Women and Work in Family Soap Operas

Gender, Work and Organization. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0432.2011.00569.x

Women and Work in Family Soap Operas

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Barbara Czarniawska,* Ulla Eriksson-Zetterquist and David Renemark The starting point of this article is the assumption that images of work and organizing produced by popular culture both reflect and shape actual practices. Among various genres of popular culture, soap operas deserve more attention. This article analyses three local soap operas: one Italian, one Swedish and one South African. All three focus on family life — a focus typical for the genre. We trace the side topic of women at work and women and work, on the assumption that its marginality renders it less likely to contain intentional messages from the creators of the series, and thus more likely to reflect the taken-for-granted beliefs underpinning everyday life and contributing to their reproduction and maintenance. We trace the series’ connections to local contexts but also look for commonalities that may be characteristic of this genre of popular culture. Keywords: organizing, popular culture, soap operas, work places, gendering work

Introduction: popular culture and organizing

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he connection between popular culture and organizing has been sporadically mentioned for some time, but it was perhaps the edited volume Organization/Representation (Hassard and Holliday, 1998) that first dealt with this issue in a systematic manner. As the title announces, its contributions focus on the ways organizations (rather than organizing practices) are represented in the popular media. Its main thesis is that popular culture presents a side of life in organizations that were hidden from the focus of conventional organization studies: sex, violence, emotions, power struggles and disorganization.1 A question thus arises: was it hidden because it is unmentionable or was it rarely addressed because it is a marginal phenomenon? One could argue for both possibilities, as there is certainly a preference in traditional organization theory for portraying rational behaviour, but there is also a preference for truly dramatic events in popular culture. This why the genre of soap operas is noteworthy: it can be seen as complementary to the rationalist portraits of organizational life. Additionally, not being focused on organizations, soap operas can reveal taken-for-granted assumptions about women and work that are firmly embedded in the public discourse. In this article we scrutinize three soap operas from different cultural contexts, looking for such assumptions. Before we move to our material and the analysis, however, we briefly review other attempts at connecting popular culture and organizations. In the edited volume mentioned above, John Hassard (1998) focused, for instance, on the British cinéma vérité. All in all, although the main emphasis of the volume was on issues of representation, the editors and the contributors suggested that the representation of organizations and working life in popular media both reflects and helps to shape contemporary practices and institutions. Can this claim apply to all or even to most genres in popular culture? Martin Parker and his colleagues (1999) edited a special issue of Organization dedicated to science fiction. Their idea was not ‘to add science fiction to the list of things that might be “useful” for management, but instead to try to disturb the discipline itself’ (pp. 579–80). This task may prove difficult, however, because, as the Address for correspondence: *Professor of Management Studies, Gothenburg Research Institute, School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, PO Box 603, SE-405 30 Gothenburg, Sweden, e-mail: [email protected]

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GENDER, WORK AND ORGANIZATION

