ACADEMIC POSTING: Soap Opera versus Action Series: The active male meets the passive female

Within the world of television, certain genres of shows are created that are seen to appeal to a particular gender and therefore geared towards that gender. The daytime or primetime soap opera or serial are made for a female audience. The action series are made for a male audience. But of course, this does not mean that the desired audiences are the only ones who consume the texts. To say that only women watch soap operas and only men watch action shows would be beyond a generalization, but also ignoring an audience that is representative of not only one gender (as men constitute one third of the soap opera audience[1]), but of age, race, class and sexuality. While there are some quite obvious differences in the styles of soap operas and action series, there are also a huge number of similarities. Within the action series, these similarities are subtly coded to some, and obviously coded to others, but regardless, there are coded elements of melodrama that occur within the text. The purpose of this essay is to identify the melodramatic elements that occur within both soap opera and the action series by using examples of the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE, formerly WWF) wrestling and primetime series such as 24 (2001-), Dynasty and Desperate Housewives (2004-) in order to establish the differences and similarities of the two types of shows. (1981-89)

What is melodrama?

Over the last thirty years, the term melodrama has evolved into a genre that was quite different from its original meaning. Melodrama and its conventions had been seen to be typified by the idea of ‘the woman’s film’ where a lot of crying occurs under very hyperbolic and melancholic music. Ben Singer notes that the term ‘melodrama’ in its current day stance refers to “a set of subgenres that remain close to the heart and hearth and emphasize a register of heightened emotionalism and sentimentality.”[2] But what about the meaning of melodrama in the past? John Mercer and Martin Shingler notice melodramas earlier origins in film (circa 1910 to 1970) were related to “thrillers with face paced narratives, episodic story-lines featuring violence, suspense and death-defying stunts. Dastardly villains, heroines in peril and daring adventurous heroes.”[3] However, over time these elements became less known to the genre of the melodrama. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, feminist film scholars identified melodrama in relation to ‘the woman’s film’. However, it is Steve Neale’s reconstruction of the term in the 1990s which identified the key components of melodrama:

(i) conflict of good and evil (ii) eventual triumph of good over evil (iii) hero, heroine and villain as principal types (iv) demonstrative and hyperbolic aesthetic (v) episodic, formulaic and action-packed plots with fate, coincidence and chance playing a major role (vi) ‘situations’ forming moments of dramatic revelation or display.[4]

It is these components that were central to the melodrama and were present within both the thrillers and gangster films and ‘the woman’s film’ and we can see these components existing in such action series as 24 as well as in primetime soap operas like Desperate Housewives.

As well as seeing the evolution of the melodrama genre, it is also important to note the importance that the audience plays within making or recreating a text (or in this case, a genre). Across time, audiences have played a part in making certain genres popular, as ultimately, audiences are the ones who the texts are made for, and they are the ones who consume the texts, therefore they must enjoy the text for it to continue being produced. Mercer and Shingler talk about the important role that an audience has in determining the success of a genre where “the development of a specific genre or ‘film cycle’ requires a consistently positive audience response to its style and content, its associated stars, directors, plots, props and settings.”[5] The enjoyment within melodrama not only sees the audiences having excessive visceral responses (whether it be crying in a drama or being thrilled in a suspense), but also allows for the spectator become agitated from seeing extreme moral injustices and “being profoundly disturbed or outraged when [seeing] vicious power victimizing the weak, usually involving some kind of bodily violence.”[6] These reactions help the audience get caught up in the storm of what is known as the masculine melodrama.

Masculine Melodrama

Henry Jenkins talks about the masculine melodrama of the WWE in relation to melodramatic coding. However, it is important to note the presumed elements of the action series before we identify the melodrama within the text that changes the traditional idea of an action series. The most structurally noticeable part of an action series is that most of the story is contained to one episode. The Law and Order franchises are good examples of a contained episode where the narrative story is resolved at the end with one big climatic scene, thus closure is achieve. However, with my two case studies, closure is not always reached at the end of each episode, especially within 24, where each episode usually ends on a cliffhanger. It is these elements of an open ending, multiple characters and disjointed time sequences that are usually attributed to a female based soap opera. 24 and WWE are not simply the traditional action series, but comment on much more than this. 24 sees Federal Agent Jack Bauer fighting against terrorism, trying to save the world, all within the time period of one day. There are 24 episodes per season and each episode is seen to be a consecutive real life hour in the one day. While the character of Jack Bauer is a man’s man fighting the global scum threatening to erase the democracy of the United States, he is also a very troubled man. In the first season, while killing all of the necessary people to save the world, Jack’s wife and daughter are kidnapped, and his wife is then killed towards the end of the first season. Jack is seen holding his wife Teri while crying. While he is the typical action hero that we see in such 1980s action series as Miami Vice, his breaking down over his wife’s death is an uncharacteristic moment within the idea of a typical action series. Thus the new style of action series is born where the traditional heroes have internalized anguish that inhibits them from being completely immune to any type of pain whether it be physical or emotional.

Within the WWE world, the spectacle element of an action series is played upon very strongly. Jenkins interestingly makes note of the traditional ideas of sport versus melodrama, where sport is linked to the male affect to “physical prowess, competition and mastery” and melodrama is linked to female affect to “domesticity, sentimentality, and vulnerability”.[7] Jenkins also makes note of sports soliciting aggressive and noisy externalized emotion through shouting, cheering and booing, compared to the passive and quiet internalized emotions of crying that is featured within melodrama.[8] But despite these rather noticeable differences, there is a lot of melodrama featured within WWE wrestling.

