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Bending Over and Picking Up the Soap Opera
If you meet anyone who denies knowing a thing about soaps on tv, I think they are lying. Soaps are the middle class dirty little secret. Soaps somehow engage the viewer in the best and worst of life. But alas, I come not to praise the soap, but to expose it. It is obvious that soaps reflect a notion of the middle/upper class in North American society...the repetitive themes of romance, death, quest, riches, poverty...these come honestly from the notion of plot in fiction. What I find compelling, is that even in 2009, the dominant discourse makes no apology for existing...in fact, if you aren't in that discourse, you are not compensated for your marginalization, and with each piano riff, the non-belonging viewer is sentenced to more exile. Whiteness is a given, the white cast leads the dynamics of the show. Each time an "of color" member is introduced to the cast, the attempt to integrate is awkward and smacks of tokenism. When a non-white character is given a storyline, it often serves to add the character to the white mix, while other characters of color do the background chorus.
But, I am not here to talk about whiteness. What I am fascinated by is the Christian text which has been inserted within plots. As a child, I watched General Hospital from its inception. My stepdad's best friend was the star, so from the early 60s, I knew how to watch soaps. I remember every Christmas, when dad's buddy, who played Dr. Hardy, would go to the hospital and read "the" story of the birth of Jesus" to little children from the pediatric ward sitting at his feet. As a kid, I sat there and listened to the story, but as I got older, the story stayed the same, and ever December, the scene repeated itself. To this day, the oldest patriarch in the show reads the story. The text was Christian in nature, but the nature of the reading assumed everyone believed this story...a tacit text.
As the decades rolled by, few other attempts were made to create a religious text in soaps. Many may remember Ryan's Hope. A working class drama set in the American Northeast, an entirely Irish soap, the show was blatantly Catholic, but the viewer was engaged in the narrative as narrative. There were no attempts to involve the audience in the belief system of the characters, just to follow the story.
With the Reagan/Bush years, soaps started to change in regard to religion. More churches were used in weddings, the occasional cross was spied, and Father so-and-so or Reverand whatever counseled characters. Most often the clergy was male and white, always straight.
However, in the past years, ushered in by the blatant Christotained Hollywood writers, viewers spend more of their time in chapels, watching prayerful pleas, miracles, and confirmation of deity. It is not unusual to use a Christian miracle to solve an illness or bring together a separated couple. The Christian soap text has been defined as middle class, patriarchal, very straight, and, for the most part, white. Those who commune with their deity turn to him as the last resort, confessional, or with expectation. Unlike the padres in Ryan's Hope, the text of the soap engages the viewer in a hegemonic exercise which proclaims that 'we all believe this.' Never even implying a 'don't we?' Viewers are informed that there really isn't an option if you don't belong to the Christotained club.
Fascinating
- Shirley Steinberg's blog
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All About Soaps
When I was a young teenager, I, along with another friend, would stop whatever we were doing to watch “Another World” faithfully at 3:00 in the afternoon. It was like peering into a “fantasy adult world” that was so far removed from my own (my dad was a blue collar worker and my mom- a “stay at home” mom.)
For this assignment I tuned into watch 1 hour of General Hospital, a soap I had only watched on occasion. Interesting with a few minor changes, the same characters remain, good vs. evil reigns supreme (ex. Sam and Jason rescue a pregnant lady while having broken into the basement where Ian- someone who was up to no good lived), getting married or remarried, (ex. as in Lucky and Elizabeth’s case), sex (ex. Johnny and Olivia having an affair) and having children with different partners, is still the norm.
Each soap whether it is General Hospital, Another World, or some other one, you must tune in the next day, not to see the conclusion, but to see what further complications or obstacles will hinder the resolution or introduce a new set of problems. It’s amazing to me how each women and guy always looks “great” even when they have been shot or have fallen off a cliff. And they all live happily ever after!!
