Reality Killed the Daytime Soap Star

Jan 25

Image by Justin_D_Miller

Back in grade school, I could be off the bus and at my front door by 2:50 p.m., leaving just enough time to change out of my uniform, grab a Little Debbie snack cake, and take a seat in front of the television for that day’s episode of Guiding Light.

During the years I watched it, Guiding Light felt like the perfect escape. Like any good fantasy, the show transported me to a world populated by larger-than-life people (and their long-lost twins, played by the same actress!) doing larger-than-life things (like coming back from the dead, this time being played by a different actress!).

But Guiding Light also taught me plenty, in an after school special kind of way. Watching with my mom, we’d chuckle at the outrageous and ease our way into topics that were far afield from the predictable suburban existence we knew: rape, teenage pregnancy, AIDS. Guiding Light got us talking about these weighty topics and about love and commitment, irresponsibility and consequences.

That was – gasp! – almost thirty years ago, during the twilight of the soap genre. Guiding Light aired its final episode on CBS on September 18, 2009, 72 years after its debut as an NBC radio serial, making it one of five soap operas cancelled in the last three years.

Last spring, ABC axed both All My Children and One Life to Live. AMC, long committed to tackling social issues, signed off in September after a 41 year run. OLTL, which earned acclaim for a groundbreaking homophobia storyline, aired its last episode on January 13th after 42 years on the air.

Only four daytime dramas remain.

So what burst the soaps’ bubble?  The numbers. Ratings fell precipitously as “women 18-49” turned their backs. But it’s not as though we’ve suddenly lost our appetite for love triangles, alien abductions, and surprise pregnancies. Heck no! If anything, we’ve become hungrier for the schlocky content soaps were long derided for.

And we’re finding plenty of it: in reality TV.

A glance at the Nielsen ratings for the past decade demonstrates the explosive growth of reality television. 56% of the primetime audience is watching reality TV, as compared to 22% in the 2001-02 season. During the day, aggressive, in-your-face options like Judge Judy and The View dominate.

As if the victory of reality over scripted drama wasn’t clear enough, ABC emphasized the point by replacing its venerable soaps with fare dished out by a veritable Who’s-Who of contemporary reality television. The Chew, a talk show about food and entertaining starring Mario Batali and Michael Symon (of Iron Chef America fame), Carla Hall (Top Chef), and Clinton Kelly (What Not to Wear) replaced All My Children this fall. The Revolution – a health and “lifestyle” talk show hosted by Project Runway’s Tim Gunn and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’s Ty Pennington – debuted this month.

The demise of the soap opera underscores a deep shift in our cultural preferences away from the narrative form that has shaped art and entertainment since prehistory and toward quick fixes, cheap thrills, and narcissism. Sure, daytime dramas made their names with outrageous storylines, but they also asked their viewers for a commitment that most reality TV eschews.

Ultimately, soap operas gave us 40-year story arcs about families. The multi-generational clans made messes and had to deal with them. Declaring bankruptcy landed characters in more hot water than a cookbook deal could lift them out of. Being 16 and pregnant had consequences beyond giving them a chance at a TV contract. And watching these soap characters deal with the costs of their mistakes came with lessons for viewers.

Now I’m not trying to say that I learned all my values from watching soaps as a kid. And there were certainly plenty of badly behaved soap characters who were unrealistically redeemed or rehabilitated. But I am arguing that the values soaps taught me are a whole lot better than the ones reality TV is instilling in kids today.

The swan song of the soap opera makes me wonder about the type of television that my young children will eventually watch – and that we will watch and talk about together.  It also makes me think about a recent UCLA study that found that fame was the top value conveyed by TV shows – many of them reality shows – popular among pre-teens. (Benevolence ranked 13th out of 16, tradition 15th.)

These are the values reality TV is teaching?

Maybe I’ll see if I can find some old VHS tapes of Guiding Light on eBay.

Did you ever watch soap operas? Do you watch reality TV? What, if any, TV do you like to watch with your kids?

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When the Student is Ready

Jan 18

Image by RichardBH

I was never that good at coaching – in the traditional sense, at least.

During the nine years I was a teacher, I spent seven as a coach: of basketball, of softball, of lacrosse. The best coaching I did was when I headed up a junior varsity girls’ high school basketball team. My own love of the sport, combined with a solid knowledge of the game, good skills communicating with teenage girls, and a great relationship with my co-coach led to a successful season – in the metrics of fun and wins. The worst coaching I did was when, at a different school, I helmed the varsity girls’ basketball team. I was under-qualified and in over my head. We all knew it – the players, the parents, me – and it was miserable.

