This thesis uses the concept of pleasure as it has been applied to cultural artefacts in order to give a description of various characteristics of the soap opera genre. The concept of pleasure is applied to soap opera narrative, characters, visual style and viewing attitudes. Three soap operas, The Young and the Restless, General Hospital, and Another World, are described in detail according to these various types of pleasures. The Young and the Restless is a soap that relies largely on visual pleasures and melodrama. General Hospital's strongest pleasures are related to its character development and use of humour. Another World, the most traditional of the three soaps, is best at stimulating the pleasures associated with talk. Through analysis of viewer commentary supplied by letters sent to Soap Opera Weekly and Soap Opera Update and Nielsen ratings, it can be concluded that the pleasures that most soap opera viewers seem to value the most are related to visual style, romance and a delicate balance between realistic characters and fantasy in narrative.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.56928 |
| Date | January 1992 |
| Creators | De Montigny, Michelle C. (Michelle Chantal) |
| Contributors | Kaite, Berkeley (advisor) |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Graduate Communications Program.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 001327183, proquestno: AAIMM87652, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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