SEX, LIES AND SOAPS
BACKGROUND
Talking to the teenage audience
Soap opera has consistently been one of the most popular forms of TV drama, attracting massive audiences for its continuing, interwoven narratives and opportunities to 'belong', from a distance, to a community of familiar and engaging characters. However, the recent impact of the plethora of digital and cable channels has drastically reduced viewing figures for mainstream terrestrial soaps. Research shows that the hugely important 16-24 age group is watching less TV than ever before.
Soaps are working hard to draw back these younger viewers who will become tomorrow's adult audiences. The answer has been to move away from the traditionally naturalistic, cross-generational representations of everyday working-class life to more aspirational models. Nowadays teen characters have a higher profile and face a range of storylines and dilemmas with which young people can identify. While some of these storylines address teens often in apparently light-hearted and frivolous ways, another tendency has been to involve teen characters in increasingly action-packed and melodramatic narratives. These storylines frequently involve the sort of strong content that would previously have been broadcast only after the Watershed – for example, the recent arson attack that wiped out several Hollyoaks regulars, or the violent kidnapping of Squiggle in EastEnders.
To attract the teenage audience, soap producers have increasingly relied on creating highly targeted narratives around glamorous and aspirational characters. They have gradually transformed even the most conventionally gritty and unromanticised soaps. Both British and Australian producers, from Hollyoaks and Neighbours in particular, admit that they cast primarily on the basis of looks.
The media effects debate
There has always been concern about the influence of soap opera, particularly on young people. These anxieties range from fears that soap 'dumbs down' its audience, to conservative or liberal attacks on its treatment of ethical or moral issues. Does soap endorse under-age sex, promote child abuse, mis-represent adoption issues, for example.
Soap has been vilified for its use of bad language and its realist, naturalistic storylines (EastEnders and the much-loved long-lost Brookside in particular) and for its increasing tendency to boost flagging ratings with melodramatic plot twists, plane-crashes, serial killers, arson attacks and other highly unlikely events. Yet it has also been blamed for over-glamorising, over-simplifying and misleading.
Because soap opera is often used as a 'flagship' programme for broadcasters, representing the best and most popular programming on offer (EastEnders in particular is hugely significant for the BBC), it is frequently castigated in the media as a scapegoat for all the failings of the broadcasters themselves. As a media phenomenon it just can't win.
Sex, Lies and Soaps considers questions of influence, and the role soap plays in the lives of its teenage audiences. Programme 4, for example, raises questions about the glamour of teen soap characters and their influence on patterns of consumption and on young people's attitudes to their bodies.
In his book Remotely Controlled: How Television is damaging our lives and what we can do about it, American psychologist Aric Sigman attributes a range of tendencies (along with obesity, violent crime and virtually every other anti-social outcome) to the effects of television. In an interview for the series, he argues that when we see attractive people in TV soaps, we feel less attractive. His arguments come from the perspective that the media necessarily affect their passive and uncritical audiences; a media studies perspective would label this the 'hypodermic theory' of audience response. The copy-cat behaviour of some girls in relation to soap icons' dress and personal style might seem to reinforce this view.
Many media theorists strongly disagree with this view, as do many of the young people interviewed in the series. They argue that teenagers are not so easily influenced, that they choose knowingly to enjoy soap glamour as uplifting and escapist); that they are aware of the constructed nature of soap stars' beauty. They understand the importance of dramatic plot points in retaining an audience and they value soaps for the social experience and opportunities for discussion they provide. This is known in media theory as the 'uses and gratifications' model.
These viewpoints are discussed and challenged throughout the series in the context of the economics and politics of soap opera production. Leading soap figures, from producers (for example, Mal Young, Executive Producer of EastEnders and previously Brookside) to scriptwriters, costume designers and editors, comment on the reasons for their decisions. They argue that they understand, respect and value their teenage audience. Along the way, they provide valuable insights into the ways soap is made, and the pressures that influence it.
