one big challenge of discussing soap opera...

with any clarity has been getting one's arms around the numerous, sometimes seemingly disparate, elements that make up the genre.

For soap fans, past and present, who wonder why the shows they love have disappeared, or deteriorated beyond recognition, or who think they know what could-have-should-have been done, if only, Elana Levine's new book, Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera & US Television History (2020, Duke University Press) connects the dots with a combination of nuance and rigorous research. Levine writes as scholar and professor (Media, Cinema and Digital Studies in the Department of English at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee), and longtime soap fan. (Full disclosure: Levine and I have been exchanging our observations of soap opera for more than 10 years. She shared early drafts of several chapters, and the final version contains two references to my work).

Her Stories begins with detailed look at Irna Phillips's first, and most influential, effort to bring soaps to television — These Are My Children — which premiered on 31 January 1949, and laid the groundwork for the serial dramas that would follow in the 1950s and 60s. Levine then connects soaps' glory years — mid-1960s-mid-1980s — when "both the TV industry and culture at large recognized that the soap audience was broader than that of the stereotypical housewife" — with rise of the Big Three broadcast networks: CBS; NBC; ABC. The final section considers the future of soaps in a post-network age, along with their influence on other forms of popular culture in the ever-expanding digital landscape.

Levine chronicles one aspect of soaps' decline by deconstructing and comparing their use of melodrama, realism, and social relevance. Through soaps' early years, writers fought to moderate the melodrama associated with radio serials in favor of emotional realism. But in the 1980s, emotional realism, and the social relevance of the 1970s, gave way to the romantic fantasy storytelling that propelled the popularity of the supercouple. By the 1990s, soap storytelling had become bifurcated, as shows addressed the social and political tensions of the times by either revisiting social relevance, or moving even further away from social realism, diving into "fantastical extremes" that surpassed "the fantasies of the eighties soaps."

Also running through the book is the impact of gender: Through close examination of numerous storylines — several from my favorite show As the World Turns: there were the unhappily married Lowells; their daughter, Ellen, who gave up her illegitimate son for adoption; soaps' first supercouple, Penny and Jeff, and first bad girl, Lisa, all from the show's early years; then in the final years, Luke and his boyfriend, Noah — Levine illustrates how soaps have reflected society's gender roles as they shifted over the decades, occasionally linking to the larger political landscape.

At the risk of overstating the obvious: soap opera's marginalization and invisibility have always stemmed from its association with women. What's less obvious is how that marginalization contributed to a collective "inferiority complex" among many of those who make soaps, which, in turn, would lead to variations in the soap narrative that drove away many longtime fans who found the changes "too far removed from soap proper" and "further rejections of the soap opera past." Irna Phillips, who died in 1973, was never embarrassed by the stories she told or the characters she created. Had she lived, she would have been appalled to see what's become of her creation. Phillips's unfinished memoir, All My Worlds, wasn't available until 2009; Her Stories benefitted greatly from Levine's access to the manuscript.

Viewer discontent with changes in soap storytelling is but one factor in the genre's long descent. Levine does a fine job detailing how, beginning in the mid-1980s, declining soap viewership led to declining advertising rates, which led to networks reducing the licensing fees paid to shows, which led to reduced production budgets; on and on the vicious cycle continues. Where will it end, and when? While Levine acknowledges "that there is little place for for soap opera in a steaming TV world," she goes on to say, "as the US daytime soap opera approaches its ninetieth birthday, it may yet have life to live." We shall see. 

ETA:

Just after I posted this, I read of Fred Silverman's death. All of the online obituaries led with the fact that Silverman was the only executive to oversee programming at all of the Big Three networks. While The New York Times pointed out, "he also had a hand in a number of daytime series in his initial job as head of daytime programming for CBS," none noted that CBS daytime is where Silverman made his bones as a programmer. Levine, however, spends several pages discussing the impact Silverman, a hands-on programmer, had on soaps, and the impact his success at CBS daytime had on his career.

I interviewed Fred Silverman in 2016, and after reading of his death, I took a look at my notes. Funny how people can remember events so differently. Levine cites a 1972 appearance with David Frost in which Irna Phillips said she quit Love is a Many Splendored Thing  (a serial she created at Silverman's request) because he insisted she get rid of Mia, the Eurasian character.

However, when I asked Silverman why Irna left, here's what he had to say: "She hated the show. She hated the lead that we cast — Eurasian girl. We did a show that was supposed to be about a Eurasian girl coming here. A love story, a repeat of the movie. And we ended up agonizing with a young woman, a Catholic, who was studying to be a nun, who was troubled about her vocation. Should she stay in the nunnery. I don't think that's what the daytime audience wanted to see. Mostly her fault the show didn't work. It was not the show that the title and the whole idea of the show; it promised one thing and delivered another. And that why I don't think it worked."

And here's another possibility: A few years before I interviewed Fred Silverman, I talked to Les White, who's researched Irna Phillips's life. According to his source, Phillips was so angry after Bill Bell left As the World Turns to take over as headwriter for Days of Our Lives that she agreed to do Love is a Many Splendored Thing because it was scheduled opposite Days... When she failed to make a dent in Days... ratings, she made up some excuse to quit. 

Not that we can ever know for sure, and there's likely a nugget of "truth" in each telling. But from everything I've learned about Irna Phillips over the past ten years, Les White's version has a certain ring of truth.