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1960s Soap Operas

“Soap operas,” they called them. Housewives watched
Them while they sewed or cooked or ironed clothes.
At two o’clock each afternoon began
The sleazy saga to which mom attached
Attention, sympathizing with the woes
Of characters unlike her, who would plan
Adultery or revenge. She sat and stitched
A hem, or stood and ironed, while the themes
Of selfish human nature crossed the screen
In tangled threads of hate. Malicious schemes
Were interwoven; each distressing scene
Changed suddenly when it was at its peak.
The one mom watched was called “The Secret Storm.”
It featured gales of anger, squalls and gusts
Of squalid murder plots. Five days a week
The vengeful envy thundered on while mom—
Engrossed in drama based on brutal lusts,
Vindictive pride, and winds of violent greed—
Was drawn into this sordid world. Her iron
Appeared to move itself, her mind absorbed.
I was bewildered by her curious need
To follow these warped lives. What might she learn
About the world from people so disturbed?
“It shows me that my problems aren’t so bad,”
She said. I wondered after that, instead,
About her private world: what secret storm
Might haunt this normal woman I called Mom?

This stormy world is full of secret sins.
“Adam is in this earth. So it begins.”

First published in The Orchards Poetry Review, January, 2020

Poet’s Note: the quote in the last line is from James Agee, Sonnet I

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Cynthia Erlandson is a poet and fitness professional living in Michigan.  Her second collection of poems, Notes on Time, has recently been published by AuthorHouse, as was her first (2005) collection, These Holy Mysteries.  Her poems have also appeared in First Things, Modern Age, The North American Anglican, The Orchards Poetry Review, The Book of Common Praise hymnal, and elsewhere.

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34 Responses

  1. Dan Ward

    Brings back memories when I was in day care ( really long time ago!) and right after lunch we were all marched off to bed so Mrs. Millen could watch her afternoon soaps. Your poem hit it on the head, I suppose that’s why they were so addictive. I enjoyed reading this.

    Reply
  2. Norma Pain

    This was a fun and interesting read Cynthia. It has caused me to reflect on the programs that I watch for ‘entertainment’ value. Human nature is so interesting. Thank you for this observant poem. Great job.

    Reply
  3. Roy E. Peterson

    My mother never watched soap operas, but I did in the summers sitting at home. There was not much else to watch with only three snowy television stations that we could get. I remember the ‘Secret Storm,” but as a teenager, I fell in love with one of the girl actresses on “As the World Turns.” The other soap opera I remember was “The Guiding Light.” Thank you for the thoughts concerning their warped but fascinating scripts and my memories.

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Others were “The Edge of Night,” “All My Children,” and “General Hospital.” A weird one called “Dark Shadows” dealt with vampires. The soaps were specifically aimed at women in the home, and were almost always concerned with family relations, love affairs, impossible dilemmas, anticipated dangers, jealousy and envy, and mysterious strangers. In the 1950s, soaps were somewhat reticent and constrained. As the 60s and 70s came along, they became racier and sexier.

      But drama must always have conflict, disturbing elements, transgressions, bad choices, and tension. Otherwise it won’t work as entertainment. If these things are gone, all we have is “Leave It To Beaver.” The housewives wanted more than that.

      Reply
      • Cynthia Erlandson

        Thanks for that history, Joseph. I do remember all of those titles.

  4. Brian Yapko

    A very fun read, Cynthia — a most original subject with a slightly disturbing and thought-provoking subtext. What “secret storms” indeed! There’s a certain schadenfreude, I think, in watching other people’s problems and drama on TV. I myself confess to rushing home from school everyday to be able to catch “Dark Shadows” at 4:00 p.m. I wasn’t interested in the human nature aspects. I was nine or ten years old and I just liked the vampires and ghosts.

    Reply
    • Julian D. Woodruff

      Well done, Cynthia. Maybe you could do one on the current equivalent, whatever it might be.
      I think producers back then were pretty shrewd: they kept viewers engaged, but not to the point that ironing got burned, and enabled marketers to sell a lot of (more or less useful) product.

      Reply
      • Cynthia Erlandson

        Thanks for the suggestion, Julian. I just haven’t been able to take a liking to any of the soap-opera “update” shows — if they’re “reality” shows, I don’t recognize them as being very realistic, so I don’t think I could write about them.

    • Cynthia Erlandson

      Thanks, Brian. I remember kids talking about Dark Shadows, too, and our friends’ dad thinking it was funny. That’s one I never watched.

      Reply
    • Cynthia Erlandson

      Thanks, Brian. I remember kids talking about Dark Shadows, but never watched it. Our neighbors’ dad thought it was funny.

      Reply
  5. Shaun C. Duncan

    Nice work, Cynthia – an insightful take on an original subject. It’s interesting now to reflect on the passing of the era of the soaps. They seemed so trashy at the time but now appear as the model of sophistication compared to the reality shows which have replaced them.

    Reply
    • Cynthia Erlandson

      I think you’re right, Shaun. I wasn’t really even interested in the old ones, but I’m totally uninterested in these new “reality shows”; it seems to me they’ve all “jumped the shark” (that was “Happy Days, wasn’t it?)

      Reply
  6. Sally Cook

    Dear Cynthia,
    A girl who had a role on General Hospital had a grandmother living two blocks from me in another city… When her grandmother fell ill, this girl came to take care of her, and we became friends. Later, grandmother died, and there was a house sale, where I bought a lovely pair of satin shoes from the 1930s.
    A bit earlier at home, my father and his cow listened to the radio as he was milking her. Their programs were funny, and all about bars, and strange people that father and his cow were unlikely ever to meet. He said the cow enjoyed these programs !

