by Tracy Bee

Created on: July 10, 2008   Last Updated: July 11, 2008

In America, Soap Operas define daytime television. It is virtually impossible to turn on the television in the afternoon and not encounter one of these daytime dramas. From noon until late afternoon, business tycoons like Victor Neuman and other equally cliched, yet somehow captivating, characters dominate the airwaves on ABC, CBS, and NBC. In fact, soap operas have been entrancing the public since 1937, when the first serial drama aired on the radio. The medium has evolved but the message hasn't. North American soap opera themes have always been the same - forbidden love, tragic love, betrayal, murder, malice, death, and even miraculous resurrection. With these themes, according to Denise Bielby, Sociology Professor at the University of California, "the soap opera genre moves its viewers so completely, and draws them in so fully, that from an audience's perspective, it is the most intriguing and important program in all of television."

But if soap operas are so incredibly fantastical, isn't it outrageous that so many millions of viewers are obsessed with watching them?

Their outrageousness seems to be the whole point. At least in North America, soap opera viewers are predominantly drawn to the show as an escape mainly from the monotony of regular, daily life - especially for women at home during the day, weighed down with the tedium of childcare and/or chores. The soap's themes and plots go against the norms of everyday life. And that is why they love them. The men and women who reside in this fantasy reality know no real limits. Ultimately, the soap opera's outrageous plots are merely an attempt to sell the drama to the audience as something indulgent to watch. It is none other than a consumer good, like chocolate, into which audiences can indulgently sink their teeth. Like waiting for that next sumptuous bite out of a Toblerone, viewers eagerly anticipate that next resurrection or sexual affair. The shows have no real value in the viewers' lives. They are merely pure, indulgent entertainment.

International soap operas are also gaining renown, especially in this age of the internet and Youtube. Brazil is the greatest producer of soap operas - known as telenovelas elsewhere - outside of the U.S. In fact, it also produced the first telenovela outside of the U.S in 1950 and Brazil's TV Globo is the world's fourth largest television network (next to, of course, America's big three networks). Brazilian productions are also more expensively and elaborated produced

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