I first started watching soap operas, specifically General Hospital, with my mom when I was a toddler, before she went back to work full-time. Home sick alone from school? Soap operas will keep you company. Laying around with nothing to do during the summer? Soap operas and a box fan will help you survive. I'm pretty convinced one of the reasons I went on, once I started reading books, to loving epic fantasy series is because soap operas had clued me into the reality that I never want the story to end. The characters become so real for me, even if the stories are absurd, that I don't want to let them go.
When I went to Cuba, you could set your watch by the time when all of Havana would be inside watching telenovelas. That was the first time in my life I realized soaps didn't have to be gender-coded. Everybody watched them. When my ex and I moved back East to a town where we knew no one, soaps helped me feel like I had friends. I didn't, but I had the never ending story, and it got me over the hump. My ex had never been to Cuba, saw soaps as feminine nonsense, and was contemptuous of my attachment. But here we are, 25 years later, and I still believe in the power of soaps to bring people together, while he (and his contempt) has been rightfully exiled.
Yeah, same in Brazil where I spent a lot of time... It was amazing to experience. I rented a room in Rio from a guy who directed film festivals, and he would watch the latest telenovela while discussing it in real time on the phone with his mother.
Great to experience Ivy Meeropol’s important film with you! E Jean’s story- who knew?! More need to see it. And yes, soap operas. I watched General Hospital as a kid and was hooked. There is value in them for sure. Keep on telling the good stories Sari!
For 13 years, I was the Emmy Award-winning Music Director on NBC’s long-lasting soap opera, ANOTHER WORLD, and then served another six months on NBC’s short-lived PASSIONS. As a songwriter/producer, Procter & Gamble, the show’s sponsor, allowed me to use my songs for source music (the music the characters hear in bars, clubs, the gym, on the radio, etc.) but not for underscoring (music the audience hears but not the characters.) My songs, especially the Christmas album (“Together on Christmas Day”), frequently played ANOTHER WORLD and on the other P&G shows, GUIDING LIGHT and AS THE WORLD TURNS.
I found that my AW soap opera team could be cleanly divided into three groups. First, were the NABET folks – engineers, cameramen, lighting crew... the techies. For them it was a very decent job, and they were brilliant at it. Yeah, production occasionally ran late, but then they got overtime, all good. For the rest, the production staff (producers, directors, writers, editors, etc.) and “talent” – as the actors were referred to – were either bitterly resigned to careers in daytime TV, as opposed to their glory dreams in theater, film, or even prime-time TV... or else they were ecstatically grateful, “OMG! I’M WORKING ON A TELEVISION SHOW!”
At some point, P&G/NBC allowed me to bring in a production crew to shoot a short segment for a PBS show on literacy: “Behind the Scenes at ANOTHER WORLD.” It’s on YouTube somewhere.
My husband and I forged our relationship around a shared love of As The World Turns, which we'd both watched through our teenage years and into college. He was one of the only men I'd ever met who wasn't disparaging about soaps but, instead, understood their appeal. (In fact, one of his roommates said "Really? I thought better of you" when I confessed to my love of daytime drama.) That attitude about soaps is the same as the disdain for "chick flicks" and romance novels-- anything primarily designed for women's enjoyment must be ridiculous, since it doesn't cater to men.
The will to will is enormously hard to find. It’s not a matter of outer resources. It’s inner resistance to thinking (or singing) “is that all there is?” But if it’s epiphany anxiety that’s holding you back, Foggedaboudit. It’s remarkably anti-climactic once it’s done.
Are you sure you weren’t a fly on the wall of my suite my freshman year of college? Jane Fonda and GH the center of our afternoons. And snacking on that horrible air popped popcorn. I need to watch the documentary too!
I love this! I started watching soaps during summer breaks in elementary school when my Mrs. Collins (Mrs. Smith) “babysat” me. We started with Ryan’s Hope through Another World. My later babysitter introduced me to Guiding Light and I picked up Santa Barbara on my own. Ahh good times.
Soap operas were not a thing for my mom or grandmothers but I got them through my best friend at 11 (what is it about age 11?). All My Children and The Guiding Light. Then I moved to LA in 1980 and started auditioning right when General Hospital mania hit.
And just a couple months later, after getting nothing more than a couple of walk ons in commercials, I get an audition for GH. And I get called back. And then I get a screen test for some young ingenue...Cathy?. I was convinced it was all meant to be. But of course, it wasn't. Fun times!
