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[We] have to break from the notion of isolating the object and then discovering its components. On the contrary, we have to discover the nature of a practice and then its conditions. (Williams 1973:16)
The way I went about carrying out the study followed from an emphasis on the actual practices and conditions involved. I used participant observation as a way of developing a firsthand understanding. The method is particularly suited for the study of behavior in natural settings and for capturing both subjective and objective processes. Put differently, meanings, social conditions, and behavior can all be studied and interrelated.
For the case study, I largely focused on one soap opera, although I did observe the making of Edge of Night and, to a lesser extent, All My Children. I embodied the results of my research in an ethnographic account that relays data but also ideally communicates a sense of what it means to participate in the production process on a number of levels. I hope the detail, concreteness, and thoroughness make the argument persuasive and contribute to the reader's grasp of the experience of making a soap.
In this brief account of how I went about doing the research and how and why I arrived at some of my conclusions, my aim is to aid the reader in assessing the study. I do not pretend to completeness, and my understanding of the research process has been constructed in retrospect. But I share in the growing interest in the understanding of the research process (Ruby 1982). A danger in my account is that I personalize what is actually a social process. My role as a scientific investigator gathering information for a dissertation was a powerful and important factor in virtually every area of the research. While my skills and manner of self-presentation affected what I learned, the way people in media organizations perceive academic research strongly influenced what I was able to learn.
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My interest in the social shaping of consciousness underlies my interest in reflexivity as a part of ethnographic practice as well as the topic and approach of my research. My initial research choices reflected the common prejudice that only nonfictional production was to be taken seriously; I planned to study how television news was constructed or how television documentaries were made. However, there were a number of good ethnographic accounts of news production (Tuchman 1969; Gans 1979). I also determined it was very doubtful I could do a study of local documentary production because few are made, their production schedule might not correspond to when I was free to carry out the research, and such projects might entail great expense for me and perhaps be shelved at any time.
Surveying the literature, I found few lengthy, detailed studies of fictional production, particularly television production. Soaps suggested themselves because they are very popular and long-lived, and many are made five days a week, 52 weeks a year, in New York. Daytime television has largely been ignored by academics, and the scholarly research I was able to find concentrated on effects and content.
Soap production intrigued me. Soaps seemed to be exotic, perhaps even glamorous, since they involved show business. Ideally I would gain some added social stature as one who knows about them firsthand, from the inside or backstage. But I also knew that they were very popular and seemed to have such a strong hold on some viewers that soap fans were often labelled hopeless addicts. Also, there were, and are, anecdotes about fans confronting or attacking performers whom they identify with the parts they play and stories that some audience members do not distinguish the show from reality. The issue of soaps' realism and the relationships between realism in fictional and nonfictional constructions of reality is a major theme of this study.
In part, I saw my production study as perhaps demystifying the process and the performances. Just as studies of news production showed it to be a limited construction or account of the world and very much a product of work routines and organizational pressures, so I hoped to reveal what was really behind or involved in soaps' construction.
During a sabbatical from teaching duties, I spent an average of four days a week at Edge of Night, January through March of 1981. In April, I began observing how Guiding Light was made. Later I could spend only two or three days a week because I had to resume teaching. I could spend only two days a month from October 1981 to October 1982 when I was writing up the research. The opportunity to go back to
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the field situation while I wrote this book was extremely helpful. It was this effort to make sense of what I had seen that led to a clear focus on what to look for.
My ability to gain entry clearly had to do with my doing dissertation research. Also, I was a professor as well as a Ph.D. candidate, and I used both identities as a way to gain access to information. People are willing, if not eager, to offer help and teach students. As a professor, I had established credentials already. The people I observed saw themselves as participating in my work, aiding me and contributing to science. People wanted to contribute to a deeper understanding of soaps than the one they knew society had, given the popular press about soaps. Many people felt I appreciated their work because of the depth of my study and the long time I spent in the studio.
