Compared with the TV drama culture in China, western soap operas have their own unique definitions and characteristics. Broadly speaking, countries such as Britain and the United States divide all operas into three categories: soap opera, sitcom and drama. Many people in China think that the popular "I Love My Family" and "The Story of the Editorial Department" can be drawn into the category of soap operas, but according to the classification of western TV dramas, they are strictly defined as sitcom, because the stories between the episodes of the two dramas are not closely related, and they can often be independent. Moreover, the last episode has been arranged with a happy ending. However, the characteristic of western soap operas is that they tend to be serial. Usually, the stories between episodes are related, and they are very good at "dragging the show". Sometimes, after several weeks of watching, the plot can still be connected. Almost all soap operas have no ending in the traditional sense or are called "open ending". Even if there is one, it is a temporary balance in an unstable state, often a pair of contradictions. Even if there is an obvious "ending" like Sex and the City, the producers will intentionally leave something alive: when Bigger confessed to Kelly, he used the phrase "I want you" instead of the most commonly used "Will you marry me", so that the relationship between Bigger and Kelly can change rapidly. If a sequel is made at that time, no matter how the relationship between the characters changes, the plot can be justified immediately.
In western society, soap operas were once considered as low-level TV programs by academic circles and public opinion, and a simple form of entertainment for audiences with low social and cultural levels. Even in Britain, sociologists have pointed out that soap operas have an obvious tendency to encourage bad habits of human beings. On the surface, compared with news and documentaries, soap operas do lack timely and important information, and they don't contain many things related to social and technological progress and cultural progress. They are not as extensive and profound as documentaries, nor are they as critical as news commentary programs. In addition, soap operas seem to be hard to be called masterpieces from the perspective of TV program production methods and program quality. Most soap opera actors became famous after the program was broadcast. There are few other special features in filming technology: the lack of large-scale moving lens (the standard to measure high-quality commercial programs) and the lack of time-consuming and laborious scene scheduling and arrangement. Some early soap operas are even inferior in quality from the perspective of the current production and performance level. For example, the early British soap opera crossroad.
However, after careful study of many academic debates, it will be found that the proposition that "soap operas encourage bad tendencies" remains at the intuitive level, and there is little theoretical evidence. Critics accuse the poor quality of popular culture, the producers are all commercial laymen, and the audience is a group of people who have no aesthetic standards and are culturally suppressed, and satirize these people who watch soap operas in front of TV as "couch potato". In fact, if the aesthetic standard of taste culture and its comment content are so deep-rooted that only a few people can enjoy it, then this aesthetic standard and value orientation are nothing more than "high and low", and it is difficult to meet the social function requirements of TV in the consumption era.
In fact, the social impact of soap operas is far beyond people's imagination. As early as the 198s, the famous American dynasty soap opera Dallas, which reflected the internal contradictions of the oil rich families, reached a sensational effect when it was released in various cities. Before the climax drama "The Murderer Who Killed Xiaojie" was revealed, the whole American society was talking about "Who killed Xiaojie". After the program was broadcast, the Dallas police were still in communication, and they even called the branches to round up the real murderer in a serious way, which was passed down as an anecdote in the United States for a while.
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Times have changed. Soap operas that have been developed for decades have long been endowed with new spirit and significance by the times. At the end of March this year, the HBO TV series Sex and the City, which has been popular in Britain and the United States for six years, finally came to an end, putting a perfect end to this soap opera feat that went down in history. According to American media, when the last episode of Sex and the City was broadcast, 1.6 million viewers in the United States sat in front of the TV, setting the second highest viewing record in American TV history (the first one was the game show "Who Will Be a Millionaire" on NBC TV). Recently, CNN's Larry King talk show interviewed Sarah for an hour. During the recording of the program, the glamorous Sarah attracted Larry's full attention. It is rare for a TV actor to receive such "courtesy" from Larry (a famous program host) in the history of CNN, which shows that the position of Sex and the City in the eyes of American audiences is irreplaceable. Many top brand-name shops in new york and London have sold many expensive fashion products under the banner of "Kelly". The four sexy heroines in the play dress in different styles, and all the shapes in the film are made by top stylists and dressers in new york. Their dress images also represent four main categories of urban women: Kelly is fashionable, Charlotte is elegant, Miranda is professional and Samantha is mature. For many female viewers, another reason why they like Sex and the City is that they can know "what's popular in Manhattan recently" from Kelly's dress.