All About Soaps
I grew up watching soaps because my mother, grandmother and every mother I knew watched soap operas. Their favorite soap operas were on channel 7 and 2. They would watch these soap opera until 3:00 in the afternoon. I grew up watching All My Children, As the World Turns, General Hospital, and The Young and the Restless. I would find it hard to believe that most people haven't seen soap operas or know somebody who is hooked on soap operas. Soap operas had such an impact on my family that everything stopped at 11:00 am until 3:00 p.m. I developed a habit of watching soaps for years.. When I was in high school we tried our best to watch All My Children at noon, if we did not get a chance to watch it, we would go home and ask my mother or grandmother what happened. What was interesting to me was the boys claimed that they didn't watch soaps, however a lot of them liked and watched All My Children. My uncle and brother and other guys I know would not normally watch soap operas but somehow found All My Children interesting, especially the character Jessie, I guess because he was black and they could identify with him. The characters of color that I remember in All My Children were usually coupled with another black person. Then I began to notice that they would show the stereotypical black girl with a white man. Eventually I began to see white men with black women. People of color were not in big numbers in the soaps. I guess that is why so many black people fell in love with Jesse on All My Children. The blacks in the soaps did not usually show how real blacks are in the neighborhood.
I do remember church weddings in soap operas, however I don't remember Dr. Hary's story of the birth of Jesus Christ. Even If I had seen it, I would not have had a problem with it. Now they have soap operas or shows similiar that openly exposes the world to demons, vampires and darkness, and you don't read complaints about these shows. Christian miracles are a reality, lets be fair, everybody and everything else has a voice in Hollywood, why can't Christians have a voice. Viewers see more episodes that do not involve Christianity than ones that do, take some time and couunt. I agree with another reply that soaps are centered around white people with money and lots of it. The one thing that I find interestng about soaps is no matter how long you stay away from them the plot never changes. You can quickly figure out the story line. The characters may change but the story remain the same. In black culture we called the soaps the stories. I guess we relate them to stories which could mean the soaps are fiction, however they are told as if they are real. I would question whether nor not we should really didicate our precious time watching them for the reason that they really are not created equal. Fascinating.
Male Immunity?
I read and try to understand your comments from the standpoint of someone who can flatly say I have not followed or been entertained by soaps- the Monday to Friday variety that is. My first reaction is to claim indifference towards the Soap Opera world as if my being a male somehow immunized me from the effects of this medium.
After some reflecting, I do in fact recollect scenes from the Soaps my mother used to watch from the sofa. These memories are part of my earliest exposure to television. Even my Grandmother religiously watched her soaps while babysitting me as a toddler. I have to admit that notions of Whiteness and Christian underpinning morality were present in the few scenes I can remember. Christmas trees and arguments between adults - followed by log cabin love scenes.
Interesting at how young I was "affected" - I blame my family.
America soap operas are fake,
America soap operas are fake, slow and boring..that is a fact not an opinion, and by slow I mean not moving.. I mean nothing happens over hours and hours of footage. They also always happened indoors or in hideouts..soooo boring, so plain, no imagination whatsoever, I cannot watch more than 2 minutes of that..that is my limit. Brazilian soap opera on the other hand are so dramatic, although they are just as bad in their story lines; Brazilian soaps start fashion statements (shining socks in the 80's), relieve the local history,incite waves of names after the soap heroes, and are shown in prime time, they have so much meat..everybody watches the soap, is a family event..people watch the news and then the soap..so much fun. However my very personal favorites are the British soaps, I am a non closeted huge fan of Eastenders, I started watching them the year I lived in London, back when Kylie Minogue was a teen..Eastenders has everything,, white, blacks , Pakistanis intrigue, lies, the pub, and the accent, seriously,how can you compete with that?
Serial Desires
In Media Literacy: A Reader (Macedo & Steinberg, 2008), Leistyna and Alper write about issues of class through the lens of critical media studies, annotating the way class unfolds (in rather striking instances) in a myriad of TV shows throughout the history of popular culture in the United States (54-78). There isn't a discussion, though, of class in soap operas (both daytime and primetime serial dramas). These shows for half a century have had a perverse way of distilling class in rigid forms and shaping many American viewers' conceptions of class through contrived representations. This is the opposite, however, in some of the more popular serial dramas in the United Kingdom, most notably EastEnders, Emmerdale, Coronation Street, which, to be sure, appropriate style, fashion, and aesthetics from upper-class entertainment industries, but remain able to convincingly convey the lower-middle-class and upper-lower-class lived realities of the residents in a fictional London bourough in London's "working class" east side. Imagine if an American soap (and here I use American to refer to the serial productions from Canada, the United States, and Mexico, all of which produce soap operas that reflect images from upper-middle-class and lower-upper-class lifestyles) were to focus on lower-class and "average" middle class lifestyles? It simply doesnt' exist in today's American dramatic serial, and, when portraits of life in such social classes do air, they are usually in regards to a villainous, psychotic temporary character holding a wealthy hero from the serial hostage in a remote, undisclosed, rural setting. Instead, we see characters who are constantly shopping in fancy clothing boutiques, living in opulent hotel rooms, eating by candlelight in dimly lit bistors with mahogany walls, living in mansions with chandeliers and opulent decore, never working as machinsts, assmebly workers, cashiers, fast food managers, bank tellers, mail carriers - only jobs that require advanced college degrees (and the instantaneous ability for characters to acquire these credentials is never quesitoned; accountant one week, psychiatrist the next, and elected senator the following month).
