Gender, Sexuality, Genre and Lesbian Stories in Soap Operas

In this article I demonstrate on the examples of lesbian love narratives in four soap operas around the world (Spain, USA, Germany, Australia) that the growing number of lesbian narratives in soap operas is mainly due to commercial reasons, since television networks want to increase ratings among heterosexual audience by being sensational and different. They do this in a way acceptable to heterosexual audience: this means they have hypocritical and double standards towards lesbian narratives and show just enough to satisfy the inquisitive heterosexual gaze. At the same time they are reproducing the well known gender binarism, femme and butch gender roles, acceptable to the straight gaze. That is why we frequently notice structurally incomplete and unreal love stories, where almost all intimate scenes between female lovers more or less lack eroticism. However, if this is not the case, these scenes are dramatically stylized and shortened. Although we conclude that in such a manner progress has been made in the representation of lesbian love, it is still far from righteous and equal.

The integral version of this article can be found in the printed KINO!