Invisible Roots: Re-examining Soap Opera’s Influence on the Narrative Complexity of Contemporary Television Drama

Abstract

This paper examines the notion that contemporary television is more “complex” than programming made in the past, arguing that such an approach can risk denigrating earlier TV and erasing its impact on current practice. Focusing on the role soap opera has played in influencing recent narrative trends, it will particularly examine the genre’s tendency toward “paradigmatic complexity” and its increasing presence in contemporary long-form drama. Explaining how this esthetic trend has helped to produce increased levels of narrative depth and expansion, it will also show how this is no longer sacrificed at the expense of a forward-moving plot or a profound sense of “syntagmatic determinacy.” Describing this in terms of “paradigmatic determinacy,” it will conclude that current TV does not offer an entirely new mode of storytelling, but is best understood as the culmination of narrative forms and generic traditions which can be traced back many decades.