A cursory reading of the history of American soap operas, however, suggests some leaders in the industry at one time were committeed to realistic portrayals of life from a variety of social strata. Agnes Nixon, most famous for creating the serials One Life to Live in 1968 and All My Children in 1970, focused creative energies in writing families that represented different ethnic and social classes. The degree to which this was an exercise in tokenism or true and just desires to celebrate the social diveristy in the American family is not fully agreed. When One Life to Live aired in 1968, Nixon had five families: The Lords (upper-class WASP); the Siegels (upper-middle-class Jewish); the Rileys (lower-middle-class Irish Catholic); the Woleks (lower-middle-class Polish Catholic). There was also a storyline in 1968 featuring the daughter of a black housekeeper who tried to 'pass' herself off as white to date a wealth white boy. In the 1990s, the show would feature a Hispanic family - the Vegas - which earned industry controversy this year when the actor who plays the family's matriarch, Carlotta, quit over a storyline dicting that Carlotta would be supportive of gay rights. The actress believes Carlotta's belief system as an older, Catholic, Latina mother would not support gay rights or a gay storyline. The extent to any "truth in storytelling" of this incident leads us to the tepid, if not noble, attempt today's soap operas are making in presenting viewers with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and (one) transexual character. Gay couples on One Life to Live, As the World Turns, and the Young and the Restless, and lesbian couples on All My Children and the Guiding Life, respectively, are now seeing significant air time - an indicator of committemtn on the part of the show's producers to explore these issues, as much as a serial drama can, with viewers. For the most part, however, these examples are rarities in the history of soap opears. Almost all families have been white, Anglo-Saxon, protestant, affluent, suburban professionals. True to industry standards of the 1960s and 1970s, most soaps had not problem with stories of incest, adultery, blackmail, and infidetlity, but abortions, divorce as liberation, sexual freedom, etc. were not allowed in the storylines. Interestingly, again if we look at Agnes Nixon, she angered ABC executives with the debut of All My Children in 1970 with a prominent characters involved in multiple storylines regarding the Vietnam War: recently returned young male veterans, protestors, and drat dodgers. This was not standard fare for daytime serials at that time. Shirley pointed out in her initial post about the show "Ryans' Hope", a uniqe entry in the list of American daytime soaps, mostly because of its early focus on a lower-middle-working-class Irish-American Catholic family. Black and Hispanic families have always been rare; Asian-American and Native American families non-existant. Any Asian characters in an American soap are illegitimate children a major white character had with a woman while stationed in Vietnam (Lien on As the World Turns; Kimo on the Young and the Restless).
This "exploring of issues" was a hallmark of sopas in the 1980s, which not infrequently devote storylines to exploring critical issues of health and personal safety for their viewers, sometimes ending pivotal episodes with "special messages" from a character's actor about alcoholism, AIDS, domestic violence, homelessnes, depression, eating disorders, breast cancer, getting a pap smear, and so on. In this way, soap operas viewed themselves - and viewers view the serials themselves - as agents of education for (mostly) female viewers who had little self agency, advocacy, or access to information and opportunites for discussion of these grave matters. Today, though, that is rarely the case as almost all daytime and primetime American soaps are focused on glamorous depictions of young characters in their 20s engaged in relationship "drama", lived experiences that talk shows and reality shows are providing viewers with more gusto for far less money. Thus, the soap opera is almost an extinc relic of Americana. Perhaps that is a good thing? What do you think?