In my initial contacts, I emphasized that I wanted to understand how soaps were made and not judge them. Much of the early literature on soaps, both popular and elite, has been critical of soaps and their audiences.6 As a form of popular culture, soaps have been subjected to a great deal of criticism, compounded by the fact that their audience is largely composed of housewives. Only recently have they been viewed as legitimate, and I suspect my research itself is part of that trend. I stressed that I was there to study the way work was accomplished and that I would largely be writing down what they took for granted.
That I was not there for commercial purposes was very important. Soap production is extremely competitive and relatively secretive. Budget and future story are strategic resources that are part of a competitive process with large financial and personal stakes. I emphasized I was not gathering information for personal profit, and I stressed that my interests were academic.
When I began observing I wasn't sure of what I was gaining or learning from my observations, and there was a great deal of self-doubt. Would I be able to write a meaningful account--would it be valid and reliable, and was I letting things pass unnoticed that really were significant? In a sense, because everything might be important, nothing was, and the continual preoccupation with the meaning of virtually everything made it seem meaningless.
While in the studio, I recorded my observations on a legal pad, began using a tape recorder after three weeks at Edge of Night, and a camera three or four weeks after that. I transcribed the tapes as soon as possible and found it consumed many hours. I then decided it would be best to spend three or four days observing and then a few days,
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including weekends, transcribing interviews and working with the information I had gathered--or created.
The atmosphere in the studios was contradictory. Camerapersons' prop persons, and stage crews, for example, were frequently bored, yet there was an intensity and air of excitement as the program or a scene grew closer and closer to the time when it was to be taped. The overall schedule, the work routines, and the formulaic nature of soaps generated boredom and disinterest on the set, but the necessity to stage and block each scene, capture all nuances of interpretation, camera shots, lighting, and other technical concerns, demanded complete attention to the work at hand.
The reactions to my presence on the set varied. (At Guiding Light a memo was circulated saying I would be doing dissertation research.) Some people were flattered and seemed eager to talk of their work experiences, frustrations, and goals. Like most people, they enjoyed the attention. Others quickly told me that there wasn't anything to observe, it was all routine. Some people, particularly camerapersons, compared the routine of current production to earlier days when shows were aired live and to the golden age of television when workers felt a sense of importance from havir,g worked televising relatively prestigious material live. After I had been around for a month or two, workers would express surprise I was still there, wondering what there was to see that would take so long.
It was easier than might be imagined to fit into the production situation. I started by carrying a clipboard with a yellow legal pad, looking, I guess, like a staff member who might be keeping a record of time or noting factors important for continuity. Several people are on set with notebooks or scripts. Actors, the director, the sound technicians, the associate director and the production assistant make reference to scripts or take notes. (The production assistant's role includes keeping track of the time required or expected for the program or scenes and recording the producer's comments to the director in the control room. The director then relies on the production assistant for those comments or notes when on the set.) Another basis for my rapid acceptance was the occasional presence of journalists on the set interviewing principals for magazines and newspapers. Also, much of the work is oriented to an audience, and I was an audience member in the studio.
The physical settings and production schedule of both shows varied, in part, because Edge of Night is 30 minutes long whereas Guiding Light is one hour long. At Edge of Night fewer people were involved, the rehearsal schedule
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permitted regular break periods, and work order was more predictable. Scenes were typically rehearsed in their order of appearance. There was an overall sequence of dry rehearsal, a "no fax" (with no technical facilities), a "fax," a dress rehearsal, and then the final taping. At Guiding Light, the day was broken up into two segments. One grouping of scenes would be rehearsed and shot in one studio from early morning until mid-afternoon. A similar routine would be followed in another studio later in the day into early evening. The scheduling might vary considerably if there was a need to pretape or posttape material; that is, to tape material produced earlier or later than the taping of the bulk of the material for a particular episode. Because of the different methods of taping the shows, it was much easier for me to become involved and enjoy Edge of Night as a program. It was impossible to get the same feeling of fulfillment from Guiding Light. At the end of the day, there was no final product that was experienced as a meaningful performance, whereas the result of the day's work at Edge of Night was a coherent dramatic production. At Guiding Light it was a series of isolated scenes, taped out of sequence, and never shown as a final performance. The episodes were edited the day after taping; it was only then that the episode took its final shape, without the commercials, however, which are added later.
