Marxist Theory in Soap Operas
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Critical Analysis of Mass Media: Marxist Theory and Soap Operas
Introduction
This essay will look at the media theory of Marxist Perspectives, and how it relates to the world of television soap operas. Gender roles will be explored, and Marxist theory will shed light on how gender roles in society are perpetuated by character roles and relationships in Soap Operas.
Saffhill (2001, 3) provides a basic introduction to the world of the soap opera:
Soap opera was born in America in the 1930s and initially it was devised as a radio programme. It targeted the housewife and aimed to include issues concerning women's culture, so as the woman could tune in as she went about domestic chores. The original ideas for programme content may have come from women's magazines, as there are several similarities, also concerning the features such as the regularity and repetitiousness of each. Magazines contain regular features with which the reader becomes familiar and expects, and the problem pages which are a particularly feminine form pertaining to advicegiving and nurturing are reminiscent of the features that are replicated in soaps.
"Soaps" became so called due to the advertisers who bought air space for their commercials surrounding the programme, as the featured products tended towards those of a domestic nature, particularly Proctor and Gamble who, aiming for a female audience, not only advertised but sponsored to the programmes, lending its name as a soap powder manufacturer to the entire genre. It became a genre that grew "in response to the perceived isolation of women in the home" (Brown, 1994: 46) and in the 1950s branched out into television productions. Britain's first televised soap was The Groves, which ran from 1954 to 1957 and was followed by the appearance of Coronation Street in 1960. Other well known British Soaps Brookside and EastEnders arrived in 1982 and 1986 respectively...