{"title":"女族长之死:肥皂剧美学、空间与记忆","authors":"Faye Woods","doi":"10.1177/17496020251339438","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The deaths of long-running, elderly characters offer up a chance to consider the ebb and flow and circular nature of soap narratives. This article uses the deaths of three of <jats:italic>EastEnders</jats:italic> ’s matriarchs to think about the soap opera’s use of aesthetics and space, alongside its layering of memory. Pat Butcher, Peggy Mitchell and Dot Cotton’s deaths – two on screen and one off – saw the programme intensify and disrupt its aesthetic and narrative conventions to signify these deaths as intensely emotional ‘events’. These endings were moments of pause in the ever-onwards flow of soap narrative. Long-running elderly characters embody soap memory, and through these deaths <jats:italic>EastEnders</jats:italic> revisited deep layers of its past to pay tribute to departing iconic characters by employing ‘practices of self-citations and self-referentiality’ (Holdsworth, 2011: 37). Here, objects and spaces, remembrances and returns are used to enrich the experience of long-time viewers. This article considers the use of Albert Square as a ‘time-rich’ (Lury, 2005:16) space and presents these episodes as examples of how the programme can shift its aesthetic conventions and unsettle its spatial dynamics for affective impact.","PeriodicalId":51917,"journal":{"name":"Critical Studies in Television","volume":"40 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.9000,"publicationDate":"2025-05-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Death of a matriarch: Soap opera aesthetics, space and memory\",\"authors\":\"Faye Woods\",\"doi\":\"10.1177/17496020251339438\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"The deaths of long-running, elderly characters offer up a chance to consider the ebb and flow and circular nature of soap narratives. This article uses the deaths of three of <jats:italic>EastEnders</jats:italic> ’s matriarchs to think about the soap opera’s use of aesthetics and space, alongside its layering of memory. Pat Butcher, Peggy Mitchell and Dot Cotton’s deaths – two on screen and one off – saw the programme intensify and disrupt its aesthetic and narrative conventions to signify these deaths as intensely emotional ‘events’. These endings were moments of pause in the ever-onwards flow of soap narrative. Long-running elderly characters embody soap memory, and through these deaths <jats:italic>EastEnders</jats:italic> revisited deep layers of its past to pay tribute to departing iconic characters by employing ‘practices of self-citations and self-referentiality’ (Holdsworth, 2011: 37). Here, objects and spaces, remembrances and returns are used to enrich the experience of long-time viewers. This article considers the use of Albert Square as a ‘time-rich’ (Lury, 2005:16) space and presents these episodes as examples of how the programme can shift its aesthetic conventions and unsettle its spatial dynamics for affective impact.\",\"PeriodicalId\":51917,\"journal\":{\"name\":\"Critical Studies in Television\",\"volume\":\"40 1\",\"pages\":\"\"},\"PeriodicalIF\":0.9000,\"publicationDate\":\"2025-05-02\",\"publicationTypes\":\"Journal Article\",\"fieldsOfStudy\":null,\"isOpenAccess\":false,\"openAccessPdf\":\"\",\"citationCount\":\"0\",\"resultStr\":null,\"platform\":\"Semanticscholar\",\"paperid\":null,\"PeriodicalName\":\"Critical Studies in Television\",\"FirstCategoryId\":\"1085\",\"ListUrlMain\":\"https://doi.org/10.1177/17496020251339438\",\"RegionNum\":2,\"RegionCategory\":\"艺术学\",\"ArticlePicture\":[],\"TitleCN\":null,\"AbstractTextCN\":null,\"PMCID\":null,\"EPubDate\":\"\",\"PubModel\":\"\",\"JCR\":\"0\",\"JCRName\":\"FILM, RADIO, TELEVISION\",\"Score\":null,\"Total\":0}","platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Critical Studies in Television","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/17496020251339438","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"艺术学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"FILM, RADIO, TELEVISION","Score":null,"Total":0}
Death of a matriarch: Soap opera aesthetics, space and memory
The deaths of long-running, elderly characters offer up a chance to consider the ebb and flow and circular nature of soap narratives. This article uses the deaths of three of EastEnders ’s matriarchs to think about the soap opera’s use of aesthetics and space, alongside its layering of memory. Pat Butcher, Peggy Mitchell and Dot Cotton’s deaths – two on screen and one off – saw the programme intensify and disrupt its aesthetic and narrative conventions to signify these deaths as intensely emotional ‘events’. These endings were moments of pause in the ever-onwards flow of soap narrative. Long-running elderly characters embody soap memory, and through these deaths EastEnders revisited deep layers of its past to pay tribute to departing iconic characters by employing ‘practices of self-citations and self-referentiality’ (Holdsworth, 2011: 37). Here, objects and spaces, remembrances and returns are used to enrich the experience of long-time viewers. This article considers the use of Albert Square as a ‘time-rich’ (Lury, 2005:16) space and presents these episodes as examples of how the programme can shift its aesthetic conventions and unsettle its spatial dynamics for affective impact.
期刊介绍:
Critical Studies in Television publishes articles that draw together divergent disciplines and different ways of thinking, to promote and advance television as a distinct academic discipline. It welcomes contributions on any aspect of television—production studies and institutional histories, audience and reception studies, theoretical approaches, conceptual paradigms and pedagogical questions. It continues to invite analyses of the compositional principles and aesthetics of texts, as well as contextual matters relating to both contemporary and past productions. CST also features book reviews, dossiers and debates. The journal is scholarly but accessible, dedicated to generating new knowledge and fostering a dynamic intellectual platform for television studies.