Melodrama Variations: TV Soap Opera (Discussion)
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Readings
"Notes on the Soap Opera Apparatus"
- What are the main characteristics of soap opera's style of sound and image? And what significance do they have? In other words, what/how does style signify in terms of:
- Group 1: Sets?
- Group 1: Lighting?
- Group 2: Multiple-camera production? In terms of how it looks on the screen, how does multiple-camera production differ from single-camera production?
- Dialogue?
- Group 2: Music?
- Groups 1 & 2: How are these characteristics present (or not) in the scene from ATWT episode we viewed in class? How would you compare/contrast the sound in ATWT with that of the radio soap, Backstage Wife?
- All Groups: How does the excerpt from Guiding Light we watched violate soap-opera style?
"'I'm Not a Doctor, But I Play One on TV'"
- Group 4: How does Jean-Louis Comolli's notion of a "body too much" in historical film apply to the soap opera?
- Grad Group: What is the "commutation test"? How does it apply to soap-opera recasting?
- Grad Group: How might the commutation test be used with Humphrey Bogart's Charlie Allnut character in African Queen?
- Group 1: What makes Meg Ryan an atypical soap star?
- Group 1: How does the position of soap actors resemble that of early-film actors?
- All Groups: How do Lindsey Frost's character/performance signs differ from Meg Ryan's? What meaning does that difference connote?
Bibliography
- Jeremy G. Butler, "Television and Zero-Degree Style" in Television Style (New York: Routledge, in press), 55-120.
- Jeremy G. Butler, "'I'm Not a Doctor, But I Play One on TV': Characters, Actors, and Acting in Television Soap Opera," Cinema Journal 30.4 (1991): 75-91.
External links
- Soap Opera Illustrations
- ATWT alumni.
- Johanna Schneller, "Meg Ryan", Us Weekly, April 1998, pp. 50-54, 96.