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Watching Daytime Soap Operas
The Power of Pleasure
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Book Presentation:
Though wildly popular, daytime soaps are arguably the most denigrated and parodied of any contemporary entertainment form. For this reason, even the most devoted soap opera fans are often reticent or even secretive about the shows they love. Watching Daytime Soap Operas is a meditation on the pleasures--and displeasures--of watching and talking about daytime soap operas. In this multidisciplinary study, Louise Spence talks to 25 women about their mostly solitary viewing practices and observes many Internet chat rooms. Over 20 years in the making, the book explores the varied critical and creative ways in which the women use soap operas in their lives. Spence draws on work in reception studies, and pays particular attention to the question of what it means to be a fan. She ultimately challenges the accepted belief that soap opera viewers are passive consumers of escapist fantasy. Her study expands the current literature of this largely misunderstood television genre while making an important contribution to the field of film-TV studies.
About the Author:
LOUISE SPENCE is Professor of Media Studies at Sacred Heart University. She is a co-author of the award-winning Writing Himself into History: Oscar Micheaux, His Silent Films, and His Audiences (2000) and an avid soap opera fan.
Press Reviews:
"Watching Daytime Soap Operas combines the best of those books that look at the unique textual features of the soap opera form with those that study soap opera audiences. I believe scholars and students could read this book and receive a complete education in the soap opera. To date I find it the best single book on the topic--if I were to adopt a book for use in my courses, I would choose this one." (Jane Feuer, Professor of English, University of Pittsburgh)
See the publisher website: Wesleyan University Press
> From the same author:
Crafting Truth (2010)
Documentary Form and Meaning
by Louise Spence and Vinicius Navarro
Subject: Genre > Documentary
Writing Himself Into History (2000)
Oscar Micheaux, His Silent Films, and His Audiences
by Pearl Bowser and Louise Spence
Subject: Director > Oscar Micheaux
> On a related topic:
Gold Dust on the Air (2024)
Television Anthology Drama and Midcentury American Culture
Television Show Trends, 2016-2020 (2023)
Authenticity, Diversity, Sexual Candor, and Retrospection
Conversations with Legendary Television Stars (2019)
Interviews from the First Fifty Years
by James Bawden and Ron Miller
Film Stars' Television Projects (2017)
Pilots and Series of 50+ Movie Greats, 1948–1985
New Television (2017)
The Aesthetics and Politics of a Genre
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