(upbeat music) (graphic pops) - Hello and welcome to "Journal".

I'm Steve Kendall.

They started in the '30s on radio, and to some degree, they're still with us today.

We're talking about soap operas.

We're joined by Dr.

Matt Donahue and Dr.

Charles Coletta from the Bowling Green Department of Popular Culture to talk about soap operas in popular culture, the conference you, gentlemen, are gonna have.

First of all, welcome to "Journal".

- [Charles] Thank you for having us.

- [Matt] Thanks for having us.

- [Steve] Thank you for both being here.

You know, Matt, tell us a little bit about the Department of Popular Culture and Critical Studies, because you guys do a lot of things besides just these seminars.

And we've had you on to talk about those before, but kinda give us the scope of what you folks cover.

- Well, the Department of Popular Culture was founded in 1973 by Dr.

Ray Browne, and it really put Bowling Green State University on the map.

It was kind of, of course, everybody knows BGSU as a teacher's college, but Ray Browne had a vision for studying contemporary culture.

He sort of viewed studying contemporary culture as sort of like studying the new humanities, where the old humanities, Shakespeare and that sort of thing, but the new humanities hadn't been studied.

So what Ray Browne wanted to do was he wanted to create an academic program, the Department of Popular Culture, as a place that academics could go and study contemporary culture.

And we've been going really strong since 1973.

We have an undergraduate degree that students can get in popular culture.

We also have a masters degree that students can get in popular culture.

And then to get a PhD, folks have to go through the American Culture Studies program.

But what's unique is that Ray Browne was a doer.

So he put together a variety of other things related to popular culture.

He started the Department of Popular Culture that helped put Bowling Green on the map.

Then he started doing a number of conferences, national conferences and regional conferences.

And we sort of have taken a lot of inspiration from him.

So one of the last talks that he gave was "Popular Culture And."

It was like about tying topics out there in society to popular culture.

So for instance, a lot of the conferences that we've done here at our beloved university, Bowling Green State University, have been a particular topic and popular culture.

So we did heavy metal music and popular culture.

We did the Batman and popular culture, Spider Man and popular culture, the electric guitar and popular culture, funk music and popular culture.

And we wanted to mix it up a little bit and do something a little different for the soap opera and popular culture, because it is such a hugely popular medium, not only here in the United States but all across the world.

- Around the world.

Sure, sure, because, yeah, you'll see with the vast array of channels that are now available and the things you can see.

Yeah.

Hispanic language, any language basically, and the way they approach things can sometimes be different than ours, but they're still that same genre.

And you mentioned an interesting point there too, because this is the kind of stuff that goes, we're watching it, we're listening to it, whatever, it goes by, and sometimes, you don't realize why it's written the way it is, why it sounds the way it does, that sort of thing, because it's a lot of, almost all of it is a reflection of real life.

I mean, some maybe fantasized a little, maybe exaggerated a little bit, but the reality is it's what people are living in their day-to-day lives and they can see the characters in themselves the same way.

- Absolutely, and that's something that we also deal with quite a bit in our Popular Culture Studies is how popular culture represents really a document in time.

And so if you look at the soap operas of past, present, and from a national or international level, it's interesting because it sort of gives a vision.

If it's like kind of like a contemporary soap opera, it gives a vision of what's going on in society during a particular period of time: attitudes, hairstyles, clothing styles, - [Steve] Yeah.

- Different mores and so on.

So it's interesting to see how it's a document and it serves as the document, not only with soap operas, but pretty much anything everything in popular culture.

- [Steve] Anything, sure, sure, yeah.

Yeah.

- [Charles] Oh, no, and as Matt was saying, Ray Browne defined popular culture as the culture of everyday life.

And so people would tune into these shows every day.

My grandmother watched "All My Children" probably from the day it was on until the day she died.

And you see how the culture changes, how certain topics which were totally taboo, then they start to filter in in the daytime dramas, like interracial relationships or drugs or spousal abuse, things like that they weren't even dealing with on primetime shows, they were dealing with on daytime dramas.

- Yeah, and it's interesting that you mention that because, obviously, primetime had a safe harbor after 10 o'clock.

I don't know if most people probably don't know that, but things were restricted between 8:00 and 10:00 to certain topics, where during the daytime, which is kind of interesting, because during the daytime, you could do a lot more there than you could necessarily between 8:00 and 10:00 PM at night.

- Right, now for example, the most famous relationship in soap operas that one of our speakers is gonna talk about is the Luke and Laura from "General Hospital."

- [Steve] There, yeah.

- And everybody thinks of their famous romance.

It's still the highest-rated, I believe the highest-rated episode in daytime television.

