Time after tedious time, when critics suffer an aridity of fresh, inventive phrases with which to denigrate a film, play or book, they fall back on "soap opera"; it has become the classic cliché of derogation…. [The] syndrome persists that soap opera is a Never-Never Land where hack writers and inferior producers, directors and actors serve melodramatic pap to a lunatic fringe of female children who grow older but never grow up….

For those of us who watch the soap operas, once the citadel of escapism, it is clear that we are living in an age in which even such places as Oakdale, Pine Valley, Henderson, Bay City and Somerset—all soap opera locales—can no longer remain completely aloof from the forces at work in our society…. But the question is: Just how far have we come? Unfortunately, a closer look at the situation reveals that, despite some creeping social relevance, the soaps have yet to come to grips with re...

Partly because of her concern for three-dimensional characters, Agnes Nixon's shows are among the most popular on daytime TV. (p. 13) More than anyone else, Agnes Nixon has let reality into the claustrophobic sound studios of soap operas. Not too much reality, of course. Certain subjects, such as homosexuality, never come up in soap-opera conversation. Family anguish and romantic misalliances still dominate the plots. Yet, over the past couple of years, viewers have been exposed to information on VD,...

Although soap opera aficionados would seem to be a minority among college students, there are nonetheless thousands of young people around the country who daily put aside their Sartre, Machiavelli and Freud—not to mention such obsolete writers as Fanon and Debray—to watch the moiling passions of middle-class America as portrayed on daytime TV. What is it about these slow-moving melodramas with their elasticized emotions that today's college students find so engrossing?… [In] rece...

Escapism, voyeurism, masochism, catharsis by comparison with others worse off—these are … what the soaps are selling. And if the daily bath of bathos packs a bit more tingle these days, so much the better. It may even provide an educational experience. Agnes Nixon, a refreshingly thoughtful writer who has been manufacturing soaps for fourteen years, likes to point out that episodes concerning alcoholism, adoption and breast cancer have drawn many grateful letters from those with similar proble...