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Television soap operas -- United States -- History and criticism. Fans Persons -- United States -- Psychology. Television viewers -- United States -- Psychology. Notes Includes bibliographical references p. View online Borrow Buy Freely available Show 0 more links Set up My libraries How do I set up "My libraries"? These 12 locations in All: Open to the public. La Trobe University Library. Borchardt Library, Melbourne Bundoora Campus.
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Fan behavior is not haphazard, accidental, or spontaneous. It reflects the cultural object or text it addresses. A final reason we wanted to study soap opera fans is to expand what is known about the private meaning of fanship. The most recent studies of fans Bacon-Smith ; Jenkins a, b; Penley I99I suggest that at the core of media fandom lie the alternative texts created and produced by the fans themselves based on the primary narrative, such as fanzines, song tapes, or original artwork.
In this perspective, fan worlds are constituted by the public and semipublic activities of fans. Although we agree that fan texts provide intriguing evidence of fan culture, our initial experiences with the soap fan world convinced us that concentrating on activities obscures an important element of fan worlds: As we show, fans engage in negotiations over the meaning and relevance that being a fan has in their lives, and these struggles influence their degree of involvement with organized fandom.
We want to question not just what fans do but who they are. Readers might be surprised that we do not take an especially gendered approach in our study of soap opera fans, for soaps were created for a female viewing audience Allen , and despite demographic changes the audience remains largely female Rouverol In addition, feminist scholarship has convincingly analyzed soaps' particular appeal for women, in terms of both story content and narrative structure, and we draw on that literature in order to introduce the reader to the genre and to inform specific analytic points we make in the book.
But while soaps' viewing audience is most appropriately analyzed in terms of gender, that variable is less salient to an understanding of the soap fan community.
Once we begin investigating the semipublic and public world of fans, variables other than gender explain more. We also interviewed soap actors - from day players to divas - soap writers, producers, fan club staff members, and journalists who write for the daytime magazines as well as photographers who contribute to them. We quote liberally from these materials throughout the text but identify individuals by name only when they have given us permission to do so or when they have been interviewed by others for public attribution for example, magazine and television features on soap celebrities and other industry participants.
We report details about how our study was conducted in the Appendix. The book is organized into six chapters. In the first we describe the soap opera genre and offer initial thoughts on the impact of the narrative form on the construction and activities of its fan community. In the second we explore how the celebrity-fan relationship is created collaboratively by the production industry, the press, and relevant others, and how in turn that relationship cultivates and sustains fanship. In Chapter Three we look at the dual processes of becoming and being a fan: In Chapter Four we explore the issue of pleasure, focusing on a newly visible form of fan pleasure that plays with the boundaries between the real and the fictional.
In the fifth chapter we examine the impact of fans on the media production process specifically and on the production of cultural meaning more generally, focusing on the possibilities for viewer and fan agency. In the concluding chapter we suggest how our findings contribute to the concepts of viewing pleasure, power, and agency and to the phenomenon of subculture in everyday life. Jennifer is a fifteen-year-old high school sophomore, and her mother, Elizabeth, is an administrative assistant at a computer software company. They flew in from Chicago the night before.
Neatly dressed, each clutches her camera and purse. Inside, they ask the concierge to direct them to the soap opera fan club luncheon. Once they have checked in, they join the cluster of fans and professional photographers outside the ballroom door. The fans gossip excitedly about which stars might show up, while the photographers share backstage dirt about the actors. The arriving actors smile and pose graciously, then disappear into a private room.
As the two fans make their way to their table, Elizabeth stops at the cash bar for a glass of white wine. Their table is well positioned near the stage and beside the red-carpeted aisle where the actors will make their grand appearance. They are seated with six other fans: The fan club president approaches the microphone, greets the audience, and begins to introduce the actors one by one. Smiling and waving to the crowd, they make their way down the aisle to the roped-off section at the front of the ballroom reserved for them and their dates and families.
A cacophony of sound carries them along: Tuxedo-clad waiters serve a meal so unappetizing that some fans and actors visit the cash bar instead. At the request of the fan club president, fans refrain from taking photos during the meal, but they are delighted when an occasional actor abandons the chicken Florentine to wander among the tables talking and posing for pictures.
After lunch, during the entertainment portion of the afternoon some actors sing and others perform skits. A long, humorous, and often ribald question-and-answer session gets out of hand when several actors begin yelling to each other, in character, across the crowded ballroom, again to the delight of the fans. The highlight of the event is the autographing session. The fan club president shepherds the actors to a long banquet table lined with pens and publicity photos and instructs the fans to line up by table number.
To Jennifer and Elizabeth's disappointment, they are scheduled almost last. The autograph line creeps forward, as fans chat with each actor before getting an autograph and having a picture taken. As the afternoon lengthens, fans at the remaining tables become impatient and abandon the instructions for lining up. The club president pleads with them to remain orderly but everyone ignores her, and several squabbles break out when fans try to cut to the front of the line.
