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The increase in clandestine migrants to Italy following the 2010 Tunisian uprising has been an issue of popular and political concern in both countries. This article investigates Harga (2021, 2022), a top-rated and critically acclaimed drama series. Produced and aired by Tunisian national television as a vehicle of entertainment-education, Harga strove to make a geopolitical intervention in the process of irregular migration. Combining textual analysis with interviews conducted with the production's producers and participants, the article explores how local and transnational actors came together to create a counternarrative to the popular success stories of clandestine migrants. This approach contributes to a better understanding of the relationship between media and socio-cultural and political dynamics as well as of their effect on formulating mediated narratives on clandestine migration. Due to Harga 's documentarist depiction of the social and political driving forces behind irregular migration and its open criticism of Tunisian authorities, the show is investigated within the framework of post-uprising Tunisia's mediascape, and domestic and international political environment. In this regard, it offers a good case study for examining how local politics, transnationalism, and postcolonialism are intertwined in formulating discourses on irregular migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addressing the soap opera's enduring vitality, this study focuses on the soap culture on the Russian-language Web (Runet). With the serials produced in Asia and Latin America at the center, this culture emerges as a vibrant site of transnational spectatorship and a crucial area to negotiate the interpersonal relationships and social values. A fundamental condition of this cross-border phenomenon is language translation predominantly performed by women. In foregrounding the case of the Hindi soap serial on the Runet, this paper examines the role of women translators as a driving force behind global television traffic and an important agent of soap imaginaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During a 2-year period, the depictions of religious figures and their interactions with secular individuals in urban daily life became an integral feature of Turkish soap operas that gained popularity in the world after the 1990s. While previous studies have explored the portrayal of various actors in them in terms of age, gender, socio-economic status, and historical perspectives, there is a lack of analysis regarding the interaction between secular and religious urban representations. This research aims to investigate the differences in everyday cosmopolitan perspectives in terms of spatiality and temporality between the two groups. To examine this, the soap opera Kızılcık Şerbeti (One Love) was analysed. Research has shown that when two groups develop their identities in opposition to one another, it leads to the emergence of different temporal and spatial dimensions within the same urban setting. While it seems unfeasible to reconcile the daily routines of both groups in the same place, age, gender, education, and class make negotiation possible in shared spaces. This draws attention to the intersectional approach rather than the binary positions of identities in the placemaking process. The main contribution of this research is to integrate religion, which has been forgotten in human geography, into geographical and sociological discussions by focusing on an intersectional approach in an urban context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Thus far, the success of soap operas in peacebuilding and their contribution to social change have been attributed to the edutainment format they usually take. The edutainment format is indeed an essential element of success, but it alone does not reveal the basis for soap operas' influence on audiences and societies. We therefore argue that for soap operas to have a transformative peacebuilding effect, to contribute to the learning of non-violent engagement with conflict and thereby to enable social change and resilience to violent conflict within societies, they need to do more than educate and entertain: they need to acquire moral authority. This moral authority can only be derived from the combination of two elements: first, edutainment and second, civil norm building. The second element, though indispensable, has thus far not formed part of our understanding of the success of soap operas. To illustrate our argument, we take the soap opera Team Kenya which was created following the 2007–2008 post-election violence to help Kenyans overcome their ethnic-tribal identity conflicts in non-violent ways as a case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Soletras is the property of Editora da Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (EdUERJ) and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Latinas continue to be disproportionately affected by HIV in the United States. Effective interventions to address HIV-related disparities among Latinas are available; however, they have not achieved widespread dissemination due to implementation challenges for real-world settings. A culturally tailored intervention that increases access to HIV prevention is urgently needed. The objective of this study was to develop a culturally tailored telenovela (i.e., a soap opera) to promote HIV prevention behaviors (condom use; HIV testing; and pre-exposure prophylaxis awareness, access, and use) among Latinas. The study was conducted in community organizations throughout South Florida. A total of 44 Spanish-speaking Latinas, 18–35 years old, and sexually active with a man in the past 6 months participated in the study. The final product was an HIV prevention telenovela that incorporated Latinas' ideas and feedback and was produced as four 10-minute filmed episodes. This study aimed to develop innovative approaches to reduce HIV-related disparities for Latinas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The soap opera "Cinta Fitri" is one of the most popular TV drama series (soap operas) not only in Indonesia but also in Singapore (MdEntertainment). This paper focuses on the phenomenon of soap operas and gender representation in Indonesian media. The research methods that will be used in this research include content analysis, case studies, surveys and statistical analysis, literature studies, and comparative analysis. The Indonesian soap opera "Cinta Fitri" captivates audiences with its portrayal of personal struggles and complex relationships. Lead characters Fitri and Farrel challenge traditional gender norms, resonating with viewers. The show's popularity is fueled by its relatable storyline, strong character dynamics, and dedicated fan base, making it a cultural phenomenon in Indonesia. "Cinta Fitri" is an Indonesian soap opera that was successful because it presented an evocative story, strong characters who challenged traditional gender norms, and received fanatical support from the audience. By focusing on personal conflicts and relationships between characters, this soap opera shows its appeal and becomes a cultural phenomenon that influences views on gender in Indonesia.

