When this
storyline broke, the press printed endless stories ‘should Deirdre go to bed
with Mike, or should she leave Ken to set up home with Mike?’ The Daily Star,
Daily Mail, Sunday Mirror, Daily Express, Sun, even the Times, Daily Telegraph,
and Guardian covered the storyline. Ann Kirkbride who plays Deirdre Barlow said
“I thought the story would spark off a few fan letters, but I never imagined
anything like the press and public reaction we got. I never dreamed it would
grip the nation like it did. It was scary.” The interweaving storylines are
another reason why soaps are enjoyed by viewers. There are at least 10 different
storylines in each episode, so that if one storyline does not interest a viewer,
one of the others will. In an episode each scene is generally no longer than a
minute and a half, thus keeping the interest of the audience. The assumption
here is that the average viewer has a short attention span. Because there are so
many storylines, new characters can be introduced to the soap alongside old
ones; this all adds to the viewer’s enjoyment. The most popular TV programme of
Christmas 1987 was the Christmas Day episode of Coronation Street, so they must
be a pleasure to watch. According to the book BBC People and Programming, most
families seem to organise their evening TV viewing around a few core programmes,
which everyone enjoys, such as Coronation Street or EastEnders. These are called
bonding programmes. ‘At 7pm 80% of TV viewing is group viewing’ says Clarke. So
another pleasure derived from watching soaps is that they can be enjoyed by
people of all ages. Viewers know that there will be no embarrassing sex scenes,
no foul language, and no nudity. So in the case of Coronation Street,
grandparents and grandchildren can sit down and watch together and neither will
be offended. However, this statement does not hold true for EastEnders, where
the ‘gay’ storyline, for example, could upset the older generation.
Women are
avid soap watchers and it is possible that their enjoyment is in watching
scenarios that could occur in their own families, and so prepare them to deal
with such situations. They are also enjoyable for women because soaps are about
the only television programmes which show that older women, who are larger and
not so beautiful, do have a romantic or sexual existence. This is not shown on
the screen, just talked about. According to Fiske : ‘There is a real pleasure to
be found in soap operas that assert the legitimacy of feminine meanings and
identities within and against patriarchy. Pleasure results from the production
of meanings from the world, and of self that are felt to serve the interests of
the reader rather than those of the dominant.’ They also appeal to women
because, there is a pleasure in seeing women take active and controlling role;
an example being Barbara Windsor as Peggy Mitchell in EastEnders. Soaps are
enjoyable because they echo what is going on in the world. Television and soap
operas are not the originators of social change, but are merely part of that
change. As aids became an illness affecting people in society, so soaps such as
EastEnders included it in their storylines. However, despite all the pleasures
of soaps that I have written about, things are not that straightforward. Because
soaps are shown at peak family viewing times, care must be taken with the
content of the storylines. Aggressive behaviour should be kept to a minimum
because ‘there is a positive relationship between the amount of exposure
children have to television violence and the extent to which they act
aggressively’ according to Atkinson.