But it starts off with Luke sexually assaulting her on the disco floor.

- [Steve] Ah, wow.

- And you know, they tried to sort of forget that, but the fans remember that.

And so 20 years later, they have to address it because times have changed and you can't ignore that anymore.

And so things like that, there were characters who had abortions on soap operas in the early 1970s, and that was pre-Roe versus Wade days.

- Yeah, well, and then you go, you look, again, you look at primetime, especially from the late '50s early '60s where, in primetime, on the Dick Van Dyke show, they had separate beds in the bedroom, yet on a soap opera later on, there were affairs, there were all kinds of things going on that we people didn't talk about, but yet they were going on, because they became things that people talked about in their everyday lives.

- That's exactly right.

And these go all, like you said, at the beginning of the show.

They all go back to the beginning of radio.

The reason that they're called soap operas is because women were at home doing cleaning, and these shows were sponsored by soap companies.

- [Steve] Soap companies.

- And detergents and things, and the shows were very gentle.

"The Guiding Light," the guiding light was Jesus.

A minister would come to your house, the person's house and sort of solve their problems.

And they were done in 15 minutes.

And now they're, some of these storylines really extend for decades in some of the shows.

- Yeah, and we've got just a moment here, but I know when we come back, then you get that transition from radio to television.

And then the just explosion of things.

Of course, radio was the only medium then for a long, long time, and that's why they got their start there.

But we come back to talk about sort of, as we move through the years, how things changed.

And as you guys said too, you can look at a show sometime from the '60s and '70s ago, so what year do you think that is?

What is that hairstyle?

Is that from '77 or is that from '68?

That kind of thing.

- [Charles] That's right.

- So we'll come back in just a moment with Dr.

Matt Donahue and Dr.

Charles Coletta from the Bowling Green Department of Popular Culture and Critical Studies here on "The Journal."

Our topic is soap operas.

You're with us on "The Journal."

Our guests are Dr.

Matt Donahue and Dr.

Charles Coletta from the Bowling Green Department of Popular Culture and Critical Studies.

They've got a conference coming up, a seminar on October 31st, November 1st to talk about the soap opera in popular culture.

Dr.

Coletta, kinda walk us through, we mentioned the fact that these began in the '30s and they were sponsored by soap companies because the idea was to target women, and that was who was home.

So cleaning, soap, the connection.

So kinda walk us through the decades to where we kind of get to now eventually.

- Well, there's a woman who's largely been forgotten by sort of the general public, but she really was a pioneer of television history.

Her name was Irna Phillips.

- [Steve] Oh, okay.

- And she was a writer, and she created a bunch of the earliest soap operas for radio.

And then they transitioned to television.

First, on radio, they were 15 minutes, and then they might go up to half hour on television, and then later, an hour.

But she was interested in stories that featured strong women.

If you look at the history of soap operas, a lot of the shows are female-centric.

A lot of female writers, the main characters were women.

There were sort of good-hearted women and the vixens who would come into the town, that kind of a thing.

But Irna Phillips really wanted to sort of showcase life from a female perspective.

And on some of these shows, you have characters like Susan Lucci was on "All My Children" and Erica Kane and some of these other shows, where the women were the driving force of the programs.

And you see, as time goes by, that the women do become stronger.

There was an episode of "The Guiding Light" where one of the main villains, he rapes his wife in the 1970s.

And it's like, "Well, it's my wife.

I can do whatever I want."

And that was a topic that they were not addressing at all, or in the larger popular culture.

And here, it's on at three o'clock in the afternoon.

And so it was interesting, where you would find shows, they would be set around the hospital or the local community.

And sometimes, they could go into fantasy elements.

They could go kind of off the wall for a while.

There was a hidden frozen city underneath General Hospital and things like that.

But they were really dealing with sort of daytime drama of everyday people.

And what they would do is the shows would be repetitive and kind of slow paced.

- [Steve] Right.

- [Charles] So it didn't matter if you missed a day or two.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- [Charles] You could come back- - [Steve] You'd catch up pretty easily.

- [Charles] You could come back and catch up pretty easily.

And they were always kind of explaining what was going on.

You're my sister and I love you, and I loved you even when you ran off with my husband.

And so tell my students, if you could watch a show for five days, you would pretty much know everything that was was going on.

- [Steve] Going on, yeah.

- [Charles] And people really became invested with these characters.

Some of the actors would be on shows for 20, 30, 40 years.

- [Steve] Now, and how many, I know it probably varied, but they were shooting a lot of episodes.

I mean, this isn't like 13 weeks in primetime, or back in the day, 26, 52 weeks.

They were doing this almost every day of the week.

