Soaps, Pulps, and the ?Low-Brow? Self | Nothing Worth Knowing

Over Spring break, I searched for creative ways to avoid comps- one of which was watching foreign soap operas on youtube. One of the things that struck me was the prevelance of gay and lesbian storylines. LGBTQ characters are coming into their own in prime-time TV, as well, yet there is a certain? je nais se quoi to queer daytime that deserves attention.

Rather than describe the characters and plots I?ve been watching, I?ll let wikipedia, that ultimate low-brow knowledge creator, speak:

(On Los Hombres de Paco)? Pepa is a lesbian. She becomes close friends with co-worker Silvia who realizes she has feelings for Pepa. Silvia is straight and Pepa is her exception. In season 8 they get married. On their wedding day Silvia gets shot by the mafia and dies.

(Hollyoaks) Brazil dates Lucy Benson before coming out as gay. Nick is openly gay and had a relationship with Nathan. John Paul and Craig ambark on a complicated relationship, in between John Paul dates Spike and Kieron Hobbs, before leaving with Craig. Ravi?s bisexual who dates Kris, a cross-dressing bisexual. Sarah and Zo? had a drunken liaison together. Gina & Emily had a brief lesbian relationship, encountering homophobia from Darren Osborne when this was revealed. Sarah starts dating Lydia Hart, Charlotte Lau her ex becomes a student and has had flings with Laura and Molly Montgomery. Jasmine Costello then suffers from Gender disaphoria and dresses as a male called Jason. Ste later reveals to Brendan he had feelings for another male whilst in young offenders and they share a kiss, embarking on a violent relationship. Fern is a lesbian who bullies Jason because of his GID. Noah arrives and is openly gay. Esther arrives and comes out as a lesbian. She later has a romance with Tilly, and later her gay friend George Smith arrives in Hollyoaks to start College. After Jodie snogs Texas it doesn?t take very long until lots of feelings start to grow.

(Emmerdale) Paul was openly gay and had several relationships, one with bisexual binman Ivan. In the end Paul married Johnny Foster and left the village.

Aaron was first portrayed as a straight, angry teenager but soon he is revealed to be gay and is very self-loathing, but once he comes out, he entered into a relationship with Jackson, ending when Aaron agrees to Jackson?s wish to euthanize him.

Now, laid out like that, these character seem to suffer from the same over-the-top soap drama as their straight compatriots. But I think that?s the point, and why these storylines are subversive even if (or because?) they?re so outlandish. Also, I?m not gonna lie: I sobbed.

So what does all of this have to do with my Omeka project? Well, these soaps remind me of the gay and lesbian paperback explosion of the 1950s and ?60s. Like soaps, these books were cheaply produced, mass-marketed and decidedly ?lowbrow.? And I think, like soaps, it is these very production values that allowed them to be truly subversive, and created a space in which the queer community could identify and express themselves. As one reader remembers upon reading her first lesbian pulp, ?it opened the door to my soul and told me who I was.?

These novels, like today?s soaps, mixed serious social issues with salacious details of lust and sex. Thankfully, soaps today have largely abandonded the faux moralizing that lent early pulps a veneer of dissaproval for the sake of obscenity laws. Both soaps and pulps are inherently ?over the top,? in ways that both dimishes their impact yet paradoxically allows for edgy storylines to be a natural part of the landscape.

These media allow us to explore assumptions about the conservative nature of low-brow entertainment. My question today is ?how can Omeka help me do that?? Frankly, the salacious covers of pulp novels means that any google image search brings up hundereds of results for those with a casual interest, so how can archiving and tagging improve that perusal? I think tagging can help clarify important changes over time, for one thing. Susan Stryker notes that the loosening in obscenity laws preceded a shift in gay pulp presentation, from a didactic moral tone and themes of social realism to ?sheer sexual wish fulfillment fantasies.? This is an important shift that deserves acknowledgment, and can illustrate the diversity of pulp. For lesbian pulp novels, it is important in tags and metadata to focus on the author: both nomme de plume and real name when available. This information can help readers sort out the identity of authors: they range from homosexual men, straight men writing for prurient or financial reasons, nominally straight women, closeted women, and out lesbians. The broader readership for lesbian novels and gender imbalances in published tell a fascinating story in the evolution of lesbian novels. We?ll see how much of that story can be told through dublincore.

Source: http://blogs.luc.edu/aserafine/2012/03/15/soaps-pulps-and-the-low-brow-self/

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