1.Introduction
1.1 Soaps
1.2 How did it all begin?
1.3 What does a soap contain?
2.Characters
2.1 Introduction to two soaps
2.2 The Patriarch
2.3 The Neurotic luxurious wife
2.4 The Kind one
2.5 The Bitch
2.6 The Careless fellow
3.Conclusion
3.1 Final words
3.2 Summary
Christina Mårtensson
Soapoperas
1 Introduction
1:1 Soaps
Why did I chose this subject? For me it's easy; I love soaps and I am as many people around the world a dedicated fan of soap operas or daytime serials as they really are named. People who don't follow soaps might think they're superficial and that nothing has happened since the last week they accidentally watched an episode, but for us dedicated fans it's almost a way of living. You wouldn't miss an episode and the characters feel like your second family. And when the network decides to cancel the show you get involved in stopping it. Unfortunately it doesn't work most of the time how many petions you sign and letters you write.
1.2 How did it all begin?
Some people might think that soap-operas is something new, but\par even the old Greeks wrote a kind of soap. If you think about it, they had all their intrigues, jealousy and so on, and that is what soap operas of today are about. In the book Tvål! by Göran Everdahl there's a family tree of soaps. Since I couldn't scan it into my computer I wasn't able to get it into this project.
1.3 What does a soap contain?
It's easy to say; Everything! And it's true too. It contains everything. I think that is what makes people watch and get involved. Just to mention a few things a soap contains love and hate, sorrow and happiness, friends and enemies. And the writers almost every time make it clear. A friend is a friend and seldom turns out to be an enemy. The enemy, however, can "dress up" as a friend just to get closer to be able to hurt more.\par And of course it has music. Sometimes it's written especially for the soap and then there's some of the music you hear every day on the radio. The main theme is something you hear in your head when a person says the name of a soap. It could be romantic or dramatic i e the main theme of the Swedish soap Rederiet is very dramatic, it was written to fit right into the soap, and it does.
I asked a question to friends on the internet all over the world what "ingredients" they found the most important in a soap and the answers were very different. Many of them thinks that love/romance/sex, intrigues, good actors and a good fast storyline are the most important.
2 Characters
What would the soap be if there were no interesting characters. The ones we love and the ones we love to hate. I'm going to try to compare the Swedish and the American ways in describing some of the main characters. I've chosen the following characters; the patriarch, the neurotic wife, the kind one, the bitch and the careless fellow.
But before the start of this I think it's important to say that how one interprets the characters is very much up to the person who is watching. Although it's quite clear to see which person is which character.
2.1 Introduction to the two soaps
First I'd like to introduce you to the soaps where I collected the characters so you know what they're about.
I'll start with my favourite; the American soap Sunset Beach. This is the first daytime serial by Aaron Spelling who has produced a lot of soaps over the years but no daytime soap before. In his record you'll find Dallas, Beverly Hills 90210 and Melrose Place just to mention a few. Sunset Beach is about Meg Cummings from Ludlow, Kansas who on her wedding day finds her fiancé cheating on her with her best friend, who is to be maid of honour. She decides to leave him at the altar and go to Sunset Beach to find her cyberromance "S.B". "S.B" doesn't want her to come but she doesn't find this out until later on, when she has already arrived at Sunset Beach. She's about to go back to Kansas, but she wants to meet him face to face before that. As in many soaps the way to their first meeting isn't free of complications . Anyway, Meg gets a job as a waitress at the Deep and the JavaWeb, a night-club and an Internetcafé both run by Ben Evans, who we know is "S.B". Eventually Meg finds out, too. Their lovestory, which is the main theme is not easy at all; it contains the widower Evans not very dead wife(everyone thinks she's dead but she'll show up later), her(Maria the wife's) best friend the neighbour of Ben's (who always loved him), and Meg's ex-fiancé. Meg and Ben get trapped in the wine cellar of the Deep and in a cave, just to give a few hints about what happens to them. Of course there are other characters and families in Sunset Beach. One of them is the Richards. They are the richest family in town. I'm mentioning them here because some of the characters I'll describe comes from this family.
Now to the Swedish soap I've chosen. It's Skilda Världar. It is a soap that has been produced both in Germany and Australia. Behind Skilda världar you find Peter Emanuel Falck who have also been producing soaps like Rederiet and Tre kronor and the Norwegian soap Sju systrar. The original is the Australian Sons and Daughters. And in the Swedish version(the one I'm using) the main characters are Sandra Bouvallius and Daniel Toivonen. They are twins who have been separated as infants by their mother. She wants to get out of her relationship with their father and feels like she can only take care of one of the children; so she takes the daughter with her. She gets employed in a mansion as a nanny for the only son in that family. The wife has died quite recently and later on Sandra's mother marry the widower Harald, and Sandra is brought up believing that Harald is her father. On her 20th birthday Sandra comes home from being in France for some time. At the busstop she gets robbed of her things but a young man stops the robber. It turns out to be Daniel , and from this moment on nothing will ever be the same for the two. They've been brought up in two different worlds. Sandra in a rich family and Daniel in middleclass family.
That were the soaps and now I'll tell you about some of the characters.
2.2 The Patriarch
The Patriarch is often the father of the rich family. According to the book Tvål!(Everdahl 1998) he's dominant and tries his best to get the only or firstborn son to be interested in the family business. He's a man that believes in traditions and if he's not the founder of the business he has inherited it from his father and wants to pass it over to his son some day. Even if he seems to have everything under control the fact is that he's not always that smart.
In Sunset Beach Gregory Richards is the patriarch and he wants to have everyone around him under his control all the time. He doesn't care for the money when it comes to hiring a private detective to follow the young man his beloved daughter is seeing. He also wants his son, Sean, to do what he tells him to and not to do anything that's not appropriate. Like when he got a car as a bribe and he gave it away to a foundation to sell it so some poor people could get the money instead.