At Edge of Night there were regular periods when everyone took breaks. There was also a coffee room where actors, technicians, office workers, or other members of the production company would join together. This made it easy to fit in and overhear conversations, or even conduct an impromptu interview. Actors, for example, would come there when they weren't needed for rehearsal. At Guiding Light there was no one place where people from various areas of production came together.
Another reason I found it relatively easy to observe much of the production process is that people come and go, with varying numbers of people on the set at any one time. In fact, it was easier to observe in the studio, where I could be relatively unobtrusive, than in the office areas, where I felt conspicuous. Not wanting to infringe on privacy, I tended to avoid going into the producers' offices at Guiding Light, even though they were next to the production office. At Edge of Night the producer's office was on another floor and was much less accessible.
The research at Edge of Night was limited by this factor. Not only was I apprehensive about offending people, and less sure of what I needed to find out, but the show had
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only one producer/executive producer and an associate prodUcer whose involvement in the work process was limited. The executive producer was always extremely busy, and I found it difficult to interview him. At Guiding Light there was an executive producer, but there were also two producers, one of whom did more of the line producing, or actual overseeing of the taping process. In addition, there was an associate producer who also was available. Their offices were near the production office and were connected--I had to walk through the associate producer's office to get to the office of the two producers, and through their office, in turn, to get to the executive producer. People at every level were willing to help me, as long as they had time. The only exception was the former supervising producer for Guiding Light. I guaranteed that all informants would be anonymous.
Initially, I observed the more accessible routines and interviewed the more immediately available people. I was in either the control room or the studio, interviewing technicians, actors, or production personnel. Camerapersons or prop persons enjoyed talking, partly as a way of breaking the daily routine. It is difficult to imagine just how routine the work is. The limited settings, movements, and ways they are shot, repeated daily, guaranteed boredom. Humor was the major means of alleviating it. At Guiding Light the personnel are largely CBS staff people, some of whom have worked for CBS for thirty years. Many compared the work, as I said earlier, to the golden years or to other forms of work in television.
I interviewed some people, particularly the headwriters, directors, and producers, in their homes or over lunch. Some people were extremely busy during the production process and often did not have time to talk. It was easier and more successful to schedule interviews. In addition to interviewing the headwaiters of Guiding Light and Edge of Night, I also interviewed two other headwaiters. Finally, as I explored the organizational relationships later in the study, I interviewed CBS and advertising executives.
Two important areas that shape the performances--budget and future story--were largely inaccessible to me. At Guiding Light I could ask about anything except for budget. It was surprising how few people had an overall knowledge of the bottom line figures and, in general, how much of a secret budget is. I was told that Procter and Gamble tends to keep a low profile and that figures were not available on production costs because the shows did not want competitors to know what their dollars produced. One employee suggested that
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public knowledge of salaries of performers, for example, would be divisive and lead performers to compare salaries and make greater demands. This problem, in fact, had recently occurred.
Individuals having some responsibility for budget spoke of the difficulties of answering Procter and Gamble's questions about costs. Procter and Gamble often wanted to know what an average scene cost, but producers found it impossible to define the average scene. I did gain some information about the budgets or costs for stage crews and technicians., The individuals responsible for this information at Edge of Night and Guiding Light were not employees of Procter and Gamble.
The secretiveness about production cost had to do with the competitive environment in which the soaps are made. Procter and Gamble shows (then) aired on CBS (As the World turns, Guiding Light, Search for Tomorrow), CBS (Another World, Texas), and ABC (Edge of Night), and Procter and Gamble attempted to make the best deal they could with each network, not letting any of the competing networks know what their agreements were. The agency of production (an advertising agency) handles the payments for Procter and Gamble so that the costs for the agency of production are not known to the individuals responsible for budget at Guiding Light. This adds to the mystery of the budget process.
One assistant to the producer summarized the complexity and difficulty of understanding budget:
Obviously you have gleaned that money goes from one pocket to the other -- between CBS, Compote and Procter and Gamble. It's a mire. It's half barter, it's half money set on historical precedent. We get some things as part of a package.
