My two-cents worth and then some. An online journal by LP Brown.
Two long-running soap operas have been cancelled. All My Children and One Life to Live are scheduled to be scrubbed within a year. ABC’s decision to cancel the shows has soap opera junkies from Baby Boomers to Generation Xers making appointments with their therapists. During a recent TV newscast, an anchorman read an email from a soap fan expressing how deeply depressed she is since learning that the programs will be taken off the air. How do you save a soap opera junkie? What are they to do? Where do they go? Is there a 12 step program to help them? What about rehab? There must be some means of detoxing soap junkies. Even nicotine addicts have patches.
One of AMC’s stars who should certainly welcome the break is Susan Lucci. The queen of daytime soaps, Lucci, who plays Erica Kane on All My Children, looks marvelous in spite of the fact that she is older than television. (Okay, soapies, I was only kidding about Lucci’s age. Unclench your fists now so that your blood pressure will return to normal.)
I rarely ever watch soap operas, but I confess that decades ago, I watched a few episodes of All My Children and yes, I was one of the 30 million viewers who witnessed the wedding of Luke and Laura on General Hospital. I blame that lapse of judgment and temporary insanity on peer pressure from my girlfriends who were themselves soap junkies. Speaking of Luke and Laura while surfing the Internet a few days ago, I discovered that You Tube has a video of the 1979 episode showing the rape of Laura by Luke, and another video of that’s couple’s marriage. A You Tube video! Who would have thought it?
Occasionally, when I am channel surfing and pause momentarily on one of the soap operas, All My Children, The Young and Restless, Days of Our Lives — you name one, the snippets of conversations that I hear remind me that the characters in soapdom have more high drama than a proposed government shutdown, and everyone’s life revolves around sex, lies and reincarnation. Soap operas are the dramas of eternal life, where characters can die or get killed off and then after a few months or years return to the program; brought back from the grave by viewer demand. Who said that only Jesus could raise the dead?
Soap operas rule! At hair salons. In doctor’s waiting rooms. Walk into any office building, particularly the lounge or breakroom at lunchtime, and you can bet your paycheck that you will find a television set tuned to the stories. I have seen fans of daytime soaps have conniptions whenever their program is preempted by breaking news or – God forbid – a presidential news conference. Any presidential news conference.
I have approached this subject cautiously, because I know how seriously junkies take their fix. You’ve got your sports junkies, political junkies, and religious junkies, who are capable of losing it at any time under the right circumstances. Obviously, the soap junkies will go through serious withdrawal pains when All My Children is cancelled in September and One Life To Live fades to black in January. So, soapies, before you start jonesing, I offer you these words of consolation — get over it!
Baby Boomers think back about three or four decades. When we were younger didn’t the world seem to be a simpler, more rational place? Granted, our youthful generation produced dramatic social change, fist-pumping militants, barefoot hippies, and psychedelic drugs. Ours was a tumultuous yet evolving culture that led pundits to predict that because of the recklessness of our generation the world was going to hell in a handbasket. Look at the world today. Now look back at the days of our youth. Now look at the world today. Tell me is the basket half full or half empty?
The point is that overall today’s society seems ten times more out of sync than it was back in the day. The 21st century cultural landscape is muddier than the Woodstock Festival. Normalcy, privacy, and civility are things of the past. Call the present the go-along-to-get-along society, because there is a lot of denial and pretending going on. People are pretending to accept things that in their heart they feel are morally wrong. Political correctness rules over common sense, and PC has virtually annihilated the spontaneity of “call it as you see it.” The trend now is to pretend that you don’t see something inappropriate or unethical even if it is in plain sight. You can no longer call a spade a spade, offer a prayer in a public forum or use the world God without offending someone.
Violence and iniquity is spreading like blood gushing from a gunshot wound, and overreaction has reached new heights, from body scanning before plane trips to jostling in the office. Jokingly say to a co-worker, “Pal, if you borrow my stapler again without returning it, I’ll kill you,” and you are liable to find yourself snatched outside your cubicle, thrown flat on your belly, hands cuffed behind your back and swat team rifles pointed at your head. Don’t try to explain that you were only kidding. Don’t blink. Don’t sneeze. Don’t even inhale.
Thanks to texting and technology, even the English language is convoluted. Decades ago, when people thought of a mouse they visualized a creepy rodent scurrying across the floor. Now unless your home is infested with the critters, the tech savvy immediately think of a pointing device used to direct images on a computer screen. Proper grammar and spelling have become a hodgepodge of gobbledygook. We — used to be spelled w-e, not Wii. Now, we is still us, but Wii is a video game console. Who would have thunk it? Yes, I said thunk. Thanx u.
Boomers, look at the world today. Now look back at the days of our youth. Now look at the world today. Tell me is the basket half full or half empty?