Jenkins notes the ideas of WWE wrestling as the “ageless struggle between the “perfect bastard” and the suffering hero.”[9] These ideas relate back to Steve Neale’s idea of good versus evil within melodrama where there is a hero and a villain, as is the case within WWE. However, one difference between melodramatic soap opera and melodramatic wrestling is that there is much more of a spectacle within the narrative as the “externaliz[ing] emotion map[s] the combatants’ bodies and transform[s] their physical competition into a search for moral order.”[10]

The narrative, similar to 24, is one of the many melodramatic elements that turn “televised wrestling into a form of serial fiction for men.”[11] The open ended narrative featured within WWE wrestling allows for stories to continue over many months, allowing for the fights and disputes to follow through to big matches where the viewer is ultimately rewarded for following the conflicts and melodramatic tension between certain players, therefore resolving the narrative and providing closure to the consumers, (and subscribers; this being a central reason for marketing and money making schemes). One reason that Jenkins sees for the success of the WWE wrestling is that it rebels against the traditional ideas of the male, setting up an “alternative means of releasing and managing masculine emotion while preserving the myth of the stoic male”, allowing men to engage in serialized melodrama while at the same time engaging in a sporting spectacle.[12]

The Melodrama in the Soap Opera

The melodrama seen within soap operas are much less coded than in action series and rely on the knowledge that the show is a soap opera to escape true ridicule, as in the world of the soaps, nothing is ever close to the truth. Jenkins notes that “melodrama explores the concerns of the private sphere, sports those of the public. Melodrama announces its fictional status, while sports claims for itself the status of reality.”[13] These ideas all relate back to ideas of passivity of the female and the activeness of the male. Some shows such as Desperate Housewives highlight the vulnerability of suburban housewives and mothers who seem to be lost in their own desperation, and also adhere to the ideas of melodrama relating to domesticity. But then there are soaps such as Dynasty and even The Bold and the Beautiful (1987-) where women hold high corporate positions and are just as concerned about their careers as they are about their lovers.

Even soaps hold high gender distinctions as usually the women are thin and beautiful, and the men are strong, tall and muscular. But despite this, the men also break down and cry and become as vulnerable and passive as the women do when confronted with an emotional situation. The elements of the soap opera that relate to the passive female must be noticed. The melodramatic soap opera is played out in the private sphere, another difference from the WWE wrestling, where everything is out in the open. The idea of the incessant crying thus relates back to the passive female, internalizing emotions. Along with these stylistic elements, the narrative conventions see soaps as episodic, featuring many characters, having an open ended narrative that continues gradually throughout the show where closure is not achieve at the end of an episode, and cuts back and forth between these characters stories, as opposed to the so called few characters and single plot lines that the action series traditionally adheres to.

It is the multi strand narratives of the action shows like 24 and the WWE wrestling shows that see a similarity in the style of soap operas and action series. While some television shows still adhere to the traditional male-action series and female-soap opera series, there are both action series and soap operas that feature multi-narrative strands with open ended narratives, many characters and disrupted time sequences. The two forms of television shows blend into one another, as 24 and the WWE wrestling illustrate. Despite this, melodrama does not seem to take anything from their masculinity. Similar to the Rambo’s and Terminator characters within the Reaganite 1980s, the characters of WWE “have made themselves so spectacular that they…verge on comic representations of themselves”[14] while at the same time still holding potency as strong, muscular heroes that have internalized anguish which will sometimes result in a breakdown, whether it be over a lost match (as in WWE), or the death of another character (as in 24). What we understand of melodrama is that it can take many forms and it manages to permeate through television shows in some form or another, whether it is in a gangster film, in a televised wrestling match or in a soap opera featuring predominately women.

Bibliography

Bernstein, Alina. ‘Representation, Identity and the Media.’ In The Media Book, edited by Chris Boyd, Oliver Boyd-Barrett and Hilde Van Den Bulck, 259-299. London: Arnold, 2002.

Jefford, Susan. ‘Terminal Masculinity: Men in the Early 90s.’ In Hard Bodies: Hollywood, Masculinity in The Reagan Era. Rutgers, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1994. 193-206.

Jenkins, Henry. ‘Never trust a Snake: WWF Wrestling as Masculine Melodrama.’ In Sports, Media and the Politics of Identity, edited by Aaron Baker and Todd Boyde, 48-78. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997.

Mercer, John and Martin Shingler. Melodrama: Genre, Style, Sensibility. London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2004.

Singer, Ben. Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001.

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[1] Alina Bernstein, ‘Representation, Identity and the Media’ in The Media Book, ed. by Chris Boyd, Oliver Boyd-Barrett and Hilde Van Den Bulck (London: Arnold, 2002), 272.

[2] Ben Singer, Melodrama and Modernity: Early Sensational Cinema and Its Contexts. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 37.

[3] John Mercer and Martin Shingler, Melodrama: Genre, Style, Sensibility. (London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2004), 6.

[4] Mercer and Shingler, 30.

[5] Mercer and Shingler, 5.

[6] Singer, 40.

[7] Henry Jenkins, ‘Never Trust a Snake: WWF Wrestling as Masculine Melodrama’ in Sports, Media and the Politics of Identity, ed. by Aaron Baker and Todd Boyde (Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997), 53.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Jenkins, 48.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Jenkins, 50.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Jenkins, 53.

[14] Jeffords, 176.