The daytime serial drama, commercially known as the soap opera, has for a long time been diminished as an inferior artform, which previous research has connected to bias towards its historically predominantly female audience as well as its close relation to advertising. This thesis examines Guiding Light (original title The Guiding Light, CBS, 1937-1956, 1952-2009) and its transition from radio to television in the 1950s by using a historiographical approach through analysis of archive artefacts that cover the decade. The archive material, consisting of newspapers and magazines, have two parts to play: the first regarding the influence of the sponsor Procter & Gamble considering the soap opera’s status as a thriving advertisement vehicle of the time, and the second in the relationship between soap opera and its listeners/viewers throughout the era of transition. Throughout the years that it existed as a combination serial; both factors were seen to play a vital role in shaping the serial, both from an industry point-of-view, and as evident in its text. The two perspectives are often contradictory to one another but the co-existence of them is essential to the shaping of the soap opera’s history writing. Gender ties into both angles as the transition added to a growing social panic surrounding the housewife as a pillar for postwar US-American values.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-205650 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Svanberg Mattsson, Evelina |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Filmvetenskap |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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