Are Soaps Still the Next Coming of the “After School Special”?: The Genre’s Role in Promoting Social Awareness & Edutainment to Adolescent Audience

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m a longtime General Hospital fan and a soap opera advocate.  But recently I’ve been disappointed in a few storylines running on the show.  I have long praised the way in which this show, and other daytime serials, have been narrative leaders – tackling social issues progressively with tact and care (as you will see in the discussion that follows).  So I have been surprised by GH’s recent depiction of homosexual males on the program.  While visibility in itself is sometimes something to be applauded – since homosexual characters are still underrepresented on television – the recent characterizations have left much to be desired. 

In December of 2012, GH introduced Felix DuBois (Marc Samuel), a homosexual male nursing student into its large cast of characters.  Although I enjoy the character for what he is – comic relief to balance out some bleak storylines – he is, problematically, just the embodiment of stereotypes concerning.  He serves mostly as a sidekick for a more prominent character (Sabrina Santiago) and most of his screen time has been devoted to silly antics (e.g. conducting female makeovers).  Although with the introduction of his kid sister, there is some indication that he is about to get some storylines with a bit more “meat” to them, this hasn’t been the case so far.  Further, the show devoted much-too-much time to him longing after a straight male character (a body guard turned accidental male dancer, who quickly earned the nickname “Magic Milo” – a pop culture allusion to the recent film, Magic Mike).  That the show would promote the mistaken assumption that gay men are secretly lusting after straight men is troubling.  It was even more troubling when the premise surfaced again with another new gay character!

In 2013, Brad Cooper (Parry Shen) became a minor character on the show.  He is a shady lab tech whose unethical behavior extends beyond the work scene.  Another gay character, he first is portrayed as chasing after Felix and almost stalking him (following him into the locker room to spy on him as he showers).   As if this wasn’t bad enough (and I find it to be pretty bad), just last month this character turned his sights toward a young, straight male character, Michael Corinthos (who will be discussed in greater detail below).  Brad even attempts to blackmail Michael into sleeping with him.  As if this storyline wouldn’t scream “ick” already, it is even worse being that Michael is a victim of male sexual abuse (a storyline from three years ago).

So as these plots flit across my television I have found myself shaking my head in anger thinking about how surprising this is for GH and soaps in general.  It made me need to go back and re-read a conference paper I delivered a few years back on the social value of soaps and the ways in which they have delicately dealt with important social issues.  In order to remind myself of this rich tradition (and to hopefully encourage the genre to return to it immediately), I am including my previous thoughts on soap’s social utility here.

Soap Opera & Social Awareness

During the last three decades of the 20^th century, a staple in the lineups of network television was the After School Special, a genre that often aired on the heels of the daytime soap operas that filled earlier timeslots.  The term “after school special,” was coined by ABC and correlates with its series of 154 made-for-television movies which ran from 1972 to 1996 over 25 seasons.  However, the term itself more loosely relates to the general genre of television programming during that time period which dealt with controversial or socially relevant issues intended to be viewed by school age children, or more specifically, adolescents.   So while ABC was the inventor of this form – and was the most successful with it, racking up 54 daytime Emmy awards – the other networks followed suit:  CBS with its Schoolbreak Special (or Afternoon Playhouse) which ran over 17 seasons from 1980-1996 and NBC’s Special Treat which ran 11 seasons from 1975-1986.

