The Irresponsible Party
A few months ago, I chastised the industry for trying to drum up attention, pats on the back, and Emmys with social issue stories. My main point was that if writers are going to take serious real life issues and try to make them five minute tearjerkers for their own glory, then it bordered on exploitation. And while in my first column I touched on the fact that sometimes these stories are nothing more than a prop, it was still quite a rare occurrence. But now I'm beginning to notice that lately more writers are throwing serious issues at soap characters without any awareness of the severity of the subjects they are addressing. In the past while these stories were unrealistic medically or not as well told as they could have been, they were not told with a cavalier attitude. When serious issues were brought up in soaps, no matter the level of dedication the writers had to the subject, most of the time they were taking it seriously, they were trying to come off as educational, important, compelling, and responsible. Instead, now that is the rarity.
The threat of this happening on a regular basis was there with the string of acquaintance rapes soaps suffered. Each time, the story may have courted controversy and had tongues wagging, but there wasn't an ounce of responsible storytelling in them. While one was an genuine attempt to deal with the he said/she said aspect of this type of assault (but ultimately blew it), another on the same soap was actually played for a bit of comic relief. Yet another was too afraid to call it a rape and ended up offending everyone in the writers attempt to make it vague. It has become clear that rape is not only a handy cliché for your lazy soap writer, but it's now treated as serious an issue as a paper cut. But now other issues spanning from mental illness to abstinence are being used and abused as props for other stories.
The reason why this is happening is actually very simple; writers are dealing with these touchy subjects, these taboos, and these social issues for shock value. They aren't even trying to pretend to be responsible, to get pats on the back, they are just going for a small moment of melodrama. They want to garner a specific reaction from audience and then they want to use that moment to go into their next fluff storyline. They use very real and dramatic illnesses and issues to further love triangles. These aren't social issue stories; these are social issue insults.
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