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"It's Time for My Story" Soap Opera Sources, Structure, and Response
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By Carol Traynor Williams
ISBN: 0-275-94297-X
ISBN-13: 978-0-275-94297-7
272 pages, figures
Praeger Publishers
Publication: 10/30/1992
List Price: $119.95 (UK Sterling Price: £70.00)
Availability:
Media Type: Hardcover
Trim Size: 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Subjects:
Series Title: Media and Society Series
Reviews:
  • Her conclusion that the soaps have "resonance, complexity and spacious vision" is persuasive. Undergraduate; graduate; faculty.
    —Choice
  • This is a serious analysis of both the programs and their critics which does a useful job making the format more understandable to those who cross serials off their list.
    —
    Communication Booknotes
  • A refreshing entry into the growing list of studies of the soap opera genre.
    —Popular Culture in Libraries
Description: Soap opera story, the only mass-public form of continuing narrative today, is oral culture for our electronic era. Carol Williams' "It's Time for My Story" is an examination of soap opera sources, structure, and response, particularly from the critical viewpoints of psychology, both archetypal and empirical, and popular culture, specifically narratology and feminism, that uncover the true nature of the genre. First, Williams traces the development of soap opera from its immediate source in radio and television as well as from its fundamental source in age-old myth and storytelling. Then she analyzes the content and form that together make up the structure of soap opera. Finally, she looks at what soaps mean to watchers and in the process debunks many myths about soap opera (for instance, the myth that soap opera, like all television drama, is merely commercial, produced formulaically by advertisers; Williams argues that soap opera is not only a commercial product but also a popular art form derived from the wellspring of culture and folk story). She also argues that it is a form which has been depreciated because it is historically a woman's medium. Discussions with writers, creators, and fans are included throughout. Recommended to scholars and students of media, drama, popular culture, and women's studies.
Table of Contents:
  • Introduction: Story for a Global Village
  • Sources
  • The Institutional History of Electronic Story
  • "There was this dentist in Santa Barbara . . . ": Folk and Fantasy Sources for Soap Opera
  • The Maid's Tragedy, The Comedy of Errors, An American Melodrama: The Genre of Soap Opera
  • Structure
  • Social and Archetypal Realism: The Content of Soap Opera Story
  • Issue Stories
  • Soap Characters as Story "Functions"
  • Blocking and Weaving: The Structure of Soap Opera
  • Response
  • Toward a Methodology for Soap Opera Audience Study
  • Resonance, Complexity, and the Spacious Vision: Folklore, Story, Oral Culture, and Art
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index
LC Card Number: 92-945
LCC Class: PN1992
Dewey Class: 791.45
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