During a 2-year period, the depictions of religious figures and their interactions with secular individuals in urban daily life became an integral feature of Turkish soap operas that gained popularity in the world after the 1990s. While previous studies have explored the portrayal of various actors in them in terms of age, gender, socio-economic status, and historical perspectives, there is a lack of analysis regarding the interaction between secular and religious urban representations. This research aims to investigate the differences in everyday cosmopolitan perspectives in terms of spatiality and temporality between the two groups. To examine this, the soap opera Kızılcık Şerbeti (One Love) was analysed. Research has shown that when two groups develop their identities in opposition to one another, it leads to the emergence of different temporal and spatial dimensions within the same urban setting. While it seems unfeasible to reconcile the daily routines of both groups in the same place, age, gender, education, and class make negotiation possible in shared spaces. This draws attention to the intersectional approach rather than the binary positions of identities in the placemaking process. The main contribution of this research is to integrate religion, which has been forgotten in human geography, into geographical and sociological discussions by focusing on an intersectional approach in an urban context.

The objective was to report the experience of the production process of a soap opera, as a tool for nutrition education (NE), to promote adequate and healthy eating soup kitchen frequenters. This process went through two phases: 1) collection of sociodemographic, nutritional and psychosocial data of soup kitchen frequenters in a Brazilian capital, to trace the profile of this subjects as well as their needs, in order to guide and orientate the plot of a story that intertwined with their own stories; and 2) creation of the plot/script and the production of the soap opera, as an audiovisual resource, loaded with signs that trigger subjectivity. The soap opera is defended as a powerful NE tool, since its aesthetic perspective intertwined with the stories of these people can mark and affect them, both by the intensity of the sensations and emotions it is capable of producing, as well as by its analytical pedagogical devices and subjectivities producing devices. It is assumed that the adoption of new ways of thinking and new practices requires an investment that acts not only in the intellectual or cognitive dimension of learning, but in its affective dimension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1992, Jesús Martín-Barbero and Sonia Muñoz co-authored a book called Televisión y melodrama: géneros y lecturas de la telenovela en Colombia (Television and melodrama: genres and readings of the telenovela in Colombia). There, the authors proposed some ideas that allow us to understand the new forms of entertainment, typical of the culture of the algorithm, at the dawn of the TVIV era. This article is arranged in the following sections: first, by way of introduction, a distinction is made between soap opera and telenovela in order to show that the analysis of these authors applies to both audiovisual products, now in decline; secondly, the way the audio-visual transition from TVIII to TVIV has experienced a boost during the last years is shown; thirdly, how the authors' insights on television melodrama find accommodation within the Mediation Theory and in the cultural context of the 1980s and 1990s is explained; finally, the article concludes by highlighting Barbero and Muñoz's lens (on social typology of screen time and other important conceptual tools) to understand new drama series on streaming media platforms within the context of a psychologized culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers a typology of modalities of reception based on the criteria of activity, (in)mediatedness and awareness, which aims to explain the presence of scenes and motifs with Plautinian parallels in the audiovisual dramatic products of the popular culture of our time: sitcoms, soap operas, quality drama. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Comunicação Pública is the property of Escola Superior de Comunicacao Social and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Levine discusses the research and writing of her 2020 book, Her Stories: Daytime Soap Opera and US Television History, considering whether the long duration of the project qualifies it as "slow scholarship." Within this context, she examines the slow scholarship movement and the ways that slowness may function as an interventionist practice. As well, she considers the ways that cultural studies benefits from an embrace of slowness, in particular in terms of the move toward radical contextualization inherent in cultural studies models of inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article demonstrates how the soap opera Personal Problems reveals a crucial yet overlooked moment of