I remember my mother was into her "stories" during the daytime. I got on board in college with All My Children. I was addicted. I never understood the Luke and Laura drama, though. My mother tells the story of being in a department store (Sears? Wards?) with my younger brother, a toddler at the time. As they walked past a case with world globes on it, my brother stopped, pointed, and said loudly, "Mama! Look! As the World Turns!"
I'm guessing I was 5 or 6 when my mother pleaded with the rest of us to have one "program" to watch on TV. It was Peyton Place. Seeing that it aired 1965- 69, I had to have been that young. We sat in silence as she watched the show that one night a week. I didn't get it with all the sad eyes and pleading pretty people - Ryan O'Neal, Dorothy Malone, Mia Farrow.
Lunch at my grandparents included Days of Our Lives (they both watched) and then off to separate rooms. My grandmother took her naps on the sofa with the soaps playing. Mostly, we would try our best to sneak over and change the channel to cartoons. She always knew and always stopped us.
Summers in West Texas introduced me to Dark Shadows which we could not get in East Texas for some reason. My cousins LOVED IT! I usually stood in the hallway of my other grandparents' house and hid in fear that I would see Barnabas Collins' fangs and cap! YIKES!
Then came All My Children in the mid-seventies. My sister and I were hooked. Loved the funny story lines with Billy Clyde Tuggle and Opal! In junior high I could walk home and catch most of it during lunch. Once the show went from 30 minutes to the full hour in high school, we could drive from across town and catch a good chunk of it before going back to school (days of the long lunches!). I was devoted to AMC for years.
One memory is the summer of 1980. I was traveling Europe after graduation and everywhere we went, people wanted to know two things: How hot is it in Texas?? (We were in the infamous record-holding heat wave that summer) and "Who Shot JR?" I didn't watch Dallas but Europe was OBSESSED! I missed all soaps that summer but when I got to college that fall, Luke and Laura were on the lam on General Hospital. I'll never forget this girl running out of the dorms into the street in utter shock to announce to the world that the woman who had befriended Luke and Laura WAS A MAN!! I had to go in and check it out. The dorm lounge had erupted!
And finally, as a very young mother of an infant and toddler, I came to the realization that my whole day had become consumed by soaps. I watched from 10 to 3 every day and thought about those characters more than I considered my own life. I wasn't dressing. I was stuck. So I quit cold turkey and never went back. The shame wasn't the derision from others but it was that I had become subsumed and depressed and had to fight my way back to life and to my children. Life after soaps became my life, not the lives of fictional characters.
One of my earliest memories is hearing the theme song from Y&R (the 1970s plink-plink-plink-plink version) while curled up behind my mom's knees on the sofa as we both settled in for an afternoon nap. I've checked in over the decades and there's something so comforting about seeing the same actors up to the same old dramas: infidelity, secret children, life threatening accidents.
I wrote soaps for 30 years. I started in the 80s when soaps were gold. Huge audiences. The OJ trial, the first reality show, was the reason soaps started to lose audience and we never got them back.
I have fond memories of watching The Young & Restless on summer mornings in the 70s with my mom. Over the next 50 years, we both continued to watch it and occasionally chatted about the current plot and characters.
There is a lot of bias and dismissal of soap operas, and even a sense of shame is lodged at a fan who confesses to watching them. I worked in higher education for 20 years, and on a trip to a colleague's cabin, I discovered her watching the previous day's recording of All My Children early in the morning. An academic librarian, she was immediately embarrassed until I shared my secret viewing habit. We laughed and discussed our soap opera history. But she made me promise never to disclose our secret to anyone at our college.
I continue to watch the series several times a week, now with a touch of nostalgia after my mom died in 2021. My days are busy with projects, growing food, preserving, and making. My one-hour guilty pleasure is to plop into my chair, pick up my knitting, and watch the latest episode. My partner is still shocked that I watch a soap and leaves the room when I turn it on.
I first started watching soap operas, specifically General Hospital, with my mom when I was a toddler, before she went back to work full-time. Home sick alone from school? Soap operas will keep you company. Laying around with nothing to do during the summer? Soap operas and a box fan will help you survive. I'm pretty convinced one of the reasons I went on, once I started reading books, to loving epic fantasy series is because soap operas had clued me into the reality that I never want the story to end. The characters become so real for me, even if the stories are absurd, that I don't want to let them go.
