3a
C. Scardaville; High art, no art: The economic and aesthetic legitimacy of U.S.
soap operas
For decades, the soap opera – a serialized narrative drama created in the United States
in the 1930s – has been a viable way to conduct business in the global media industry
(EG: «Santa Barbara»; «The Bold and the Beautiful»). The soap opera paradigm, as
Wittebols coins it, offers a powerful way to make money across the globe. That is,
soap operas are economically legitimate. Legitimacy can be defined as ‘‘the construal
of a social object as consistent with cultural beliefs, norms and values that are
presumed to be shared by others in the local situation and perhaps more broadly by
actors in the broader community (e.g., organization or society)’’. While soap operas
have obtained economic legitimacy by being acceptable commercial products, they
have not achieved aesthetic legitimacy because they are generally not seen as works of
art. Great works of arts are not recognized as much as they are created, and their status
as masterpieces must be actively maintained. In this view, almost any cultural product
has the potential, at least theoretically, to become art. The process through which they
attain status is aesthetic mobility. This mobility entails a cultural object’s journey
from a low status form of mass entertainment to a high status position where the genre
that contains the cultural object is widely seen as capable of producing works of art
that have intrinsic, non-economic value (Baumann, 2001, 2007). For example, once
‘‘base’’ cultural objects like jazz are now seen as art (Lopes, 2002).
Claims regarding the merits of soap operas resonate with arguments about the artistic
worth of television in general. Primetime television (shows that air between 8 pm and
11 pm eastern standard time) has experienced a recent influx in scholarship that
examines the medium’s aesthetic potential (Bielby et al., 2005; Grindstaff and Turow,
2006). Arguments about the artistic value of soap operas, however, has occurred only
within select groups and has not translated into general artistic validation of the
medium. Thus, we can say that soap operas may have attained a limited type of
aesthetic legitimacy within certain localized circles but not across the general public.
Therefore, if we think of legitimization as a social process that begins with validation
by local constituencies and can eventually culminate in general acceptance (Johnson
et al., 2006), then American soap operas again become an interesting case study.
If we bring aesthetic mobility and legitimization scholarships together, we see that
there are two dimensions to a cultural object’s peripatetic journey to higher status. The
range of its acceptance across aggregated groups connotes its legitimacy, while its
movement up and down the ladder of artistic worth speaks to aesthetic mobility.
Process of Legitimation
Opportunity space emerges when the cultural object in question can favorably
compare itself to a newcomer product. reat art does not naturally rise to the top but
attains its distinction through social processes. Thus, the legitimation of any cultural
object is process that unfolds over time.
,In summary, Baumann (2007:60) argues that ‘‘discrete areas of cultural production
attain legitimacy as art, high or popular, during periods of high cultural opportunity
through mobilizing material or institutional resources and through the exercise of a
discourse that frames the cultural production as legitimate art according to one or
more preexisting ideologies.’’ By extrapolating from empirical studies across a range
of sociological areas, Baumann makes a case that the mechanisms of legitimacy
operate in a similar fashion across many fields of cultural production. In a similar
vein, Johnson et al. (2006) argue that legitimization can operate similarly across
diverse realms (e.g., art, education, business) and levels of analysis (e.g., small
groups, economies), thereby offering a complement to Baumann (2007). To that end,
they offer a four- stage model through which a social form – be it a handshake,
cultural object (e.g., motion pictures) or an entertainment industry – can achieve
legitimacy: innovation, local validation, diffusion, and general validation.
1) Innovation occurs when external societal factors prompt the creation of new social
forms—as in the late 1800s, when the Boston elite created non-profit arts
organizations to insulate European high culture from the influence of outsiders.
2) Local validation happens when participants within the particular field (or
organization or group) believe the form in question fulfills its goal, and they are able
to link it to already legitimate cultural forms. For instance, local validation of the non-
profit occurred as elites came to view this type of organization as superior to other
forms for offering art rather than entertainment.
3) Diffusion is the transport and translation of the local legitimate product into other
settings. The non-profit model spread to other U.S. metropolises and became the
standard practice for disseminating art in the U.S.
4) General validation is the widespread agreement (tacit or explicit) that a particular
form is generally accepted as superior and/or correct. The non-profit model is now the
legitimate way to support the fine arts in the U.S.
The type of legitimacy tied to the establishment of a given cultural industry (e.g.,
motion pictures, soap operas) and its attendant players (e.g., trade journals, critics,
professional associations) is distinct from the legitimacy that can flow to the aesthetic
merit of its products .
Soap operas, both on radio and television, generated relatively stable windfall profits
for the networks. The money earned in daytime regularly offset losses incurred in
primetime. Given the uncertainty of success and the high risks involved with failure in
television, soap operas provided networks financial security (see Bielby and Bielby,
1994). Whereas primetime television made money over years through syndication
deals and re-runs (Bielby and Harrington, 2008), soap operas needed to profit from the
initial air show. Soaps’ longevity and economic success positioned the genre to be the
financial workhorse and scapegoat for the television industry.
