This Friday marks the broadcast television finale of "All My Children", the long-running ABC soap opera about Erica Kane and the other denizens of the fictitious Pine Valley, Pennsylvania.
Soap operas are often denigrated as one of the lowest forms of entertainment. The characters are often vapid or self-absorbed. None of them ever seem to work, except the doctors and lawyers. And the format often plays fast and loose with the concept of time - people rarely age, except for children, who can be born in one season then returns as a teenager just 5 years later if the idea suits a new storyline.
But for all their faults, soap operas have been an enduring element of the American fabric since the days of old-time radio. Back in the 30's and 40's, the soap opera became commonplace afternoon diversions for housewives as well as financial boons for stations and advertisers alike. And many of them eventually made a successful switch to TV when the little box stormed the country and changed everything. "Guiding Light" started on radio back in the 40's and only recently went off the TV airwaves.
With the departure of "All My Children" - soon to be followed by "One Life to Live" - there will be only 4 regular daytime soap operas left to carry the torch. And a valid argument for this seeming eventuality can be made regarding the seismic shift of both the American family and the American workplace. Two working parents is no longer a rarity, but the norm. Women are not expected to stay home as they were in the 50's and 60's. Even teenagers find the often ridiculous plots and stories of the average daytime soap opera to be passe.
But there's more to it than that. I think you can draw a straight line from the demise of the American soap opera back to one event - a colossal touchstone that changed television forever in so many ways. Brace yourselves for his name - O.J. Simpson!
Regardless of where you fall on the "did-he-or-didn't-he" aspect of the brutal killings of his wife and her lover, the plight of O.J. Simpson and his subsequent trial was undeniably a game changer. Singlehandedly, they spawned both the 24-hour news cycle and the obligatory news "crawl" that runs across virtually every news channel these days.
Now, both of these elements have their benefits, whether it's the comfort that can be provided by the 24-hour news cycle in times of distress, such as a hurricane or 9/11. And any sports fan counts his blessings that the "crawl" exists, thus preventing endless hours of lost sleep worrying over the final score of "the big game".
But there is no turning off what happened to the American viewer after O.J. Scripted television took a hit and reality TV began to take over. We became obsessed as a society with watching real people doing - whatever. We, as a whole, like to see them on display. We like to see them make fools of themselves. We like to watch cameras follow celebrities around in their private moments with hopes that they'll say or do something stupid. We like to vote for people on singing and dancing shows - more than we do for, oh, a presidential election. We love so much to build them up and equally as much to tear them down. There is a voyeuristic element to it all that I'm sure speaks to all kinds of psychological drawbacks.
And there's the soap opera, the bastard child kicked to the curb. Sure, after starting out as these chaste mini-plays about fidelity and morality and the struggles of real people, soap operas became their own worst enemy: hackneyed fables filled with deathbed confessions and unrealistic back-from-the-dead shockers and cliffhangers. But somewhere along the way, soap operas also got ahead of the curve on many social issues of the day, scripting poignant story arcs about AIDS and homosexuality and interracial relationships that prime TV viewed as taboo and wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole. In many ways, the American soap opera was a reflection of who we were.
The entertainment world is filled with genres that are so very us, both good and bad. We respond to the underdog nature of "Rocky" and "Rudy" because America itself is the story of the underdog. We thrill to "The Dark Knight" and "Rambo" and pull for characters like Jack Bauer and anyone Charles Bronson every played because we like knowing there's someone out their who can deliver justice, even if that justice can sometimes blur the edges of what is right and wrong.
And I know all reality TV isn't bad. There is something fascinating about the gamesmanship and strategy of "Amazing Race", something endearing about the altruistic nature of "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition". And there's probably something to be said about the idea that we're now the ones dictating what we want to watch and the notion we would rather watch people more like ourselves and not characters that aren't real and simply exist on the written page.
But there's something equally bizarre and self-absorbed and even sad about much of the reality TV we now respond to. We may be watching "ourselves" more now, but I think there's ultimately more of us to be found in the Kanes and the Martins and other great soap opera families than can be found in Snooki and her ilk.
The American soap opera is dying and so is a part of us. That's a dose of reality that cannot be denied. Thanks alot, O.J.! Now we have something else to blame you for.
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