- Right, there were hundreds of episodes a year and five episodes a week.

And a lot of times, into the early '70s, they were still doing them live out of New York.

And so it was constant pages for these people to remember.

- [Steve] Sure.

- And it was good training ground.

A lot of people went on to bigger careers.

Kevin Bacon and Billy Dee Williams and Julianne Moore and lots of people.

But other people sort of stayed in the trenches and ground these shows out.

And the most interesting thing is how people talked about how they got into soaps.

They were primarily targeted towards women.

And girls would watch them with their mother or their grandmother.

And they would kind of stick with those shows.

So we watched ABC or we watched CBS and people were very loyal to these things.

And you could see characters be born, grow up, and their lives throughout.

- [Steve] Get married, have their families, and then eventually become, yeah, the older people in the show.

- Yeah, that's it.

You could have like a real history of these characters on these shows.

- Yeah, well, it is interesting too when you talk about that, because you would see, a lot of times, if you look back over an actor's career, that they would be in soap operas, they would go to movies, they would go to TV, but then they would sometimes come back to being a character in a soap opera again.

And that was just the way it was.

There was no stigma to being in a soap opera.

It wasn't like, "Oh no, you're doing so."

It was considered just regular acting.

There was nothing lower about it.

It was considered prime.

- No, it was work.

And the interesting thing is there were lots of different genres.

Again, there were the sort of the mainstream, but then we have people who are big fans even now of something like "Dark Shadows."

- [Steve] Yeah.

There's...(laughs) - Which have vampires and werewolves, and you watch the DVDs, it looks kind of creaky and low budget.

But I know people my age who weren't old enough to watch it then, they're watching them on YouTube and places now.

- Yeah, and in real time, the production values back then were, things weren't as computer-generated and all that sort of thing.

So you had real sets with things you had to populate the sets with and, yeah, and these things had budgets.

The idea was to make money, obviously.

- That's right.

And you didn't need to be sort of sitting in front of your TV and watching it.

The idea was that it was kind of even like pictures with radio, radio with pictures because you could be making dinner or cleaning the house or fixing things up with the kids and the show was on in the background and you could still follow it along.

- Yeah, and as you said too, if you did miss a day or two, they would definitely go back and sort of rehash what went on the previous.

- [Charles] Yeah, they would.

- [Steve] Which, from a writer's perspective, that was a lot of content to generate.

So they needed to actually do that, to some degree, not only for the audience but for themselves just to fill that amount of time.

- That's right, and that's why the plots could become convoluted sometimes.

And then, like Matt was saying, how they reflected the times, like in the 1980s, Rick Springfield shows up on "General Hospital" and he's a rock star.

And he's playing the doctor at the hospital and he's a rock star by night on the show.

That kind of a thing.

- Yeah, yeah.

So, well, and because it's interesting too, because they would attract celebrities.

It was a big deal to appear on so far.

Just like it is now in a certain primetime series, people will make a guest appearance because you want to be on that show because it is so popular.

- The biggest one probably was, I mentioned, Luke and Laura in "General Hospital," when they finally did get married.

Elizabeth Taylor shows up.

And they were on the cover of People Magazine with Elizabeth Taylor.

And she cursed them at the wedding.

I forget who she was, but she cursed them.

And that's why they've had problems for the last 35 years on the show, or 40 years.

But you're right.

Even on the nighttime soaps, you would get, Ava Gardner would show up on "Knots Landing."

Lana Turner shows up on, what was it?

"Falcon Crest."

- [Steve] "Falcon Crest," yeah.

- Shows like that.

- Yeah.

because it was, yeah, I mean, it was considered, and as you said, from an actor's point of view, it was work and it kept you out there in front of people and you wanted to be seen on those shows.

- [Charles] Right, right.

- [Steve] So, yeah.

- [Charles] And especially in the 1980s, the nighttime soaps all exploded.

You had things like "Dallas" and "Dynasty," and those were at the top of the ratings for most of the 1980s.

- [Steve] Yeah, and for a lot of people, that was their career.

I mean, there were obviously other genres in primetime, but for a lot of them, that's what you remember them for.

They went on to other things to continue to act after that, but people always remember, because you think about Larry Hagman, for instance, in "Dallas," - [Charles] Oh, sure.

- Some people might remember him from the '60s when he was doing "I Dream of Jennie," but most people know him as the bad guy or the the higher, yeah, JR, yeah.

- I was a kid at the time, and I remember what a big deal that was.

I mean, at the time, that was the highest rated show ever in American history.

- [Steve] Wow.

- Followed a couple years later by the last episode of "MASH."

But they were taking bets in Vegas.