Although these programs are most well known for their coverage of social issues, this focus only evolved (or enhanced) gradually over time.  A review of all 154 of ABC’s episodes shows that during the first decade of the programming, the majority of the episodes did not actually have this focus.  While a few were devoted to being accepting of persons with disabilities, understanding different family structures (such as teens living with foster families or coming to terms with the fact that they were adopted), many of the episodes simply aired storylines featuring teenagers (embarking on fundraising quests, making friendship pacts, working on political campaigns).  Some did focus specifically on coming of age type conflict stories (a teen overcoming the embarrassment of having a stutter, a male basketball player who wants to join ballet but worries about what friends and family will think, etc.) but others were quite different (for example there was a slew of literary adaptation and historical programming episodes).   It was not until the 1979-1980 season that the first episode aired in ABC’s series that would fit the normal formula for the after school special.  This episode, “The Late Great Me! Story of a Teenage Alcoholic,” was about a15-year-old who girl starts to drink liquor to impress a boy, and soon starts to develop a serious alcohol problem.  After this episode throughout the next two decades, plots such as this became more prevalent and the series began to focus more on storylines that fell more under the classification of “edutainment” with their made-for-TV films focusing on social issues that would relevant to teenage viewers.  Such storylines included:  unexpected pregnancy, drug experimentation, racial discrimination, depression, sexually transmitted diseases, child abuse, peer pressure, sexual assault, learning disabilities, bullying, suicide, drunk-driving, domestic abuse, etc.

By the time these after school specials went off the air in the mid-1990s, its daytime cohort, the soap opera, was already turning an eye toward its key audience:  adolescents.  In efforts to increase its audience pool, soaps began “youthening” their storylines hoping to gain after school teenage viewers.  As the genre already had a proven track record of tackling social issues, it is not surprising that eventually these issues were more often addressed with these teen viewers in mind.  In this way, perhaps inadvertently, the soap opera filled the void left by the departed after school special, acting as an occasional form of edutainment.   I have been interested in on how recent storylines have tackled social issues by centering a teenage character at the front of the narrative. 

A few years ago I argued that in a televisual era that no longer broadcasts “after school specials,” soaps have evolved to partially fill this role and that this role is one more reason that voices should be raised to save this genre-in-crisis.  But a few recent soap storylines have made me question this claim to some extent.

As the Teen Turns: The Soap Opera’s Desire for a Younger Audience

The soap opera’s initial turn toward younger viewing audiences and more socially relevant issues were not fueled by altruism (the desire to better serve the public) or even innovation (the desire to take the genre in new and exciting directions).  Like most televisual transitions, the shifts were primarily motivated by financial reasons:  ratings were plummeting. 

According to Robert C. Allen, By the mid-1970s the majority of soap’s audience members “began to pass out of the demographic target range of 18-49 years.  To make matters worse for soap opera producers, the baby boom of the immediate postwar years had ended, and women had begun working outside the home in numbers unprecedented in peacetime…  Soap opera producers responded by introducing younger characters, interjecting plot lines with social controversy, and making more female characters career orientated.”

A key example of how this combination worked is ABC’s General Hospital.  By 1977 the show’s ratings indicated that the soap opera was destined for cancellation.  Gloria Monty was hired in 1978 in a last ditch attempt to save the show.  She fired some of the older actors [and] focused the narrative on two younger ones (the first super couple the genre saw:  Luke Spencer and Laura Baldwin).  This paid off as by 1980 GH had become the highest-rated daytime program.  Underlying Monty’s strategy – and that of other producers who followed her lead – was the need to reorient soap operas toward younger viewers, not only to add viewers but to establish soap opera viewing as a regular activity among women just entering their ‘prime’ as consumers.  By 1982 soap opera producers across networks had succeeded in attracting more than 3 million college students as soap opera viewers, 70 percent of them women.

Edutainment:  The Soap Opera on Social Issues

Of course, the genre’s turn toward social issues actually predates its attempts to “youthen” up its audience by at least a decade.  It was during the late 1960s that soap operas first entered into the era of social issue coverage.  This was the time period that first saw minority actors entering the genre and storylines that aligned with the social climate flourished.  Topics covered included:  feminism, abortion rights, the Vietnam War, drug use, child abuse, and others.  As Dorthy Anger notes, “this new openness on serials extended, for the first time, to sex” as well (33).  Although the groundbreaking storylines are too many to list in full, some noteworthy ones include:  the first illegal abortion on Another World in 1965, the first legal abortion on television on All My Children in 1973, Agnes Nixon’s AMC 1970 storyline concerning the protest against the Vietnam War, OLTL, AW, AMC, and GH’s 1990s storylines dealing with HIV & AIDS. 