When I went to Cuba, you could set your watch by the time when all of Havana would be inside watching telenovelas. That was the first time in my life I realized soaps didn't have to be gender-coded. Everybody watched them. When my ex and I moved back East to a town where we knew no one, soaps helped me feel like I had friends. I didn't, but I had the never ending story, and it got me over the hump. My ex had never been to Cuba, saw soaps as feminine nonsense, and was contemptuous of my attachment. But here we are, 25 years later, and I still believe in the power of soaps to bring people together, while he (and his contempt) has been rightfully exiled.
Yes, we develop sort of parasocial relationships with the characters. And those shows are so soothing when you're sick at home.
We had a Spanish language teacher where I taught who showed telenovelas in class to help students learn conversational speech.
Yeah, same in Brazil where I spent a lot of time... It was amazing to experience. I rented a room in Rio from a guy who directed film festivals, and he would watch the latest telenovela while discussing it in real time on the phone with his mother.
Great to experience Ivy Meeropol’s important film with you! E Jean’s story- who knew?! More need to see it. And yes, soap operas. I watched General Hospital as a kid and was hooked. There is value in them for sure. Keep on telling the good stories Sari!
Thank you, Ilene! So great to see you and Paula there. xo
For 13 years, I was the Emmy Award-winning Music Director on NBC’s long-lasting soap opera, ANOTHER WORLD, and then served another six months on NBC’s short-lived PASSIONS. As a songwriter/producer, Procter & Gamble, the show’s sponsor, allowed me to use my songs for source music (the music the characters hear in bars, clubs, the gym, on the radio, etc.) but not for underscoring (music the audience hears but not the characters.) My songs, especially the Christmas album (“Together on Christmas Day”), frequently played ANOTHER WORLD and on the other P&G shows, GUIDING LIGHT and AS THE WORLD TURNS.
I found that my AW soap opera team could be cleanly divided into three groups. First, were the NABET folks – engineers, cameramen, lighting crew... the techies. For them it was a very decent job, and they were brilliant at it. Yeah, production occasionally ran late, but then they got overtime, all good. For the rest, the production staff (producers, directors, writers, editors, etc.) and “talent” – as the actors were referred to – were either bitterly resigned to careers in daytime TV, as opposed to their glory dreams in theater, film, or even prime-time TV... or else they were ecstatically grateful, “OMG! I’M WORKING ON A TELEVISION SHOW!”
At some point, P&G/NBC allowed me to bring in a production crew to shoot a short segment for a PBS show on literacy: “Behind the Scenes at ANOTHER WORLD.” It’s on YouTube somewhere.
Oh, wow!
Ryan’s Hope & All My Children, all summer long, 1978.
My husband and I forged our relationship around a shared love of As The World Turns, which we'd both watched through our teenage years and into college. He was one of the only men I'd ever met who wasn't disparaging about soaps but, instead, understood their appeal. (In fact, one of his roommates said "Really? I thought better of you" when I confessed to my love of daytime drama.) That attitude about soaps is the same as the disdain for "chick flicks" and romance novels-- anything primarily designed for women's enjoyment must be ridiculous, since it doesn't cater to men.
I love this! And you are 100% right.
The will to will is enormously hard to find. It’s not a matter of outer resources. It’s inner resistance to thinking (or singing) “is that all there is?” But if it’s epiphany anxiety that’s holding you back, Foggedaboudit. It’s remarkably anti-climactic once it’s done.
I can be pretty avoidant but there is nothing I've been more avoidant about! But I'm now determined to check this off my list.
In the exact same boat, Sari! Thanks for the helpful resource and the parasocial accountability partnership 😂.
<3
Are you sure you weren’t a fly on the wall of my suite my freshman year of college? Jane Fonda and GH the center of our afternoons. And snacking on that horrible air popped popcorn. I need to watch the documentary too!
OMG, the air-popped popcorn! We all had air-poppers! The doc is so good. Definitely see it!
Would not miss Dark Shadows as a kid.
I love this! I started watching soaps during summer breaks in elementary school when my Mrs. Collins (Mrs. Smith) “babysat” me. We started with Ryan’s Hope through Another World. My later babysitter introduced me to Guiding Light and I picked up Santa Barbara on my own. Ahh good times.
Soap operas were not a thing for my mom or grandmothers but I got them through my best friend at 11 (what is it about age 11?). All My Children and The Guiding Light. Then I moved to LA in 1980 and started auditioning right when General Hospital mania hit.