Some actors also become impatient with the line's slow crawl and leave their stations to descend into the crowd. By five o'clock the actors have left, and the remaining dozen fans appear exhausted but happy. Jennifer and Elizabeth exchange addresses with their table mates and emerge from the ballroom looking shell-shocked. On the way back to the airport they examine their goods. Between them they have snapped more than four rolls of photos and collected twentyfive autographs.
Was it worth the sixty-five dollars per ticket? Will they be back again next year?
Joshua Gamson I suggests that an appropriate metaphor for most casual celebrity watching is the hunt, where fans collect autographs or pictures or sightings of celebrities and compare their collections with each other. Whoever scores the most or the best wins the hunt. By contrast, the soap opera fan club event is akin to an extended family reunion. The actors on the dais hold the rapt attention of the fans. Used by permission of an anonymous fan. What transforms a hunt into a reunion?
What explains the greater intimacy between celebrities and fans in the world of daytime television compared to other celebrity-fan relationships? Is this intimacy an illusion? What does it mean to be a fan of soap operas? While considerable research exists on daytime viewers, little is known about daytime fans.
Some examples include the group of female fans who write homoerotic fiction starring Kirk and Spock from Star Trek Bacon-Smith ; Penley , and the "filking" community, which creates and performs original songs extending the narratives of media texts Jenkins a. Most scholarship defines fans by the types of activities they engage in. A person "becomes a fan not by being a regular viewer of a particular program but by translating that viewing into some type of cultural activity For fans, consumption sparks production, reading generates writing, until the terms seem logically inseparable" Jenkins The popular perception of the fan is shaped almost exclusively by this subset of fans who engage in well-organized and public expressions of fanship.
They create fanzines or original artwork, attend fan club conventions or luncheons, write letters to the stars, or, in rare cases but with much publicity, stalk a celebrity. But what is the private meaning of being a fan? What are the personal and interpersonal pleasures and meanings derived from the role? What does it mean to call oneself a fan of something? We chose to study soap opera fans because they represent a unique type of fan world. The genre's distinctive textual construction lends itself to the creation of a community with little formal structure and fairly low public visibility whose participants are nonetheless more socially stigmatized than any other type of media fan.
Little is known about soap fans, and the popular perception is that there is nothing of import to know. Before we introduce the world of the soap opera fan, we must describe the structure of the serial narrative, because the nature of the genre shapes the daytime fan community and its activities, just as the nature of any text shapes its fans. To understand soap fans, one must first understand the soap narrative. Fans Clued in to Soaps' Nuance, Structure Despite increased research on the soaps in the past decade or so, critics continue to characterize them as "curiously distorted reflections of empirical social reality" Allen The stereotype of the soap watcher remains a bathrobe-clad housewife who has abandoned her domestic duties to sit weeping in front of the television set clutching a half-consumed box of bonbons.
This vision, firmly entrenched in the minds of the non-soapwatching public, is negotiated consciously by serial watchers themselves. However, it is not the simplicity of soaps but their narrative complexity that has left them inaccessible to non-soap watchers Allen , Several elements distinguish the soap opera from other narrative forms; most notable is its resistance to closure Allen Daytime serials are open texts. Unlike most novels, feature films, or prime-time television series, where each story has a distinct beginning, middle, and end, soaps are characterized by an "endless middle"; story lines are never finally resolved.
While subplots regularly reach resolution, the story itself goes on forever. Open-ended narratives engage viewers through the development of story telling within the text and foster the perception of soap characters as real, with human strengths and limitations. Daytime serials are also openended in the sense that a new episode is shown every weekday, fifty-two weeks a year, often for years on end.
CBS's Guiding Light is in its fiftyeighth year of production, including its early years on radio. That television seasons are less clearly defined for daytime shows also makes the boundaries of the text more difficult to determine. Open texts encourage multiple readings. Unlike a closed text with a "straightforward linear pathway of stimulus and anticipated response" Allen Not that anything goes with narrative interpretation. Rather, a competent viewer knows the specific codes at work in the genre, including camera conventions, intertextuality, ideological codes, and so on Allen This knowledge guides viewers' textual readings.
While sharing certain codes with all televlsion genres, soap operas CHAPTER ONE I 14 have distinct codes of their own, such as character development, distortion of time, emphasis on domestic concerns, multiple narratives, commercials as a structuring device, and background music Allen How each code is manipulated sends distinct messages to the viewing audience; none are accidental, and all are sources of meaning for viewers.
The textual code of each soap opera is important to the construction of the genre. While each serial shares the genre characteristics mentioned above, it also has its own narrative history, and experienced viewers make sense of the action on the show by drawing on their knowledge of this history, or "backstory" Timberg The codes unique to each show are generally inaccessible to nonwatchers, who tend to view all soaps as interchangeable.
