The Fun and Absurd Genre of Soap Operas
*Mild spoilers for A Simple Favor
I recently got around to watching A Simple Favor, a new movie with Anna Kendrick, Blake Lively and Henry Golding. And I absolutely loved it. It struck me to be less of a thriller and more as a black comedy, but when describing it to my mom, I said it was a soap opera in movie form. Which of course got me thinking about what makes something a soap opera? Can a movie be a soap opera or merely soap operatic?
What most people consider to be soap operas, such as Days of Our Lives, were broadcast almost every weekday. But that is not the only thing a soap opera can be. Consider Gossip Girl, which for the record is the first soap opera I really got into. It’s all about relationships and insane situations, even though was a standard hour-long cable drama with super high production values (OMG the clothes). Regardless of the fact that it was crazy beautiful and expensive, it was still absolutely a soap opera.
A soap opera is defined by the type of content, not the format in which it is produced. Technically, a soap opera is a serialized drama that focuses on characters and their relationships. In practice though, soap operas have the added caveat of being utterly absurd and/or convoluted. Relationship-based drama is one thing. Having people return from the apparent dead or have sudden evil twins, or all the relationship drama is a part of something being a soap opera.
The rise of Netflix and streaming have changed the concept of what a “season” can be in general. Something like the Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (which is phenomenal) is all of eight episodes a season, while most Star Trek series were 26-episode seasons. Series are now anything from episodic, largely unconnected stories to one single, coherent story told in several parts, and everything in between. That’s a pretty wide range for “serialization.”
Another soap format is the telenovela. Now, the only telenovela I’ve ever watched is Jane the Virgin (Team Rafael btw) but despite generally having a more compact format, is still absolutely considered a kind of soap opera. Which just reinforces the fact that a soap opera is a genre – and a cross-cultural one at that – rather than a show with a specific format.
I don’t know if, given the declared serialized nature of soap operas, if a movie can be considered a soap opera. On the one hand, the point of the serialization is to give the characters room to grow and to, of course, to give the space for all the crazy plot twists. A Simple Favor, a slightly over 2-hour movie, definitely hits the latter, although the former is debatable.
But if we even ignore the serialization aspect and look at a soap opera as a character and relationship-focused story with absurdist elements, then a movie can absolutely fit within that definition. It really comes down to what matters more, definitionally: absurd plot elements or serialization. I personally see serialization as a means to an end, in this case the end being characterization and relationship drama. It is a tool, rather than an end in it of itself.
One the other hand, absurdist plot elements are absolutely necessary in a soap opera. I cannot think of a soap opera, in any format, that doesn’t engage in absurdism. Jane the Virgin’s entire premise – a virgin getting pregnant via accidental artificial insemination, is absurd. Fun and often compelling, but ultimately absurd. To go back to A Simple Favor, can you have a secret evil twin as a plot point and not be considered a soap opera, regardless of format? I honestly don’t think so.
If a soap opera is defined not by its format, but by the style and content. A daytime soap, a high-production teen drama (Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, Riverdale etc), or a twisty relationship-drama all contain the same thematic, stylistic, and trope-based concepts, they are the same beast, just I different forms. AKA, the same genre. Nothing more, but nothing less.
Like so many other genres – fantasy, romances, chick-lit, beach reads – the soap opera is unfairly looked down upon. The conflation of the genre with the daytime-soap format, which by and large necessitates quick and less polished writing and low-production values, has only helped cement that status. The fact that soaps, again like romances and chick-lit, focus on relationships, something that our current cultural biases say only illogical and or silly women are drawn to, diminishes the value of the genre even further.
Make no mistake, soap operas are completely and utterly ridiculous. But they aren’t any more ridiculous than any given James Bond movie, or a Clive Cussler novel (I have a bunch of Dirk Pitt novels). Fighting SPECTER is just as absurd as having an evil twin you didn’t know about, but one if maligned and the other is, while not respected, at least respectable.
Absurdity is great. It’s fun and silly and I enjoy it equally in comedies, action flicks, and soap operas. Soap opera is a fun, and extremely engaging genre, largely because of it’s absurdity and, I look forward to watching many more of them.