authors immediately acknowledged, there is a great deal of science fiction in management practice already. Indeed, the corroborating studies continue to accumulate: from the ‘eternal myth of technology’ (Eriksson-Zetterquist, 2008), through ‘strategic planning scenarios’ (Greenman, 2008) to various accounts of ‘cyborgization’ (Czarniawska and Gustavsson, 2008; Parker, 1998). The message of this special issue has been that organization theory can learn from science fiction in matters of reporting and reflecting about actual and possible practices; a theme later raised by Rhodes and Brown (2005). David Metz (2003) and Brian Bloomfield (2003) have used science fiction somewhat differently, again in tune with Hassard and Holliday’s (1998) postulates. Metz has suggested that science fiction offers identity models to the incumbents of new jobs and occupations, such as information technology freelancers and various temporary workers. Bloomfield saw science fiction as a template for making sense of the relationships between human beings and advanced technologies. Czarniawska and Rhodes (2006) attempted to summarize these insights by describing the circular relationship between popular culture and practices of organizing, taking as a starting point the circuit model of culture (Johnson, 1986–87). They pointed out that popular culture transmits ideals, including identity models (Metz, 2003; Rombach and Solli, 2006). It also reflects — in the sense of representing — actual practices, sometimes more completely than organization studies, as Hassard and Holliday (1998) have noted. It does more, however; it teaches practices, including those that might not have existed before. Apparently, both the Sicilian and US Mafiosi created their business discourse based on dialogues from The Godfather and Scarface (Varese, 2004). Finally, to complete the circuit, popular culture offers interpretative templates, patterns for sense-making, as exemplified, for example, by Bloomfield (2003), as well as by several examples used by Czarniawska and Rhodes. In short, the reflection and the projection, the expression and the construction, the imitation and the creation of practices happen constantly and simultaneously. As Traube (1992) has noted, expression becomes control, as popular culture selects and reinforces certain desires and anxieties of its audience. In turn, control provokes the further expression both of submission and of resistance. We espouse this perspective in this article and apply it to yet another popular genre: the TV series known as soap operas.2 In what follows, we summarize commonly recognized characteristics of this genre and then focus our attention on three local soap operas, situated in the countries of their production. Reading the three series closely, we look for differences and relate them to their local contexts. We also look for similarities in order to see if the genre has trans-local properties in addition to those used in its formal definition. The focus of comparison is women at work (including contrasts between the portrayals of women and men at work), which is not the main topic of the series. But, as Christine Geraghty has pointed out, ‘[w]omen had always worked in soaps, either in the home or in mundane everyday jobs, which drew attention to their own ambitions’ (1991, p. 135). Our premise is that a representation of such a non-central topic is more revealing than works dedicated to issues of women at work; revealing in terms of local contexts and revealing of the taken-for granted attitudes toward women and work. Thus, our effort has been undertaken in the same spirit as that of Hassard and Holiday (1998) and, more recently, of Rhodes and Westwood (2008). Unlike them, however, we focus on works of popular culture that do not represent organizations. Similar to subliminal marketing (Key, 1973; McLaren, 2004),3 the attitude-forming impact of messages of secondary importance to the plot may be as strong as those of primary importance, because they are not easily submitted to critical reflection. Furthermore, when such messages are embedded in a local context (in contrast to those of the imported TV series), they may have a stronger impact on actual practices, as the distance due to estrangement is removed. Additionally, our aim was to extend the analysis of soap operas beyond US and UK examples. Although there is no doubt that these are models for local productions (in competition only with Latin American soaps4), their local variations deserve greater attention.

Soap operas: a very special genre Although we intend to focus on TV series, we would like to point out that the origins of serials are much older than the beginning of television. First there were radio series, which were popular until Volume ** Number ** ** 2011


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well after World War II, when TV replaced most of the functions of radio. The psychological development of characters played no role in these serials: the protagonists were familiar and the audience anticipated new events rather than new insights. The TV series can be also related to film serials that originated in the times of silent movies, when many people went to the cinema every week. Umberto Eco (1990) has traced the genealogy of the series back even further to sagas — those of Old Norse origin, for example — which were narrated orally for generations. Unlike stories, sagas never finished; the heroes and heroines were as good as immortal. New things can always happen so long as someone is prepared to go on telling the tale, and anyone is interested in listening. The sagas live on: one of the relatively recent continuations of Norse sagas can be found in Douglas Adams’s Dirk Gently books (Adams, 1987, 1988). Seeing soap operas as a continuation of Norse sagas is not a common point of view, however. And although it is not often now that popular culture is pigeonholed as lowbrow, there is often a derogatory tone in cultural critiques of TV series in general and soap operas in particular (although recently the anathema has moved to reality series). A historical perspective may change that stance. After all, as Eco (1990) pointed out, it was only modernist aesthetics that had equated artistic value with novelty and set a low value on the pleasure derived from repetition. The earlier classical theory of art lacked this differentiation. The modernists decided to distinguish the two, however, in the face of unprecedented technological development, which permitted mass replicability. Consequently, all variations on a known model could be judged as pleasurable but not artistic. Moreover, repetition and the desire to please combined with a lack of innovation were seen as commercial tricks, in contrast with provocative proposals for a new world vision. ‘The products of mass media were equated with the products of industry, insofar as they were produced in series, and the “serial” production was considered alien to artistic invention’ (Eco, 1990, p. 84). Eco criticized this artistic Puritanism, hoping that it would vanish in times characterized by iteration, repetition and mass production. After all, the mass media constantly offer new things, which are liked and accepted — even though or maybe because — the audience recognizes them. Eco spoke of a ‘new esthetic of seriality’, in which TV serials might replace Greek tragedies in western culture. ‘Why do people like TV series?’ is the question asked by practically every author analysing the impact of soap operas. The question can be asked from two standpoints: by the critics of low culture or by art critics, who point out that soaps lack dramatic effect. Eco responded to this question by suggesting that TV series reward their viewers by confirming their skills of prediction (see also Geraghty, 1991). Developments proceed through various complications that produce a feeling of suspense but are resolved just as expected. The unsophisticated consumer and the smart consumer of popular culture, whom Eco called the naive and the critical reader, share this pleasure — the naive one merely enjoying the events in the series and the critical one enjoying the seriality of the serials, ‘not so much for the return of the same thing (which the naive reader believed was different) but for the strategy of the variations’ (Eco, 1990, p. 92). Eco compared Balzac’s Human Comedy and Dallas, to conclude that each of Balzac’s novels told the reader something new about French society, whereas each installment of Dallas told the audience the same thing about US society but ‘both use the same narrative scheme’ (Eco, 1990, p. 93). ‘Lowbrow culture’ is only one of the derogative terms used to describe soap operas. It has also been claimed that serials present a feminine narrative form in contrast with the masculine tradition that emphasizes goal orientation, pre-established conflict and a climactic resolution (see Alexander, 1991; Geraghty, 1991; Modleski, 1979 for a summary of this argument). Indeed, action serials, as Fiske (1987) noted, attempt to reconstruct masculinity by breaking the rules of the soap operas. Soap operas in their turn broke the rules of classical drama by introducing a rhythm that is typical of everyday life, replacing dramatic resolutions with small problems that arise while others are being solved; by introducing several possible identifications and open-structured events and by blurring the genre. All the same, soap operas are strongly connected to the melodramatic tradition from the second half of the 18th century (Brooks, 1976). As Modleski (1979) shrewdly observed, soap operas can never end because there is no way to disentangle the contradiction between the demands of a melodrama (the