But avid viewers come to know a fictional community and its characters so well that they recognize appropriate and inappropriate behavior by characters, just as in real life we know when our intimates are behaving falsely. The following extended quote illustrates the importance of backstory and the narrative structure to a viewer's interpretation of the action: Let us presume in scene one of a soap episode we learn from a conversation between Lucy and her friend Debbie that Lucy is pregnant with Rick's child. In scene three, Debbie tells her husband Chris of Lucy's pregnancy. In scene five, Chris warns his friend Billy against becoming too involved with Lucy In terms of the syntagmatic It makes a difference that Lucy chose to confide in Debbie about her plight because Debbie was once married to Rick.
Debbie's telling Chris of Lucy's revelation is read against the background of Debbie's inability to have a child and Chris' recurrent infidelity, and so forth To the experienced reader Serial textuality draws upon an aesthetic of repetition and redundancy that offers "an indulgent invitation to repose, a chance of relaxing" Eco This description suggests why nonwatchers have difficulty recognizing and understanding the pleasures offered by soap narratives.
Viewers learn soap opera conventions through repeated viewings, and ignorance of these conventions leaves novice viewers and critics uneducated about the meanings viewers derive from soaps. Meaning is thus partly generated by the viewer's understanding of the nuances of the genre. The "Femaleness" of Soap Opera Soap operas have long been considered part of "women's fiction," which includes romance novels and melodramatic films, even though 20 to 30 percent of the soap audience is male Rouverol ; Whetmore and has been for at least a decade A.
This gendered typecasting is due partly to soaps' predominantly female audience, but primarily to their narrative structure. Certain conventions of daytime television can be characterized as feminine and especially resonate with the experiences of female viewers: What happens on daytime serials, the action, is less important than reaction and interaction Modleski It is not the events that reoccur with alarming frequency in the world of daytime television that appeal to viewers - the kidnappings, murders, and reappearances of characters believed to be dead - but rather their "concentric ripples" Archer Actions and climaxes are only of secondary importance" Modleski Why is this a feminine element?
Women tend to perceive themselves not as having sharp ego boundaries, as men are presumed to have, but as embedded in a network of relationships. The mature female is thus defined through attachment, the mature male through separation. Daytime serials celebrate relationships and affiliations, the "realistic terms of many women's lives" Archer A second convention that contributes to the genderedness of soaps is their emphasis on verbal interaction. The action or events on serials "are not important in themselves; they merely serve as occasions for characters to get together and have prolonged, involved, intensely emotional discussions with each other" Modleski Such scenarios appeal particularly to female viewers because women, unlike men, tend to emphasize verbal self-disclosure in their own interpersonal relationships Rubin ; Tannen Women define love and intimacy as residing in the sharing of personal and emotional information, the telling of secrets, whereas men have traditionally defined intimacy in terms of sexual contact or instrumental help Cancian This is, in short, a female world" Rosen Women place a high value on talk in their own lives and thus identify with the centrality of talk on daytime serials.
Another gendered aspect of soaps is the preference for close-up camera shots. Unlike most media forms that either fragment the female body or make a fetish of it, serials rely on close-up facial shots of characters Byars ; Modleski ; Timberg This technique instructs the viewer to pay attention to, indeed to worry about, the welfare of the characters. Concern over the needs and wants of others has long been a prescribed concern of women in the domestic sphere Bernard ; Modleski Women have traditionally been socialized into roles that entail caring for others, often at the expense of self Gilligan Unlike men, women are presumed to be natural caregivers with an intuitive ability to read people emotionally.
Extended close-ups affirm these assumptions by allowing viewers not only to experience emotions along with characters but also to imagine and speculate on the source of those emotions. Close-ups "are the means of exercising the feminine ability to understand the gap between what is meant and what is said" Fiske 19 The fragmentation of story telling, which has been explicitly linked to women's domestic labor Brown ; Modleski ; Oakley , also contributes to the classification of soap operas as female narratives.
Consider, for instance, the frequent repetition of facts or information within a single episode of a serial Allen In an hour-long program, a certain bit of news might get told four or five different times by as many different characters. A viewer who is simultaneously working and watching television does not need to worry about missing information if he or she is distracted by children, a timer, or a phone call because the information is sure to be repeated Modleski Commercials serve a similar function. Soaps air for only five to ten minutes between commercials and often backtrack after each, for example, by reiterating the end of the previous scene.
The formal structure of the soap opera is thus closely linked to the rhythms of women's work in the home Modleski A fifth gendered feature of serials is the focus on the private or "interior world" Allen rather than the public or exterior one. While most daytime characters, both male and female, now have glamorous and respected careers as physicians, lawyers, or corporate executives, they are rarely seen actually working.
