A work · 1933 · Television
The soap opera
A form built almost entirely by women, for women, and treated as unserious for fifty years. Daily episodes, fixed slots, cliffhangers, characters written in indefinitely and never resolved.
The origin of the entire research tradition, and it started as a footnote about daytime television that nobody thought was important. The rhythm is the mechanism: a fixed slot and an unresolved story, repeated daily, is a relationship with a schedule. It is also the reason the phrase 'soap opera' is now an insult rather than a description.
Application. One-sided attachment put to work on purpose. Creator economies, community, fandom as infrastructure, and the things that genuinely help people. Not automatically good - a tool with an obvious use is a tool that will also get a bad one.
Where it sits
1900 1900-1949 · 1933 1949
Provenance · 1 source record(s)
- unverifiedNo specific claim is recorded against this source. The record is a pointer to the work in general; the entry's own prose is the argument and is not sourced line by line.Schlesinger, P. (1932, 1933), WGN
Connected · 3 out, 6 in
Reported as a story
It sits in