Eastenders and soaps

A soap opera is an ongoing, episodic work of fiction usually broadcasted on television. What differentiates a soap from other television drama programs is the open-ended nature of the narrative, with stories spanning several episodes. A soap opera, according to Albert Moran who is Senior Lecturer in Media at Griffith University, (Brisbane, Australia), is "that form of television that works with a continuous open narrative. Each episode ends with a promise that the storyline is to be continued in another episode". Soap opera narratives run concurrently, intersect, and lead into further developments. Soap operas rarely "wrap things up" storywise, and generally avoid bringing all the current storylines to a conclusion at the same time. Soap opera episodes typically end on some sort of cliff-hanger. [1]

Soap operas have emphasis on family life, personal relationships, sexual dramas, emotional and moral conflicts; some coverage of topical issues; set in familiar domestic interiors. Most UK soap operas focus on working-class communities.

EastEnders programme makers took the decision that the show was to be about "everyday life" in the inner city "today" and regarded it as a "slice of life".[2]

“Working-class” audience as a target for Eastenders has worked well and has become popular in this class. “Working-class” is a group of people associated with people who are employed for wages, especially as manual workers. People from this class usually have time to watch television and do not have “hectic” lifestyles as opposed to, for example, a doctor would, with emergency calls to a late surgery.

The setting is in the fictional “Albert Square”. The characters in Eastenders all live in this area so it makes the audience feel as though they are a member of this community because they are presented into the lives of the different characters so it makes the audience have a sense of belonging to the soap. It also has a sense of familiarity because the area is a local place with markets, businesses and schools. It is a “middle-class” area where it is linked to the target audience as most of the population class themselves as “middle-class”. The East end has a history of, at one point, being a place of industry and work and was a place of poor quality of life, so it is iconic to feature characters of families which face problematic issues in their life.

There are varied age groups of characters where audiences can relate to characters in a way. There are middle aged couples in the soap are in love with each other and this may be interesting for people of this age who are in a similar state in reality, or this may just be interesting to the age group because it may be an experience the audience has not had recently. There are also younger characters that are still in full-time education and younger audiences can relate to these characters because they have a common interest among the similar aged characters. So, it is just a pleasure to watch what their “peers” are doing.

In Eastenders there are homosexual characters present. These characters that are featured in this soap are an example of how soap operas, and the media, have changed and developed over some time to become parallel to modern society. Years ago, being homosexual and to explicitly show this sexual preference would have been rare and difficult to accept by both the person and society; Eastenders puts forward, by featuring these characters how homosexuality has become something casual and a part of society.

Eastenders also features concepts of paedophilia in recent episodes. Even though the purpose of featuring this thread in the soap is not to promote paedophilia or to attracts paedophiles it raises awareness of the idea of this sort of behaviour which could be happening anywhere, even in your own home; the characters Tony King has a relationship with Whitney Dean a 15-year-old school girl. The child abuse storyline is an issue which had been created in association with the NSPCC and in accordance with BBC editorial policy. The soap’s storyline shows tackling difficult social issues such as domestic violence and mental health. This feature among other features can subconsciously educate the audience of what could be going on in their neighbourhood and even make the audience who have experienced such social issues to feel united to the characters in similar dilemmas.

Each episode is about half an hour but the day of the soap is no longer than a day. Time still carries on as it does in the “real” world of the audience, so if an episode were to be shown once a week, the life of the characters would have also passed a week since the last episode, however, Eastenders is broadcasted almost everyday, which adds to the realism of “everyday life” of the soap, so the audience are constantly “visiting” Eastenders.

During the time of the absence of the soap audiences have a chance to discuss or predict what could happen next. There is a past and present of the soap but the future is the discussions or gossip of the audiences about the soap.

Different races in the soap represent the multi-cultural state of London and “mirror” the audience’s life in London. There are different ethnicities present in Eastenders such as Black and Asian. Viewers, again, is in knowledge about different cultures; one of the characters refused to eat pork because of the rules of their religion.

Eastenders may be able to “teach” the audience about different concepts of society whether it is ethical issues or cultural issues, on the other hand, the soap also uses stereotypical characters. A female character in the soap is known to be as a “gossip”, whereas, there are no men characters who gossip. Another stereotypical type of characterisation is that men have more successful businesses as opposed to women. Some teenagers are presented as rebellious and classified as “trouble makers”. Another character where stereotypical features are implied to be a homosexual man who speaks in a feminine tone of voice and seems to be “bitchy” towards a past partner who he thinks is flirting with another man. Using stereotypical characters can be unrealistic but it is helpful in a way to identify a certain character in order to understand them better.

Eastenders, being a British soap opera mirrors the social issues of London well. The storylines and threads of the soap may well make it seem bleak and over exaggerated but this is assumed to be a way of capturing and keeping the audience to view the soap. Eastenders is built well as it is a long-running soap with history of characters and past events which have occurred making the soap more realistic. Most soaps could get less ratings as time goes by because of the “dragging” series, however, Eastenders has used the typical techniques well of time, narrative and repetition.

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[1] Extracts from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soap_opera

[2] Geraghty, Christine (1991). Women and Soap Opera: A Study of Prime-Time Soaps. Polity Press, p 32.