Soap+Opera

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Soap Operas
Soap Operas are an ongoing episodic work of fiction on television or radio. The main difference between soaps and other televsion dramas are that soaps are ongoing, plots run concurrently, intersect, and lead into further developments. Most soaps focus on large extended families. Many Australian and UK soap operas explore social issues such as family discord, marriage breakdown, or financial problems, and sometimes include significant amounts of comedy. However American soaps tend to focus on beauty and unrealistic story-lines. American soaps portray an unrealistic idea of how we should act, in the home and in society. They fill our heads with the ideas that youth, beauty and wealth are the only things that matter in life, and do not focus on a realistic view of the world. Soap operas create gender identity, and stereotypes among people; which leads to an unrealistic idea of people, and how we categories individuals. Soap operas have the ability to create these ideas and have them accepted by their viewers, because they are able to make relationships between the viewer and the character, mainly woman. When woman watch these shows, on a daily basis they begin to feel a connection, making it easier for them to trust and accept the ideas that they are producing. Soap operas are a highly used medium to express an idea and have it accepted by a mass amount of people.

toc = = =Day- time Soaps=

=Evening Soaps=

=American Soaps= > =Canadian Soaps=
 * Passions
 * Days of our Lives- Soap made for older adults as well as young
 * General Hospital
 * As the World Turns
 * All My Children
 * Guiding Light
 * Young & the Restless

=Australian Soaps=
 * Neighbours

=Indian Soaps=
 * Jassi Jasi Koi Nahi (Ugly Betty of India)
 * Kitty Party

=British Soaps=
 * Coronation Street

=Mexican/Spanish Soaps (aka Telenovelas)= Unlike American, British or Australian Soap Operas, where shows can continue indefinately, (ex/ All My Children, Coronation Street, Days of Our Lives), telenovelas (Spanish soap operas from all of Latin America) are limited-run prime-time serials, lasting approximately eight months to a year. Stock characteristics of telenovelas include: beautiful, young, poor woman falling in love with rich man. Rich man dumps his girlfriend; jealous ex-girlfriend seeks to enact revenge, enlisting the help of ex-boyfriend's family; beautiful woman marries rich man. Telenovelas perpetuate the notion of the machismo man, controlling and sometimes even abusing his "girl". Because telenovelas are limited-run serials, it would be difficult to include all the titles in this wiki. The following are a list of a few popular telenovelas.

=A Sample of Titles:= >
 * Milagros (Peru)
 * Juana La Virgen (Venezuela)
 * Angela (Mexico)
 * Betty La Fea (Colombia):

Betty La Fea

 * A very popular Colombian soap opera, its theme primarily based on "the ugly duckling" story. Betty Pinzon Solano is a very unattractive but intelligent and hard-working woman climbing the corporate ladder of a Colombian fashion corporation, Ecomoda. Her successful assension to the executive position culminates in a make-over and marriage to her boss. Ratings for //Betty La Fea// skyrocketed in Colombia while it aired in Colombia, other Latin American countries, and the United States (via Telemundo) in 2001. Viewership for the show was estimated to be around 80 million people in the US and Latin America ([|salon.com]).
 * The show became a social phenomenon--professional writers for reputable Colombian newspapers like "El Tiempo" dedicated columns to the show; praising the show's departure from other formulaic telenovelas in which a woman's success was measured according to her measurements and marriage. Betty won the hearts of her audience and could attribute her success to her intelligence, humour, and personality. However, it is interesting to note the uproar in Colombian print media and internet chattrooms when the plot took a twist: Betty traded in her signiature "ugliness" for sleek beauty and when she married her womanizing boss.
 * The success of Betty La Fea can be measured not only in the ratings it pulled overseas, the effect it had on mainstream culture, but in re-productions of the soap opera in countries like Russia, Israel, India, Mexico, Spain, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, and most recently, the United States. Salma Hayek, who incidentally began her career as a telenovela star, bought the rights to the Colombian soap and has created the ABC fall 2006 hit, Ugly Betty.
 * Betty La Fea can be added to the list of Colombian exports along with coffee, textiles, and most notoriously, drugs.