I can be sticking my nose in as much as I can and you can't get to the bottom of it. If you have ever talked to sales, they are the biggest bunch of double talkers. They wouldn't tell you what was going on if your life depended on it.
P & G sells their show to CBS; CBS in turn gives them the commercial minutes -- there's a certain amount of barter in there, but then the facilities are paid for by P & G to CBS. Most of it is computer money -- debit, credit -- at some point there is a reckoning at the end of the year. That's when we get hysterical when actual dollars have to be exchanged.
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People handling budget matters for the program had difficulty in determining costs themselves.
The other major area that I found difficult to study was future story. Put simply, the future story is what they want to use to hook the audience. Suspense and anticipation are two of the major components that are counted on to capture and hold the audience. Knowledge of future story was restricted, in a sense, to those who have a need to know. I was not allowed to participate in story conferences but was able to discuss the story projection with producers.
At Edge of Night, which is a mystery melodrama, the very nature of the storytelling depends on mystery. At Guiding Light there was more openness about future story, except again, when a mystery was involved or an important character was in jeopardy. Once a number of alternative endings to a mystery story were taped so that the production staff itself would not know who was responsible for a series of murders in the story.
I experienced several problems utilizing an ethnographic approach to study behavior in an organizational setting. Some of the difficulties have to do with the highly competitive, high stakes nature of the business. One's attention tends to be focused on the creative or dramatic character of the production process or on the work routines and roles, but there is a larger organizational and market context underlying the process, and that context provides the resources through which performances are created. At one point, it struck me that news production was probably easier to study than soap production. It was the larger (economic) setting that I initially had difficulty linking to the work process in a meaningful way.
In the studio, however, money
is not forgotten about, ratings are not ignored, and corporate
interests are not overlooked. Economic considerations surface
in a number of ways. When I asked one technician about his work,
he laughed and said, "They bribe us. They pay us lots of
money, lots of it!" Actors were aware of the commercial pressures.
They recognized that the pace of production and the content of
the scripts were strongly influenced by commercial considerations.
Directors often remarked that producers suggested that they keep
requests for extras down and explained this was due to pressure
from the production hierarchy. Directors would then cite decisions
they felt reflected a misuse of money. They complained that the
tardiness of actors for rehearsal, and their failure to know their
lines, often led to a longer production day, which translated
into. significantly increased production costs. And for everyone
there was the pressure and awareness of the
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production schedule. A major referent was the lunch break. Contractually, the technicians were entitled to an hour for lunch after five hours of work. At both shows, the lunch hour was a basic indicator of how well the production was going. Finally, a writers' strike during the spring of 1981 was also a clear indicator of the economic stakes involved. The strike was difficult to settle, in part, because the potential income from cable, video discs and tapes, and syndication for all involved was unclear.
Some of my naivete was related to the traditional anthropological study of groups with less power or whose financial stakes are smaller. Anthropologists have tended to focus on the exotic or the marginal, have tended to study down as opposed to up. Reading about people's lives, even in a book like Tally's Corner (Liebow 1967), in which the Negro males and their ways of living are clearly structured by the larger political economy, is to focus on people made marginal by the class structure and racism of American society.
Millions of dollars are at stake in the competitive world of soaps. Budgets and story are used to create potential markets and are at the heart of the "business behind the box." Perhaps the most unsettling quality of the research experience had to do with the discrepancy between the content of the shows--the symbolic world that is created--and the world which leads to the manufacture of that world. While the world of Guiding Light is largely upper and upper-middle class, full of things appropriate to a way of life based on consumption and ease, and about the powerful and the pursuit of power, the nature of the political economy of the real world is so far removed it doesn't exist. We don't see the workings of our society directly because the impersonal forces of the political economy--its embodiment in corporate decision making, routines on the assembly line or in a bureaucracy, and many of the frustrations of contemporary life--are absent. From one perspective, trying to understand soaps is to try to understand the world of corporate profit seeking, which the world of the soap denies. It was as if the harder I looked into the content of the program itself, the greater the potential mystification.
