybe I just didn’t want to think about the next round of dental pain, or the fact that my 30 minute appointment was taking two hours. Either way, the next time I’m feeling punchy I may very well just turn on the closed captions and watch a little daytime serial television. It’s cheaper than comedy show tickets and almost as funny.
*General Hospi-Tale was a “rap” song by a group called The Afternoon Delights. It peaked at number 33 on the Billboard Charts in 1981.
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