Sudsy+Seriousness

A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episode work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name //soap opera// stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers such as Procter & Gamble, Colgate-Palmolive and Lever Brothers as sponsors and producers. These early radio series were broadcast in weekday daytime slots when most listeners would be housewives; thus the shows were aimed at and consumed by a predominantly female audience. Soap opera stories run concurrently, intersect and lead into further developments. An individual episode of a soap opera will generally switch between several different concurrent story threads that may at times interconnect and affect one another or may run entirely independent of each other. Each episode may feature some of the show's current storylines but not always all of them. Especially in daytime serials and those that are screened each weekday, there is some rotation of both storyline and actors so any given storyline or actor will appear in some but usually not all of a week's worth of episodes. Soap operas rarely bring all the current storylines to a conclusion at the same time. When one storyline ends there are several other story threads at differing stages of development. Soap opera episodes typically end on some sort of cliffhanger. //--from wikipedia.org// However, as silly and mind-numbing as soaps can be, many of these programs have a lasting influence over the cultural and political landscapes. Many of the stories have celebrity fan bases featuring people as diverse as Elizabeth Taylor to Wayne Gretsky. Not content to use their popularity to see how many times characters can divorce without ending up in the poor house and how often one can come back from the dead, soaps decided to bring important social issues into American homes as early as the 1950s with the first soap //Guiding Light//.



**SOME ISSUES DEALT WITH ON SOAPS**
 * Alcoholism (1950s)
 * Race Relations/Regular Black Actors (1960s)
 * Breast Cancer
 * Sexual Assault
 * Legalized Abortion (1973)
 * HIV/AIDS Awareness and Research(1980s)
 * Homosexuality (1983)