In Skilda Världar Harald Bouvallius is the head of the family. He's from "the old school", and has inherited his money and the family company. He also like his son to take over the company one day, but it isn't proceeding very well. The son(Tom ) wants to make his own career. Harald dies in a fire(which is quite usual in a soap), and the family is left fighting for the money. Just before he disappears his unknown brother shows up, which not easy for the family.
2.3 The neurotic luxurious wife
In the book Tvål! (Everdahl 1998) it is written that this character very often is an alcoholic. She may be married to the patriarch and have her own business, or a small company in her husband's business concern. She is often a good businesswoman and her company is successful most of the time.
Rebecka Bovallius is the wife of Harald. She was first the nanny of his son and had her daughter with her. She now runs a fashion company. She's not an alcoholic, but very vicious and doesn't let anyone tell her what to do.
Olivia Richards in Sunset Beach runs a radiostation. She's an alcoholic, but gives that up when she finds out that she's pregnant again. The thing is that she's been having some loveaffairs, so she doesn't really know if her husband or her daughters boyfriend is the father. She as well as Rebecka didn't have any money to begin with, but has always wanted a life in luxury.
2.4 The kind one
There's always a kind person in a soap, a person who's everyone's friend and thinks well of(almost) anyone. He or she is easy to talk to and a good listener. In addition to that he's according to the book Tvål! (Everdahl 1998) a doleful and gloomy person.
Mark Wolper came to Sunset Beach as a runaway, and became friends with Ben Evans who also employed by him. He's the first one Meg become a close friend of when she comes to town. Later there's a runaway girl who shows up and Mark helps her out, just like Ben did for him.
Mikael Toivonen is the kind one in Skilda världar. He also stands by for his friends and family. There's really not much to say about the kind one. He or she is always there when anyone needs to talk or just to see a friendly face. But there's not always a person to do the same for him.
2.5The bitchs
The bitch is a character we all love to hate. She is smart, charming, far-sighted and bad to the bone all according to the book Tvål! (Everdahl 1998). She's also full of plans how to be seen and often tries all the ways to come between two people in love.
In Skilda världar I think that Rebecka, although she's also the neurotic wife, has a lot of a bitch in her. Together with Camilla an employee of hers and the mother of her grandchild, she's the real bitch. Although Camilla and Daniel have Jakob together, Rebecka does a lot to split them up, and of course succeeds.
xAnnie in Sunset Beach isn't that successful, although she has help from Meg's ex-fiancé to try to break Meg and Ben up. She writes new entries to Maria's ( Ben's dead wife) diary which Meg finds and reads. Meg would never have read it if Ben hadn't been a person who doesn't want to speak of his past. Annie herself is a person who dresses to be looked at and isn't very lucky in love. She became friends with Ben before he met Maria(friend of Annie's) and lost him to her, and then when he finally got over Marias death Meg was there, so no luck there either.
2.6 The careless fellow.
This guy is young and rich and doesn't want to do what's expected of him. He's kind of a party guy and isn't always serious in his relationships with girls. In the book Tvål!(Everdahl 1998) the author writes that he's a rich male slut.
In Swedish soaps he's often a real creep, but in the American ones he's a bit nicer and can even be turned into a kind one later. Tom Bovallius is a real creep. He wants his own career and not a job in the family business. He doesn't have many serious relations, but was once engaged to Camilla(who has a son with Daniel, but the baby could as easily have been Tom's ). He finally found a girl to marry but then she was killed in a car accident.
Sean in Sunset Beach isn't a creep when it comes to girls. He's about 18 years old( Tom is between 25 -30). He too doesn't want to do has his father says, which is shown when he helps the runaway girl Tiffany and lets her stay in their maid's room(who has her family nearby and lives with them) without telling his father.
That will conclude my comparison of the characters. I haven't taken the main characters to comparison, but I mentioned them in the introduction.
3. Conclusion
3.1 Final words
Some final words of comparison are that soapcharacters aren't that different in different soaps although there are many ways to describe a person. I think they make them look a certain way so that we easily would recognise the character when we switch over to another soap. I would also like to say that this is a short summary for some of the people in a soap. It's not easy for a dedicated fan to pick out the most interesting characters, because to me they all have their places in the soap and although I don't like them all, they do their job to make the soap as real as possible.
3.2 Summary
An introduction to the two soaps I chose.
The American is Sunset Beach and it's about Meg and Ben who met over the internet as "Dorothy from Kansas"and "S.B". The Swedish one is Skilda världar and it's about the twins Sandra and Daniel who are separated as infants and meet again at the age of 20.
The characters I chose to compare are:
The Patriarch who believes in traditions.
The Neurotic luxurious wife who you shouldn't be surprised to see as an alcoholic.
The Kind one a gloomy person who always are there for his or her friends.
The Bitch a character we all love to hate.
The Careless fellow who doesn't do what expected of him and isn't very interested in keeping the familytraditions.
Literature
Tvål! Kärlek, svek och härligt hat på teve Göran Everdahl Amilcare Pizzi S.p.A, Milano, Italien 1998 Bokförlaget DN
WebPages
Evas Ben och Meg sida: http://lavender.fortunecity.com/pimlico/112/benmeg.hmtl
NBC's homepage about Sunset Beach http://www.nbc.com/sunsetbeach
Saras Sunset Beach Sida http://svesube.cjb.net/
Tv 4 homepage http://www.tv4.se
On these WebPages I've been using links to get to other pages too. I haven't really taken anything from them in this purpose but there's descriptions of characters and so on.
I would also like to add that Sara has because of lack of time and because the storyline is a bit dragged out closed down her pages. I myself hope that she opens them up again because they are full of information.