soap opera

soap opera, broadcast dramatic serial program, so called in the United States because most of its major sponsors for many years were manufacturers of soap and detergents. The soap opera is characterized by a permanent cast of actors, a continuing story, emphasis on dialogue instead of action, a slower-than-life pace, and a consistently sentimental or melodramatic treatment.

The soap opera began in the early 1930s with 15-minute daytime radio episodes. The main originator of the genre was Irna Phillips, a former teacher who created Painted Dreams, considered the first soap opera, in 1930. Her later programs include Guiding Light, which aired on radio from 1937 to 1956 and on television from 1952 to 2009, making it by some measures the longest-running soap opera.

The soap opera form was inherited by television beginning in the late 1940s and expanded to 30 minutes. The first television soap opera was These Are My Children, also created by Phillips, which premiered on January 31, 1949. By the mid-1950s soap operas dominated late morning and early afternoon weekday television programming as they had dominated a similar time frame in radio programming during the previous decade.

From the 1930s to the 1950s the classical American soap opera was typically a continuing play about a middle-class family living in a small town. Sin and violence, always offstage, frequently affected the daily lives of the family members, but good inevitably triumphed, or at least all wrongdoing was justly punished. Most settings were indoors, usually in an immaculate home or office. The reality of housework or business seldom intruded; conversation abounded with intensity and only occasional humor.

By the 1970s the style and content of soap operas had undergone a revolution. There was open discussion of such matters as abortion, drug use, domestic violence, and sexually transmitted diseases on such shows as Days of Our Lives (1965– ) and All My Children (1970–2011). Characters of various racial and ethnic backgrounds were introduced into a previously all-white, Anglo-Saxon population. The traditional emphasis on romantic and marital problems remained, but promiscuous behavior, violence, and criminal activity came to be treated more directly. Some of the programs expanded to 60 minutes, and a few even aired during prime-time evening viewing hours, including the wildly popular Dallas (1978–91).

Programs sharing many of the same features as soap operas have been long been popular around the world. Notably, the telenovela, a serial drama similar to a soap opera in plot development but with a broader audience and airing during prime time rather than daytime, is a staple of Latin American television.