Although this is too brief a space to fully credit the genre’s impact on social awareness issues, it should be briefly noted that this is not simply an American phenomena.  As the genre spread globally many countries began using their soap operas and telenovelas for social education.  Hedi Noel Nariman covers this well in her book length study, Soap Operas for Social Change:  Toward a Methodology for Entertainment-Education Television. 

A Network Analysis: An Overview of “Teen Social Issue” Plots on ABC’s Soaps

I have been most interested in how the soap’s coverage of social issues shifted throughout the decades increasingly utilizing its younger cast members in such storylines.  In the chart below I have attempted to house the majority of the youth-centered social issue storylines that occurred from 1970 to present on the three major soap operas of one network – ABC.  Across each of the programs:  General Hospital, One Life to Live, and All My Children, the progression is clear:  as time progresses the number of teen-centered social issue storylines increases as well.  Most notable is the explosion of such plots around the mid-1990s:  the exact time when the after school specials went off the air.

General Hospital
Character	Social Issue	Year/Range
Laura Webber-Baldwin	Rape	1979
AJ Quartermaine	Alcoholism / Drunk Driving	1995
Stone Cates/Robin Scorpio	AIDS/HIV	1995
Karen Wexler	Child Molestation/ Drug Addiction	1996
Elizabeth Harding	Rape	1998
Leslie Lu Spencer	Teen Pregnancy/Abortion	2006
Kristina Corinthos	Dating/Domestic Abuse	2010
Michael Corinthos	Male/Prison Rape	2010-2011
One Life to Live
Character	Social Issue	Year/Range
Cathy Craig	Drug Addiction	1970
Billy Douglas	Homophobia/Coming Out	1992
Marty Saybrooke	Gang Rape	1993
Jessica Buchanan	Teen Pregnancy	1999
Starr Manning	Teen Pregnancy	2006
Oliver Fish	Coming Out	2009
All My Children
Character	Social Issue	Year/Range
Erica Kane	Abortion	1973
Donna Beck	Teen Prostitution	1978
Bianca Montgomery	Anorexia	1998
Bianca Montgomery	Coming Out	2000
Bianca Montgomery	Rape	2003
Zoe (Fredrick Luper)	Transgender Identity	2006

Table 1.  Teen Social Issue Storylines on ABC (1970-2011)

In studying this list, it is clear that certain predictable storylines receive more coverage as other, for example:  unexpected pregnancy.  However, it is also clear that a great many of the ground breaking narratives centered around younger characters are covering more uncharted territory.  For example, General Hospital’s coverage of child molestation and male rape; One Life to Live’s storylines related to homophobia and gang rape; and All My Children’s narratives concerning eating disorders and transgender identity. 

Ratings, Reactions, & Realism:  A Discussion of Two Recent General Hospital Storylines

At the start of the century, General Hospital launched two teen-centered social issue storylines, although quite different in content, both focus around the two children of the soap’s key mobster, Sonny Corinthos.  These two characters, Michael and Kristina, both experienced the infamous SORAS (soap opera rapid age syndrome) process – aging into teenagers, likely so that they could contribute to teen-centered social issue storylines such as this. 

Kristina Davis-Corinthos:  Domestic/Dating Abuse

The first storyline pertains to 17-old year old Kristina Davis-Corinthos.  Running for the majority of the 2010 season this storyline dealt with the abuse this over-achieving teen experienced at the hands of her high school boyfriend, Kieffer Bauer, a seemingly all-American, Ivy League-bound, perfect (on paper that is) guy.  The plot dealt with his escalating acts of violence, his jealous, controlling rage, and his constant justifications that his abusive outbreaks were all due to his love for her or were due to her own actions which caused his anger. 

