Guiding Light

For at least the last thirty years (and probably more) my mom has been a faithful viewer of The Young and the Restless.  For several years in there I was too - my earliest memories involve eating the peel from her apple while watching the show.  Without fail, my mother has taped every episode, even if she's watching it live, in case she is called away.  Great woe awaited the daughter of hers who accidentally interfered with its taping on the VCR every once in awhile - though always the result of a mistake my mother acted as if I had deliberately planned the ruin of her day.  Vacations are organized with an eye to how my mother will get to catch up on her show.  Nowadays I'll only see glimpses of it when I'm home, and not much has changed: Victor is still endlessly remarrying and divorcing Nikki, Jack Abbott still has an abundance of sandy blond hair, and there is always, always, a rhinestone somewhere in the frame.

I'll admit that despite all the wooden acting, the stilted dialogue, the unbelievable marriages and remarriages and devil possession plots, I did, for a while, succumb to the hypnotic power of the soap opera.  There is something reassuring about them, the same people there every day, without fail, missing only a few major holidays a year, never changing and always predictable.  And I can see, very well, that they broke up the monotony of housewivery for many women.  Moreover, soap operas have occasionally displayed a penchant for progressivism: most recently, they've been introducing gay and lesbian characters with little judgment, and more than a little reverence.