2000 words research assignment

Assignment 2

For decades many eons the soap opera has been crowned the king of ‘trash’ television, yet

this genre continues to thrive and defy criticism. This is largely due to the influences of

genre, which gives the ‘daytime dreary’ the power to reinvent itself, to poke fun at itself and

to generate desire from its audience. In turn, it enables the soap to stay modern and keep up

with the endlessly changing landscape of popular culture. yes

In this essay I we analyse genre and its relationship to other key ingredients of the soap such

as narrative, story and plot, characterisation, and its melodramatic history. To help visualise

these connections and highlight the effects of their interactions, we have centred around an

episode of Australian soap Neighbours, episode 5972 which aired on Tuesday, July 20, 2010.

Through this focus, we can understand more clearly the ways in which genre “defines the

limits and possibilities of a text” (Study Guide, p.82) and “provides a framework for the ...

action, characters and settings” (Study Guide, p.84). yes

This episode, without including Rocky the guide-dog, features eight characters from the

show: Toadfish (Toadie), Steph, Squid, Sonia, Libby, Paul, Rebecca and Diana. It circles

around three situations: Sonia’s possible romantic interest in Steph’s husband, Toadie; some

double-crossing in a business deal between Paul, Toadie and Diana; and tension over Paul’s

request to his wife, Rebecca, that she sell her radio station business. In typical soap fashion,

this disharmony is set against the harmony of a domestic situation (Study Guide, p.101),

which is represented in the story-line of Rocky’s (Squid’s adopted dog) guide-dog test. Also

characteristic of the genre, the story-lines mingle freely between each other and between

those from previous episodes (Study Guide, p.103.).

Many literary analysts, such as Russian folklorist Vladimir Propp, have studied storytelling in

terms of its universality (Graeme 1988, pp.68-69), its place as an essential social function and

its common properties (Graeme 1998, p.72.). Though, it must be understood that “(g)enre is

not simply a cataloguing device, but instead names the ways in which texts can relate to each

other” (Mules 2002, p.99). When readers engage with texts, they don’t read them as if they

existed as an individual entity. Readers draw on a seemingly endless variety of other texts

(Study Guide, p.82), which makes for a dynamic and culturally contemporary experience.

Yes Genres can be recognised almost instantly. Genre relies “on a few recurring signs to

enable readers or viewers to recognise a text” (Mules, p.114). For example, iconography such

as a six-shooter in a holster and a man wearing a cowboy hat, just on their own, cue the

reader that the genre is a Western. Soaps are no different. Some of the signs include: serial

form which resists narrative closure, multiple characters and plots; the home, or some other

place which functions as a home, as the setting of the show (Study Guide, p.103.). good

These signs and the soap opera have their roots in melodrama, which is “based on stories that

represent(ed) the struggle of good over evil in domestic situations” (Study Guide, p.101).

Melodramas are cautionary tales which provide the audience with exaggerated scenes and

stitched through a set of standardised character and narrative types (Study Guide, p.101). The

melodrama is also feminised and concerned with issues from a female point of view (Study

Guide, p.103). We can see this at work when Paul threatens to upset this weakened patriarchy

by asking his wife to sell ‘her’ business. She interprets this request as a threat to her

independence; saying “what’s unfair is you (to Paul) making unilateral decisions and patting

me on the head”. We can see this, too, in the power relations established by the narrator

(through camera positioning). good

Genre’s capacity to use other texts not only helps to keep the soap modern, but also to spawn

sub-genres. This includes the daytime and night-time soap, the dynastic and workplace soap,

and the community soap—the genre under which Neighbours works. The community soap

“is constructed by locating the action within a small, specifically detailed landscape” (Study

Guide, p106). In the episode, the community is set up in the opening credits with images of

the court (the erroneously named Ramsay Street) and its occupants (the characters), who are

shown enjoying the seeming bliss of suburban life (harmony, or equilibrium). Yes The

locations never venture far from the court, with action taking place at the seemingly nearby

Lasseters, the Coffee Shop, at the front of the Coffee Shop, and at Paul and Rebecca’s home.