    Reply
  7. Joshua C. Frank

    I like it. As I read it, it occurred to me that this is true of television in general, not just soap operas (which, as far as I can tell, seem to have been largely replaced by so-called “reality television”).

    On the subject of television, you might like my short poem “TV Bubble,” published here June 17, 2022.

    Reply
    • Cynthia Erlandson

      Hi, Joshua, I would like to read “TV Bubble”, but was unable to find it here.

      Reply
      • Damian Robin

        Cynthia — “TV Bubble,” is one of three poems to be found here:

        https://classicalpoets.org/2022/06/17/a-modernization-of-to-his-coy-mistress-by-joshua-c-frank/#/

        Living in England in the 50s and 60s, we would have had a different kettle of fish … though, as my family had no tv until much later, I knew little of its wonders.
        However, when my mother was visiting my father in hospital over several weeks in the evenings, my sister and I, both under ten, were palmed off with a widow over the road.
        She plonked us in the front room with the tv and left us there. We watched ‘One Step Beyond’ and ‘The Outer Limits’. I had many nightmares but got some cultural and paranormal education and could, much later, understand where the Madness song came from, that I enjoyed very much.

        Thanks for your well written, psychological insights into life in the American domestic slow lane.

      • Joseph S. Salemi

        Dear Damian —

        You really brought back a memory by mentioning “One Step Beyond.” Hosted by John Newland and sponsored by Alcoa Aluminum, it was the only TV show that my mother prohibited us from watching, because it tended to give me and my brother nightmares. We had to sneak into the upstairs living room and watch it secretly while she was downstairs.

        And you’re right — “One Step Beyond” gave the viewer a real sense of the mysterious, the inexplicable, and the paranormal. Unlike so much of the escapist fare of the time, the show made you think and wonder and be frightened.

  8. Tonia Kalouria

    Dear Cynthia, Wow! Talk about nostalgia! I used to rush home every day after a hard day teaching high schoolers, change clothes and put my feet up to watch “my show” and decompress. (Before that, the ironing of the dread white shirts while watching rang true, too.) I have one on soaps, too — prior to the 60’s. Hint: Oxydol. Perhaps I should dig it out. There’s a longing for “the good ole days” nostalgia in these somber times.

    Reply
  9. Allegra Silberstein

    Thank you for this delightful poem bringing us into the past. The ending was superb.

    Reply
  10. Paul Freeman

    “What secret storm / might haunt this normal woman I called Mom?” I found this the most poignant of lines.

    When I used to go home at lunchtime from school, ‘The Sullivans’, an Aussie soap opera set around and during WWII, would be on. Who can forget the more English than the English, nosy neighbour, Mrs Jessop?

    Alas, then it all went ‘Neighbours’ and ‘Home and Away’.

    Thanks for the read, Cynthia, and for the unusual topic of your excellent poem.

    Reply
    • Cynthia Erlandson

      Thank you very much, Paul! It was a strange feeling recalling (and I don’t remember what prompted the thought that spawned the poem) how I wondered why mom was sort of addicted to that show.

      Reply
  11. James Sale

    Very powerful and actually very disturbing poem – the mother getting so absorbed in this way; it sort of reminds me of Sauron’s Ring of Power which totally dominates the mind. Deeply excellent work – very impressive.

    Reply
    • Cynthia Erlandson

      I’m very honored that you were impressed by it, James — thank you so much!

      Reply
  12. Susan Jarvis Bryant

    Cynthia, I love this “sleazy saga” poem of “warped lives”… there are some excellent images in this well written piece. It reminds me of a fair few evenings in England watching Eastenders and Coronation Street, with more plots, twists and turns than the entire works of Shakespeare. Every Christmas there was a murder… I’m glad I’ve moved beyond this daily trauma… Eastenders and Coronation Street didn’t follow me to Texas!

    Reply
    • Joseph S. Salemi

      Americans loved Eastenders, though we had some trouble with the British vocabulary and idioms. But it wasn’t as difficult as Last of the Summer Wine — a very funny show, but the Yorkshire dialect was really impenetrable sometimes.

      Reply
      • Susan Jarvis Bryant

        Joe, it’s lovely to hear of ‘Last of the Summer Wine’ – I grew up with that wonderful Sunday evening treat, and thoroughly enjoyed mimicking Nora Batty with my wrinkled schoolgirl socks. The British are so into their soaps that the Prime Minister of the time, Tony Blair, had to assure the British people that Jack Straw (the then Home Secretary) would look into the case of Deirdre, a Coronation Street star wrongly convicted of a crime… how odd is that?! The only American soap I indulged in was Dallas… was that a soap? The British were taking bets on who shot J.R. – that’s how popular it was. I thought ‘Dallas’ was a weird, wacky, and wonderful world to live in, and now, here I am in my own lil hummingbird-filled ranch in Texas. 🙂 hehe

      • Paul Freeman

        When the series ‘The Sweeney’ aired in the U.S., it was subtitled, apparently.

        “Let’s put an ear on ‘is bell, gov,” became “Let’s bug his telephone, boss.”

  13. James Kirkpatrick

    You really make the reader hear the theme-song organ and the steam iron’s hiss with this one.

    I missed the 60s’ soaps, but those of the 70s and 80s were common in my grandparents’ house (All My Children being the favorite). You’re right, it is bewildering: Do watchers wish their lives were like the sordid characters’, or rather, like your mom suggested, just relish vicariously “dodging bullets” that the characters can’t? (And could you even get an honest answer?)

    Reply

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