Apparently, all is not well in Soap Opera Land!
Less than 3 months into their new lives on The Online Network, production has stopped on "All My Children" and "One Life to Live" due to a labor dispute. I guess they are still working out some of the "bugs" of a new medium. Or something.
However, they also announced that they have enough episodes already filmed to last through the rest of the summer, and that the dispute will be resolved by then, and production can resume. I hope that actually turns out to be the case, because in spite of a few random issues, I'm really, really enjoying getting reacquainted with my old friends in Soap Opera Land.
It was also announced recently that "swear words" would no longer be spilling from the mouths of our beloved characters. I haven't decided yet how I feel about this issue. It was a little shocking at first to hear characters freely busting out with the s-word, but that is only from years of conditioning provided by network Standards and Practices committees that have completely controlled script content for years and years--since television's inception. The fact that they have decided to eliminate swearing, after a rather short period of free-range dialogue, suggests a strong backlash from viewers. Lots of people, like me, I guess, were shocked/surprised/taken aback. Unlike me, they expressed their views--probably loudly--to the producers, and perhaps even on their Facebook pages or something.
I must admit to having mixed emotions about this. On the one hand, we certainly don't need any more crudeness in our American society. We have plenty of that already. But on the other hand, people talk like that everyday. If the show is supposed to be reflective of reality, then crude/coarse language should be included, especially among the youngsters.
The whole issue brings up the chicken-or-the-egg dilemma of popular culture. Do TV and movies reflect reality? Or is reality influenced by TV and movies? I personally believe it to be a reciprocal relationship, marked by the fluid exchange of one reality for another. I think the river flows both ways, at once. The only way to remove oneself from its influence is to live apart from society--to become a hermit, living in a cave on a hillside, or on a deserted island or something. And even then, I'm not sure that total isolation can even be accomplished.
So since control is out of the question, I can only observe. I observe that America is a heavily prudish culture, on one hand, while also being outrageously permissive. We exoticize that which we abhor, which makes it impossible to ignore.
In the meantime, Billy Clyde Tuggle still can't act, Jesse Hubbard still makes the world's worst decisions in stressful situations, JR Chandler is still an addict and a liar, and the feud between Dorian and Viki has found new life. Profanity, either its existence or its absence, does not change the basic foundational aspects of the storylines, the characterizations, or life as we know it in Soap Opera Land.