Also the way people at the corporate level go about doing what they do makes observation difficult. Conversations over the phone are difficult to observe. The executive producer and headwaiter continually have telephone conversations covering all aspects of production. The decisions they make during these phone conversations are extremely important. This observation difficulty also holds
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true for decisions that are affected by written communications. Private meetings were inaccessible or unannounced. For example, the executive producer and a performer might confer over salary or story behind closed doors.
There was one other source of difficulty. I was initially mystified by a native's view of the world of soap opera as show business, as in some way more vital and sacred than other forms of work. There is an aura to the world of entertainment' even the most commercial aspects, that sets it apart. It took me a while to shake such a perspective.
The competitive profit seeking, the complex, continuous production process, a product that was a secret (and ephemeral to boot), along with the nature of communications in an organizational context made the research frustrating and difficult.
Another major difficulty, of course, was making sense of it all. There was a point when it was clear I was constructing an understanding or explanation of the production process, and not simply gathering data. At first I was observing, taking notes, and transcribing them. I was separate from and, in a sense, passively registering or collecting information. Then, after I began to organize and write up the data in the fall of 1981, the experience of the research and writing changed, and I became more active in the process of making sense of how and why others go about making sense that results in a soap opera. What became clear is largely reflected in the organization of the ethnography.
My first efforts in writing were directed toward describing the production process in terms of the visual conventions that are used. Then I began to write a description of the process in terms of the most important roles. I did this in such a way as to (1) check my generalizations with people involved in the production process by giving them the essay to read, (2) see some concrete results of the research, and (3) generate more areas of research. The concept of role was, however, very unsatisfying because I was suspicious of the ease with which I used the concept. It fit the readymade typifications of people involved in the process itself, and it also seemed a very static way to apprehend a process.
One other major problem in the initial process of description and analysis had to do with seeing the organizational relationships in the studio where I could observe firsthand. I then developed a strategy of focused interviewing about the relationships and did more reading about industry trends and relationships. I was uncomfortable speaking about corporate policies because they were removed from the actual daily activities, yet they controlled and
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made Guiding Light and Edge of Night available. I realized that much of what occurred was the result of strategies to reduce uncertainty and minimize risk. Economic factors also affected the production process in terms of the procedures, routines, and practices that were used to meet production deadlines. Storytelling and its realizations became a hierarchically controlled corporate and collective activity in a competitive market setting.
A major issue involved the relationship of the audience to the show. I sensed that the audience varied depending on where one was in the process, that the audience was an economic (viewer/consumer) being, as well as a social being inhabiting different social worlds, and that the audience out there obviously could not be known directly. The perceptions of the audience were a major factor in decision making. I compiled a selection of letters to document the types of letters Guiding Light received, but I also wanted to create a more concrete sense of the variety of audience members. Also, on-going interaction between program and audience meant that ratings and letters could be used differently than in other forms of production. Research questions were then raised about this interactive process and its implications for the performances that were generated.
The metaphor of domains helped me to grasp a number of simultaneous and interactive relationships. I was particularly impressed by Eric Barnouw's (1979) analysis of the commercial support for network and public television and his use of the metaphor of domains. At the core of the system lies the commercial and the entertainment programming surrounding it. Domains that are further removed, but that are still affected by the commercial underpinnings of the system, are public affairs programming and even public television itself. The image of various domains resonated with my concern for identifying relationships on both a social and cultural (symbolic) level. Placing the commercial at the heart of the system of relationships, as Barnouw does, became for me a key to constructing an understanding. While I was aware from the start of the importance of economic factors, the metaphor of domains provided a concrete and persuasive means for identifying and communicating relationships. To some degree that metaphor avoids the danger of the base/superstructure metaphor, which dichotomizes a process that can be, and often is, very complex and interactive and which also often makes the symbolic seem as if it is a form of epiphenomena. The metaphor also seems fresh and free of the associations of base and superstructure in much of the literature.