And just a couple months later, after getting nothing more than a couple of walk ons in commercials, I get an audition for GH. And I get called back. And then I get a screen test for some young ingenue...Cathy?. I was convinced it was all meant to be. But of course, it wasn't. Fun times!
I remember my mother was into her "stories" during the daytime. I got on board in college with All My Children. I was addicted. I never understood the Luke and Laura drama, though. My mother tells the story of being in a department store (Sears? Wards?) with my younger brother, a toddler at the time. As they walked past a case with world globes on it, my brother stopped, pointed, and said loudly, "Mama! Look! As the World Turns!"
Ah, the soaps...
I'm guessing I was 5 or 6 when my mother pleaded with the rest of us to have one "program" to watch on TV. It was Peyton Place. Seeing that it aired 1965- 69, I had to have been that young. We sat in silence as she watched the show that one night a week. I didn't get it with all the sad eyes and pleading pretty people - Ryan O'Neal, Dorothy Malone, Mia Farrow.
Lunch at my grandparents included Days of Our Lives (they both watched) and then off to separate rooms. My grandmother took her naps on the sofa with the soaps playing. Mostly, we would try our best to sneak over and change the channel to cartoons. She always knew and always stopped us.
Summers in West Texas introduced me to Dark Shadows which we could not get in East Texas for some reason. My cousins LOVED IT! I usually stood in the hallway of my other grandparents' house and hid in fear that I would see Barnabas Collins' fangs and cap! YIKES!
Then came All My Children in the mid-seventies. My sister and I were hooked. Loved the funny story lines with Billy Clyde Tuggle and Opal! In junior high I could walk home and catch most of it during lunch. Once the show went from 30 minutes to the full hour in high school, we could drive from across town and catch a good chunk of it before going back to school (days of the long lunches!). I was devoted to AMC for years.
One memory is the summer of 1980. I was traveling Europe after graduation and everywhere we went, people wanted to know two things: How hot is it in Texas?? (We were in the infamous record-holding heat wave that summer) and "Who Shot JR?" I didn't watch Dallas but Europe was OBSESSED! I missed all soaps that summer but when I got to college that fall, Luke and Laura were on the lam on General Hospital. I'll never forget this girl running out of the dorms into the street in utter shock to announce to the world that the woman who had befriended Luke and Laura WAS A MAN!! I had to go in and check it out. The dorm lounge had erupted!
And finally, as a very young mother of an infant and toddler, I came to the realization that my whole day had become consumed by soaps. I watched from 10 to 3 every day and thought about those characters more than I considered my own life. I wasn't dressing. I was stuck. So I quit cold turkey and never went back. The shame wasn't the derision from others but it was that I had become subsumed and depressed and had to fight my way back to life and to my children. Life after soaps became my life, not the lives of fictional characters.
One of my earliest memories is hearing the theme song from Y&R (the 1970s plink-plink-plink-plink version) while curled up behind my mom's knees on the sofa as we both settled in for an afternoon nap. I've checked in over the decades and there's something so comforting about seeing the same actors up to the same old dramas: infidelity, secret children, life threatening accidents.
I wrote soaps for 30 years. I started in the 80s when soaps were gold. Huge audiences. The OJ trial, the first reality show, was the reason soaps started to lose audience and we never got them back.
Love the tribute to Mary Hartman!
When I lived in croton on Hudson we use to visit rhinebeck!
I was brought back in time!
Nice. I love Upstate Films.
I have fond memories of watching The Young & Restless on summer mornings in the 70s with my mom. Over the next 50 years, we both continued to watch it and occasionally chatted about the current plot and characters.
There is a lot of bias and dismissal of soap operas, and even a sense of shame is lodged at a fan who confesses to watching them. I worked in higher education for 20 years, and on a trip to a colleague's cabin, I discovered her watching the previous day's recording of All My Children early in the morning. An academic librarian, she was immediately embarrassed until I shared my secret viewing habit. We laughed and discussed our soap opera history. But she made me promise never to disclose our secret to anyone at our college.
I continue to watch the series several times a week, now with a touch of nostalgia after my mom died in 2021. My days are busy with projects, growing food, preserving, and making. My one-hour guilty pleasure is to plop into my chair, pick up my knitting, and watch the latest episode. My partner is still shocked that I watch a soap and leaves the room when I turn it on.
Storytelling takes all forms.
I look forward to listening to the discussion.