Rather, the work setting is transformed into a private arena in which to confront and explore personal issues. Every setting, then, becomes a private arena or a "home" where personal dilemmas are brought to the forefront Brunsdon I98I: This division between public and private spheres accompanied American industrialization, as women were relegated to domestic life when men took control of the public or exterior world Bernard I98I.
Despite women's increasing participation in the paid labor force since the IS, they are still held responsible for the private sphere Hochschild I The focus on the domestic arena in daytime serials and the transformation of public settings into private ones thus corresponds to women's lived historical experience and resonates strongly with female viewers.
A final soap opera convention geared to female viewers is the endless middle, the consequence of stories with no real beginnings or endings but instead a continuous interweaving of past, present, and future. The emphasis is on the "process rather than the product, on pleasure as ongoing and cyclical rather than climactic and final" Fiske I This structure especially holds for romance and courtship, a main focus of daytime story telling. As any knowledgeable viewer knows, a happy couple rarely remains so for long. Instead, characters move in and out of relationships and marriages, with destruction a constant threat to romance.
When the Super Couple phenomenon of the Is violated this convention, it led to story-line dead ends and frustrated viewers [Reep I]. Soap operas, like all romance texts aimed at women, emphasize not the end goal of heterosexual courtship marriage and a family but the courtship itself see Haskell I; Radway This emphasis appeals to women whose own experience of married life or romance falls short of the ideal.
Daytime serials thus invest pleasure in the central condition of women's lives: The focus on courtship is explicitly contrasted with the "masculine pleasure of the final success" Fiske I These conventions contribute to the female-gendered categorization of daytime serials, and their low status and marginalization as a cultural product.
In the same way that men are often concerned to show that what they are, above all, is not women, not "feminine," so television programs and movies will, surprisingly often, tell us that they are not soap operas. Like other forms of fandom, the daytime fan world is decidedly female gendered. By studying fans through the framework of gender along with other aspects of interpersonal identity we can explore how fans' activities are an extension of issues central to their lives, not as many assume the consequence of a marginalized status.
Soaps' Structure Shapes Fan Community The genre's structure, including its genderedness, helps shape the soap fan community into a form of fanship individual fan activity and fandom organized fan activity oriented toward private uses and pleasures. In contrast, activities focus on creating, producing, and exchanging derivative texts in the fan communities based on prime-time series and feature films - most notably Star Trek but including Beauty and the Beast, Blake's 7, Starsky and Hutch, and others see Bacon-Smith ; Jenkins b; Penley Female Star Trek fans among the most fully explored groups of media fans create derivative narratives partly as a way of claiming space in male-centered texts Jenkins To access the text, some begin to create their own stories, either in fantasies or through dialogues with other fans.
Creating an actual product is the predictable next step, "the transformation of oral countertexts into a more tangible form, the translation of verbal speculations into The form and content of male-centered texts lead to activities that provide a way for female fans to access masculine narratives.
Participation in this community provides female fans with opportunities for self-revelation and selfdevelopment Bacon-Smith I Through fiction writing, fans carve out space for themselves in male-gendered roles and activities and are able to "construct a safe discourse with which to explore the dangerous subjects of their own lives" Bacon-Smith I Why do daytime fans rarely engage in derivative activities? Soaps, like other women's texts, do not marginalize women but rather "speak to very real problems and tensions in women's lives" Modleski While telling fairly traditional stories about personal relationships, a woman-centered text "allays real anxieties, satisfies real needs and desires, even while it may distort them" Modleski I Some scholars argue that the repeated consumption of feminine texts has subversive potential for women readers because it allows them to redefine gender expectations, particularly the expectation to care for and orient toward others at the expense of the self.
In this sense, women's consumption of such texts constitutes a form of "everyday resistance" to patriarchal dominance Scott I For example, Janice Radway argues in her study of romance readers that, in picking up a book, women "refuse temporarily their family's otherwise constant demand that they attend to the wants of others even as they act deliberately to do something for their own private pleasure" I It is because female consumers of women's texts - including soaps - find it easier to identify with and find pleasure in the primary narrative that they rarely produce derivative texts.
Instead, they struggle with the disparaged status of the primary text as a female text, and with the difficulty of articulating the pleasure they receive from such purportedly unrealistic stories of love and romance. A second explanation for the difference in the activities of soap fans compared to those of other media fans concerns the structure of the soap narrative.
Most media fans engage a closed text that makes limited installments of the official story available: Not only is the text limited in scope, but the gap between installments may stretch from a week in prime time and syndication to several months between seasons or even several years, in the case of feature films.