Black media production in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Tracing the evolution of the show from radio drama to television program, I illuminate how video technology, generic innovation, and collaborative networks provided the foundation for new representations of Black life. While scholarly accounts typically focus on Hollywood and the LA Rebellion, I argue that the crew’s location shooting animated a critique of New York City’s media-focused urban redevelopment policies while challenging the broader inequities of creative industries. The trajectory of Personal Problems serves as a model for rethinking Black film history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Soap operas are an integral part of Brazilian popular culture and the daily lives of Brazil's people. In 2018, the biggest TV channel in the country, Globo, broadcast a six-month-long soap opera called 'Pride and Passion', centered on the story of the Benedito family and their five unmarried daughters, who live in the small village of 'Vale do Café' ('Coffee Valley') around the 1910s, surrounded by the rural aristocracy and its coffee plantations. The obvious inspiration is Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and its choice is an indication of Austen's growing popularity outside English-speaking countries. This adaptation, which incorporates characters from her other novels as well, is the quintessential amalgamation of cultures and media, combining a canonical author of the English language with a Brazilian TV genre commonly seen as 'lowbrow'. It was not, however, Austen's first incursion in Brazil's popular culture. During the 1960s and 1970s, photonovels were an extremely popular genre there, usually translated into Portuguese from Italian productions, as was the case of the 1965 Pride and Prejudice photonovel, sold as a literary supplement to a widely circulated women's magazine. This essay analyses both cases of different, although connected, adaptations of Austen, arguing that Austen's presence in Brazil was always mediated by the expectations and appropriation of new media, while showing that the dialogue with popular culture can only enhance our understanding of the 'global Austen' phenomenon and her appeal across time and cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The soap opera Dark Shadows (ABC, 1966–1971) gradually took on elements from horror movies, including an immensely popular vampire character. This article examines how the mixing of genre elements took place and how it changed the show's audience and messaging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australian soap Neighbours (1985–2022) was in active production for nearly 40 years. As a piece of popular television, it is still syndicated internationally and also sold as a successful format for new works. Neighbours has also served as an outlet to launch new generations of Australian on- and off-screen talent. Despite these successes, Neighbours has been overlooked by tastemakers, academics and critics. This article places Neighbours in context within the Australian television landscape; going on to explore how the soap has responded during the rapid technological, industrial and cultural evolutions that have occurred since its beginnings in the 1980s. Importantly, Neighbours has featured a variety of different types of Australian characters with a variety of narratives, including working class, migrant, LGBTQI+, and blended families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of soap operas on other forms of television narrative has long been remarked upon by television scholars, especially with regards to the increasing tendency towards serialized plotlines that contemporary dramas have exhibited over the last three decades. Nonetheless, the full impact of the soap opera form on the structural principles of ongoing television narratives is yet to be explored. A crucial part of this lineage is the privileged role granted to communities in soaps, a narrative strategy that has been embraced by an array of other types of serialized programming, including 'premium' dramas. Drawing on Christine Geraghty's writing on soap operas' construction of community, this article will examine how this storytelling strategy is reworked by contemporary 'premium' programmes. Using Orange Is the New Black (2013–19) as a case study, I will explore how the patterns of interplay between the individual and the group can shape both the form and diegesis of a programme. I will analyse how Orange Is the New Black gradually shifts from being structured around a single protagonist to being structured around the community as a whole, demonstrating that the tension between individual and collective identities can be a productive force that proliferates and expands the narrative of a programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is an introduction to the Special Issue, inspired by the Histories and New Directions: Soap Opera and Serial Narrative Research conference at the University of York