Soap Opera Analysis

Soap operas is one of Britans most popular genres and have had some of the highest viewing figures since they have started and there main focusses are everyday problems which reflect reality. Soap operas have realism and they accomplish this by sets that relate to its audience through culture realism. One of the biggest soap operas is Coronation Street which is set in weatherfield which is a fictional town in Salford, this town has terraced houses, post office, newsagent, cafe and a pub called The Rovers Return which is the meeting place for the whole community.

Eastenders is the other big soap opera and there approach is similar with a fictional city called Walford in London with a has a newsagents, cafe, terraced houses and a pub called The Queen Victoria Pub Soap operas revolve around families and the social statues of the family which can be determined by which family they come from in the program and what role they are in the family such as mum, dad or son in the family. 

Soap operas have many other characteristics and one of these is how they portray women in the program. There are two ways with how the women are portrayed and one of them is the Matriarch which is a powerful women who is the head of the family and is looked unto by others and an example of this is Peggy Mitchell from Eastenders who is a powerful women in this soap opera and everyone looks up to her. and she is also the head of the pub in Eastenders called The Queen Victorian Pub.

The other characteristic for women in soap operas is the bitch, The Bitch is person who controls people to get information they want and they can also be evil and psychotic. An example of a bitch in soap operas would be former Eastenders actor Charlie Brooks who was the best bitch in Walford and was known on Eastenders for plotting and scheming for her own personal gain. 

The female characters in soaps are usually the controllers of all information and they gain this information from questioning people. The female characters use the information to there advantage to gain power in the commiunity and they often get what they want from this. 

In soap operas people are that are being deceived by the females are usually the male characters in soap operas. Male characters are the ones who try to avoid all drama with the female characters but usually they get sucked in. Although males are the ones who orchestrating whats going on in soap operas. Males in soap operas are usually weak men and they can lack in social skills and are manipulated by women although this isn't the case for every male character in soap operas as some are very strong men and sometimes can be blamed for things they haven't done such as killings or cheating that go on in the programs. 

Narratives in soap operas can be both open or closed narratives, closed narratives are the stories that tend to be short and are normally wrapped up and solved by the end of the program. An example of this show would be a sitcom such as The Big Bang Theory which is a show that is a closed narrative with characters that always their way into difficult situations but end up finding a solution to the problems in the Sit-com. Shows with an over arching narrative which will run throughout the series are soap operas like Coronation Street and Eastenders which have an over arching storyline which will run across a period of time and is effective in gaining viewing figures for these soap operas and this shows how popular they are amongst people because they keep you interested and make you want to watch the next episode to see what happens next. 

Other narratives in soap operas are Linear and Non-Linear, Linear narratives are programs that consist of a start, middle and a end and this is used in most films and is used a lot in the Transformers films with there being a beginning of the story a middle part with something dramatic happening and the end being the big war at the end of all films. The opposite to Linear narrative is a Non-Linear narrative which is a film where the start may be at the end and doe not move in a chronological order and an example of a Non-Linear film would be Batman Begins which was released in 2005. 

There are also five scales of narratives such as a Micro narrative which usually deals with relationships between certain characters. An example of this would be that the writers would plan a disagreement and this then would be classed as a Micro narrative and an example of a film like this would be a romantic film such as Titanic.

A Meta-narrative is a narrative that deals with drugs and race and an example of this could be panorama which is a program that deals with these problems. 

A Macro narrative is a program that can embrace the notion of a society being created and this is the most popular narrative within soap operas where there is drama created on a square or a street and both Eastenders and Coronation Street are examples of Macro narratives.

A Trans-narrative is a narrative which is the sum of all the story being seen all at once.

A Hyper narrative is a narrative that refers to a small scale of collective stories.

There is also a technical aspect to soap operas and they use natural light when they are filming scenes outside this is beneficial because it gives the program more of a naturalistic look. The sound for soap operas is diegetic and this consists of the sound being on the screen and fitting with the current time frame. 

The editing techniques soap operas consist of are jump cuts and shot reverse shots and these are used to fit the style and help the program rum smoothly. Jump cuts are used to show the movement of the storyline. Shot reverse shots show the conversation between two people and these are used as a close up to show emotion or expressions used.

Within the Mise en scene the location is a stereotypical London street with houses, a pub and corner shops. The clothes they wear are also stereotypical with Peggy Mitchell dressed in smart casual clothes because she owns a pub. You also have the characters who own a corner shop and they are dressed in smart casual clothes like Patrick Truman who owns the corner shop in EastEnders. Finally you have all the that are in the mechanical business and they dress in dark, baggy and dusty clothes that fits the location they work in rather than smart or casual wear.