A soap opera by definition is a drama, typically performed as a serial on daytime television or radio, characterized by stock characters and situations, sentimentality, and melodrama.
The term “soap opera” was given during the 1930s by the American press to refer to the extraordinarily popular genre of serialized domestic radio dramas. By the 1940s they covered 90% of the commercially-sponsored daytime broadcast hours. The "soap" in soap opera represented their sponsorship by manufacturers of household cleaning products; while "opera" suggested an ironic absurdity between the domestic narrative concerns of the daytime serial and the most elevated of dramatic forms.
Soaps tend to be extremely dramatic, they have a completely unrealistic plot line, but I believe that is why there are so many people who enjoy watching them, they kind of let your imagination run a bit but it seems real because it is real actors and happens typically Monday-Friday. In other words, you feel like you are actually living in their life, because you are exposed to it daily and you can somewhat relate to what you are taking in from the television, radio or internet.
I quite enjoyed my grandfather’s take on soap operas. He was flipping through the channels one day as I was scrapbooking and we came across The Young and the Restless and he stopped for a moment to watch about 30 seconds of it. The show went to commercials and his comment was, “These things they call soaps, the characters on them are always either kissing, fighting, crying, getting married, in jail or coming back from the dead”, which is basically completely true! Each soap airing today will have a different version of the plot of one another. Growing up, my mom always watched Days of Our Lives and The Young and the Restless and if one person died on one show, another person was to shortly after die on the other. The same thing would happen if there was a wedding on one of the two.
http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/S/htmlS/soapopera/soapopera.htm
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I enjoyed this post, because I don't watch soap operas, and it gave me an understanding of what they were, and the history of it was interesting. How it got it's name was also interesting to me, I never would have guessed that was how it's name came about. Myself, personally, think soap operas are way too dramatic, and a little bit overrated. It was also interesting to hear about your grandfather's take on soaps. By sharing that it made your blog a little bit more personal, by giving some insight to your family's views.
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