in July 2017. The event was conceptualized and organized by the editors of this Special Issue to gather media and cultural studies scholars, and generate a scholarly dialogue on the historical issues, current status and future directions of serial narratives and soap opera as a genre. The introduction outlines the seven articles in this issue, all of which revisit and expand on previous soap opera scholarship and its enduring appeal to audiences and fans. In asking questions about the aesthetics, audiences and industries of soap operas, the articles in this Special Issue highlight some of the key issues in soap storytelling and fandom such as community, pleasure and gender. Some of the articles also consider the impact of COVID-19 on the production and reception of soap operas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its cultural significance, soap opera as a television genre has been in decline in the United States since the early 2000s. While the nature of its audience has been changing, the media landscape also has been drastically shifting because of the wide expansion of new media technologies. In this article, I survey these reasons and examine the current state of the genre. To do so, I first briefly examine the history of the genre before I review the significant cultural and social forces that reshaped the US media landscape and eroded the popularity of the genre in certain segments of the audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Comunicação, Mídia e Consumo is the property of Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Departing from the extensive internet shutdown (2019–2021) that the Indian government imposed on the annexed state of Jammu and Kashmir, this essay traces a historical trajectory of Kashmir's invisibilisation in India's popular imagination. Focusing film and television serial productions from the 1960s onwards, my argument proceeds from the forming of the cinematic master narrative on Kashmir towards the forcefully aborted TV serial Kashmeer (2003). I contend that in order to understand the large public acceptance both of Kashmir's annexation and its digital closure, we need to engage a more capacious conceptualisation of censorship that captures the variety of its political influences in everyday entertainment and its formative role for audiences. Moving beyond the official interference with imagery and story lines (through the Central Board of Film Certification, CBFB) I examine on the one hand, how the visual framing of Kashmir, and its absence, has been dependent on a structurally, ideologically and economically shifting televisual field that bore interlinked modes of vertical/state and horizontal/populist censorship as well as manipulative corporate intervention. On the other hand, in conjuncture with these conditions, I argue for a stronger consideration of the functional significance, at specific historical moments, of different formats and genres in fictitious storytelling, whose respective logics of production and consumption are themselves carriers of emancipative opening and closure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[es] Este artículo se propone a analizar escenas de parto exhibidas en telenovelas brasileras a lo largo de cuatro décadas, criteriosamente seleccionadas, con el objetivo de identificar las relaciones de género en ellas inscriptas, explicitas o veladas. Para eso, optamos por dos métodos complementarios, el Análisis de Contenido y el Análisis de la Imagen en Movimiento. Para la discusión, hemos considerado especialmente autores de los Estudios de Género y del campo de la Comunicación Social centrados en la teledramaturgia, así como aquellos que se dedican al objeto de esta investigación, el parto como evento social y su representación ficcional. Como resultado, identificamos tres ejes centrales que, al convergieren, encarcelan la parturiente y la convierte en un cuerpo biológicamente necesario y destituido de su derecho/poder de dar a luz. La falta de problematización sobre las desigualdades de género que circundan el parto en la ficción, de forma sintomática, contribuye para su naturalización. [en] This article proposes to analyze scenes of childbirth broadcasted by Brazilian soap operas broadcasted along four decades, carefully selected, aiming to identif y the gender relations there inscribed, explicit or vailed. Therefore, we have opted by two complementar y methods, the Content Analysis and the Analysis of Moving Images. For the discussion, we have considered especially authors belonged to the fields of Gender Studies and Social Communication centered on tele-dramaturgy, as well as the ones who study the childbirth as a social event and its fictional representation.As a result, we have identified three central axes, when converged, imprison the parturient and convert her into a biologically needed body, without her right/power to give birth. The lack of problematization regarding gender inequality in fictional childbirth, symptomatically, contributes for its naturalization.