, Wittebols argues that business-oriented professionals whose main concern was the
bottom line dramatically increased their direct influence in television programming
and content as the number of media companies shrank. This consolidation also
brought formerly disparate divisions – news, sports, daytime, primetime – under the
same leadership (Wittebols, 2004). Thus, soap opera storytelling, already a legitimate
business model in the daytime sphere, diffused into other divisions. Unlike other
television genres, soap operas were created specifically for niche audiences, i.e.
middle class women.
Critical to any discussion of legitimacy is differentiation and hierarchy. In order for
aesthetic mobility to be possible, members at the local level need to make a distinction
between cultural products, and their choices for distinction must overlap. If
respondents differentiate soaps (if at all) and hierarchically rank them in similar ways,
then local validation may exist and, hence, the potential for diffusion and general
validation.
In sum, these preliminary findings show that soap operas may have achieved local
legitimacy within the community of daytime watchers, and identification of superior
soaps may be tied to similar mechanisms in the art worlds, such as the legitimating
ideology of critical acclaim. Thus aesthetic mobility has occurred within the genre for
some soap operas, but this upward trajectory has not translated into general aesthetic
legitimacy.
In contrast, local aesthetic legitimization for soap operas has not translated
universally. In particular, sustained diffusion of aesthetic legitimating ideology did not
occur. I argue that the frames that allowed widespread understanding of soap operas to
occur in the 1980s in the United States – soap operas as larger-than-life melodramas –
were at odds with the genre’s nascent aesthetic ideology of soap operas as literary
texts.
SHYON BAUMANN
The popular acceptance of the idea that film can be art and that it has certain
recognizable characteristics that justify the honorific title of "art."
CREATING ARTISTIC STATUS: OPPORTUNITY, INSTITUTIONS, AND IDEOLOGY
Sociologists of culture rely on three main factors to explain the public acceptance of
a cultural product as art:
1) the changing opportunity space brought about by social change outside the art
world.
DiMaggio (1992:44) contends that whether a cultural genre succeeds in earning
recognition as art "has depended on the shape of the opportunity space," which is
defined by the appearance of "competitors," "substitutes," and the formation of a
pool of high-status "patrons" who can act as sponsors. A newly popular substitute
C. Scardaville; High art, no art: The economic and aesthetic legitimacy of U.S.
soap operas
For decades, the soap opera – a serialized narrative drama created in the United States
in the 1930s – has been a viable way to conduct business in the global media industry
(EG: «Santa Barbara»; «The Bold and the Beautiful»). The soap opera paradigm, as
Wittebols coins it, offers a powerful way to make money across the globe. That is,
soap operas are economically legitimate. Legitimacy can be defined as ‘‘the construal
of a social object as consistent with cultural beliefs, norms and values that are
presumed to be shared by others in the local situation and perhaps more broadly by
actors in the broader community (e.g., organization or society)’’. While soap operas
have obtained economic legitimacy by being acceptable commercial products, they
have not achieved aesthetic legitimacy because they are generally not seen as works of
art. Great works of arts are not recognized as much as they are created, and their status
as masterpieces must be actively maintained. In this view, almost any cultural product
has the potential, at least theoretically, to become art. The process through which they
attain status is aesthetic mobility. This mobility entails a cultural object’s journey
from a low status form of mass entertainment to a high status position where the genre
that contains the cultural object is widely seen as capable of producing works of art
that have intrinsic, non-economic value (Baumann, 2001, 2007). For example, once
‘‘base’’ cultural objects like jazz are now seen as art (Lopes, 2002).
Claims regarding the merits of soap operas resonate with arguments about the artistic
worth of television in general. Primetime television (shows that air between 8 pm and
11 pm eastern standard time) has experienced a recent influx in scholarship that
examines the medium’s aesthetic potential (Bielby et al., 2005; Grindstaff and Turow,
2006). Arguments about the artistic value of soap operas, however, has occurred only
within select groups and has not translated into general artistic validation of the
medium. Thus, we can say that soap operas may have attained a limited type of
aesthetic legitimacy within certain localized circles but not across the general public.
Therefore, if we think of legitimization as a social process that begins with validation
by local constituencies and can eventually culminate in general acceptance (Johnson
et al., 2006), then American soap operas again become an interesting case study.
If we bring aesthetic mobility and legitimization scholarships together, we see that
there are two dimensions to a cultural object’s peripatetic journey to higher status. The
range of its acceptance across aggregated groups connotes its legitimacy, while its
movement up and down the ladder of artistic worth speaks to aesthetic mobility.
