InsaneJournal

On Television
I get punched in the face too much by tv. I treid to watch the Show I know Zvi had liked "Drop Dead Diva". There was a Marathon on. And gut punched in the face by a plotline revolving around DID - except while no one was a murderer who was faking it - it was about Integration as Death and Theraputic Abuse that wasn't framed as such at all. It was just... punch in the face.

Now I've just heard that All My Children and One Life To Live are being cancelled and it has me thinking a lot about what I got from soaps - aside from twisted ideas about white people, American society and the pursuit of facade perfection. I learned about rape; spousal rape, aquaintance rape, date rape, being roofied - having no one believe you. I learned about stalkers and the dangers. Spousal abuse. Child Abuse. Lupus, Breast Cancer, Other Cancers, AIDS.

Though I didn't realize it for years afterwards, I can look back now and see stories about familial pressure to conform to other people's expectations of you; for good and bad. I figured out what kind of woman I did NOT want to be, what kind of person I did not want to be. I learned that parents lie, and have their own wants and desires they sometimes don't even want to admit to themselves.

I think if my mother had any clue I had been watching (with my aunts, sometimes not with my aunts) or what I had been learning from them; the need to believe in yourself, and your own perceptiont of reality even when other people say things like 'That couldn't possibly have happened because so and so is just too nice, too much a strong upstanding member of the community and you are not...' - She would have had some strong words about it.

I learned secrets are dangerous. Liars do prosper. The world is unfair. And that no matter how story-book, commercial 'romantic' a courtship might be, no matter what grand gestures might be made, if two people aren't fundamentally compatible with the same outlook, the same understandings of hurts and healing, the same willingness to walk on the same path - then people would end up married and divorced a half dozen times.

I am seriously sad that they only just started having gay couples on Soaps. Soaps are so Mainstream America. And now... nope. And the thought of no more general people wishing for this guy to be with THAT GUY or this girl to be with THAT GIRL? That hurts. The thought of an audience no longer having, thinking of, wanting a gueer supercouple? That Seriously Seriously Hurts. Even if I hadn't watched in years and years.

The age of the daytime soap opera is dying. Or on serious lifesupport at the moment. And it is sad, because now I wonder at the loss, the lack of a Supercouple that includes someone trans. And now I wonder whatever happened to the Supercouple in Days of Our Lives that had included someone fat (and amazing).

I am going to spend a little time mourning the loss. Cause it is as if some remote beloved has just died. It is something I grew up with. I followed the actors to other things. I checked in once in a while to find out what happened to various characters; who got aged up, which character had their actor changed, are women to this day still fighting over that guy named Ridge?

And now two of the main ones I knew anything about - poof. Gone. Just like that. And I know it must be more crushing to far more serious fans - the ones who go to the conventions and wait in line for autographs and pictures.

I also can't help but think of all the camera people, lighting people, hair and make up people, set makers, prop folks, sound guys and gals, even any darn caterers, and the like, along with the actors, who no longer have a steady paycheck. I grew up being aware, being told that soap actors aren't the Hollywood types who get big lump sums, they're the working men and women of actordom - the office grind, as it were. And some of them, I'm not sure if they'll even get spots on stuff for the Hallmark Channel (which seems to glom Canadian actors) because they are some righteously older women.

It's all sad. And the pathetic is their replacement with reality shows. Ugh. I get keeping a thing for tradition's sake has serious bad in it most of the time. And perhaps even when it has some good, there's still significant loss. But I don't think The Real Wives Of Anything, is ever going to fill the niche - the... the apple pie niche of innovation and modernization that is these soaps.