ABSTRACT

In recent years I have more than once set an examination question for thirdyear undergraduates along the lines of, “Why have feminist critics been so interested in soap opera?” To my recurring disappointment, no student has yet attempted this question, which I think is probably a tribute to their much underrated ability to identify their teachers’ research agendas, and the way in which these tend to frame unanswerable questions. There is also a way in which the answer can seem very obvious – because soap operas are women’s programs – which may make it very unattractive in the competitive context of an examination. This essay is my attempt at an answer to this question, but I should make clear that I think this bald and simple answer, in the west, in the key period of feminist interest, is fundamentally correct, and that all that I shall do is to make things a little more complicated. This I shall do in two main ways. Initially, by sketching a rather broader semi-historical context for feminist analyses of soap opera – a “when” of this interest – and then by tracing the different modalities of this interest – a “how.” In this process, I hope to provide an account of the role of soap opera in feminist television scholarship. Before I start though, I want to spend a moment on establishing why I think the question is itself interesting.