Most media fans thus create derivative narratives partly to fill the gaps of production delays. Their fan communities are fundamentally structured by the nature of the closed narrative and the production schedule of the entertainment industry. Because serials' structure differs from that of other narrative forms, the fanship and fandom that surround serials also differ. The open-ended nature of the genre allows for an endless story. Fans receive a new installment of the story five days a week, potentially for decades.
Why create alternative stories if the official one unfolds for you daily? Much like romance readers who are gratified by the repetitive consumption of familiar stories Radway I , daytime fans find pleasure in the daily engagement with fictional characters that they come to know through long-term viewing. The stance of the production industry also helps shape and define its relationship with viewers and fans. For example, the people in charge of Star Trek tend to treat fan-produced materials with "benign neglect" Jenkins Lucasfilm, in charge of Star Wars, has come down harder on fan-produced material, viewing it as competition for the company's officially sponsored fan organization.
The relationship between the industry and many fan subcultures is tense at best. A different relationship exists between soap fans and the daytime industry, which supports, endorses, and legitimates fans' existence - mainly for commercial reasons, as the industry equates happy fan with long-term viewer. The industry treats fans as integral to the success of the genre, and soap producers attempt simultaneously to cultivate new fans and retain long-term viewers.
While viewers and fans regularly contact the production offices to complain and offer advice about story lines and character development, they essentially support the story that is offered to them and feel little need to create alternative versions of the daytime world. Soap producers therefore do not feel threatened or infringed upon by fans in the way that prime-time or movie producers can be.
Most scholarship treats the television audience as a unified mass or as comprising social categories such as gender, race, class, or age that modify reception see Ang ; Press We know little about differentiation among viewers in terms of their viewing habits or the activities they engage in around viewership. Scholars conceptualize viewing as a process that takes place in the private, domestic sphere Lull , and fanship as the participation in public activities surrounding interest in a cultural object.
They make a sharp distinction between the private activity of viewers and the public activity of fans, which we believe to be false. Because being a serial fan presumes that one is a serial viewer, however, the viewing habits of our survey respondents deserve some attention; these are summarized in Table I see the Appendix for a description of the data collection and for demographics of respondents. Nearly every respondent has a favorite soap opera, but more than half watch three or more serials on a regular basis.
Most watch their favorite soap five times a week, and almost half view a second soap every day as well. Nearly a third view an additional serial just as often. The industry considers regular soap viewers to be those who watch at least 2. Nearly half videotape soaps to watch at their convenience, while about a fourth watch them as they air during the day. As noted, scholars typically conceptualize viewing as a process located in the private, domestic sphere, and Our findings support this claim.
However, we find that daytime viewers modify their practices in a particular way: Most respondents 76 percent would rather watch soaps alone than with other people, and their choice is closely related to the pleasures of viewing. Solitary viewing allows freedom to respond emotionally to the program without being distracted or ridiculed by other viewers: It makes for a better cry when a cry is called for. Those who prefer watching in group settings also do so for the sake of personal pleasure; they like to be able to discuss and react with others to the events unfolding on the screen.
Our findings suggest that soap viewers are not a unified subgroup of the mass audience; rather, they can be differentiated from one another in a number of ways. For instance, viewers tend to orient to and find pleasure in very specific things when watching a show, whether it be the character, actor, story line or writing, and those who are focused on, say, quality of acting, find it difficult to relate to those who are focused on lighting or set design.
Viewers can also be differentiated in terms of what serials they watch. Both industry professionals and viewers themselves can distinguish, for example, between a Days of Our Lives viewer and a Guiding Light viewer based on their likes and dislikes, the letters they write, their behavior at fan events, and so on. Viewers categorize themselves and others on the basis of what they like and dislike about soaps, aspects of viewership almost always overlooked by critics and nonviewers.
What distinguishes viewing as we have discussed it from public activity? In other words, what constitutes the difference between viewership and fanship? Is it true that "one becomes a fan not by being a regular viewer of a particular program but by translating that viewing into some kind of cultural activity" Jenkins While we agree that activities pursued around viewing habits are an important part of "doing fan," one of our major goals in writing this book is to redefine what it means to be a fan.
Being a fan is more than engaging in publicly visible activities. It includes a wonderfully rich private realm of meaning and experience that has yet to be fully examined. Activities of the Soap Opera Fan Fanship can entail both public and private acts. One of the most private is viewers' creation of oral culture Fiske , their ongoing dialogues and gossip about soap opera actors, story lines, and production news.
In the female-dominated science-fiction subculture studied by Camille BaconSmith, gossiping is the most frequent and important fan activity. When a fan comes up with an idea to extend the narrative through the creation of an alternative text, she calls on other members of her community to help develop story ideas: In the daytime community too, gossiping is a priority for fans, though the dialogue has a different orientation and serves a different purpose.
