Soap operas are the modern day gothic romance and, like all things coded romance and feminine, they are unnecessarily maligned/used as shorthand for something bad/poorly written.
What are the trademark traits of a soap opera? Secrets, lies, betrayal, families, murder/death, sex. All of these are presented to the viewer in heightened levels while using melodrama as a foundation instead of a peak. Gothic romances, and the Gothic as a genre, use all these things and are always, in every moment, achieving some state of melodramatic grace. Secrets, lies, families, murder/death, sex–all of these things exist in the Gothic and are often heavily intertwined as to be impossible to separate from the other. They are compounded layers and knots woven into a narrative’s fabric.
So why and when did soap operas become shorthand for something bad, when all they do is continue the tradition that gothic romance novels have been doing since their inception several centuries ago? Hell, we even GOT a gothic soap opera in the 20th century (Dark Shadows), which was slowly paced, dripping with drama and twists and secrets and dramatic irony, that at times it was almost oppressive. The only other show I can think of off the top of my head that continues this tradition (slow pacing, twists, secrets) is Twin Peaks (both the original, the film Fire Walk With Me, and the season three/revival). What Twin Peaks does differently is remove context from many of its scenes, presenting the audience sequences of the story and the puzzling aspects of it without explanation, demanding the audience feel as a response, instead of react/review what is laid out in front of them. Dark Shadows and other soap operas have plots that are relatively easier to follow, but still leave room for guessing and logical predictions to make within the show’s themes. Make no mistake, however: Twin Peaks is as much a soap opera as Dark Shadows is, and for the love of god please do not watch the Burton movie of it.
I find it so satisfying and equally frustrating that Twin Peaks, which is so heavily draped in melodrama and soap opera tropes and the Gothic, is such a classic show, heavily praised and lauded as a groundbreaking story (which it was and is), while at the same time is not recognized more widely as being a soap opera. It’s the weird cousin of General Hospital, One Life to Live, etc., but it is very much within their family tree. Hell, just look at the names of soap operas! They’re dramatic and Gothic as fuck: One Life to Live, As The World Turns, The Young and Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful, The Edge of Hope, Days of Our Lives, Passions–and the list goes on. There are even more than a few whose names are borrowed from the fictional towns in which they take place, much like Twin Peaks itself.
Side bar: this is also why I like Life Is Strange so much. The game is far from a masterpiece, or even a solid story (it’s a 5/10 at best for me), but the potential it has as a soap opera narrative is what draws me to it and why I like its concepts so much.
Every single one of those titles puts me in mind of a heroine fleeing a dark house in a stormy night, her face a perfect image of terror; every title makes me think of oppressive secrets and quickly stifled emotional intrigue that a newcomer stumbles upon and everyone else is deadset determined to keep buried (sometimes literally). Every title, even the ones of towns, suggests that there is a world bubbling and churning and seething inside of that title, a world that is just waiting and dreading to be discovered. And that, too, is Twin Peaks.
I think it very likely Lynch and Frost knew what they were doing with this, by the way, since Twin Peaks’ original seasons had their own meta in-universe soap opera that was a mirror of the mysteries and events happening in town. Of all the changes that were made between FWWM and S3, it’s this soap opera’s absence that I notice the most keenly. I don’t think there’s a proper replacement in the show so far either, which I think is just a reflection of the times: there is the doctor’s weird local radio show, and there are live performances at the bar, but both of these things only offer us a very small part of Twin Peaks looking back at itself through a dramatic lens (and that lens is entirely imaginary: they don’t have to really ‘look’ at anything, they can create the visuals based on the sound). The town and its people currently have nothing by which to really see themselves through the mask of an in-universe show, and this creates a very listless, drifting, aimlessly eerie sort of narrative, one that is spread across the world and yet has its roots in a small Washington town and in the death of one teenage girl. It’s very sprawling and almost agoraphobically terrifying in that way, where most soap operas confine themselves to one town/city, one group of characters, etc.
Anyway, to wrap up: Soap operas are the Gothic’s modern way of holding the mirror up to nature and showing us our own selves reflected right back, with no white washing, no trimming of unseemlier bits, and no reduction of what is ugly and emotional and raw. And I love the potential of this in written fiction, especially romance fiction. I want to fully embrace my natural impulse to make most of my current original works melodramatic and bizarre, because I’m naturally following my instincts and keeping in line with the Gothic. I shouldn’t hesitate to say I’m writing a soap opera romantic mystery. I shouldn’t shy from that association. After all, sci-fi bros got to take it and spin their stories into space operas, so why the fuck can’t I take pride in a speculative/strange opera?
I wasn’t into soap operas as a kid, but when I visited my mom’s relatives my cousins watched “All My Children,” and I loved the back-from-the-ad-break cue of a hand turning a page in an old-looking book, to a wistful fragment of the show’s theme tune. I’d go into the living room just for that part.
Mooncustafer 