Soap Opera and Women's Talk: The Pleasure of Resistance (Communication and Human Values)

"This book contains a good mix of original research and theorizing with a comprehensive survey of the literature in the field. Its aim--to get us to rethink and reevaluate the positive and progressive contribution of female soap opera fans to women's culture and through that to the broader culture of late capitalism--runs clearly throughout the book and is gratifyingly well achieved. I expect the book will make a significant contribution to television studies, cultural studies, and women's studies. This is a good book that will make a significant, original, and provocative contribution to the field. I expect it to be widely read and cited."

--John Fiske, University of Wisconsin-Madison

How can such an apparently trivial or even exploitative genre as soap opera be associated with empowerment for its viewers? The answer, states Mary Ellen Brown, is that soap operas create and support a social network in which talk becomes a form of resistive pleasure.

Undertaken as an ethnographic study in which the author is a member of the group, a fan, and also a researcher, Soap Opera and Women's Talk demonstrates how the enjoyment of and engagement with soap operas create the opening for women to serve as wedges in the dominant culture. Brown explores how the hegemonic notions of femininity and womanhood are developed at one cultural site and how they can be accepted, resisted, and negotiated in the processes of consumption. This pivotal work on the relationships between feminism, cultural studies, and the media is essential reading for all students and scholars studying and working in these areas.