How the 1980s Soap Opera Craze Changed Television Forever

Remember when Luke and Laura got married on General Hospital? That was the peak of the 1980s soap opera craze. People were setting their VCRs, gathering for binge-watching parties, and forming discussion groups. ABC's 1984 Olympics coverage was even interrupted to update viewers on their favorite soaps.   

In the early 1980s, soaps became common cultural currency. The 1981 wedding of Luke and Laura attracted the largest audience for a daytime soap episode in US television history. A surfeit of media attention to the wedding was paired with a boom in the merchandising of ancillary products such as soap-inspired T-shirts and board games, celebrities declaring their soap fandom, and large groups of college students gathering in communal campus spaces to watch the daily installments.

That audiences beyond the housewife had become so invested in soap opera accorded it a new level of respect, but this respect assumed that 80s soaps were “better” than the daytime dramas of the past; the soaps’ greater cultural legitimacy was dependent on a distancing from their feminized history.

The rise and fall of the soap opera craze was due to several trends that collided, from cultural shifts to world news to technology. But it reinforced community television, in which people bonded over their favorite fictional worlds. Read about soaps in the 1980s at LitHub. -via Digg


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I remember going to LA in 1980 and visiting the set of General Hospital so my Dad could meet up with some of his old co-workers from his CBS days. My two most vivid recollections were 1) the set was just a big 'ol dank warehouse, and 2) the actors loved watching themselves on TV.
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I remember my mother watching General Hospital before I started first grade. The big drama was whether Dr. Hardy would marry his nurse Audrey. And there was a teenager named Angie who was pregnant... quite the scandal.
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I grew up with General Hospital. It was must see TV for my mom - the nurse's aide. The episode that finally got me hooked: Cliffhanger episode with two young people in a plane that's about to crash. Could hardly wait for the next episode. Except - nothing. I'm like, wait a minute! What about the plane crash?? That's all I remember. By the time the whole Luke and Laura thing came around, I was bemused. He raped her you know. Nothing about that in the article, but it's why their marriage was such a story.
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