In Chile, both the men and the women watched telenovelas- to interrupt them during a telenovela was the highest offense. This obsession had nothing to do with gender, it was purely cultural.

I doubt you’re going to get many responses to this post from
soap watchers, I’d think that soap watching and political blog reading would be mutually exclusive.

Unless the purpose of this post was to do a not so subtle side kick to Fox News. In which case that montage the video link showed could have easily been done with any other broadcasting network as well.

To compare FoxNews to Days of our Lives would be intriguing if you could draw some comparison between Stephano and Bill O’riely, However as this post stands it looks like you just spent a lot of time trying to figure out an original way to present an unoriginal argument.

So is this post about soap operas or about fox news?

I couldn’t tell if the soap opera analysis was to present the Fox punchline or if the fox punchline was an after thought.

I think you should consider watching an episode of Days to draw parrallels between the two, sure your IQ would drop 10 points but it’d make for some good blogging.

As for me- I watch CNN, Fox, MSN, listen to NPR an KSL. I figure I have to listen to all viewpoints to figure out the truth for myself.
As a side note I did watch soap operas one summer when I was in the 3rd grade. My mom had no idea.

I consumed a lot of TV as a kid, but I simply don’t have time for it nowadays. But I haven’t really consumed much TV of any kind for years, except for general conference. We don’t have satellite or cable. Each time we go on vacation and stay at a place that has these amenities, I am quickly convinced that instead of a few channels of nothing useful, they simply have lots of channels of nothing useful. The only stuff I know about most TV personalities (including people on FoxNews and CNN) is stuff I have derived from other sources. If I ever sit down in front of the TV, I soon find myself getting up and wandering away to something more pressing. It just can’t hold my interest. I don’t understand what others see in it.

I know that the reason many old women watch these shows is for social reasons. They fit in with the group when the subject of these shows comes up. It’s like some guys with football or basketball – equally mindless shows.

I think Doug makes a good point about the social factor. I think that soap opera’s are also the television equivalent of romance novels (which also appeal more to women). I think it’s the female equivalent of porn as women respond more strongly to the emotional stimuli of the soap operas and romance novels just as men respond more strongly to the physical stimuli pornographic imagery. (I’m not sure I would go so far as to suggest that soap operas have the same destructive capacity of porn.)

Even if one doesn’t partake of porn – as a man it’s easy to recognize the pull that it can exert. I’m sure women are the same, even if they don’t watch soap opera’s they probably would recognize the draw if you were to ask them about it.

It’s the power of narrative/storytelling that hooks people on a soap opera and keeps them involved. And, unlike a typical t.v. series drama, the story continues every day, not just once a week.

My mom had a couple soap operas she used to watch back in the 1970s. Usually she was ironing or folding laundry, she never just sat and watched. I don’t watch soap operas, but I’ll listen to nearly-mindless radio, like NPR or Dr. Laura, while I’m mopping a floor. Something entertaining that doesn’t interfere helps me stick to a task till it’s done, something I wouldn’t bother with if I didn’t need to get the spaghetti sauce off the floor.

When I was in my early 20s, some of the gals I worked with set their VCRs to tape the soaps, then they would discuss them the next day. So, there was a social function. It was, at least, an improvement on speculating and gossiping about real people.

Nibley used to make frequent comments about television fare, and how it depicts a world sharply in conflict with a Zion society. Are we prepared to participate in a society that most people, when putting them side by side, would look at Zion and respond with a judgmental “how boring”?