Process of Legitimation
Opportunity space emerges when the cultural object in question can favorably
compare itself to a newcomer product. reat art does not naturally rise to the top but
attains its distinction through social processes. Thus, the legitimation of any cultural
object is process that unfolds over time.
,In summary, Baumann (2007:60) argues that ‘‘discrete areas of cultural production
attain legitimacy as art, high or popular, during periods of high cultural opportunity
through mobilizing material or institutional resources and through the exercise of a
discourse that frames the cultural production as legitimate art according to one or
more preexisting ideologies.’’ By extrapolating from empirical studies across a range
of sociological areas, Baumann makes a case that the mechanisms of legitimacy
operate in a similar fashion across many fields of cultural production. In a similar
vein, Johnson et al. (2006) argue that legitimization can operate similarly across
diverse realms (e.g., art, education, business) and levels of analysis (e.g., small
groups, economies), thereby offering a complement to Baumann (2007). To that end,
they offer a four- stage model through which a social form – be it a handshake,
cultural object (e.g., motion pictures) or an entertainment industry – can achieve
legitimacy: innovation, local validation, diffusion, and general validation.
1) Innovation occurs when external societal factors prompt the creation of new social
forms—as in the late 1800s, when the Boston elite created non-profit arts
organizations to insulate European high culture from the influence of outsiders.
2) Local validation happens when participants within the particular field (or
organization or group) believe the form in question fulfills its goal, and they are able
to link it to already legitimate cultural forms. For instance, local validation of the non-
profit occurred as elites came to view this type of organization as superior to other
forms for offering art rather than entertainment.
3) Diffusion is the transport and translation of the local legitimate product into other
settings. The non-profit model spread to other U.S. metropolises and became the
standard practice for disseminating art in the U.S.
4) General validation is the widespread agreement (tacit or explicit) that a particular
form is generally accepted as superior and/or correct. The non-profit model is now the
legitimate way to support the fine arts in the U.S.
The type of legitimacy tied to the establishment of a given cultural industry (e.g.,
motion pictures, soap operas) and its attendant players (e.g., trade journals, critics,
professional associations) is distinct from the legitimacy that can flow to the aesthetic
merit of its products .
Soap operas, both on radio and television, generated relatively stable windfall profits
for the networks. The money earned in daytime regularly offset losses incurred in
primetime. Given the uncertainty of success and the high risks involved with failure in
television, soap operas provided networks financial security (see Bielby and Bielby,
1994). Whereas primetime television made money over years through syndication
deals and re-runs (Bielby and Harrington, 2008), soap operas needed to profit from the
initial air show. Soaps’ longevity and economic success positioned the genre to be the
financial workhorse and scapegoat for the television industry.
, Wittebols argues that business-oriented professionals whose main concern was the
bottom line dramatically increased their direct influence in television programming
and content as the number of media companies shrank. This consolidation also
brought formerly disparate divisions – news, sports, daytime, primetime – under the
same leadership (Wittebols, 2004). Thus, soap opera storytelling, already a legitimate
business model in the daytime sphere, diffused into other divisions. Unlike other
television genres, soap operas were created specifically for niche audiences, i.e.
middle class women.
Critical to any discussion of legitimacy is differentiation and hierarchy. In order for
aesthetic mobility to be possible, members at the local level need to make a distinction
between cultural products, and their choices for distinction must overlap. If
respondents differentiate soaps (if at all) and hierarchically rank them in similar ways,
then local validation may exist and, hence, the potential for diffusion and general
validation.
In sum, these preliminary findings show that soap operas may have achieved local
legitimacy within the community of daytime watchers, and identification of superior
soaps may be tied to similar mechanisms in the art worlds, such as the legitimating
ideology of critical acclaim. Thus aesthetic mobility has occurred within the genre for
some soap operas, but this upward trajectory has not translated into general aesthetic
legitimacy.
In contrast, local aesthetic legitimization for soap operas has not translated
universally. In particular, sustained diffusion of aesthetic legitimating ideology did not
occur. I argue that the frames that allowed widespread understanding of soap operas to
occur in the 1980s in the United States – soap operas as larger-than-life melodramas –
were at odds with the genre’s nascent aesthetic ideology of soap operas as literary
texts.
SHYON BAUMANN
The popular acceptance of the idea that film can be art and that it has certain
recognizable characteristics that justify the honorific title of "art."
CREATING ARTISTIC STATUS: OPPORTUNITY, INSTITUTIONS, AND IDEOLOGY
Sociologists of culture rely on three main factors to explain the public acceptance of
a cultural product as art:
1) the changing opportunity space brought about by social change outside the art
world.
DiMaggio (1992:44) contends that whether a cultural genre succeeds in earning
recognition as art "has depended on the shape of the opportunity space," which is
defined by the appearance of "competitors," "substitutes," and the formation of a
pool of high-status "patrons" who can act as sponsors. A newly popular substitute
