Page 265 - Communication Theory and Research

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250 Communication Theory & Research
power-crazy rogue (Greece; see Mander, 1983). The dyadic is never socially
responsible, as it is in search of a new, as yet undiscovered, moral code.
While both the patriarchal soaps and the community soaps operate within a
structure of power relations that they take for granted, the community soaps have
been produced in the spirit of public broadcasting, indicating certain pedagogic
aims. Thus, unlike the patriarchal dynastic type which is supposed only to appeal
to the viewers’ fantasy, here we may examine the kinship structure in terms of the
social message they are consciously seeking to transmit, i.e. what issues are inten-
tionally problematized, and, in parallel, what these soaps take for granted.
In other words, we were interested in how they constitute a type of public forum
for debating social issues. We regard the kinship network as the static, taken for
granted, hegemonic elements, and thematic analysis as complementing the
picture by revealing the extent and patterns of openness to change.
Within this gender and class context, what social problems do community
soaps in British and German cultures address? Both have unemployed charac-
ters, teenage drug taking, sexual harassment and battered wives. Both soaps
16
make attempts to deal with the issue of xenophobia and racism. Lindenstrasse
transmits two messages regarding immigrants on the street. One is the explicit
statement of the immigrants themselves that they would prefer to go home. The
second, implicit in the story, is that violence of neo-Nazis against immigrants is
exercised by misguided, harmless youngsters, and is basically under control. 17
Coronation Street did not at this point have any foreign inhabitants. While both
18
communities are harmonious, and in control of violence, it does threaten. Our
tentative observation (which has to be confirmed) is that in Coronation Street
19
violence is mostly external, anonymous and arbitrary. In Lindenstrasse there is
more violence from within. 20

The postmodern future?

Both the community and dynastic types offer stable patterns of social relations,
and hence an image of a stable society. Two main forms of stability are repre-
sented, one based on generational hierarchy, the other based on social class. With
regard to the production of soap operas in Europe, it seems that the community
and dynastic forms are the two most commonly adopted. The community
model, as noted above, is more often associated with public service tradition, the
latter seems to fit with the cultural preoccupations of the countries which pro-
duce them. Or, more accurately, one might say that the dynastic form, based on
hierarchical power relations of one form or another, allows space for the expres-
sion of particular sociocultural concerns, where these differ across nations, in a
manner not so readily permitted by the dyadic form of soap opera, in which
individualistic longings take over. Thus Redereit struggles with issues of ecology,
town planning and workers’ rights (all invading the grand designs of the dynas-
tic family), while Die Schwarzwaldklinik addresses such issues as the limits of
patriarchy and the meaning of ‘countryside’ in the German tradition (Kreutzner
and Seiter, 1995).