The soap opera and development : a history, critique and suggestion for an alternate practice

This study begins with an acknowledgment of the power of stories and the power of story-telling. We tell stories to cope with our day-to-day experience. And, we tell stories that help us come to terms with the big issues in our lives -- death, violence, conflict. The plot, characters, symbols and formula of modern-day myths are our attempts to make sense in some partial way of our existence. The centrality of the story is shared by all cultures across place and time. Over time, the frames through which we tell our tales have changed and become more technological and mass-mediated. But, in many fundamental ways, the story has remained the same. We are still explaining ourselves to ourselves through characters who search for love and happiness, struggle to make choices between "good" and "bad". It is getting more and more difficult to be clear-cut about these values, and our tales reflect this ambiguity, even as they become more bizarre, take flight into hitherto unexplored liminal worlds of alien planets and twilight zones. This study offers a history and critique and suggests an alternate practice for a particular story-telling system - the soap opera. In the United States, this dramatic serial is broadcast every weekday by the three commercial television networks -- American Broadcasting Company (ABC), National Broadcasting Company (NBC) and Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), usually during the afternoons. Soap operas are the only dramatic programming produced and videotaped daily, Monday through Friday, in broadcast studios shortly before they are aired. Soap operas are shown throughout the year and are rarely preempted for other types of programming. Only major news "stories" such as the U.S. invasion of Panama take precedence over the soaps. This narrative form evolved from a marketing need to reach the housewife on an on-going basis with messages that promote household products like soaps, detergents, baby products and cereal. In the American context, the economic function of the soap opera as a commodity to sell other commodities informs its production context, and its content as well as the way the target audience is perceived by the commercial sponsors, the advertisers and the networks. The power of this dramatic serial has been recognized in other parts of the world as well. The telenovela, the Latin American counterpart of the U.S. soap opera is extremely popular and airs on prime time as well as during daytime. Most Latin American television systems show 9 to 14 telenovelas daily, 5 to 6 times a week. However, the soap opera has also been used for other purposes besides entertainment. It was Mexico that first demonstrated that in the combination of story and actors enhanced by the serial nature of soap opera drama could be the elements of a powerfully evocative pro-social text. Between the mid-1970's and the early 1980's, Mexico produced and broadcast five soap operas designed specifically to tackle major social problems. The success of this new development communication strategy proved that pro-social soap operas could attract large audiences and profits while at the same time promoting development themes like adult education, women's emancipation and health educationRadio-Television-Fil