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Section Five

Media Culture

18 European Soap Operas:The

Diversification of a Genre

T amar Liebes and Sonia
Livingstone

Why analyse European soap operas?

How does Europe preserve its cultural diversity vis-a-vis the swamping of
imported, mainly American, globally diffused, soap operas? The first massive
influx of American television during the 1980s has already stirred the worried
European film and television producers to consider seriously how to rise to the
challenge. Dallas, the American prime-time soap, immensely popular in Europe,
became the symbol of what was then labelled ‘American cultural imperialism’ or
Americanization (Mancini and Swanson, 1996), terms which may better be
replaced by the more neutral ‘globalization’ or even audiovisual ‘modernization’
(Schrøder and Skovmand, 1992). ‘Europe fights back’ was the spirited slogan
(Silj, 1988) which called for the local production of European family series in
order to combat the threat of television capitulating to Americanization.
But the result on the screens was disappointing. True, France delivered its
answer to Dallas in the form of Châteauvallon, a best-seller which transferred
the dynastic family from Texas to a French provincial town, and changed the
characters from oil moguls into the more cultured occupation of publishers. But
it took only a car accident involving its main star for the show to collapse.
Germany’s Lindenstrasse is another case in point. Explicitly modelled on the
British example of Coronation Street, it has nevertheless been influenced by the
American formula, focusing less on community issues and more on illicit sex
and romance.

Source: EJC (1998), vol. 13, no. 2: 147–180.