Soap Opera Addiction
The only television show that I watch religiously is Desperate Housewives. It is an evening soap opera that airs once a week and is an hour long in length. Every 7 minutes the program is interrupted with long commercial breaks. I would say that there are more commercials that actual show. The commercials focus on products for cleaning, babies, children, beauty products & care, sanitary napkins, foods and family cars. Why are they showing all these these commercials? The companies are targeting their clientele during the show----- that would be the people most interested in purchasing these items---women!
Soap Operas
Good Morning
I have to admit that soap operas are quite predictable and redundant. But I must say that I am totally addicted to some of them! Why? I really believe that soap operas are a fairy tail that every young women would want to live in. For example: who here is not dreaming for a perfect date, a perfect wedding or simply romance. They make everything seem so wonderful that allows you to dream or to be in a superficial world. On the other, they can also help you realize that our lives are quite simple compare to the characters in the shows. How many people actually go through 5 divorces, prison time, mental institutions, coming back from the dead, having children with 5 different mates, rapes, illegal activities in one life time?
I am a big fan of the Yound and the Restless and General Hospital. When I come back from work I really enjoy watching both of those shows to to relax and let my mind wonder. I was reading Shirley blog about the underlining message in General Hospital and I must say that I do not critically analyze the shows like she does. Now that she is mentionnoing thoses facts I can see it but at the time did I really pay attention to that concept? NO! To me soap operas are not meant to be scrutinized and studied, they simply exist in my mind to represent a world that doesn't really exist!
Soap operas can be a positive or a negative element in your life, but I believe that a little bit of everything is good for your well being. Excessive behaviour is what will get you in trouble.
Its a slippery soap
Great discussion in last night's class about soaps. I must say that after watching my one hour (thank goodness for no commercials and the internet, which make a one hour show into a 38 minute show, which I thought was really supposed to be 44 minutes...anyway, I digress) of The Young and the Restless I was surprised by the acting. It was better than I remember. Not to say that it was great, just better. I couldn't believe that I recognized the characters, and I couldn't believe that I recognized the storylines, someone was sick, someone was getting a divorce, someone needed money, someone was in a mental institution, etc, etc. I also couldn't believe how outrageous some of the storylines were. I thought that the show was not at all in touch with reality and that it was just a sensational version its writers imagination. Until class that is.
The class presentation allowed me to connect the stories in the show to real life. It also identified to me the strong role of women in soaps. Which was apparent during the Y and R episode that I took in when one of the characters wanted to buy a company (from someone in his family I believe, to show them that he could run a better show). He was refused loans from several banks and did not have access to his trust fund which forced him to apporach the matriarch of his family for the cash.
Would that have happened in a primetime show? I don't think so. The money probably would have come from the partriarch. Not to say that primtime television does not include strong roles for women, perhaps just not as many.
Regardless, I have a new found appreciation for soaps. Long live GH, Y and R, All My Children and the rest!
Soaps and life lessons
During the drive after this weeks class I started to think about soaps and what had been said in discussion and during the presentation. I admit to having at first dismissed soaps as daytime programming that lacked realistic plotlines and good acting, however; hearing some of the storylines dealing with HIV/AIDS or with drug and alcohol abuse have changed my mind.
My first memories of Soap operas are also memories of my grandmother who, like Brian, was also my sitter. Every afternoon I would take a nap on the couch while my Grandmother would watch her favorite soap operas. I wouldn’t fall asleep right away so I would catch the beginning of the episode. Even at the age of five or six I could tell that soaps were different from other TV programming. I also remember that my grandfather watched soaps after his retirement. The two would discuss the storylines and how each thought they would work out. This would not seem remarkable except for the fact that anytime my grandparents discussed anything other than soaps it would lead to an epic battle. Score one positive for soaps in my world.
I agree that watching soaps might help to relay information to teenagers through story lines such as the already mentioned HIV/ AIDS death story. I think this can also be said for the elderly who may have difficulty in staying abreast of current topics in the news. With story lines mimicking real life (or vice versa ?) writing about current trends in crime, political deceit, and scandal in a soap’s story line might help in making what’s in the news digestible to viewers. When a horrific story airs on the evening news viewers might be immune and disconnected to the details. In a soap opera viewers caught up in the lives of the characters might be impacted much more by the details of the same horrific crime set in the familiar context of their favorite soap.
Although I am not a fan of this format of story telling it still has much to teach us about our society.