Nearly all of our respondents 96 percent talk with others on a regular basis about what is happening on their shows, and many 37 percent have four or more people with whom they regularly discuss story lines, characters, and plot developments. Gossip usually occurs either face-to-face 54 percent or on the telephone 32 percent ; as one fan states, "I have enormous phone bills to prove it! Gossip in the soap fan community is grounded in the primary narrative, the show's own story lines, and tends to be speculative Bielby and Harrington The following comment from a Loving viewer, is typical: Seems to me that Loving changed when Agnes Nixon returned and the new producer took over.
Ava could have a meatier story than she does now. It's getting old really quickly. Buck and Tess used to be majorly involved in stories, now they just wait around talking to other characters in their stories. Where's Tess's villainous streak? She could have been a match for Gwen if Gwen got in her way. Gwen wasn't nice to Dinah Lee when Trucker and Gwen were talking about Trisha, so much for being friends. And I would like to see something happen with Buck and Tess, remember they did have that night of drunken passion.
She could be pregnant, Stacey could find out that Tess was the one Buck slept with, etc. Gossip is a central component of women's cultural production and consumption and a unique aspect of the pleasure women derive from feminine texts Fiske I; Press I In the daytime community, soap gossip holds a status similar to that of "talking story" in the Star Trek community, yet the processes differ in an important way: Another way that fanship is enacted privately is through the uses of videotape.
Of the almost 50 percent of our respondents who regularly tape their shows, about half sometimes save the tapes. In most cases, fans want to preserve a special event such as a wedding, funeral, or romantic love scene. Some viewers save all the tapes in which a favorite character or couple appears, and others save every episode aired.
Some fans construct specially edited tapes, one form of derivative activity that is common among soap fans. For example, we know fans who own more than twenty hours of videotape containing edited scenes of the characters Frisco and Felicia from General Hospital and more than twenty-five hours of the romantic couple Harley and Mallet from Guiding Light. Both tapes were produced by fans who wanted to preserve the couple's history and chronicle their relationship.
I became so captivated by these actors and their storyline that 1didn't want to tape over their scenes Some of their episodes have become "classics" to me and my friends Our tapes are like one long, continuous movie. I have a Frisco and Felicia [characters from General Hospital] video library I just want to look at them over and over, catch mistakes by actors or just enjoy the chemistry again. These activities include reading fan magazines and newsletters, writing to those in the production industry, exchanging photos and videotapes with other fans, and communicating on electronic bulletin boards.
Most respondents 82 percent subscribe to or regularly purchase soap opera newsletters or magazines. These commercial publications, whether soap oriented or not, act as forums for public gossip and are in the business of circulating information about the entertainment industry. However, fans understand well that industrysanctioned gossip is altered or manufactured for public consumption. So while they avidly read commercial magazines, fans' skepticism helps create and sustain the market for face-to-face gossip. Not surprisingly, most fans in our survey say they read fan publications to find out about their favorite show, actor, or character: Additionally, some fans read commercial magazines as a way to connect with each other: Letter writing lets fans connect with the industry yet avoid public scrutiny.
About half our respondents 49 percent have written at least once to a producer, writer, or director of a soap, and almost as many 43 percent have written at least once to an actor. Fans write for many reasons: Some fans are able to engage in ongoing correspondence with actors or producers. David Forsyth [an actor on Another World] is a very nice person and 1 enjoy writing to him and getting his replies. He seems to really care about what viewers have to say about the show and his character.
The exchanges are often just "thanks for the letter," but they are also often involved discussions of interpretations of actions, modes of action, language nuances, grammar, career goals, diet and exercise problems, religion, politics. Fans' abilities to correspond directly with daytime insiders contributes immeasurably to the pleasure they receive from viewing.
Some respondents 27 percent have also written to or telephoned a television station to complain about a show's preemption. Our respondents report contacting stations only when a show is preempted for what seems an insignificant reason: Let us know when the facts are in. I dropped a postcard about the failure of CBS to continue a program Others note that the structure of the soap narrative itself explains viewers' frustration with preemptions: Feel more flashbacks - especially when they know they've been pre-empted - would be great. I HATE to hear of soap fans doing this-hurts the image of fans.
One viewer suggested that "networks feel daytime viewers are 'secondary citizens' who are not watching anything important. Through informal connections, fans learn where to get high-quality photographs of celebrities and fan events, videotapes of classic episodes, and specially edited tapes of actors or story lines. These tapes are often of very poor quality because of the extent to which they have been recopied-a tape of a tape of a tape, and so on.
These exchange networks are usually created through word of mouth, but they can become more structured when tapes and photos are advertised in the classified section of fan magazines or fan club newsletters, or appear for exchange on electronic bulletin boards. From Soap World, no. And, like other forms of fanship, these exchanges allow avid viewers to join a subculture of people with similar interests. A final form of semipublic fanship is participation on electronic bulletin boards BBSs.
