SOAPS

the lasting appeal of the soap opera

I recently attended a dance class with Eve Stainton hosted by Mica Georgis as part of their residency at The Florence Trust. We introduced ourselves with something we’re interested in at the moment. I said soaps, and failed to clarify I meant soap OPERAS, not like queer soap making workshops. Such is the twisted life I lead!

Soap operas and soap-inspired works have inspired the tone of my films a lot - even thought I didn’t grow up with the classics (Eastenders, Corrie, Hollyoaks). I kept abreast of Gossip Girl and 90210 via 123movies on my laptop, but that’s that classic divide between British soaps (calamities affecting mostly working class people) and American soaps (calamities affecting mostly RICH sexy people). I’m doing research for an exciting collab with xyz projects and found myself mentally compiling my fave soapy moments. I haven’t waded in to the realm of the telenovela, despite being a childhood Ugly Betty stan, because I don’t know enough of the form - although special mention to La telenovela errante by Raúl Ruiz and Valeria Sarmiento (yes, I will be linking to wikipedia. A peek behind the curtain, if you will).

Here are some of my fave soapiest soaps and soap inspired works:

Personal Problems

Bill Gunn (of Ganja & Hess fame) directed this meta-soap-opera written by Ishmael Reed. It follows the life and loves of a nurse living in Harlem. It’s gentle and ambling and strange, made dreamier with early videocassette recording.

It was originally made to be broadcast on PBS (which I love! Just like a real soap! Mass art!) but was never picked up. This was a running UNpersonal problem - Bill Gunn’s intended first film Stop! was X rated and shelved, only existing as a video rip - I’m sure someone is working on this and I hope I can see it in its full glory one day (if this is you hmu plz). Watch Personal Problems here or - I torrented it

Our Friends in the North

Do you want to watch a show where a key plot point is whether a member of the Militant Tendency can win a Labour safe seat in Newcastle in the 70s?

Do you want to see Christopher Eccleston, Mark Strong and Daniel Craig in a bouncy blow out and mutton chops?

Do you want to see Gina McKee weep because of the mould in her substandard council accommodation?

Do you want to see Malcolm McDowell build a Soho porn empire?

Do you want to see somewhat hacky and melodramatic renderings of the youth crime moral panic of the 90s which continued apace in the 2000s? (10 year old boy steals a car and crashes it on purpose while Common People blares)

Metrosexuality

Everyone I show this to is like WHY haven’t I heard of/seen this before??? It’s just that good. One has to wonder - is it that queerness AND blackness was too much for millennial Channel 4 execs? Was the straight male facial hair too dynamic? Was it the crashout of Channel 4’s 90s experimentalism? Was it the title? Is calling it Metrosexuality akin to Born in Flames’ climactic destruction of the World Trade Centre pre 9/11?

I’m sure I’ll write more on this one day so I’ll leave it at that for now. If you haven’t seen it yet - run, don’t walk.

Twin Peaks

What can one say about Twin Peaks? Let’s listen to my good Judy and collaborator Charlie Markbreiter, who watched it for the first time last year while we were working on Jaw Filler (which…has its own soapy moments!)

Riverdale

Now that we’ve covered Twin Peaks let’s get on to the real shit. Yes, I am a Riverdale defender. People laugh at what they do not understand, because they do not want to FEEL! Read those lines back about the highs and lows of high school football, and you will feel America scream.

The mid season 2 to season 3 run (start at the serial killer, go past the jingle jangle epidemic stop after the climax of Chad Michael Murray’s cult) shows Archie becoming a vigilante fascist in a way that I think is genuinely compelling! His bestie Jughead goes on hunger strike and locks himself to his old school to protest it being turned iNTO A PRISON and Archie and the wrestling team break up the picket in the name of law & order. To me, Riverdale is one of the only concurrent mass works of culture to deal with the first Trump era in any kind of interesting way. Not sure what’s going on season 4 onwards I did not watch to the end. Even I have my limits.

It’s called political art - heard of it?

Poly II: Plan for a Revolution in Docklands

This film by Blaize Kirschner and David Panos draws inspiration from Polly (1728), the censored sequel to John Gay’s popular The Beggar’s Opera (1727), the basis for Brecht’s Threepenny Opera. Gay(gay-lol)’s original opera was SO popular (they had MERCH) and was within the genre of ‘satirical ballad opera’ which was in itself SO popular (although only limited records of Gay’s take on the genre remains) indicating in turn the popularity of the Italian operas whose forms and tropes were being satirised. The Beggar’s Opera sets new words to popular songs of the time (ALERTA ALERTA I’m about to mention pantomime again) just like Katie Price doing Hot To Go as a panto dame. The Beggar’s Opera was partially inspired by legendary thief Jack Sheppard, the inspiration for Confessions of the Fox. It all comes back to trans smdh.