The Queen Mother met Larry Hagman at some event in London and she asked him who shot him and he said, "I can't even tell you."

- [Steve] Who shot JR?

- Yeah.

Everybody was talking about that.

- [Steve] It was a cliffhanger at the end of the season.

And then they- - [Charles] That's right.

- [Steve] So, yeah.

When we come back, we can talk a little bit more about this, but also too, we wanna focus on the folks you're gonna have at the conference, because it's important to hear about that as well.

Back in just a moment with Dr.

Matt Donahue and Dr.

Charles Coletta from the BGSU Department of Popular Culture and Critical Studies.

Back in just a moment.

Thanks for staying with us on "The Journal."

Our guests are Dr.

Matt Donahue and Dr.

Charles Coletta from the Bowling Green Department of Popular Culture and Critical Studies.

We were talking about daytime soaps, and we touched at the end there about primetime soap hours, because that was a phenomenon, as we follow this sort of development from late morning, early afternoon, daytime soaps, suddenly someone, somewhere, somebody at a network went, "Well, would this work at night?"

And the next thing you know, it was working really well at night.

- Right, and they had tried it earlier in the '60s.

There was a show called "Peyton Place."

- [Steve] Ah, okay.

- That ran for a few days, of like two or three days a week in primetime.

But when "Dallas" hit- - [Steve] That was it.

- And then when they did that "who shot JR" season ending, and the only reason that became a reality was they had two extra episodes to fill at the last minute and said, "Well, let's just shoot 'em."

- [Steve] Wow, so it was almost like a fluke to it.

- It was a fluke, and it really captured the time.

It was like the Reagan 1980s with these glamorous oil barren families and their riches and the courtroom corporate intrigue.

And it really captured the attention of the sort of the tone of the era.

- [Steve] Yeah, and the infighting in the family to be in who's gonna be in control and who was- - [Charles] They all hate each other but they all live together.

The same mansion.

- [Steve] South Fork, yeah.

They all live in South Fork.

Now, when you look at that, where are we now with soap operas?

Because they've diminished, obviously.

Like TV goes in waves.

Things are hot and then they're not.

What's it look like now on the plane of soap operas?

- Well, the thing that really, really hurt soap operas in the '90s was the OJ Simpson trial.

- [Steve] Ahhhhh... - When OJ was on trial, the soaps basically, networks went right to the trial five days a week.

Shows were kind of regulated to this offside.

And here you had a real life soap opera, with celebrities and murder and sex and drugs.

And they never- - [Steve] Car chases and- - Everything, and they never really returned to their prominence.

And a lot of women had gone to work by that time.

- [Steve] Okay.

- So a lot of their audience had sort of diminished.

But there are only a handful of daytime dramas on now.

But there was a new one that was just started on CBS within the last maybe six months called "Beyond the Gates."

- [Steve] Okay.

- And this has an African American family at the center of it.

And so, soap operas, as we kind of grew up knowing them, aren't as what they were.

But I could argue that things like "Game of Thrones" or the "Gilded Age" on HBO, those are sort of higher tone premium shows, but they're still doing soap opera stuff.

Even a show like "Lost."

- [Steve] Yeah.

- Or "Friends," Rachel and Ross.

There's soap opera elements in a lot of them, other entertainment.

- They've been modified for the 2020s and whatever.

Yeah, yeah.

Now, when you look at the conference, you guys, obviously, there's so much to unpack with this, because we could talk about all these different shows for a long time.

So Matt, talk about about what the seminar, what the conference is gonna be about, and some of the people that are gonna be there, because they've had roles, they've had important roles in a lot of the things we've talked about.

- [Matt] Well, we do want all the viewers to know that the Soap Opera in Popular Culture Conference is taking place October 31st and November 1st at Bowling Green State University's Student Union in Room 201.

The conference is free.

And that's something that's kind of unique and a tradition that we've kind of tried to carry on at the Department of Popular Culture.

A lot of times, you go to a conference, you have to pay outrageous fees.

We always wanted to try and keep things very real for the public.

So anybody can come.

Again, it's in Bowen-Thompson Student Union, October 31st and November 1st.

And it is free so the public can come, and we have a number of academics coming in from all over the country who will be speaking on different topics related to soap operas and popular culture.

And we also have a number of stars that Dr.

Coletta has lined up.

- [Charles] Yeah, and they're gonna be joined, I wish we could afford to bring them in person, but they're gonna be joining us by Zoom.

- [Steve] Ah, okay, sure, yeah.

- [Charles] And we have, our keynote speaker is a man named Alan Locher, who's had a long career in public relations on television.

He worked for Disney, promoting hundreds of their films.