In our sample, 13 percent of the respondents use BBSs regularly. Among respondents not solicited through a BBS, 3 percent use them regularly. Through on-line charges or subscription fees members can correspond with each other night and day, seven days a week, about a variety of topics including the entertainment industry, celebrities, and daytime serials. While BBSs can serve as a forum for photos and videotape exchanges, their most important function is to provide an arena for fan gossip Bielby and Harrington Fans log on to offer commentary and opinions about serial events, speculate about upcoming plot or character developments, and request and diffuse specific information, such as a missed plot twist or the backstory of a character or romantic couple.
BBSs provide a ready-made network of fans who engage in gossip sessions that can be passionate, intimate, and confrontational. Participation on BBSs can also feed into organized soap fandom.
For example, members of one bulletin board institutionalized themselves as a fan group by planning a trip to a CBS production studio. Others coordinate attendance at personal appearances of favorite actors and organize regional get-togethers where they meet each other face-to-face.
Still other groups hold regional reunions in the form of barbecues or slumber parties and produce annual yearbooks chronicling members' fan activities. Through these planned events, fans get to know each other in ways that are impossible to accomplish through electronically based interaction, even on a daily basis. They share family photos, collectively view albums of soap memorabilia, and meet each other's families. Such occasions provide opportunities for those who know each other electronically to expand the basis for their friendships beyond their mutual specialized interest in soaps. The fans who gossip on BBSs are less likely than nonusers to engage in traditional fan activities.
These differences suggest that using BBSs partially replaces the benefits and pleasures fans derive from engaging in other fan activities. Buying and subscribing to fan publications, writing letters, exchanging photos or videotapes, and joining BBSs, all quasi-public activities, allow people the chance to interact with others with similar interests but exist largely outside the public arena. But it is the overtly public fan activities such as fan club membership that are mistakenly presumed by outsiders to represent the entire scope of daytime fanship.
What constitutes this realm of organized public fan activity so often ridiculed by non-fans? The Soap Fan World Fewer people participate in public fan activities than in private or quasipublic ones, yet these public acts seem to represent the ultimate expression of fanship. We think that the negative stereotype of soap viewers and fans strongly influences whether and how much people participate in activities that publicly announce them as fans. Because such participation is usually presumed to indicate an immature adolescent , unstable fan-as-lunatic, or loser personality, fans are unwilling to go public with their interests.
Some respondents agree wholeheartedly with the negative images of fan club members. One wrote that people who join fan clubs "really don't have lives They are a whole group of desperate people These are the kind of people who end up as snipers on the top of a tower. One woman told us she just went to her first fan event but had to reassure herself that it was okay by reminding herself that the proceeds went to a charity. Others hide their attendance at fan events from friends and family. One woman told us that several members of her church community had seen an advertisement in a fan magazine about our study, but even though they wanted to participate they did not send in their names because they feared being "exposed" as soap watchers.
While the science-fiction fan community is structured around a series of conventions Bacon-Smith One-fourth of our respondents are members of one or more fan clubs, and over one-third have attended fan-related events such as luncheons or mall appearances. Most fan clubs form voluntarily through collective and publicly expressed interest on the part of fans, who then staff and manage the club under the sponsorship of an actor, as is the case with the John Reilly Fan Club, or of a serial, as in the National Days of Our Lives Fan Club. Usually a club is started when a viewer contacts a favorite actor, offering to run his or her fan club, though occasionally a relative takes on the responsibility.
Dennis Wagner, for instance, ran the fan club for his brother Jack, who appeared on both General Hospital and Santa Barbara. Some actors' clubs are initiated at the suggestion of the show's executive producer. An actor might ask a colleague to recommend a fan club manager or invite a frequent letter writer to run the club. One of our respondents was asked to start a club by an actor who was impressed with the sophistication and intelligence of her fan letters.
Based on our interviews with presidents of several fan clubs, most fans' motives for initiating fan clubs are sincere. One exception was an actor's fan club formed to give the club officers access to his studio and contact with another actor on the show. Fans are especially interested in gaining access to the actor for themselves and others, which gives them status and privilege within the fan community.
For some fans, this is the most gratifying aspect of directing a club. Not just anyone can be an effective organizer, however; operating a fan club demands financial and administrative skill and experience at motivating actors to attend to the interests of the group London Fans interested in running a club must receive formal approval from the actor or production staff of the show. Most actors and serials have only one sanctioned fan club, if any, and occasionally disputes or misunderstandings arise when multiple clubs are advertised.
Usually the dispute is caused by a club started by a fan without permission from the actor. Some clubs, while created in response to fan interest, are run not by fans but by the show's production staff. For example, the producers of CBS's The Bold and the Beautiful and The Young and the Restless are responsible for the shows' clubs, which are managed by paid staff members who take an active part in running the club and cultivating new fans.
