Page 162 - Decoding Culture

G E N D ERED U B J E C TS, WOMEN'S TEXTS 155
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was to be seen especially in the studies of soap opera (Dyer et al. ,
1981; Hobson, 1982; Ang, 1985; Geraghty, 1991) and romantic fic­
tion (Modleski, 1982; Radway, 1987) that became so prominent in
1980s cultural studies. Several themes run through this work, four
of which will be examined here: ideology; gendered pleasure; read­
ership; and identity. All four interrelate, of course, so this division
is somewhat artificial, if convenient.
Let us begin with ideology, at the start of the 1980s still the
touchstone for so much of cultural studies. In attending to women's
culture and inquiring about the pleasures that women took from
this material, feminist scholars were obliged to question the con­
ventional designation of such texts as straightforward carriers of
patriarchal ideology. In one of the earliest explorations of the issue
in relation to soap opera, T e rry Lovell (1981: 50-51) seeks to sup­
plement conventional views of ideology by recognizing the
distinctive uses that women may make of the form:

Coronation Street offers its women viewers certain 'structures of
feeling' which are prevalent in our society, and which are only par­
tially recognised in the normative patriarchal order. It offers women
a validation and celebration of those interests and concerns which
are seen as properly theirs within the social world they inhabit.
Soap opera may be the opium of masses of women, but . . . it may
also be . . . a context in which women can ambiguously express both

good-humoured acceptance of their oppression and recognition of
that oppression and some equally good-humoured protest against
it.

In posing the issue in this way, Lovell is recognizing that ideology
and pleasure are not straightforwardly related. The interface
between them, as she puts it, 'is always and necessarily an irregu­
lar one' (ibid: 48). Of course, pleasures are crucial to the ways in
which cultural forms serve ideological functions, but to uncover
the ideology apparently conveyed in a text is to say little or nothing

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