My own experiences coaching gave me new-found appreciation for the great coaches I’d had during my years playing basketball. My first basketball coach (not including my dad, who taught me how to dribble and shoot in my childhood driveway) was also my best. He welcomed me onto his CYO team when I was a stick-thin third grader. I remember wearing my black leggings and over-sized red sweatshirt – a tomato on toothpicks – to our practices and working my way up over the years from a glorified water-carrier to the starting point guard on our state championship team. I remember him trusting me enough as a fifth grader to put me in at a crucial moment in a big game. I remember him yelling at me years later when, in that same gym, I wasn’t paying enough attention in a huddle and called our last time-out too early at the end of another big game. (We won anyway.) I remember him sending me a note and my kids three matching Larry Bird t-shirts last summer.

I’ve long since hung up my high-tops and my whistle, but I recently had the chance to work with another great coach.

Last spring I posted about wanting to find a mentor to help shepherd me through the process of becoming a freelance writer. At the end of the post, I casually – and, I’ll admit, pretty tongue-in-cheekily – mused that maybe I needed a life coach. At the time, I didn’t really know what a life coach did, but had started hearing the term more and more (kind of like the way that I have since heard about honey badgers). So imagine my surprise when Rebecca of Altared Spaces responded to my silly aside by telling me what a life coach does – helping people set goals and move past the sticky things that hold them back – and what one looks like – her!

Rebecca was generous to offer me some of her coaching magic this fall just after I launched my freelance career. It was a big moment for me, bigger than I realized at the time and Rebecca helped me see that: I had taken a pretty dramatic step off of the linear path I had been walking for much of my adult life (college, job, grad school, marriage, kids) and placed my own passions ahead of what I thought other people expected of me. I came out as a writer to my friends and family and sent my work out into the world, knowing that rejection and criticism would likely follow.

This step was hard for me and Rebecca and I talked about that. We talked too about things like guilt and the weight of other people’s expectations – not to mention the weight of my own assumptions about other people’s expectations. She – with great skill and gentleness – helped me to unpack those feelings and helped me elucidate almost immediately some of the tendencies I have that sometimes trip me up even while defining who I am. She asked questions and offered me thought exercises that helped me identify tiny steps I could take to move forward.

Coaching with Rebecca felt a lot like talking to a good friend – a good friend who also happens to be smart, insightful, and focused only on you. And that last part might be the greatest gift Rebecca gave me – a chance at a busy and momentous time to stop and think about myself, to be mindful of my goals, and to reflect on ways to get there.

Thank you, Rebecca, for listening, for asking, and for helping me start to unstick the sticky parts.

Who helps you unstick the sticky spots? Have you ever had a terrific coach?

 

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There is No Best Way

Jan 11

I have been a parent for four years, four months, and eight days. I’m not sure how many of those days it took for me to realize the only truism of parenting: There is no one right way to do any of this. — We worked on potty training this weekend with our two year [...]

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Reflections

Jan 04

I know I’m not the first or the only person moved at the beginning of January to reflect on the year that just ended. But, when I saw Tsh’s list of 20 questions for reflecting on 2011 over at Simple Mom, I knew I wanted to stop and write on them. What can I say? Cliche, thy [...]

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Have Yourself a Merry Little Birthday

Dec 21

The following is a Public Service Announcement on behalf of all children celebrating a birthday this week or next. My birthday is on Saturday. Christmas Eve. Growing up as a Catholic kid who went to Catholic school in a largely Catholic community, I sometimes felt like my birthday got lost in the Christmas shuffle. Now [...]

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December Dilemma

Dec 14

This year Christmas falls smack dab in the middle of Hanukkah.  This fact would have meant nothing to me as a child.  Now it means a lot… — Please click here to read the rest of this post, in which I wonder about how to instill a sense of wonder in my interfaith kids during [...]

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Bath Night

Dec 07

I balance awkwardly on the edge of the tub, my daughter sitting on my knee, lunging for the yellow duck just out of her reach. I turn on the faucet and let the water run into the white plastic basin with its baby-shaped contours. When my oldest – now four – was a baby, we [...]

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Baby Steps

Nov 30

On Sunday I sat on the floor in the living room, kids napping behind closed doors, my husband watching football, and went through piles of outgrown baby clothes. Like an intake nurse in the emergency room, I busied myself with triage: the impossibly small polka dot sleeper my eldest wore home from the hospital saved [...]

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Thanks Giving

Nov 23

This Thanksgiving, I am counting my blessings. I am thankful for my husband, for my kids, for my parents.  I am thankful for my friends. I am thankful for my health.  I am thankful to my body for growing a perfect baby girl this year. I am thankful for the chance to pursue my dream [...]

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The Five Year Plan

Nov 16

My sister-in-law visited this past weekend and, in the midst of chatting about important things like the kids, plot developments on Grey’s Anatomy, and her new puppy (I’m not a dog person, but this little guy?  Cute.  Very cute), we got to talking as we often do about our short-term, long-term plans – where we see ourselves in [...]

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