Does Watching Soaps Give Unrealistic Ideas?
Survey takers were asked if they thought watching soap operas gives people unrealistic ideas about sex. Answers varied greatly and were all spread out among all possible responses of strongly agree, agree, undecided, disagree, and strongly disagree. The explanation for this is probably in the interpretation of the question. Those who voted for unrealistic probably thought of facts like high illegitimacy, the four to one ratio of unmarried sexual acts to married sexual acts, the fact that married soap couples spend their time discussing the activity of unmarried couples, (Greenberg and Abelman 86) or the fact that twenty-two percent of soap characters are married to someone other than their sexual partners. (Greenberg and D'Alessio 315)
Those who felt that soap operas don’t give people unrealistic ideas about sex probably focused on the facts that the decision to have sex or not to have sex causes problems for the characters, sex can have negative consequences, or sex can be rewarding, all of which are experiences shared by soap characters and real people alike.
|
