School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications

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Style, spectacle, excess and The bold and the beautiful

NDALIANIS, ANGELA ( 1994)

Much of the writing on daytime soap opera has focused on the genre's melodramatic form with particular emphasis being placed on the idea of excess: the excess of emotion, narrative form and style. John Fiske, among others, has argued that the hyperbolic excess that dominates the genre has the potential for opening up numerous and complex interpretative positions that reject the 'singular' meanings favoured by the classic realist text that has dominated Hollywood cinema. Among the American soap operas currently broadcast on Australian daytime television , 'The Bold and the Beautiful' epitomises the genre's capacity for producing a form that tests the boundaries, not only of the classical narrative, but of the soap form itself.