Produced as a spin-off of The Vampire Diaries (Julie Plec, The CW, 2009‑2017), The Originals (The CW, 2013-2018) depicts the return of the Mikaelsons, the white Nordic vampires Elijah, Rebekah and Klaus, to New Orleans. As they seek to take back control of the city, they face other supernatural groups, notably another vampire community led by a Black leader and an assembly of Latina witches. The power relations between the different supernatural groups are fluctuating and constantly renegociated, according to the narrative logic of the soap opera (Modleski, 1990), and are given a cultural dimension (Guitar, 2015). Focusing on the conflicts between the different communities, The Originals shows how white authority is defied by racial Others with whom it must compromise in order to renegociate and reimpose its hegemony. Using the framework of white critical studies (Dyer, 1997) and post-colonial studies (Loomba, 1995), as well as a generic perspective on the gothic (Botting, 1996) and the soap opera (Allen, 1995), this paper examines the conditions of white authority in the first season of The Originals. It focuses first on how the white norm can no longer remain invisible in the face of other supernatural races. It then examines the figure of the vampire and its relations with whiteness. Finally, it analyzes how the instability that characterizes the Mikaelsons’ power is in fact the ultimate condition for their supernatural, narrative and political authority.

The protection and promotion of human rights are essential if nations around the world are to experience sustainable growth. In order for states to maintain their commitment to the universal acceptance of rights, they have begun placing a significant focus on international treaties and the execution of such accords. The establishment of a culture of respect for human rights is absolutely necessary to ensure the continued existence and prosperity of the human race. The cultivation of a culture of respect for human rights is possible through the efficient application of social work principles and values to human rights practices. It is imperative that rights pertaining to human needs, freedom, and responsibility be protected and fostered. A greater awareness of these rights will assist in the fight against violations that pose a risk to our already deteriorating quality of life and in the promotion of life-enriching care, protection, and welfare. It leads to the creation of a society that is free of violations while valuing the value and dignity of individuals and groups. The purpose of this paper was to investigate the level of awareness regarding various areas of human rights among college-aged youth in Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay chronicles the history of the teleserye or the Filipino TV soap opera, one of today's transnational televisual products making waves in different parts of the globe. It covers three periods-the period of transition from radio to TV (1962 to 1986), the period of competition (1986-2000), and the period of transformation (2000-present). Traversing through 60 years of the form's enduring presence in Philippine television, it traces the format's beginnings as it was introduced to the medium in a highly volatile social environment, and assesses its continued flourishing in democratized, contemporary times and consequent entry into the highly competitive global drama market, where it serves both foreign and its very own Filipino diasporic audiences. The essay echoes the abiding thesis of my studies about the cultural history of the teleserye-that the form is indeed the drama of Filipino life. As domestic, serial form, the teleserye's intimate relation to the Filipino everyday ultimately makes it reflective of the country's life and times, its evolution interconnected with the ebb and flow of Philippine history. These are illustrated by representative texts from the said periods, as well as key contexts that unravel the evolution of the form, now gleaned from a global, as well as diasporic context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The representation of indigenous African cultures in hegemonic soap operas remains a contentious issue. Critics and cultural activists have challenged the portrayal of African cultures from the prism of prescribed images and frames of reference. This article reports on a study that sought to ascertain how a contemporary South African soap opera, Generations: The Legacy, portrays indigenous African cultures. The study used a combination of quantitative content analysis and critical discourse analysis within the framework of Stuart Hall's audience reception theory. The results showed that Generations: The Legacy uses everyday discourse to highlight issues of patriarchy, gender relations, social inequities, power asymmetries, and contestations, as well as matters of domination and exploitation. While the show gives effusive expression to indigenous African cultures, it reuses existing sociocultural stereotypes prevalent in a divided society. It does not call attention to them so much as it re-enacts them. This representation can create tension and implicate intercultural relations and the survival of subaltern cultures, especially in a racially polarised and culture-sensitive society like South Africa. Soap operas can foster a more progressive and dynamic society by promoting a more nuanced depiction of indigenous values, practices and beliefs, and de-emphasising sociocultural stereotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a perception that soap operas are progressively infusing dominant social values and ideas while constructing and positioning indigenous cultures as peripheral and inconsistent with modernity. This article aims at ascertaining audience perceptions of and attitudes toward the construction and representation of indigenous cultures in Generations: The Legacy within the framework of indigeneity and audience reception theories. Using