What comes to mind when you hear the words “soap opera”? Grey’s Anatomy? One Tree Hill? Jane the virgin? Whichever show you thought of, you probably thought of a modern example in the genre. But have you ever stepped back and wondered about the history behind the genre? Or what role does it play in society? If you’re anything like me, the answer is no! Even after binge-watching all eighteen seasons of Grey’s Anatomy. Yes, eighteen full seasons, never once did I stop and think about the impact a soap opera could have. Whether you answered yes or no, but especially if you answered yes, I recommend you read the book Her Stories, by Elana Levine! She spent twelve years researching and connecting pieces of soap opera history in order to grasp and explain the effect of how soaps influence the role of women, and how it affects society.
In a three-part book Levine gives a very informative, yet extremely interesting explanation of the impact of soaps. As the author herself puts it: “Her Stories is a history of the US daytime television soap opera as a gendered cultural form and a central force in the economic and social power of American broadcast network television from the late 1940s through the 2010s” (4). She believes that social identities and changes in television were heavily influenced by soap operas. She works to prove her points by exploring developments and trends in media and society depending on the time period and current events.
Elana Levine grew up in Chicago Illinois. She attended Indiana University and received her Bachelor’s in English and Telecommunications in 1992. She then moved on to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to earn her Masters in Communication Arts in 1997. Next, she remained at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to earn her Ph.D. in Communication Arts in 2002. With her Ph.D., She started out as an assistant professor in the department of journalism and mass communication at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee from 2002-to 2008. She continued to work her way up and from 2016 to the current day, she is a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the department of Journalism, Advertising, and Media studies. Along the way she got married and gave birth to two sons. She currently lives with her family in Milwaukee Wisconsin. With her degrees alone, it is clear research in soap operas is her passion project, she examines how soap operas affect the past, present, and future, and reveals that soaps were her main focus of grad school, even were the focus of her thesis. Accompanying the teaching, she continues to research and write.
The book’s introduction starts out with Levine thanking those that made her 12 years of researching and writing possible. She conducted many interviews with those currently in the daytime soap opera industry including Holly Cato, fans of the field, and past members of the industry. In addition to the interviews, the majority of her research utilized the qualitative methodology, by digging into and analyzing the archives of soap operas. In order to gain access, she connected with many universities including Northwestern and UCLA to view episodes, scripts, and summaries of soap operas. With that, she also utilized the quantitative methodology through graphs and images to further her points. After describing the early technique of superimpositions to show a character’s state of mind, Levine shows an image of an example in the show Search for Tomorrow (26). Additionally, she mentions every soap opera she cites an exact episode, she has seen it (as opposed to reading a script or summary). She watched many episodes, and seasons of shows and this book also contains interpretations of her own, along with those discussed with colleagues, in a more casual style than an interview.
Part one consists of chapters one and two and stretches through the time period of 1940-1960, known as the post-World War II era. Chapter one explains the transitions of soap operas being streamed on the radio onto the television, where we now enjoy them. She takes us through popular trends for the time period, as networks were learning how to film this type of a show. The progression was astounding. Beginning with actors featured in Big Sister “standing in front of a microphone reading a script”(22), and amounting to visual storytelling effects, such as reaction shots used to “mimic characters’ states of mind”(26). Chapter two zeros in on the role of soap operas, and how they began to make gender assumptions. When tv programs began to be used instead of radios, tv stations feared that divorces would increase because women wouldn’t be able to get their work done around the house. That being said, “white, middle class, suburban homemaker”(45) women were their targeted audience. They created soap operas to entertain this crowd and succeeded in offering a therapeutic element into these women’s lives, by having characters that related to the struggles of post-war life for women.
Part two consists of chapters three through five and takes us through the peak of soap opera economic and cultural power. The period covered spans from the mid-1960s to the 1980s. Chapter three goes into detail about how much popularity soaps had gained, because of this more and more networks started broadcasting and airing soaps. By the beginning of the 1960s, soaps had earned their permanent spot on television (vs. being a Radioshow). The audience still targeted the wealthy white woman housewife, but in chapter four we see heavy shifts. Chapter four demonstrates, how with the power soaps held they could now experiment with more than just housewife struggles. Starting out as a subtle, yet notable change, the Soap General Hospital in the 1960s goes into detail about the lives of Jessie and her husband Dr. Phil, with their marital problems both at home and in the hospital, their shared workplace. Female characters “no longer to be confined to the sphere of home and family” (107). As this show was successful, among others expanding women outside of the home, channels started incorporating more current social issues, such as reproductive drama, “stories about pregnancies wanted and unwanted, term and aborted” (120). Another big shift is in the 1960’s women’s sexual desire became much more explicit and shared through soap operas. All of these shifts had a huge impact on society, making women watching these networks feel heard, and their struggles normalized, soap operas now show women are more than just stay-at-home housewives.