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good must be rewarded and the bad punished) with the latent message of the soaps: not everyone can be happy at the same time. Charlotte Brunsdon (1995) has pointed out that since the late 1970s feminist critics have become increasingly interested in the reception of soap operas for several reasons (see also Geraghty, 1991). To begin with, the soaps originally attracted predominantly female viewers, but Brunsdon’s other reasons for this growing interest are more relevant to our analysis. One was the emerging conviction that the personal is political; that the microcosm of the family captures and concentrates the image of the dominant institutional order. Another reason was the negative symbolism of the soap opera itself, suggesting ‘the feminine as contemptible, as banal, as beneath serious critical attention’ (1995, p. 60). Thus the feminists’ initial contempt turned into an authentic interest, reflecting an enrichment of and adding nuances to the early black-and-white feminist stances (Blumenthal, 1997). The prototypes of new gender roles may have been the novelty of the soaps since the late 1990s, but they only add to the attractiveness of the genre as field material for feminist studies. Johnson’s (1986–87) circuit of culture suggests reciprocal loans between texts and lived cultures, which can be translated here as loans from organizational reality to the series and the other way around. Indeed, if we replace ‘texts’ by TV series (and according to Ang, 1982, TV series originated in literature, arriving at television via radio), we can say with Fussell (1975) that the serials and the organizations truly belong to those ‘places and situations where literary tradition and real life notably transect’, and which reveal this ‘simultaneous and reciprocal process by which life feeds materials to literature while literature returns the favor by conferring forms upon life’ (Fussell, 1975, p. ix). This trait is even more evident in the case of soap operas because, unlike literary works, which are still primarily objects of individual interest, TV series are a common topic of everyday conversations, including workplace conversations (Geraghty, 1991; Hobson, 2003).5 As Hobson put it: The incidents in the series pass easily into conversation about people the audience know, and the interweaving of reality and fiction reveals not a confusion about the status of the characters in the drama, but evidence of the validity of their interpretation and their place in the consciousness of the audience. (2003, p. 5) The amount of attention dedicated to the analysis of the impact of soap operas on the rest of popular culture and on lived cultures demonstrates their importance. This article addresses a relatively unstudied aspect worthy of analysis: the relationship between women and work presented as a background to the series’ main topic. As mentioned, we began with the assumption that soap operas could reveal something in relation to the topic of women and work that fails to be captured in television series that are situated in such workplaces as hospitals and police departments. The primary theme of a work of art is always under the intentional control, successful or not, of its creators; they attempt to convey a message — be it critical or apologetic. The marginal topics, although subjected to the requirement of verisimilitude, are not necessarily shaped with conscious intention. One may assume that the institutional order speaks more loudly through marginal than through central topics of popular culture. By the same token, marginal messages may have greater impact on audiences, which focus their attention — positively or negatively — on the main messages of a given work of art.