quantitative methodology, 350 questionnaires were distributed to a randomly selected sample. Findings showed the majority of the audience felt the soap represents indigenous cultures as the 'insignificant other' and perpetuates stereotypes about traditional indigenous groups. This process creates cultural tensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: The use of telenovelas shows promise as a mode of education that could enhance Latino people's ability to prevent or manage different health conditions. This scoping review examined the available evidence about telenovela interventions on Latino health. Methods: A scoping review was conducted by searching five peer-reviewed databases for articles published on any date in English or Spanish. The methods of this review were guided by the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews recommendations. Results: A total of 431 articles were identified, and 22 articles published between 1999 and 2022 were included in the final scoping review. Nineteen telenovela interventions were described in the literature. Most studies included telenovela interventions without other elements ( n  = 15; 68%), and 91% were conducted in the U.S. ( n  = 20). Studies were qualitative ( n  = 8; 36%), quantitative ( n  = 8; 36%), and mixed methods ( n  = 6; 27%), and most telenovela interventions were developed and/or tested in Spanish ( n  = 10; 53%). The most common topics for the telenovela interventions were substance use/risky sexual health behaviors, cardiovascular disease, and mental health. Conclusions: This scoping review may serve to continue empirical and theoretical work on telenovela-style entertainment interventions on Latino health and future implementation in real-life settings., Competing Interests: Declaration of Conflicting InterestsThe author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

This article examines Candice Breitz's recorded performances and negotiations of the representation of women and gender dynamics in her video art, looking in particular at her work Extra (2011). Showing that Breitz has addressed the representation of women throughout her oeuvre, this article argues that the works Factum and Extra mark a turning point in Breitz's practice due to their collaborative nature. In Extra, Breitz intervenes in scenes of Generations, the most-watched soap opera in South Africa at the time. Using her body as a tool of metalepsis, Breitz disrupts the seamless fictional narratives, questioning gender-related power structures and modes of identity representation displayed in the show. Findings from studies about gender-stereotyping in Generations raise further concerns about the responsibility of the mass media and artists in relation to representation. This article concludes that Breitz succeeds in making her spectators critically examine their own viewing habits by combining performance and video art as two relatively new and highly politically charged artistic media, especially in the context of South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes to analyze scenes of childbirth presented by Brazilian soap operas, produced and broadcasted along the past four decades by the channel Rede Globo, aiming to identify the representation of normal birth and C-section in the corpus. We highlight that childbirth is a social and cultural event, being the subjectivities inscribed in it supported by gender relations. In this sense, the media represents an important arena where power disputes are materialized. For the empirical path, we have opted for two complementary methods, the Content Analysis based on a quantitative perspective, and the Analysis of Moving Images. As a main result, we identify that, although the frequency of normal birth in the corpus is higher, aspects associated to its representation, such as the place of birth, the pain expression, elements of religiously and characteristics of ethnicity and social class of the parturient, corroborate to position the C-section as the "ideal" form of giving birth. We have observed that an explicit apology for C-section was presented in a considerable part of the corpus. The cultural and symbolic legitimation of the surgical delivery by the soap opera deviates from the recommendations of the World Health Organization and contributes to build the collective imaginary regarding birth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article draws on the 2018 Writers Guild of Great Britain report 'Gender Inequality and Screenwriters', and original interviews with female screenwriters, to assess how the experience of genre plays out in the UK television industry. The report focuses on the experience of women, as a single category, but we aim to reveal a more intersectional understanding of their experiences. Our aim is to better understand the ways in which women are, according to the report, consistently 'pigeonholed by genre and are unable to move from continuing drama or children's programming to prime-time drama, comedy or light-entertainment'. Considering the cultural value of genre in relation to screenwriting labour and career progression, we analyse how genre shapes career trajectory, arguing that social mobility for female screenwriters is inherently different and unequal to that of their male counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One Thousand and One Nights is a composite, transnational work, consisting of popular stories originally transmitted orally within its embedded cultures and developed over several centuries. Ever since its translation into European languages in the nineteenth century, or perhaps even before, it has been adapted and appropriated into different forms and mediums and thus has reached different corners of the world. This project was inspired by the level of popularity of One Thousand and One Nights, often known as The Arabian Nights, in the world today. Although only a relatively small number of people might have read