Soap operas offer movie travelers a free, unlimited pass to other worlds and other lifestyles. Take an armchair ride to your favourite social world, pick your friends, know your enemies and be ready for some unbelievable thrills and spills. Your magic carpet leaves on schedule, so always be prepared. Same time. Same platform. The habit is addictive, an exhilarating "must do" routine; an orchestrated, controlled reality at the flick of a switch. And so people openly or secretly embark on the journey to soapie world.

To say this is a fantasy world is almost a dirty word. This is just another real world that happens to be boxed in a screen. You are there, loving to watch Sally Fletcher growing up in Summer Bay. You have known her as a child, a teenager, a crossed lover and now an admired history teacher in Summer Bay.

Perhaps it all began as an escape from your own routine of family duties. But now, that escape has become a vital ingredient of your lifestyle.

You feel a greater sense of who you are, who you like and who you don't like.

The soapies help you to make choices in a crisis, showing you ways of dealing with life's curl balls. They vividly illustrate the consequences of decisions and actions, relationships and tensions.

Soapies help you understand the psychological mechanics of personalities interacting in a pseudo everyday environment. Introverts can be socially educated by the soapie extrovert. And armchair extroverts may get a richer understanding and appreciation of quieter characters.
Soapie scripts direct actors to act out touchy issues of discrimination, unemployment and environmental threats. Soapies are an education in the finer threads of human nature and down to earth living. It could all be so real!

And that is the key! Those characters you see so regularly become your virtual family; an almost real family. Leave them awhiles, come back, and what you remember from previous viewings helps you "catch up" with the pace and the pulse in no time. If a member of this virtual family dies, you weep real tears. If a marriage is on the horizon, you feel real excitement. I even know one person who drank a toast (from her TV armchair of course), when Jason married his Kylie on "Neighbours". Who can possibly believe that soapies are just a mere fantasy world!

Gotchya! Soapies are like the Artful Dodger. That charm, that mystery, that style sucks you in every time. You are delectably conned to keep viewing the unbelievable, the incredible and the "it's just not real". Curiosity drags you back, almost against your will. You just have to check out that virtual family. Who ended up with whom? Were your predictions right? You must find out! Slowly, slowly the soapie opera, (like the song of the mythical Sirens), presses your buttons and sucks you in!

Learn more about this author, Gemma Wiseman.
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