SEX, LIES AND SOAPS

PROGRAMME 1: SEX

ACTIVITIES

Before watching

What's your view on the ways sex is represented in soap opera?
Read and discuss the statements below, then pick the three you feel most strongly about.

• Soap wouldn't be soap without the sex
• Soap sex is far too glamorous – they never show you the embarrassing bits
• There's far too much sex in soaps – no-one's really that lucky in real life
• The trouble with sex in soaps is that they get it all wrong
• If soaps gave you too much factual information about sex it would be like being in school – no-one would watch
• Soap storylines concentrate far too much on people with different sexual preferences – they might encourage people to experiment
• They shouldn't be showing so much sex while children – not to mention mums and dads – are watching
• You can learn loads of useful stuff about relationships from watching soaps
• Soaps should really show you more about love and relationships than about sex
• Soaps can help support people who are shy or unconfident about their sexuality
• Soaps just reflect what's going on in teenagers' sex lives
• The only reason the sex is there is to attract the audience.

Is sex in soap opera new?
Read the four familiar storylines below:

1. A man who has been living away from home for many years returns to his home town and falls in love with someone who turns out to be his mother
2. A gorgeous celebrity spurns her ex. In revenge he slips her a date-rape drug that will give her a night of passion with the first person she sees. This turns out to be … a donkey
3. Two under-age people from warring gangs fall in love, and finally sleep together. The following day they are separated, betrayed by their gangs, and end up dead
4. A neglected and abused orphan falls for her rich and handsome boss, but discovers at the altar that he's already married – to a woman with an incurable mental illness.

Pick one of these storylines and, with a partner, see if you think it could be fitted into one of the soaps you currently watch. Think about how your chosen soap would treat the story – which regular characters it would involve, how you would adapt the story to tie in with the style of the soap, and what you might do to make the rather extreme plots seem convincing.

Share your ideas with the class. Then consider the following:

1. is the Greek myth of Oedipus, immortalised by Sophocles
2. is a plot strand of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream
3. is from Romeo and Juliet
4. is the storyline of Jane Eyre.

So, storytellers have always used romance and sex in their narratives; and perhaps soap is no more worrying or influential than any other form of story – or is it? Discuss why you think soap is so often criticised for sending out the wrong messages about sex and relationships.

After watching

To view 4Learning video clips you will need Windows XP/2000 and Windows Media Player 9, 10 or 11. Unfortunately, the clips are not supported on Macintosh computers.

The video clips may contain a few seconds of extra material at the beginning and end. We have therefore included opening and closing descriptions to help identify the intended scene.

Realism or romance?
Clip 1: 3.10 – 4.43

• Opens: 'Quite frankly, if TV producers...'
• Closes: 'No protection, just candles.'

How realistically does soap represent relationships? Try our light-hearted quiz to find out:

How soap-like is your lovelife? Have you ever:

• Given/been given flowers for no particular reason to/by a girlfriend/boyfriend?
• Filled your room with candles for a date with a boyfriend/girlfriend?
• Booked a night in a hotel for a passionate night with a partner?
• Snogged a teacher/social worker/policeman?
• Fallen in love with someone who turned out to be your long-lost brother/sister/close relative?
• Found out that one of your parents has had a fling with your boyfriend/girlfriend?
• Been drugged and assaulted by your brother's best friend?
• Been out with a serial killer?
• Been encouraged by your boyfriend/girlfriend to become a pole dancer or a strip-o-gram?
• Been proposed to on bended knee complete with diamond ring?

Score 1 for every time you can say 'yes'. Now check your score:

• 8 – 10: Wow – you've stepped right out of an episode of a soap opera!
• 4 – 7: You've certainly had some unusually dramatic experiences!
• 1 – 3: Your love life is far more exciting than most people's.
• 0 : Oh well… you're just like most of the rest of the world – and not really very much like soap opera at all.

Around the group, jot down on a scrap of paper – anonymously – embarrassing moments you've experienced in relationships. Collect them together and read them out one by one. How many of them have you ever seen portrayed in a soap opera episode?

Does the knowledge that soap love affairs often bear very little relation to reality affect your enjoyment of the show? Talk about what you enjoy about seeing gorgeous people behaving romantically – and what irritates you.

Does soap influence your sex-life?
Clip 2: 5.50 – 8.60

• Opens: 'Soap may not show how teenagers really behave…'
• Closes: '…people accepting you.'

Can soaps really set sexual trends, as Jac, Lily, Romana and Danny suggest, or do they simply help audiences to understand other people's different behaviour? Conduct some small-scale research amongst your class to see how far people feel they have been influenced by soap storylines.