This narrative arc was well covered by mainstream publications, earning two different interviews in The Soap Opera Digest, one featuring Lexi Ainsworth and Christian Alexander (the actors who playing Kristina & Kiefer), and another featuring Ainsworth and Nancy Lee Grahm (who plays Alexis Davis, Kristina’s mother).  All three characters praised General Hospital’s inclusion of the storyline, as can be seen in the interview segments below:

Lexi Ainsworth (Kristina) commented:  "I was very excited when I heard about this story for a lot of reasons. Nothing like that has ever happened to me personally, so not only was it was a great challenge to play something like that, but I'm really glad I could do the PSA [Public Service Announcement] to inform people and let people know that this does happen, every day. That's an important message to people my age. Hopefully this will let girls in trouble know that they have friends and family who can support them and help them through it and let them know that any relationship like that is not a healthy relationship and they need to get out."

Christian Alexander (Kiefer) discussed how he reacted to the storyline in the very beginning:  "I found out the day I was shooting that scene that the storyline was going to be centered around domestic violence and abuse. I'm thrilled that we're doing something in the teen storyline that can help people be more aware of it. I spoke with the writers, who mentioned that the Chris Brown/Rihanna situation brought this to light, got people talking about it and there was an opportunity here to shine some light on the issue."

Nancy Lee Grahn (Alexis) spoke about how this storyline effected her off-screen as a mother of a teenage daughter:  “What I've done, naturally, is research teen violence, because now it interests me, and also because I have a just-turned-12-year-old. We had a conversation. She saw me on the Internet, researching it, and said, "What are you doing?" She knows the general sense of what goes on [at GH]. I said this is an interesting topic of conversation, with what these kids are exposed to with the media and violence on television and all of that stuff. What young women are accepting from boys and young men right now is unthinkable to me! I'm talking about this with other parents and I'm saying, "What happened?" Where did the disconnect happen between my generation and this generation? What happened is that girls are feeling that they need to be so highly sexualized. And that violence is cool. It's not just talking about safe sex with your kids now; you need to talk about respect, violence, verbal abuse.”

Other reviews – not geared directly toward publicity – have also praised the storyline.  Michele Whitney of Suite101.com discussed the timeliness of the storyline and the very real problem it addresses for this current generation of girls.  For example, consider these statistics: 

• 20% of teens in a serious relationship reported being hit, slapped, or pushed by their partner
• About 30% of girls reported being concerned about physical abuse at the hands of their partner
• 25% of teens in a serious relationship reported that their partner prevented them from spending time with family, and felt pressure to spend time only with their partner
• 23% of girls felt sexually pressured while in a relationship and went further than they wanted to because of it

These facts indicate that General Hospital’s edutainment plot is serving a real purpose:  exposing a problem that is nor currently getting enough attention.

Of course that is not to say that the reactions to the storyline were unanimous across the board.  Many female fans posted personal stories of having experienced similar abuse at the hands of a teenage boyfriend and while many of them were pleased that GH was addressing this issue, quite a few noted that the storyline too quickly moved its focus from the victim, Kristina, to her mobster father and his personal reaction and need for revenge.

Michael Corinthos:  Male/Prison Rape

Unlike the storyline centering around Kristina, this second General Hospital storyline, perhaps due to its even more controversial nature, did not warrant the same amount of publicity.  Although it sent message boards ablaze and sparked quite a few online reviews of the plot, it did not get the amount of coverage in mainstream publications, like Soap Opera Digest, that the teen dating abuse plot did. 

This storyline deals with Kristina’s brother,18-year old Michael Corinthos, a heterosexual virgin who is raped while in prison for murdering his stepmother in self-defense.  As with all soap opera storylines it is a bit more complicated than that one line summary indicates as the violent crime committed against this character (one that was not shown directly on screen and was only hinted at for months) was not actually committed for the “usual” reasons a rape might be committed (for example, a display of power).  This crime was inflicted on Michael simply because his fellow inmate, Carter, was hired by someone (Franco – James Franco’s year long off-and-on cameo role on the show) to hurt Michael as a way to punish Michael’s surrogate uncle, mobster Jason Morgan.  (Got all that?) 

