Blurring the Boundaries: Explorations to the Fringes of Nonfiction

Wendy Rawlings

217 Wendy Rawlings Why I Hope My Soap Opera Will Outlive Me and Other Confessions about a Dying Art This is a genre, unlike all others, that requires one thing of its audience—its memory, its collective recollection of who you are and what you’ve done. That is extraordinary. Charles Keating, “Carl Hutchins,” Another World They are very separate entities but attributes of each affecting the other. I don’t believe that you can play a character for 31 years and not have parts of the character affect you and vise versa. “cm,” via e-mail with me According to The Guinness Book of World Records, General Hospital is the longest-running soap opera currently in production, having aired more than twelve thousand episodes. Let’s just write that out numerically: 12,000 (!!!). On soap operas, as opposed to, say, sitcoms, characters acquire long and deep and complex histories not unlike the long and deep and complex histories humans acquire after living for a few decades. Soap viewers watch these histories accrue in what seems to be real time. When I first started watching gh in 1979, the technology to connect me with other viewers didn’t exist. The technology to record an episode and watch it later that day didn’t even exist. In the thirty years since I started watching, vcrs, dvrs, Facebook, Twitter, chat rooms, 218 wendy rawlings fan pages, YouTube, and dozens of other innovations have allowed fans like me to sink more deeply into our soaps than we would have been able to imagine. Sad, sad show =(hope you guys aren’t crying to hard (lldubs [Laura Wright, “Carly,” gh], via Twitter) Join my drama free gh group where its totally drama free and u dont have to worry bout being bashed or attacked for stating ur opinion or liking characters someone else dis like.... (RachaelmzRayonce’ Davis,1 via Facebook) how selfish was carho2 today she at least cud of game jason3 a couple days before asking him for jake4 kidney i mean dame women the man son just died probley an hour before she asked him that and joss5 aint goin no where anytime soon so she cud of gave it time before asking him and wtf she asking jason for anyway jason is not his legal father so he cant just give jake kidney away if he wanted to thats up to liz6 and lucky7 ....today was an emotional day by the way 1. I “met” Rachael, a very opinionated black nineteen-year-old in Chicago, via a General Hospital fan page she started on Facebook called “The RachaelmzRayonce’ Davis Show.” I have never met her face-to-face, but we comment on each other’s posts daily. 2. Rachael’s nickname for a character on gh named “Carly Jax.” Carho = Carly + “ho” (whore). At least three times per day, usually apropos of nothing, Rachael posts on Facebook: “Dear gh: Kill Carho!!!” 3. “Jason Morgan,” hunky mob operative and important character on gh. 4. “Jake Webber,” Jason’s son, the product of an extramarital affair between Jason and Elizabeth Webber. Jason gave up his son in order to protect him from the dangers of the mob. On this week’s episode, Jake is hit by a car and killed; thus, his kidney is up for grabs. 5. “Josslyn Jax,” infant daughter of Carly Jax. She has just been diagnosed with a Wilms tumor and needs that kidney. 6. Elizabeth Webber, mother of Jake. 7. Lucky Spencer, former (cuckolded) husband of Elizabeth, who adopted Jake as his own. why i hope my soap opera will outlive me 219 love l&l28 scenes today (RachaelmzRayonce’ Davis, via Facebook) Rachael has created Facebook pages devoted to gh such as “lante foreva” and “We want guza9 fired!!!” Rachael’s stated reason for starting the kill carly page is “for all u cujo10 haters please add ur friends to dis group so we can all express our hate for carly.” I’m a member of this group, but I’m not a Carly hater. I sometimes feel a little creepy about the extent of Rachael’s vitriol. I’ve wondered whether I should mention to her that I follow the actress who plays Carly, Laura Wright, on Twitter, and that I was delighted to discover that the actress owns Standing Sun Wines in California’s Santa Ynez Valley, is a devoted wine drinker like I am...