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I did not do a study of commercial production or an elaborate, quantified content analysis of commercials aired with soaps. But my understanding, based as it is on a view of the communication process as involving a number of reIationships, is supported by the patterns I observed in soaps and commercials. The audience member is both a viewer and consumer and can be understood in such a way as to link programming and commercial. Again, even though I did not study how people fit soaps into their lives--or how people build their lives around soaps--the fit between program and commercial content and the fact that they are viewed largely in the home by women was significant. Soaps and commercials, from the perspective I adopted, provide forms of participation that are experienced largely in the home, during the afternoon. It is difficult to avoid making sense of what soaps mean without some understanding of the participatory process. Careful ethnographic study of program use or participation is vitally needed.
I viewed the content of the programming as performances and as creating the possibility of participating in an alternative social world. This approach was consistent with an emphasis on the social and symbolic nature of the communication process. From my perspective, as a participant in the larger society, as a participant in the production process, and as a participant in the process of social selfunderstanding given my role as an anthropologist, my description of the performances relates them to an anthropological or sociological view of social life. At times my understanding and account reads as if I have discovered or revealed what the performances really mean. My account more accurately provides a way of reflecting on soaps in relation to social process and their implications for the kind of society we create and in which we are invited to participate.
I consciously attempted to assess the accuracy of my account and interpretation in several ways. I observed the production process for All My Children, an ABC soap, for two days in order to develop a comparative perspective. Ideally, I would have liked to study two soaps, one owned by Procter and Gamble and another owned by ABC. I chose to study two Procter and Gamble owned shows because I realized that task was large enough.
I asked various production personnel to read some of my work. The opportunity to do so partially reflected the educationa1 level or general sophistication of people working on production and their interest in an academic account. I described my work as partially a matter of writing down the unwritten rules for what they did and as putting on paper
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what they largely took for granted.
At times, they would reflect a "so what?" attitude,
then elaborate on their reaction. My account was accurate, they
would say, but it stated what they already knew to be the case.
Others appreciated my overview of the process and often corrected
minor errors. In some cases they ended questioning their work
in what they were reminded was a highly commercial activity.
When I had completed the study, a producer read several of the
chapters
and indicated they were fair and accurate. This affirmed the validity
of the account.
One factor shaping my reading of the performances is a strong
personal and professional view that is very much opposed to the
understanding of the social world that soaps present--at least
as I view them. Soaps either personalize social forces or completely
deny them. If a sociological imagination entails the understanding
of experience as the intersection of individual biography, social
setting, and history, soap understanding is a matter of personal
and interpersonal conflicts or factors in a small, bounded community.
As an alternative reality, they are crafted to deal with conflicts
in a way that prime-time television does not, yet, at the same
time, conflict is handled in the most ahistorical and personalized
individual manner.
Power is personalized and simultaneously glamorized and denigrated, particularly in characterizations of the super wealthy and powerful. The power inherent in the role of doctor and lawyer is largely ignored, while the people in such roles, and the roles as a result, are romanticized. Social mobility and the pursuit of money and social success are made appealing, while morality tales are told of their proper and inproper pursuit. Work is largely ignored, and many of the tensions of contemporary life are mystified as a result. And if work and leisure are chosen as dominant themes of contemporary life, leisure takes on the quality of a commodity, never calling into play the grounds for its existence.
Ultimately, I have used a conventional anthropological approach to study an unconventional topic. I relied primarily upon participant observation and formal interviews, complemented by library research and the use of trade journals and popular magazines to construct an understanding of soap performances in relation to the conditions and practices that generate them. The results of the research support Elliott's contention that a "phenomenological approach to social research . . . seems to offer a way of approaching 'socio-cultural wholes' from the bottom up" (1972:10). Beginning with the actual production process by working outward and upward, I identified the significant relationships
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and forces affecting the work process and the performances it generates.
An integral element of this account
is this discussion of my major aims and practices. As an ethnographic
rendering of social process, this work itself is a product of
specific social conditions and research practices. This discussion
of my aims and methods and of my theoretical, and personal orientation
ideally contributes ability to assess the account.
Proceed to Chapter 3