Plot Inflation in Greater Weatherfield: Coronation Street in the 1990s

Abstract

In a recent overview of developments in soap opera scholarship Christine Geraghty suggests that critical orthodoxy has arisen, stifling further analysis of the form.¹ Current work concentrates upon the presupposed fixed conventions of soap opera as a form, neglecting to identify and consider changes that appear within the programmes, which might potentially contradict previous generalised definitions of soap opera as a genre. In particular, Geraghty identifies the absence of detailed textual analysis of British soaps:

Textual readings of soaps need to become more nuanced and to be unhooked from questions of representation. The 1980s practice of reading for ideological positions and contradictions needs to be reinforced with (or undermined by) an account of their visual and aural textual features (including performance) and an assessment of how such features work with or against the grain of the particular stories being told. Textual analysis of this kind would need to be taken across episodes to look at the rhythms, repetitions and changes in style and would need to incorporate an account of the way in which these elements have changed over time.²