Soap Opera's: Treasure Your Children, Because They’ll Change Bodies, Change Faces, and Grow up Three Times Their Age in a Year

Soap Opera’s: Treasure your children, because they'll change bodies, change faces, and grow up three times their age in a year

Soap Opera’s "... tell the truth and show society as it really is..." (Geraghty 13). The soap opera is the most popular form of television programming in the world, and shows just how devious people are in spreading rumors and lies. The phenomenon evolved from the radio soap operas of the 1930s and 40s, emerging initially in the United States, and attracting a large following of predominantly female listeners.

Dorothy Hobson has researched the importance of gossip in the viewing of soaps. She interviewed a number of office workers who all claimed that talking about what they had watched the previous evening was as pleasurable as actually watching the program. Talk consisted of future anticipation, debate regarding the significance of certain events, analysis of character behavior and motives, and relation of this fictional world to real life (45). Christina Geraghty refers to gossip as the “social cement” that binds the narrative strands of soap opera together, uniting the television text with its fans. Gossip is now being regarded as active participation in the meaning-making that constitutes our very culture. Something incredible