Finally, chapter five focuses on the peak of soap opera culture in the 1980’s and prefaces the downfall. With peak popularity, the audience had clearly broadened to more than housewives. “Male fans included shift workers home during the day, corporate types taking lunch at men’s club, college professors and professional athletes with flexible work schedules” (157). Eventually, soap operas began showing later at night too, so that the audience was not constrained to only those with schedules allowing them to watch during the day. Students in school, elder people, and working women were all added to the audience, bringing soap operas to their absolute peak of popularity. With that increased audience, additional sponsors came in as well, making the business more profitable. Characters of color also slowly integrated into the main characters of soap operas through the trend of supercouples. Supercouples was a story that followed two lovers that were not supposed to be together due to society’s normalities. Supercouples showed couples “triumphs over structural forces” (187) such as economic equality, “class, race, and external threats” (186). Finally, the start to decline, although the supercouples storylines were popular, they failed to keep up with changing culture and for that became unsustainable and began losing popularity towards the very end of the 1980s.
That beginning of the end, brings us to part three of the book which captures chapters six through eight, during the time period of the late 1980s through 2010s. Chapter six explains the struggles and eventual failures within the networks of soap operas that led to the slow decline of the industry from it’s peak of popularity. Levine blames structural instability for the main three causes of the decline. Those three causes are: “conceptions of the audience and the problem of measuring the audience, the challenge of different ownership structures and their implications for creative control, and the limitations of existing distribution system” (201). Chapter seven expands upon the ways the industry of soap operas tried to save itself, and bring viewers back. They tried to incorporate new techniques hoping to expand their audience once again. Aesthetic experimentation such as the integration of music video style performances were thrown in as a final effort to appeal to younger audiences. Unfortunately, the soap operas only received temporary rise in viewership and then back to a steady decline. Despite producers’ best efforts, by the late 2000s “a wave of cancellations… had drastically shrunken the business” (234). Lastly, chapter eight explains more efforts to make the business as successful as it once was but failing. By 2012 the soap opera cancellations had come to a close and only four daytime soaps remained on air. To end the book, Levine brings us almost up to current day, 2020, and says that there is limited space for soaps nowadays when the traditional housewife was the long thought of natural viewer. Women are not all housewives that have open periods in the middle of the day to watch as they please. The industry of course isn’t dead! But nowhere near where it was 40 years ago.
One element Levine did to make this book more enjoyable was her descriptions of soap opera scenes. When I originally read the introduction of the book to get a glimpse as to what I was about to read, Levine went into depth about all the soaps she’s seen, read about, studied archives of, and the line: “Indeed my analysis is rooted in part in my own personal archive, episodes I haved saved to videotape, DVD, or digital format over decades” (14) made me uneasy. My knowledge on early soap operas was so limited, and I had sure not seen any myself. I feared this book was going to be using analogies, comparisons and examples from shows I’d never seen and I’d be lost and missing the main points of the research. This was not the case. Levine did a spectacular job of giving just the right amount of information/plot summary to the readers so that I was not overwhelmed, confused, or getting hung up on unnecessary details. I felt all her examples of past soap operas were well thought out and explained clearly to further her points and argument.
One element that I think Levine could have improved on is sentence structure. This is a nitpicky type of critique because I honestly loved the content of this book. I thought all of her points were well stated and all backed up with evidence easy to understand. That being said, when I am reading or writing I try to vary my sentence length. Sometimes, shorter sentences are needed. When there is continuous paragraphs of long, detailed, descriptive sentences it is really tiresome for the reader and easy to lose focus. My English teacher from this semester said: “Varying sentence length is how you distinguish between a good writer and a great writer”. That goes to say, I do think Levine is a great writer. She also packs in about 70 years of soap opera history, and 12 years of research into 298 pages of content, so it is understandable for it to be necessary to have long detailed sentences often.
In conclusion, this book is relevant for anyone and everyone to read. Levine takes an everyday media, soap opera, something we are all familiar with and have an understanding of, and does a deep dive. That common understanding does an excellent job of enticing and making the material relevant in to all audiences. In addition to giving a summary of soap operas, she explains the unrealized takeaways weaved into the storylines. Recognizing and understanding when these biases are being pushed onto you is so important when forming opinions. Additionally, I could not summarize everything, there are far more fascinating trends and interesting details following the progression of soap operas (especially in chapter four) that had to be left out. That being said, Levine has an expansive vocabulary, that may be difficult to get through for younger audiences, I’d say it’s a great read for anyone 13+. In other words, go read this book!
Levine, Elana. Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera & US Television History. Duke U.P., 2020.