The limitations and possibilities of genre also work to shape the narrative. The Study Guide

(pp.101-102) says that in melodrama “the classic pattern begins with the presentation of a

situation as both ideal and normal”, which is evident in Paul’s friendly banter with Rebecca

before Paul’s request, and Toadie and Steph’s interactions before Sonia enters the room. “The

action accelerates as some influences (Toadie pressures Paul to ask Rebecca to sell) depicted

as external (it’s their secret) threatens the situation”. The genre also asks that the episode has

multiple story-lines which all have some relevance to each another (most characters have

some involvement in, or knowledge of, each situation) and ends with a weak or ambiguous

closure (Study Guide, p.103). yes

Genre, and its relationship to the narrative, also affects characterisation. Analysts such as

Propp and Greimas say that character is a subordinate of narrative, with Greimas dividing

characters into two classes, acteur (character as specific and unique) and actant (as position

within the narrative structure) (Study Guide, p.73). Greimas said this subordination occurs

because “both (character types) are concerned of as accomplishing or submitting to an act”

(Rimmon-Kenan 1983, p.34), while Propp subordinates characters to ‘spheres of action’

within which their performance can be categorized according to serve general roles

(Rimmon-Kenan 1983, p.34). good In fact, Propp concluded that “(f)unctions of characters

serve as stable, constant elements in all tales, independent of who and by whom they are

fulfilled” (Graeme 1988, p.69). Thus, the relationships between genre and narrative, and

between narrative and character, must shape the character. Yes, but you now need to show all

of this in particular situations and character types.

Shared character traits will lead to stereotypes, characters with “clusters of conventional

character attributes. Stereotypes are neither true nor false, but mythic. They are mythic

because they are metonymic (they represent an entire grouping through a small number of

conventionally elected characteristics) and generally ordered according to simple

oppositions” (Mules 2002, p.128), or a two-term conflict: i.e. good parent/bad parent; loyal

partner/disloyal partner. Yes but examples please. This mythic element and its relationship to

genre allow for only particular myths and certain treatments. So, this paves the way for story-

lines such as Rocky’s guide-dog test, rather than those involving copious amounts of illicit

drug-use. Now we can see how genre defines the limitations and possibilities of the

community soap. We can understand why there could never be a story-line involving

repeated infidelity without the character being punished. Yes We can understand why the

narrative must respect institutions such as family and community and use appropriate

discourse. yes

One interesting fact of genre is that it does “respect the audience’s literacy. (It) seem(s) to

accept that audiences do play with the texts, that the pleasure of watching a soapie is not a

simple acceptance of soapie conventions (the structured elements of genre [Fiske 1987,

p110]), but a learned ability to play with those conventions” (Cranny-Francis 1988, p.177). In

one scene, Squid must say a final farewell to Rocky after the guide-dog test. In an overtly

Australian tone, Toadie says; “‘see-ya’ later ‘Rock-star’”. This is not Toadie’s voice but an

extra-diagetic one, or that of the actor (Ryan Moloney). This is only possible because of the

accepted ‘play’ with conventions. This is because sometimes in the soap “connections ... (are)

often so bizarre, so outrageously realistic, that they rupture the realist surface of the

narrative” (Cranny-Francis 1988, p.176). So, even though soaps, like the romance novel, have

a “preoccupation with such things as reincarnation, adultery, amnesia and mistaken identity,

these stories are built upon a shared narrative structure” (Radway 1984, p.133); and maybe

with this knowledge we will learn to share a greater appreciation for the soap. yes

Reference List

Cranny-Francis, Anne 1988, The Moving Image: Film and Television, Ch.6, in Gunther Kress (ed.) Communication and Culture: An introduction, New South Wales University Press, Kensington, NSW, pp.168-180.

Fiske, John 1987, Television Culture, Methuen, London, pp.109-115.

Radway, Janice A. 1984, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature, University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, pp. 130-135.

Shlomith Rimmon-Kenan 1983, Story: Characters, Ch.3, Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics, Methuen, London; New York, pp.29-42.

Study Guide 2010, CMM19, Griffith University.

Thwaites, Davis and Mules, Warwick 2002. Introducing cultural and media studies: a semiotic approach, Palgrave Macmillan, Great Britain.

Turner, Graeme 1988, Film narrative, Ch.4, Film as Social Practice, Routledge, London, pp.67-74.

This is a good essay with many sound points. Shows a reasonable competence at using terms and concepts, but sometimes there is not sufficient exemplification of these points. Some very good insights and ideas, but needs further development to fully realise them.

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