Although regular viewers of General Hospital are well accustomed to mob violence, dark plots, and a rather regular delivery of storylines that enter into the “social issue” arena, this narrative was met with some resistance.  A recent review of the storyline on the website Queerty, titled “Does General Hospital’s Teen Prison Rape Storyline Go Too Far?,” notes that (as of the date of publication) 949 Facebook posters noted that they felt rather ambivalent about the storyline, not quite knowing whether GH pushed the envelope for real purposes or not.  The reviewer asks at the start of the review: is General Hospital’s treatment of such a taboo topic actually progressive, or is it just going scandalous for sweeps week?  However, by the close of the review, the author writes in the show’s favor:  “General Hospital isn’t just being sensational – they’re acknowledging a very real problem.  Seventy percent of LGBT-identified inmates report having been sexual assaulted during their incarceration…. And HIV rates among male US inmates are five times higher than the general population.”  And, although these facts are not well known, most people who do think about prison rape, mistakenly assume that all prison rapists and their victims are gay and this storyline corrects this misconception.

Similarly praising this storyline, Sarah Bibel of Fancast writes:  this storyline “has the potential to be a heartbreaking, informative, groundbreaking social issue storyline exploring the impact of sexual assault on a male victim.  GH can touch on everything on why it is more difficult for male victims to come forward than for female victims, how sending teenagers to adult prisons sets them up to be victimized, to challenging the notion that prison rape is a fitting punishment for criminals.”  Bibel also applauded the show’s airing of a public service announcement featuring Chad Duell (Michael) that aired right after the episode that finally revealed that the attack Michael experienced in prison was actually a sexual assault.  As Bibel notes, this may very well be the first PSA addressing the issue of male sexual assault aired on daytime television. 

A soap opera fan posting on the message boards of Soapcentral.com wrote this post that seems particularly relevant to this panel:

It seems the era of the daytime drama is in its senior years, approaching the end of its existence. I think if this is the case, I don’t want the last stories told to be lazily written, forgettable dribble that we can’t even pretend to like. If the era of soaps is coming to an end, I want a story that will always remind me why soaps were so great, why they lasted 25, 35, 45 years. Because they reach into the heart and place something there we remember decades later, that soaps gave us memories that last forever.   (With) this gut wrenching story of Michael’s rape, these writers, Bob Guza and his team, and these talented actors, Maurice Benard, Steve Burton, Laura Wright and this incredible young actor Chad Duell could be giving us the last great soap story ever to be written. If the world of soaps is dying, I want to see it go out in a way that makes me never ever in the future forget why soaps were so great.

Conclusion

Despite having been disappointed by recent soap storylines/trends, as a soap scholar I have been very concerned by the genre’s anticipated departure.  While there are countless reasons as to why the death of the soap opera would be tragic (from a television/genre standpoint), this discussion has meant to add one more reason onto that long list:  the end of the soap opera would also mean the end of the only type programming that has arisen to fill the needs of the already deceased after school special.

Of course, this is not to say that no other programming exists that raises social issues with an eye toward teen demographics.  (Fox’s Glee, for example, is being praised for doing such in primetime).  However, the majority of the programming that does this (often on networks devoted to teen viewers, such as the CW – formerly WB – network), is limited by its programming schedule.  As primetime series only broadcast an average of 20 episodes a season, the amount of narrative time devoted to the development of social issue storylines is quite limited.  When such storylines are delivered, the speed at which they are often tackled often leaves much to be desired.  And, for all that soaps are criticized for their lack of realism, such issues are often dealt with more tactfully, and realistically, on daytime programming, perhaps because time is not a concern and because – melodramatic as soaps are – they can avoid overly dramatic portrayals of topics they long to cover seriously.  

While more could be said about the research on how effective such edutainment storylines are (be they aimed at teens or otherwise) their presence alone is something to be celebrated and their absence – along with the genre that most faithfully delivers them – would be something to be mourned.