Jerusalem in Sweaty Tights
Our discussion last week about soap operas functioning as a female utopia brought to mind a few questions that I haven't quite been able to resolve, not the least of which is, "What is the male equivalent?" If we can hold that soap operas contain the projection of an idealized world for women, is there a male equivalent to the soap opera that does the same thing?
Enter World Wrestling Entertainment. Does it contain the same archetypal narratives that typify soaps? Check. Are characters hewn from large mythologies, built primarily from stereotypes? Check. Is it soaked in sex? Check. Can you pick up at any point, even years after having watched it last, and still be able to immediately engage thanks to the consistency of plot and person? Check. So, for the sake of this argument, let's call professional wrestling the male equivalent of the soap.
But if that's the case, what exactly are the principles of the male utopia? That is, if the ideals projected in the female utopia (soaps) are the primacy of the family and the extension of the private into the public, what are the overarching ideals articulated in the male utopia? And are they as pathological as I think?
Reply to Robert's question "What is the male equivalent" to soap
I write about this topic today, a few weeks after the Soap Opera presentation, because of a recent conversation I had with a roommate about why men go to the gym, or rather, why are so many males obsessed with accumulating muscle mass.
There seems to be a force working on adolescents that influences them to "bulk up", to become buff, or, and I propose, to look like those hunky dudes in Soap Operas. Nutritionists and government officials have become quite pervasive as of late to emphasize a need for daily exercise to prevent obesity. However, while it is heartening to see so many kids taking their health to heart at the gym, the reasons for showing up with their dumb bells in hand is not for a desire to "live strong". It is no longer sufficient to obtain adequate cardiovascular activity to stay healthy and stay alive. No: There is also a need to become"The Hulk".
The dominant gender of the Soap Opera viewer may very well be female, but I believe that many males are newly becoming influenced by the dominant male characters of these shows. It is not uncommon to think that high school is a cesspool of drama, and for years, soap operas have provided an “archetypal narrative” within which dialogue between feuding females plays out. However, I would think that high school boys are also becoming entrenched into the mythology of their own soap operas. Girls getting all pretty, and boys becoming all macho-not exactly a storyline that hasn't been played out within the halls of a high school; however, there is now an analogue on television to compare.
Robert Asks: “what is the male utopia”? My answer is, “Perhaps it is one that is played out at school in a fashion that is very similar to what is shown on female-centred soap operas. Soap opera story lines usually depict young, attractive women falling in love with tall, muscly, dangerous men, who are so beefy, that they often have difficulty putting their shirts back on after doing practically everything. It is not crazy to think that adolescent males, who, given adequate funds and protein shakes, have also become entrenched in this machismo-driven soap opera world. I guess the same can be said for those scantally clad match-number holding beer girls seen in between rounds of wrestling matches (or is that boxing).
LukasL
The Male Utopia is a Quarterback Sack
Maybe we need to broaden the limits of the male utopia and instead assert that sport as a whole constitutes the projection of masculine values onto mainstream media (and thus functions much like soap operas due in the female consciousness). Given the sort of all-encompassing totality that sport holds over our culture, is it any wonder that the heart of all of these events, games, periods, quarters and halves is drama. Each game is, in a microcosm, simply another episode of a long running dramatic soap opera (“All the Ball Turns”? “Days of our Guys?”).
Much like soap opera, you need not be attuned to the nuances of the daily minutia to engage in an episode. You simply turn on the television and the same battles, conflicts, love affairs and unrequited advances are played out for you to instantly recognize. Indeed, it is not uncommon to go years between viewings and still discover that things are exactly as you left them, that the same rivalries and characters are precisely where you left them.
I say this as a member of a fan base that typically is regarded as fanatical. Perhaps you sympathize. If you’ve ever halved a watermelon and worn it on your head as an accessory, put your hand up. If you’ve ever painted your chest green and stood shirtless for hours in the freezing stands while it snowed into your beer(s), put your hand up. If you’ve ever purchased a straw hat and banjo to use as props for a football game, put your hand up. Welcome to Saskatchewan.