And he did a lot of the PR for a couple of the soap operas.

I think "Guiding Light" and "As The World Turns."

And he has his own YouTube channel called "The Locher Room," where he interviews the soap opera stars and the writers and what they're doing now and the impact of the show.

And he's great, he's a wonderful speaker.

- (STATIC) But we also have Kin Shriner, who was on "General Hospital."

He was on "General Hospital" for 45 years.

- [Steve] Wow.

- [Charles] He just left the show about a year ago or so.

But he was that third person in that Luke and Laura love triangle.

(STATIC) We have a woman named Constance McCashin, who was on "Knots Landing."

She left acting maybe about 25 years ago and became a psychotherapist.

And she's gonna be talking about sort of what, from that perspective, what did she learn as an actress and going back the other way?

(STATIC) And the other one is a lady named Claudia Lamb, who was a child star in the 1970.

She did tons of commercials, but she's probably best known for a show that I'm sure a lot of your younger viewers would know called "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman."

- [Steve] Oh my gosh, yeah, Mary, yeah.

"Fernwood 2 Night," yeah.

- [Charles] "Fernwood 2 Night" took place in Fernwood, Ohio.

And it was a very controversial, very strange show.

It aired most places in the country at 11:30 at night.

- [Steve] Yeah, because it was a little- - A little racy and syndicated by Norman Lear.

And it was very mundane and kind of very quirky and then bizarre things would happen.

One of the famous episodes is the high school football coach drowns in a bowl of soup.

He comes over to dinner and he passes out and he drowns in the soup and- - [Steve] Yeah.

- Martin Mull had a role on the show, and his character was impaled by an aluminum Christmas tree.

- [Steve] Yeah, so yeah, not your usual- - Not your usual stuff.

- [Steve] Run of the mill sitcom kind of stuff.

- Yeah.

But it's kind of a quasi sitcom soap opera.

It's very strange.

- Yeah, yeah.

And I guess when you look at those sort of things and we see, to some degree, real life in them, that's obviously the hook.

And not that those kind of things happen all the time, but people have odd things that go on in their lives.

But then you look at, and I think the one thing you talked about earlier is the fact that these moved women to a prominence because TV has always been, and film, whatever, always was sort of male-driven to some degree.

But that started to change, and it's changed obviously with the soap operas especially, because people may not remember the male lead to soap opera, but a lot of people could say, "Oh, yeah, that was the woman they remember."

- [Charles] That's right.

- Because she was the star of the show.

- That's right, and you had, you know, like on primetime shows, you had "Falcon Crest" with Jane Wyman being married to President Reagan.

- [Steve] Yes.

- And very few shows in the '80s had a woman in her '70s as sort of the heart of the show and sort of really the driving force.

And she wasn't the grandmother who was kind of weepy off to the side.

She was strong.

- [Steve] She was a strong person.

- [Charles] Yeah.

- [Steve] Yeah.

And it reflected, you know, the things that were going on in real life then too, as women became more empowered in the '60s and the '70s, and that sort of thing.

And people could see themselves in that role, because there were people like that in real life.

It's just that a lot of times, television media didn't put them in that prominent position in the show.

- That soap would would put them in a sort of a glamorous world.

- [Steve] Sure, sure.

- But the problems were relatable.

They couldn't deal with their children or they were having- - [Steve] You could scale them down.

- That's right.

People could identify with them.

- Well, and then you could look it and say, "Well, even the rich have problems."

- [Charles] That's right.

- "They're just like us.

Even they have problems."

Yeah, yeah.

Their kids go off the rails occasionally.

- [Charles] That's right.

- So, yeah.

Well, yeah, this is really great.

And once again, it's October 31st, November 1st.

Bowen-Thompson Student Union.

You can go online and find it real easily, I'm sure.

- [Matt] Yes, I mean, just do a quick search.

"Soap operas in popular culture."

Again, it's October 31st, November 1st.

The conference is free.

It's located in the Bowen-Thompson Student Union Room 201.

Anybody and everybody can come and catch a session and learn something about the soap opera in popular culture.

- Yeah, and they'll kind of bring back some flashes from the past for them too about, "Oh, yeah, I remember watching that kind of thing."

- [Charles] That's right.

- So, great.

Well, thank you guys so much for coming on.

Appreciate it very much.

- [Charles] Thank you very much.

- [Matt] Thank you for having us.

- [Steve] You're welcome anytime.

- [Charles] Okay.

- [Matt] Thank you.

- You can check us out at wbgu.org.

You can watch us every Thursday night at 8:00 PM on WBGU-PBS.

We'll see you again next time.

Goodnight and good luck.

(upbeat music)