Whether a club is organized by a volunteer fan or a paid staffer, clear norms operate in clubbing. Fans and fan club officials alike emphasize that clubs should be initiated by fans and run by them on a volunteer basis for noncommercial purposes. Clubs are usually financed by membership fees of ten to twenty dollars per year. Occasionally a show or an actor subsidizes a club, since "it is a well known fact that the fan club dues do not always cover all the fan club expenses" Trinajstick According to Blanche Trinajstick, the president of the National Organization of Fan Clubs, clubs should be run like businesses One respondent, who has managed two fan clubs and been a member of many, believes that for-profit clubs have "turned fan clubbing into a business from which [they] make money.
Clubbing was not ever meant to be like this. A fan club should be run by a fan who cares about the actor. There should be dues, but no profit! Fan club norms also apply to actions taken to encourage new members. Fans usually dislike being solicited into club membership or being targeted for writing campaigns on behalf of an actor. An application kit for her fan club! Who does she think she is?
I didn't ask for this. Fans emphasize that decisions about how to channel their interest in soap operas are best left to them. Making such decisions is central to the process of identifying oneself as a fan. The structure of individual fan clubs, as well as the fan club world, tends to be informal. Clubs are loosely organized, amorphous, and staffed by volunteers, and their division of labor is often unclear.
The only known reliable listing for fan clubs from all fields of entertainment is The Fan Club Directory, published by the National Association of Fan Clubs. If they lack access to that publication, potential club members can find information about clubs through contacting the actor or serial production offices, by word of mouth, or through regular listings in fan magazines. Fan club membership offers numerous benefits, including a membership card, an eight-by-ten-inch photo of the star or stars, and a regular publication, usually a newsletter Trinajstick Produced by the fan club staff with input from the star, the newsletter typically includes interviews with actors, recipes, members' addresses, a letter from the club president, and something personal from the celebrity, such as a letter to fans or responses to fans' questions.
Clubs may also provide members with inside information about the celebrity or serial, glossy professional pictures of the stars, information about pen pals, and video and photo exchange opportunities. In addition, belonging to a club embeds the fan in a network of people with similar interests. Through exchanging videotapes and becoming pen pals, club members develop lifelong friendships with people they may never meet.
One respondent who corresponds with an international network of fans says that it is "interesting and intriguing The club also allows the actor to communicate with all his fans personally. She says that holding a staff position is a "power trip" for many, who love being able to visit studio sets whenever they want to and monitor other fans' access to actors. But the fan club staff position has drawbacks as well, among them dealing with members' demands for special attention and managing competition among members for the recognition that comes with publication of their letters and other features written for the club's newsletter.
Other staffers describe infighting among members for selection as club officers, positions that grant access to the celebrity or show.
Soap Fans: Pursuing Pleasure and Making Meaning in Everyday Life Paperback – August 9, Do soap opera fans deserve their reputation as lonely people, hopeless losers, or bored housewives? No, according to C. Lee Harrington and Denise D. Bielby. Do soap opera fans deserve their reputation as lonely people, hopeless losers, or bored Soap Fans: Pursuing Pleasure and Making Meaning in Everyday Life.
And on a more tangible level, the labor involved in running a club can be staggering, given that membership can run into the thousands. Actor Jack Wagner's club, for example, reached more than 7, members at one point. The pieces de resistance of fan clubs in terms of providing access to celebrities are the club's annual or semiannual gatherings, usually nonprofit luncheons held in hotel ballrooms or large restaurants. These gatherings, which were introduced in the late Is, are a relatively recent development in daytime serial fandom. Traditionally celebrity-fan interaction was limited to newsletters and correspondence between the celebrity and a club member, according to a letter to us from Diane Warren, president of the Christine Jones and Friends fan club.
For fifty to sixty dollars, fan club members and interested nonmembers enjoy a lunch, entertainment by the actors, and a chance to meet and mingle with the actors and other fans. Actors often ask other actors to join in the festivities of their individual clubs. Actors' attendance at a show's fan events is generally voluntary, although some producer's invitations are widely understood to be orders. Some serials arrange fan activities over extended weekends. Days of Our Lives, for example, annually holds a series of events around a long weekend, including cocktail parties, luncheons, and barbecues hosted by different actors.
Information about all kinds of fan events are distributed through both club newsletters and commercial magazines. The metaphor of a family reunion that we suggested earlier is apt. Fans feel an immediate bond with each other because they share an important interest, and they make time at gatherings to get acquainted.
Over the luncheon tables they banter goodnaturedly about their favorite actors and story lines, swap viewing histories, and share details of their lives. Many fans recognize one another from other events and offer warm greetings, stopping by each other's tables to catch up. Fan club luncheons, like family reunions, are settings for both creating and maintaining long-term friendships.