Soap City
By Zoe Agnew
The problem with being a devoted fan of daytime soap operas is the
time commitment required. Soaps not only take up an hour of your time,
every single day during the week, but there are also a wide selection
of soaps that can be watched daily.
Soap operas are renowned for their unbelievably-dramatic plot lines
that are drawn out over long periods of time. Thus the viewer feels
like he can't miss an episode, in case he misses a crucial plot turn
or tantalizing plot-resolution. This commitment of time, as well as
emotions, could turn some viewers off of the soap-viewing experience.
Enter Sony.com's Soap City. There you can get the daily update of
ten popular soaps. These Daily Dose updates are broken up into several
categories: Full Potency ("for the best and hottest story of
the day"); Keep Out of Reach of Children ("For adult and
violent subject matter"); May Cause Drowsiness or Nausea ("Just
plain boring or hard to tolerate or view"); and Dangerous Side
Effects ("A plot point that serves as a catalyst for major story
developments"). Although they make these category descriptions,
the summaries under each sound suspiciously similar.
The tone throughout the site is often irreverent and even catty.
Any soap site that takes themselves, and soap operas, utterly straight-faced
would completely miss a hugely enjoyable element of soaps: campiness.
Soap City plays the camp up, and this makes their site enjoyable
even to us non-soap watchers. For example, within the Fan Zone, there
is a column called Hot Topics which prints and answers letters like:
"Hopefully, Sami will get her just desserts, since I believe
you have all forgotten just how evil a part you have written for
her. She may be a good actress, but playing this horrible part does
nothing for her. You don't see a "sweet person"; you see
"the devil". Wise up!" (http://www.spe.sony.com/soapcity/fanzone/hot_topics.html)"
This is great fun reminiscent of Ted Casablanca on EOnline, or any
other biting gossip columnist.
Soap City could build up their fan community even more than they
already do. There are several options for viewers to respond to the
show, whether through voting, opinion letter writing, or plot suggestions.
Soap City should take the campiness to a new level and allow viewers
to write, submit and respond to fan fiction. Then we can see the creativity
- and craziness - that daily soaps can become.