No Ladies for My Lady

New Zealand Listener, Volume 36, Issue 923, 18 April 1957, Page 24

No Ladies for My Lady

HAVE lately been bringing myself up-to-date on soap operas, and have found to my surprise that I needed to. I had supposed that since soap operas always had been written to exactly the same formula, they always would be. I now find that I was mistaken, that a néw formula is creeping in; and it is one I don’t much care for. In the traditional s.o., still represented by Dr Paul and Portia Faces Life, the hero or heroine valiantly battles against every conceivable evil and misfortune through half a lifetime of daily episodes. If most of the misfortune and evil is the result of plotting by villainous characters, that is merely part of the simple view of life which is one of the marks of the genus. At least we know whom we are supposed to admire, and why. Not so with Failen Angel and Career Girl. The title characters in both are unpleasant young women, so much alike that I have difficulty in remembering which is which; but the serials are conceived from their points of view and they are obviously the ones the listener is supposed to identify herself with. The fact that both are prostitutes, not to put too fine a point on it, is a secondary matter. Our broadcasting service would never allow overt pornography in its serials, But these stories make up for their reticence in this respect by the ghoulish delight the principal charactérs take in entangling everyone else ‘in trouble. Their technique is mental torture; and this, it seems, is respectable -enough to get by the auditioners. Mind you, Arlene Ford and Angel ‘Whatsit are. made obvious enough villains to let the listener condemn them while following their progress avidly, which is no doubt satisfying to the conscience. No doubt in a few years’ time they will come to a sticky end or be made into reformed characters;

but meanwhile a grand time is had by all. And I am wowser enough to think

it ought not to be.

R. D.

McE.