"Tune in Tomorrow"-the phrase that ended each episode of almost every Soap Opera on daytime TV...soon there will be no tomorrow as the traditional television networks cancel these institutions of popular culture one by one...on Thursday ABC shut the door on All My Children and One Life to Live after over 40 years . Long before Reality TV, The Jersey Shore or Gray's Anatomy there was Daytime Drama...Soap Opera. Soap Opera has always been simply an escape and no matter your generation or social strata if you were a soap fan then you had something in common and something to talk about. People who might otherwise never have anything to say to one another could chat for hours about what was happening in Pine Valley. Yet, even with the cancellation of All My Children and the demise of the traditional daytime drama, I don't think soaps will or can disappear --the format is a cornerstone of popular culture and our social fabric. They may simply take on new technologies...an iPhone app or gaming?? Good storytelling, however, will never go away. Younger generation have certainly embraced serialized dramas such as the Twilight
series and even Harry Pottter
. If you care about characters you want to know what happens to them-it goes back to Shakespeare and of course Dickens who was originally published in a serial format. Mad Men
, as slick and exquisitely written as it is is still soap...as is Upstairs Downstairs and Downton Abbey it comes down to how you dress it up-The Tudors, Desperate Housewives
, Gray's Anatomy
, Brothers and Sisters.
..all soaps formatted with characters and storylines designed to get you involved and coming back every week. For more on Soap Opera's history and its pop culture impact Come Visit Applause!
Posts