all the tales, we can safely assume that most people do have an idea of what the Nights are, whilst some could even name one or two films, series or cartoons that they think are based on the Nights. Indeed, only a very limited number of stories included in editions of the Nights have been adapted into films or TV series. There are two main characteristics of the Nights that help identify adaptations and adoptions in popular culture: embedded storytelling using a frame tale, and the 'feminist', emancipating heroine Scheherazade. The popular Turkish TV series Binbir Gece (One Thousand and One Nights) (2006–09), which this article focuses on, not only makes use of these two popular features; it also offers a fresh and contemporary adaptation of the frame story of Shah Shahriyar and Scheherazade and elements from many other tales from the Nights, such as the emphasis on the importance of education for women, or the evil of cunning women. After analysing the degree of adaptation of the frame story in this series, this article sheds light on its global reach, reception and popularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through the current world of multi-media, television has emerged as a crucial tool of both knowledge transaction and culture formation. Among various TV programs, soap operas are known to turn into one of the most culturally influential ones due to constant exposure of viewer during a long time span. One of the current issues in media studies is the biased nature of media toward minorities (Mastro, 2015). This study has been an attempt to view the way American soap operas reveal Americans in comparison with three groups of minorities (i.e. Arabs, Europeans and Africans) in American society based on the frequency of words and collocations used for their representations. Using the Corpus of Contemporary America (COCA), this meta-analysis aimed at shedding light on the perceptions expressed toward American culture and that of the selected minorities consulting with Lewis (2006) model of cultural categorization. The results showed that America is presented as a place of justice and pursuing dreams while the other countries are represented as one-dimensional nations which should be known for their forgotten art and history, recreational and leisure concessions or broken families; things which are peripheral in the real modern life.

In the context of ever greater circulation of televisual content of all genres and formats, this paper focuses on the intersections between the global and the local to understand how a specific genre – soap opera – was localised in a specific cultural and geographical setting giving origin to a production model that gained local prominence and nowadays faces a number of new challenges. Our general argument draws on the empirical findings of original research on the molding of this specific televisual genre and format called “telenovela”, and the specific production mode associated with it, and reflects on its historical emergence and the contingencies of such a process. Our goal is to identify the variables that allowed this genre to gain local dominance and later achieve international circulation. Following the results of quantitative and qualitative research, we argue that the structure of the local production and distribution settings and the dominant ideology of the associated production culture promoted the emergence of original local production culture and sustains it until today.

Soap operas are an integral part of Brazilian popular culture and the daily lives of Brazil’s people. In 2018, the biggest TV channel in the country, Globo, broadcast a six-month-long soap opera called ‘Pride and Passion’, centered on the story of the Benedito family and their five unmarried daughters, who live in the small village of ‘Vale do Café’ (‘Coffee Valley’) around the 1910s, surrounded by the rural aristocracy and its coffee plantations. The obvious inspiration is Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, and its choice is an indication of Austen’s growing popularity outside English-speaking countries. This adaptation, which incorporates characters from her other novels as well, is the quintessential amalgamation of cultures and media, combining a canonical author of the English language with a Brazilian TV genre commonly seen as ‘lowbrow’. It was not, however, Austen’s first incursion in Brazil’s popular culture. During the 1960s and 1970s, photonovels were an extremely popular genre there, usually translated into Portuguese from Italian productions, as was the case of the 1965 Pride and Prejudice photonovel, sold as a literary supplement to a widely circulated women’s magazine. This essay analyses both cases of different, although connected, adaptations of Austen, arguing that Austen’s presence in Brazil was always mediated by the expectations and appropriation of new media, while showing that the dialogue with popular culture can only enhance our understanding of the ‘global Austen’ phenomenon and her appeal across time and cultures.

Having the melodrama as one of its main foundations, the telenovela functions as a privileged space of social problematizations, exploring subjects in suffering based on moral values, realistic appeal, and the possibilities of television language. In this context, drug addiction has been a frequent theme of these plots since the 1980s, including its internal and external consequences to addicts. This study proposes a reflection on the intrinsic relationship between soap opera, melodrama, and suffering associated with the experiences of drug addiction. We believe that this triad presents peculiarities that allow a deeper understanding of these narratives and the suffering that communicate and produce meanings, showing to be more elaborate, complex and in tune with social and moral changes and/or continuances that occurred throughout the history of the soap operas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]