Soap opera madness?

I’ve always ripped on women for watching soap operas (or soapies). Don’t rip my head off just yet, I know loads of women that despise soapies and admit that I’m making huge assumptions here. Still, it’s my blog, I shall assume away with no further deliberation.

Soapies REALLY confused me, how could someone possibly spend so much time following the completely unspectacular, annoying and obviously FAKE life of a soapy character? I’m quite happy to put up with and occasionally enjoy a show that is fake and doesn’t hide it; even some reality shows are bearable. But soapies try so hard to fake reality that it completely destroys any sense of immersion into the plot. The fact that plots are so shallow and disturbingly mundane doesn’t help either... For instance, people don’t talk aloud to themselves when they are alone, reality doesn’t split society into good guys and bad guys (90% of people are just plain ‘neutral don’t give a crap’ guys) and we definitely don’t come back to life after having been killed off once. I could easily go on for another few pages on this topic; alas there is another more significant point to be made regarding soapies.

Soap Opera Digest!!!??? Holy Crap!

Back when I was at Wits University, and living with my gran, I would sit and chat with her after campus. We would happily converse about the good old days, recipes, her health and such, you know, usual old people talk… In any case our happy conversations would last exactly till (and not one second longer) the Days of Our Lives started on TV. My gran would instantly switch over to soapy mode.

For example (imagine grannies voice NOW): “…so my mother used to make white people food because, (queue days of our lives theme song) That Sami is such a Bitch! You should see what she did to Kerry…”

I’d sit around for a few minutes to be polite before ‘going to the kitchen for a snack’/‘needing to meet some friends’/ ‘going for a long toilet break’. What I didn’t count on was the fact that those minute doses of soapy culture together with observing my grannies behaviour made me realize the point of it all.

In fact what I came to realize was a bit scarier than a mere rudimentary understanding of why people of sane mind watch these programs. This stuff goes deep into human nature, the origins and development of conflict, violence, poverty, education, peer pressure… all stuffed into one super-concentrated energy drink we call a television. A blog post cannot possibly give this subject the attention it needs.

…I’m glad I realize this now (as in, this very second). I must end this post before my head explodes trying to explain it all to you. I haven’t even started and I’ve nearly reached my word limit.

So, about the very significant point I wanted to make about soapies… I won’t put it in here because it just wouldn’t make sense any more. Instead, I will end off with a bit of a conclusion (just to give you that sense of completion).

My opinion of people that watch soapies has changed from:

“You’re a bunch of desperate, lifeless, loonies” to

“You watch that soapy, you probably need it”.

You have a brain; just use it to fill in the bits of reasoning between those two statements. Sorry for the build up to nothing… again. I promise I’ll try to finish the next post.