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Since the debut of These Are My Children in 1949, the daytime television soap opera has been foundational to the history of the medium as an economic, creative, technological, social, and cultural institution. In Her Stories, Elana Levine draws on archival research and her experience as a longtime soap fan to provide an in-depth history of the daytime television soap opera as a uniquely gendered cultural form and a central force in the economic and social influence of network television. Closely observing the production, promotion, reception, and narrative strategies of the soaps, Levine examines two intersecting developments: the role soap operas have played in shaping cultural understandings of gender and the rise and fall of broadcast network television as a culture industry. In so doing, she foregrounds how soap operas have revealed changing conceptions of gender and femininity as imagined by and reflected on the television screen.
List of contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
Part I. The New TV Soap: Late 1940s to Early 1960s
1. Serials in Transition: From Radio to Television 19
2. Daytime Therapy: Help and Healing in the Postwar Soap 44
Part II. The Classic Network Era: Mid-1960s to Late 1980s
3. Building Network Power: The Broadcasting Business and the Craft of Soap Opera 73
4. Turning to Relevance: Social Issue Storytelling 106
5. Love in the Afternoon: The Fracturing Fantasies of the Soap Boom 153
Part III. A Post-Network Age: Late 1980s to 2010s
6. Struggles for Survival: Stagnation and Innovation 199
7. Reckoning with the Past: Reimagining Characters and Stories 236
8. Can Her Stories Go On? Soap Opera in a Digital Age 280
Notes 299
Bibliography 357
Index 369
About the author
Elana Levine
Summary
From The Guiding Light to Passions, Elana Levine traces the history of daytime television soap operas as an innovative and highly gendered mass cultural form.
