Image used under a Creative Commons license courtesy of trainman74.
Too often, when the August Sages themselves descend into the lower realms, the results are risible. Who can forget David Brooks declaring that the angry-girl sentiments of "Before He Cheats," "U + Ur Hand," and "Girlfriend" are "descended from the hard-boiled Clint Eastwood characters who tamed the Wild West and the hard-boiled Humphrey Bogart and Charles Bronson characters who tamed the naked city," before insisting that these ladies are angry because social mores are just so confusing these days. It's just plain embarrassing to watch someone in Brooks position do this to himself, fail to recognize that one of these things is not like the other (a girl-hating song about thinking you'd be better for a dude has no place next to Carrie Underwood and P!nk's righteous anthems), and even further, fail to recognize that, perhaps, cheating and scamming on girls who just aren't interested is condemnation-worthy. But I digress, and I realize I'm kicking a dead horse.
The point is, the Times columnists aren't there because they're stupid, and it's lovely to watch someone like Collins put a phenomenon like the soaps in context. I never got super-into soap operas (unless Charmed counts), and never entirely understood the appeal (Although Soapdish is MAGNIFICENT, and if you haven't seen it, you should watch it immediately. The appearance of a young Robert Downey, Jr. alone makes it worth it, but Kevin Klein, Sally Field, and Whoopie Goldberg all bringing their a-game blasts the movie into the stratosphere.) of them, but this felt fresh, and interesting, to me:
At the beginning, though, soaps were a revelation. For women who had spent millennia at home, working in silence, the company of the first radio dramas was heaven. I once read a diary that a Kansas farmwife named Mary Dyck kept during the Depression. The doings of her real family were all mixed up with the things like, “Bob is making plans to get his Marriage Lisense tomorrow,” which occurred on “Betty and Bob,” a soap opera about a secretary who marries her boss. She wasn’t confused about what was real and what was fiction. But there were probably days in the Dustbowl when Betty and Bob’s wedding plans kept her sane. Now, the remaining soaps are much-maligned for over-the-top story lines — Reva of the truck-finale had a history that included 9 or 10 husbands and being cloned. But it’s hard to create exciting stories about the personal lives of average people who stay in the same town/hospital for decades without throwing in a mad scientist or split personality here and there. It’s also difficult for the writers to keep all the relationships straight. Every once in a while they’ll forget that somebody had a hysterectomy in 1997 and make her pregnant with triplets.
Cultural forms live and die, just as policies, and the people affected by them, do. While the passing of the soap opera won't save lives or take them, that doesn't mean that the form's potential death is unimportant. It was smart of Gail Collins to recognize that, and an indicator of her talent that she could make that passing interesting to someone who is totally unengaged with the subject matter. The editorial pages of the great newspapers ought to concern themselves with the whole expanse of human existence (which is why Verlyn Klinkenborg, possessor of the greatest name in commentary, is such an important addition to the Times), even if they skip the cloning and the multiple divorces, and stick to understanding what's actually happening around us.