A TV series with the theme of the emotional life of mature women in the city has been a big hit for six years in a row and won a lot of Golden Globes and Emmys, which is rare in American TV history. According to the statistics of Nielsen ratings research company, the average ratings of Sex and the City in the last season can almost be the same as when it was first released in 1998. It is the most popular series of HBO in the past decades. This drama and NBC TV series Friends (broadcast for ten years) can be called "evergreen trees" of American TV. Recently, the two series ended at the same time, which also triggered the feelings of American women about "what to do in the future evening". Because in America, men will always have endless baseball, football or basketball games to watch, while women's main entertainment is watching soap operas. Since June 1998, Sex and the City first met the audience. Because the women in the play dared to "boldly discuss everything about men and their desire for men", it immediately became a cultural phenomenon that everyone paid attention to in the United States.
Whether 2 years ago or 2 years later, the main audience of soap operas are women, especially in developed countries. According to a statistic of the British Times, compared with the two films "The feud between the rich and the rich" and "Sex and the City" which are separated by 2 years, more than 7% of the viewers are women. Interestingly, even if some soap operas have a few male audiences, the focus of these men seems to deviate from the central plot of soap operas. They pay more attention to the "business war" in "Revenge of the Giants", the male rights and rich lifestyle of the rich families, the explicit "pornographic" dialogue and a small number of three-level shots in "Sex and the City". These concerns often deviate from the real theme and social significance of soap operas.
In contemporary society, the high ratings of soap operas among women groups provide a broad social foundation for feminist interpretation. American feminism emphasizes politics, realism and empiricism, so soap operas focusing on women's personal experiences provide a lot of raw materials and materials for feminist analysis and evaluation. This has also become the most powerful weapon used by feminists to awaken and "raise women's crisis awareness" and attack male supremacy and patriarchy. Some mainstream academic thoughts always seem to distort the true consciousness of soap operas. They simply regard soap operas as a simple embodiment of male minimalism and paternalism. They think that the audience is only a passive receiver of plots and emotions, while ignoring the active understanding and interaction between women viewers and TV programs as the main audience.
"Raising consciousness" means raising people's awareness, seeing the fact of male domination that was seldom noticed or completely ignored before, and pushing what was previously perceived and understood only at the unconscious level into the conscious level. "Awareness-raising" is regarded by feminists as an important part of the feminist movement, and its key role is to make women associate their personal experiences with political implications. No matter whether the women in the works are "struggling" (Sex and the City) or "compromising" (feuding with the rich and powerful), as long as they contain women's humanistic care, they can play a social role of "raising awareness".
each of the three heroines in "feud between the rich and the poor" said a classic line: Aili: "No matter how much you lose, the family must remain intact". Sue Airy: "If your marriage breaks up, you can either try to accept other men or be cynical". Pamela: "If you lose a child, then you can't be happy". These three seemingly simple lines just represent the core ideology of traditional women in the soap operas of the dynasty in the 198s, "passive, completely obeying the patriarchal system". This is why some western scholars mistakenly believe that "feud between the rich and the poor" leads women's thoughts to a lower level. In their view, feminist works should be full of resistance and practical actions.