Why do you think it's important that soap operas represent a range of different forms of sexual behaviour? Could they – and should they – be doing more to break down prejudices and misunderstandings about non-heterosexual relationships, as Sam suggests in the clip?

EastEnders was the first soap to dramatise a gay male relationship back in the mid 80s; the first lesbian kiss was portrayed in Brookside (a now-defunct Liverpool-set soap from the same stable as Hollyoaks) – and both caused an enormous furore in the media. Use the internet to research these two stories, and see the sorts of responses they generated. Do you think audiences and the media have become more tolerant since then?

The etiquette of soap sex
Clip 3: 10.25 – 12.40

• Opens: 'On the Hollyoaks set...'
• Closes: '…very strange positions.'

Talk about some of the techniques soap producers use to make sex scenes in soaps look authentic without actually showing anything. Do you find the comments in this clip reassuring, misleading, or disappointing?

Put yourself in Eliza Taylor-Cotter's shoes. What sorts of anxieties do you think she feels every time she performs a romantic scene? How easy is it for 'ordinary' people to overcome similar fears in real life?

Read the letter below from an anxious soap fan, and, in the role of Eliza Taylor-Cotter, write her a reassuring answer.

Dear Agony Aunt,
Whenever my boyfriend and I kiss, it's really, really awkward, and our noses keep getting in the way. It's very embarrassing and nothing like it looks when you see people kissing on Neighbours. Please can you tell me where I'm going wrong?

Guidelines and consequences
Clip 4: 14.51 – 16.12

• Opens: 'It's not just...'
• Closes: '…consider the consequences.'

Take a vote on your views on the guidelines on showing sex before the 9pm watershed? Are they:

• An effective way of protecting vulnerable young people from seeing things they shouldn't
• So easy to get around with clever editing that they don't really mean very much
• A complete waste of time because kids these days know it all anyway?

To help inform your discussion, look at the BBC's editorial guidelines for producers (see Links), which include a section at the end showing Ofcom's guidelines for commercial broadcasters.

How do tabloid newspapers discuss sex in soap operas? Keep your eyes open for the ways the press reports particularly juicy soap stories, and see how far they equally could be accused of using shock horror stories to sell newspapers. Also discuss why the Daily Mail in particular might want to express a view on sex in soaps.

Some people believe that soap can teach young people about sexual behaviour and sexual health more effectively than parents, schools or doctors. But can soaps do this without preaching?

Take one of the storylines you've seen in this programme – Justin and Becca, Amy's predicament, Janae's HIV scare – and think about how it could be made more useful and informative without preaching or talking down to the audience. For example, would any of the following help:

• Adding a helpline phone number at the end of the programme
• Linking to a helpful website
• Introducing new characters representing different points of view on the storyline?

Moral responsibiities
Clip 5: 17.36 – 18.55

• Opens: 'We have to be really careful not to...'
• Closes: 'Very sensitively.'

Talk about the Hollyoaks storyline involving Amy's under-age loss of virginity – a story that was still unfolding at the time this programme was first broadcast, and that has resulted in pregnancy. Discuss whether this story was convincingly portrayed, and whether the consequences have been thoroughly explored.

Imagine Sarah had been able to warn Amy of the dangers of peer pressure before she'd actually lost her virginity. With a partner, write the script of the conversation they might have had. Then compare your scene with those of the other groups. Which version would make better TV: the actual storyline, or your own versions?

Soap producers clearly feel a moral responsibility to their audience, but also to their ratings. Between you, discuss storylines you recall that you felt betrayed the audience's trust. Pick one of them and role-play a conversation between you and a younger brother or sister who is also watching. How would you explain the issues involved in the storyline?

Do soap stories convince you?
Clip 6: 21.10 – end

• Opens: 'London teens Jade and Vivian…'
• Closes: '...more going on than on a soap.'

Some of the teenagers in this programme suggest that soaps barely scratch the surface of what young people really get up to in their love- and sex-lives; others feel they have been helped in their own lives by watching other people's stories. Here's your chance to devise a new soap that tells it like it is:

Your task is to devise an outline for a new soap set in a young people's advisory centre. The regular characters are the nurses, youth-workers and counsellors who run the centre; the storylines follow the cases of the young people who visit it.

Between you, write a 'treatment' describing:

• The title of your soap
• Four of the central characters in your new soap
• Four minor characters
• Sample plots for three or four possible storylines, showing what issues they raise and how they will be resolved
• Suggestions for the channel on which your soap would be aired, and for the time-slot in which it would be scheduled.

Prepare to present your soap outline to the rest of the class, and to explain why you think it would be both entertaining and helpful for a teenage audience.