All: 25 biggest blunders in Daytime Soap History

[SFK]

It shouldn't even have to be an objective, it should just be. And in that search for high quality actors and writers, the net should be cast far and wide to include talent of all races, religions, and sexual orientations rather than focusing first and foremost on whites and viewing all others as give-or-take accessories. I am a biracial person raised by soap watchers on both my black and white sides. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't touced to the root of who I am when today for instance I heard the Hubbards saying things like, "Cut your eyes" and "That's your brother". There is something endearing, inclusive, familiar, and appreciated when soaps honor their full audience with diversity and slices of life. So while I agree that excellence in writing and acting is of the utmost importance, I see absolutely no reason wy that can't automatically include folks of all colors, sexualities, what have you, witout looking like a PSA or "favor" to the lowly minority audience.

[Max]

SFK, this is essentially what I was trying to say (although you went about it in a much more polite and sensitive way): diversity (while important) is not as critical as writing or acting. It is interesting that you alluded the occurrence of soaps just creating token minority/gay characters (who are poorly written) in an insulting attempt to placate a portion of the audience; I would think minorities/gays would find this even more offensive than having no diversity at all.

The fact remains that it is still appalling that soaps have yet to feature these types of characters (or have featured very few of them) in a meaningful way, and the fact that they are lesser in number (and have less political power) than other groups is no excuse. To too many people, diversity equals blacks, hispanics, and gays, but completely leaves out Jews, Hindus, Muslims, the mentally ill, the autistic, and the mentally retarted. It is the height of hypocrisy for one to complain about the lack of blacks, hispanics, and/or gays in daytime but to then only pay lip service to the lack of members of these other minority groups. (Note that I am not calling specific person here a hypocrite in this regard. Rather, I am just trying to make a point.)

[dragonflies]

Not to mention all these people uprooted their families for nothing in the long run. Especially if what was reported is true that Frons had planned the cancellation even back when the show was moving

[Vee]

Nora and Matthew on OLTL are Jewish. The Siegels, one of the original core families, were Jewish. Rama and Vimal are Hindu. Lily Montgomery was autistic. I think there should be many more of all of the above, but I don't think an imbalance in certain minorities indicates we should not continue to press for more of all of them - black, Latino, gay, Asian, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, you name it.

[quartermainefan]

Nora became a shiksa years ago! Has Matthew ever even seen a menorah? GH had a nice moment a couple of years back when their sole Jewish character Bernie, an accountant of course, got his Christmas wish for a match to light his menorah.

[Vee]

Actually, yeah - Nora and Matt celebrated Hanukkah about a thousand years ago (or maybe 2003-2004).

[Max]

I have no idea why OLTL made the blunder of writing out the Siegels and Woleks (a Polish family). This is especially perplexing given that OLTL--unlike most other soaps--made the promotion of diversity one of its primary objectives (as I stated earlier). (I know that OLTL--like all the other soaps that made the 60 minute expansion--felt the need to "clean house" circa 1980, but that doesn't excuse destroying these families.)

[SFK]

And I remember Rachel on one or two occasions playfully referring to herself as "a good Jewish girl."

[All My Shadows]

Okay? I agree with this.

Honestly, I don't think that's true. People mention blacks, Hispanics, and gays because they are some of the most visible minority groups in the US (which makes their underrepresentation in daytime all the more unrealistic), but that's doesn't mean they're leaving out other groups or just paying lip service to them. Do you assume that people are leaving those groups out, or do you actually ask "Do you think there should be some representation of *group* in daytime?" to which they respond "no"? That makes all the difference.

[DRW50]

Over the years it has become clear that soaps only want to write for most minorities when they are trying to attract a new demographic. The most recent example being the whining from ABC about how they wanted the telenovela audience with the Castillos, so don't say they didn't try to save AMC.

Daytime is enhanced when you have new voices and new lives. Just go look at OLTL clips from 1992-1993 and compare another installment of Asa treating women like whores to the stuff with Hank, Sheila, Rachel, and Nora.

The condescension that most in the industry have is what has taken over and what seeps through. It was obvious that Brad Bell was super proud of himself for his Dayzee story, which would have been laughed off TV in 1975, much less 2010.

There's always this idea that most of the people watching daytime are racist, and therefore minority groups need to be segregated and dehumanized. There is no effort to actually see what viewers want. Remember when Dru first started on Y&R? Viewers did take to her, and Bill Bell wrote for that, until she became one of the show's most popular and complex characters. What do we have now? The "new Dru" having sex with her nephew about ten minutes after she found out he wasn't her nephew, and then leaving town in shame.

[ZoeTate]

Well, techincally the Siegels weren't 100% Jewish. Eileen was Catholic. That's why she got so freaked with Timmy marrying former nun Jenny. Julie? I kind of recall that Eileen raised both kids Catholic.

[ZoeTate]

And sorry, but as a gay man, who fought P&G with letters, phone calls, protesting the treatment of Luke and Noah and ATWT I find the logic of the poster stating that only all clean, white, straight storylines can be consumed by the average soap viewer highly insulting. That's the problem with soaps today - the suits in charge never realized their viewers changed, even with all their research and they listened TOO LOUDLY to the people who spout hate and ignorance. Believe me, the ATWT storyline with L & N was never good, but Van Hansis in particular sold me. I hadn't watched what I considered a very stupid show, for years, when I was informed of Luke's coming out. I was hooked. I always hoped it would get better and I counted on it being there. I could not understand why the ONLY storyline ATWT had in years that had any buzz wasn't even airing more than ONCE a week at best. Instead we had endless Carly/Jack crap. I guess they didn't figure the fags would want Crisco for anything other than what the dirty minded would assume they'd want it for.

[Vee]

Came for discussion of daytime mishaps, stayed for Crisco lube.

[Max]

Zoe, I never stated that "only clean, white, straight storylines can be consumed by the average soap viewer." What I said was that diversity should be one of the secondary objectives of daytime, while great acting and writing should be the primary objective. As a hypothetical, extreme example, I just stated that I'd much rather watch a lily-white, all-heterosexual soap that has great acting and writing as opposed to a highly diverse soap with poor quality. (But as Qfan pointed out, there is still no excuse for being unable to write for minority characters). This is not the equivalent to saying the words above that you put into my mouth.

Carl, given your rich knowledge of the soap industry, I definately believe you. Do you have any idea how and when this line of thinking arose?

This misguided line of thinking might be somewhat "understandable" if we are talking about CBS (or even NBC soaps), since they tend to be most popular in the South and Middle America (where, sadly, there is more racism than in the "blue" areas). However, ABC soaps (as well as the network itself) are most popular in the big cities of the Northeast and West Coast. Thus, I am perplexed as to why Frons would feel the audience for ABC soaps would be racist or homophobic (even though he has indeed made statements to this effect in the past).

[Kylie]

Josh the Unabortion as #1, huh? Still makes me breathe fire. It's that storyline that makes a very large part of me feel like AMC deserves exactly what it got.