Looking at the two dramas, whether it is the resignation of the feud between the rich and the poor 2 years ago or the dissoluteness of Sex and the City today, their effective dismantling of the private sphere is a primitive feminist gesture. The most essential feature of soap operas is the public exposure of privacy. If we regard the family and private fields as the primary places for women to suppress their self-world, then the openness and public nature of the background of soap opera characters' existence just satisfies the venting and easing of this repression by women groups. Soap operas are keen on conversation and take conversation as the main means of soap opera plot progress. In the conversation of characters, privacy has no foothold, there is no "private" field, and the private barrier between individuals is often broken. Public exposure of private experiences and emotions is the regular motivation of soap operas. In the narration of soap operas, it is customary to obliterate the privacy of a single character, that is, to disclose all kinds of trivial secret information to other characters. This disclosure can be directly expressed through performances or indirectly reflected through dialogues between characters: the confirmation of lover's identity, the nature of deep feelings and opinions, the truth of past experience or future plans, and so on. In Sex and the City, the four heroines, as friends, will disclose all the privacy, even the details of sex, to each other in public places, which is the most powerful embodiment of the characteristics of public privacy in soap operas in the new period.
In fact, although the images of women in "Revenge of the Giants" are endowed with symbols such as "tradition", "resignation" and "opposition to liberation", the female audience should not be regarded as victims of passive acceptance. Even the audience with low education level is active, analytical, comparative and selective in their understanding of TV programs, rather than completely passive. This is why the "gangster film" will be understood by the mainstream society as the triumph of justice over evil, rather than the tragedy of showing criminals. The view that "women watch soap operas to escape from boredom, emptiness and reality" distorts the significance of soap operas to women's social groups.
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From the perspective of defining TV programs, soap operas are nothing more than a kind of entertainment programs. According to media consumerism, female audiences like soap operas like "feud between the rich and the poor" and "Sex and the City" just for pleasure. However, the meaning of "pleasure" is difficult to define, especially when the already complicated audience is understood as a feminist point of view. Pleasure can come from the female audience's recognition of the details of the daily life of the characters in the play. Such as the familiar street view of Manhattan in new york in Sex and the City, countless shopping and parties, hotels and coffee. Pleasure can also come from the female audience's understanding of the emotional experience and life experience of the characters in the play. The increasing divorce rate in contemporary society and the formation of single female groups provide a good audience base for this understanding. Faced with the tragic experience of women in "Revenge of the Giants" and the dissoluteness in "Sex and the City", more and more urban women have been able to base their "pleasure" on similar experiences with the characters in the play. Pleasure can be established in the group topic after viewing.
Sociological survey shows that women are used to treating their pains and sufferings as personal misfortunes, but if they tell each other about their pains and sorrows among their peers, they may fall into a pattern, which, although different, reflects the same characteristics of women's lives. In this way, women will realize that personal misfortune is not just a personal problem, but may be a social problem, so it is also a political problem. Therefore, "raising awareness" is actually a manifestation of feminists directly linking criticism to politics. In fact, a large part of women who enjoy soap operas are housewives or middle-aged women. For these people, the pleasure of enjoying "feud between the rich and the rich" and "Sex and the City" lies in witnessing the emotional and spear entanglements of high-level social groups in the plots and understanding the etiquette restrictions and lust indulgence of the middle class. As an ordinary middle-aged American woman said, "Fortunately, we are not such a family, but I will not be like them".
In the past six years, the broadcast of Sex and the City has brought countless women's humanistic concerns to the western world. Not to mention the after-dinner pastime brought by itself as an entertainment program to hundreds of millions of female audiences, the heroine's different understanding and personal practice of sex and love alone has also opened many eyes to women of the same age. If we can express the whole content of Sex and the City in one sentence, it is: "Four white-collar women in Manhattan who are alive and fragrant, grab themselves unabashedly in the crazy flow of urban material life." "Sex and the City" awakened countless urban women's desires as turbulent as the rising tide and as oblivious as the ebb tide. It was straightforward, glamorous and fashionable, and extremely vigorous. From the traditional point of view, these four women are all out-and-out "bad women" and absolute "material girls". They pursue fame and fortune at work, their bags are stuffed with condoms, and changing boyfriends is as common as changing sheets, and they enjoy the freedom of being single in body and mind.
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