The point here is that as literally every person in the province of Saskatchewan contemplates the Grey Cup on Sunday against the hated big city rivals (here the villains are portrayed in two distinct categories: Big City elitists (that’s you Toronto and Montreal) and Alberta Youth Stealers (that’s you, Edmonton and Calgary), the game fades into the background in light of the unfolding drama. Heroes are cast, alliances are forged and a narrative arch is being added to the long-standing theodicy that is Rider Nation. The term used is “Next Year Country” but the narrative tendency is quintessentially Biblical: glory, fall and wandering the desert, redemption and return. This, prototypically, is the purpose of any sport team.
Halloween newsflash: Hell
Halloween newsflash: Hell taken over by Christians!
I loved reading this amazing piece of Shirleys on the Christo-hegemonic messages in soaps. I think Mark Helmsings comments are fascinating also. By implication the "other" who is not Christian is erased and/or demonized. And it is all packaged so compellingly, our desires are co-opted into the service of hegemony before we can even catch our breath. Who has time to think about the evangelical messages of the shows, when there is the urgent question of what the sex starved wife will do next to consume our interest?
I was musing on this when the radio in the background played "This American Life" this weekend. This segment is about the church's franchise on a particular kind of haunted houses. (Act 1 in the link below iis the section of interest to me here). Apparently not only our desires but our fears and our fun are equally fertile ground for Christofascism. Haunted houses called "Hell Houses" are the Halloween treat for the Christian child. No cute spooks and marshmallows here. These fun houses are complete with a bloody gurney abortion victim and a homosexual who dies of AIDS every seven minutes (for his sin) screaming for mercy. The spookfest has the aim of converting spectators and they claim to be successful in their enterprise. Perhaps what is most disturbing is the number of franchises for this model. Links below
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=213
or
http://feeds.thisamericanlife.org/talpodcast
also there is this
http://hellhousemovie.com/
unrealistic!
I agree with your
1- It is funny that as
I Admit-Days of Our Lives was one of my favorites!!
Everyone’s dirty little secret is right! I’ll admit having watched soap operas in my lifetime. I was a fan of Days of Lives, second least realistic to Passions when it was on. I used to be home in the summer and watch the epic lives of the Bradeys and Hortons on Days of our Lives, waiting for the next big drama to occur. From Marlena being possessed, to another character being buried alive, to the chronicles of Stefano, TVs well-known villain. I made the comment in class that I think what hooked a lot of us was the element of fantasy or ‘non-real’ portrayed in the shows. Yes they all live their ideal lives with what they call drama, but in the end it was all a happy ending. I mean after being held hostage, being possessed, almost dying a few times, and losing her memory, Marlena still lives on strong as ever. I used to watch Passions, but that was just over the top for stupidity. From the talking dolls that came to life, to the witches in the show, to the monsters in the basement Passions was the next thing to a comedy! How could the writers even put out something that crazy? I mean I’m sure the show was successful; all the teenagers were hooked, including myself. I mean I’ll be honest, if you flip the channels from 1:00 to 3:00 in the afternoons; all you find on the screen are soap operas. I never really watched any of the others because nothing ‘exciting’ ever happened. No witches, no possessions, no talking dolls… I think that’s what hooked me on those 2 soaps. Don’t get me wrong, I never went out of my way to watch them, but if I was home in the afternoon, you could find me watching one of these 2 shows. Shirley made a good point in class about how the ‘Christian’ faith was portrayed on these shows. I never really paid attention to that element of it, since I am Catholic and it just seemed normal for me. The big weddings, the funerals, the praying in the churches and chapels; I assume this must be awkward from a standpoint of another faith. I don’t remember it being so evident in Passions, but Days of our lives had some praying in at least every second episode. Its funny that this still goes on with the multi-ethnic societies we live in today. I believe as long as soaps are on, people will watch, especially when all you find on TV in the afternoons of cable television are soaps.
Coronation Street
Soap - Keeping us Clean
Soaps Operas ...cont'd
Though I have not watched a soap in years, I do remember a couple of summers, while out of town and far from American television, where ( at my request) my mother would (snail) mail the synopsis of the week of my favorite soaps which were printed each week in the Gazette. At that time the trails and tribulations of Marlena and Stefano, Reva and Josh, Viktor and Vikki were part of my "escapism" teenage years. Depression, AIDS, infedelity, Christian values all wrapped up in one story line. And then of course the long awaited weddings that would start late in the episode on a Friday and not end until the following Friday! Escapism and fantasy - of course. To think of it as anything else would be ridiculous.