John Gay’s Polly is set in the West Indies and sounds dubious (racist) but fascinating - brings me back to thoughts I had in a previous substack about England’s relationship to its colonies as an extension of itself and an outer border reaffirming its own identity. I keep coming back to this book The Politics and Poetics of Transgression which outlines further this identity of the Other defining the identity of oppressive core, informed by Said’s Orientalism. I chatted with Edmund Ogawa Hardy (creator of the amazing Negative Worlds) who’d heard a recording of Polly and said it was a bit washed up and none of the satire pointed at colonialism, which is a shame! Polly II attempts a bit of this by having Carribbean (& white cockney) characters as Robin Hood style pirates / saboteurs who are considered somewhat reactionary by the other revolutionaries of this drowned docklands world. It’s complicated and I’m not sure it totally lands within the short runtime, but I’d rather a complication that misses than no attempt at all.

Here’s the artists’ spiel: “Polly II imagines a future insurrection against poverty, displacement and judicial terror, drawing on current anti-gentrification struggles and eighteenth-century accounts of East London’s radical working class, anti-colonial uprisings in the Caribbean, and their connections through revolutionary movements across the Atlantic. Realised with a cast of local amateur actors and housing activists and replete with DIY special effects and musical interludes”

I loved one scene in particular - set in a community centre at a public consultation for a new housing development (are you noticing a theme?), where the self styled community leader is also crooked. The attendees argue. Meanwhile water from the flood starts to creep slowly across the floor. The attendees scrape their chairs cacophonously to escape. It ends in a singalong with all attendees mopping up the flood water.

Tracey Rose The Cockpit

Tracey Rose’s work is part of 123 movies exhibition at 243 LUZ (on til 18th April) where I also have a DVD of my films including Poppets my soapiest short (shameless plug). I’ve only seen excerpts of Rose’s work so don’t miss the chance to see it in full! (unless I’ve posted this too late - which is likely)

Acorn Antiques Victoria Wood

My favourite Victoria Wood moment is Staying In, featuring Jim Broadbent as an archetypal Northern Playwright. But a special mention to Acorn Antiques for spoofing a certain kind of slow stuffy British soap with goofs galore. It partially satirises Crossroads, which also inspired Isabel Waidner’s latest, As If. One of the doubles in the novel is a former soap actor in a show called People Live, People Die, People Live As If They Were Dead Already. The novel gestures to a particular trajectory for white working class British actors of a certain age - admiration for Gary Oldman as Joe Orton, a bit of Angry Young Man theatre, a Mike Leigh if you’re lucky, maybe a Ken Loach too if things line up, then 10 years in the soaps. Waidner’s character fumbles the bag and gets booted directly from the National Theatre to a journeyman acting career in PLPDPLAITWDA.

Normalerweize - In This Godforsaken Place

‘In This Godforsaken Place’ is a spoof soap opera within the Danish satirical sketch show Normalerweize by Lærke Winther and Anna Neye, recommended to me by art school bestie Martin Essemann. I love the tone, the repetition, the quivering mouth acting. I find it AFFECTING! Quivering mouth acting in a middle brow tasteful drama where everyone is wearing COS type clothes makes me want to throw something at the screen. Quivering mouth acting on a soap opera makes me feel ALIVE! The end starts to recall Ming Wong’s Life of Imitation. A melodrama list would be a whole other thing so I’m putting a pin in this!

Rehana Zaman: Some Women Other Women and all the Bittermen

I saw this while a student at UAL and thought it was amazing! I still think it’s amazing. The simple juxtaposition of 2 forms of labour that are often cynically deployed against each other (white working class man in traditional industry versus feminised migrant worker in work defined as ‘low skill’) works so well without further exposition. Plus, the soap is very well rendered! You have to know a form to pastiche it properly. Watch via Zaman’s website.

Updates:

• Charlie & I were among three fabulous winners of the Hodler Prize for our novel Jaw Filler (pre-order it - second print run shipping soon!) which among other things means Ottessa Moshfegh read and liked our book! slay! Now can someone advise me on crypto - do I buy a job lot of testosterone from the dark web for the coming storm? sound off in the comments <3

• watch me, Bri & Munesu perform Plot Hole at Big Throw #3 SET Social 23rd April

• I’m doing something new for Mica’s performance night 24th April (yup, 2 nights in a row!!! eeekkk!!! for real though I actually love performing and would like to do MORE…act in stuff…and more readings too. hmu. all the world’s a stage…)