Selection and analysis The three soap operas have been chosen for their topic (family life, seen as representative of the genre), their high popularity in the countries of their origin and their linguistic accessibility to the researchers. In the spirit of the grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2006), the analysis of the first case gave us a clue to the selection of the second. We chose what we saw as a similar series (the physician and the family), apparently different only in the language and country of origin of the series. The comparison revealed many formal similarities but also a great many differences in the treatment of the topic of women and work. We then decided to maximize differences and chose Volume ** Number ** ** 2011



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a non-European series that did not deal with the medical profession, while remaining in the genre. All three series have been showing for a relatively long time (since around 1997) and are extremely popular in their respective countries. Each series was available on DVD (bought or recorded, depending on accessibility) and although the author who selected the series may have watched the original broadcast, they watched it anew several times. Next, sequences from each series considered representative were viewed by all three authors (with the texts transcribed and translated when needed) and discussed. Further selection led to the choice of the most illustrative sequences to be discussed in this article. We also read reviews and commentaries on various websites. As to the method of analysis, as lay viewers — neither film critics nor students of reception — we can only offer our close reading of the images of women and work in the soaps. We have been encouraged in this by Marjorie DeVault’s (1990) idea of novel readings. She suggested that, as interpretation of all works of art is varied and changing, the readings of the social scientists may add a new perspective to both professional critique and representative reception patterns. Contrasting our results with the literature, we once again followed the precepts of grounded theory, selecting from the abundant (and growing) literature on popular culture, and on the relationship between popular culture and work organizations only texts that were directly relevant to our conclusions. In what follows we present the three series, beginning with a general story-line and continuing to read some of the scenes and episodes more closely.

Un medico in famiglia, Italy A Doctor in the Family is a TV series adapted by the Italian Rai Uno from a Spanish series Médico de familia shown in Spain by Italo-Iberic Telecinco between 1995 and 1999. The transmissions in Italy started on 6 December 1998. At the time of writing the series has run for six seasons and the seventh is expected in spring 2011, a total of 182 episodes lasting 50–60-minutes each in six series (Wikipedia, n.d.a). It is counted among the most popular series in Italy (the first episode of the fifth series gained 7 million viewers, the second had 6 million, winning against all other programmes). As astutely observed by one of its reviewers (Il potere e la gloria (n.d.) even if the characters are relatively flat and events somewhat disjointed, the series is quite pleasant. The goal of its creators is to portray contemporary Italian society, and not without ironic touches. This Italian society is thoroughly modernized and politically correct, although some of the characters are not yet up to present standards, for which they are gently chided. Thus, the Spanish series has been completely translated into local conditions and the episodes differ from the original. The Martini family consists of Dr Lele Martini, who heads an experimental unit called Local Health Service, and at 38 is a widower with three children. He lives in the suburbs of Rome with his children, his father Libero and an au pair, Cettina. Among their frequent visitors is Alice, the sister of Lele’s deceased wife (we do not list all the characters as they are many and change from one season to another). As the series is situated in the family, it is obvious that work does not take much screen time. Two individuals are shown at work more frequently than others, however: these are Lele, the doctor, who is often shown at his workplace, and Cettina, who is constantly seen working, as the action takes place mostly in the Martini’s house. All the characters speak a great deal about Lele’s work (what he does, how tired he is), whereas the only person who discusses Cettina’s work — critically — is her putative mother-in-law. Lele’s father, Libero, also works at home as he does most of the cooking, but that task is presented more like a hobby than as work. From our perspective, one of the most interesting episodes is the first part of Episode 26, first season. Although the spectators know that Alice is a radio journalist, the details of her work remain a mystery, as she spends most of her time in the Martini house. In this episode Lele receives a call from a friend of his old friend, a Frenchman named François, who is engaged in bringing African children to Italy for holidays. This time around there has been confusion concerning the proper arrangements and François asks for help in placing the children, who will be arriving the next day



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without a place to stay. Lele contacts Alice and suggests that she could help by making this emergency known to her listeners. Alice refuses but accepts an invitation to dinner with Lele and François. During the dinner François presents his work, and his story is rendered in an attractive manner worthy of Indiana Jones (the series’ own metaphor). Alice is enchanted. All of a sudden, the transmission is possible, and the spectators can follow Lele and François to Alice’s workplace, together with two African boys who plead for their own cause. In the end, all goes well; there is a long list of families who want to take the children; Alice thanks François; François thanks Alice; and everybody thanks Alice’s boss, Irma. It is decided that the four of them will celebrate the success with a dinner. Although Alice’s professionalism is presented as doubtful from the beginning of the episode, the situation deteriorates rapidly during the dinner. Irma tosses out abundant allusions to a supposed sexual relationship between Alice and François and although the spectators will learn in time that there is not such relationship, the episode creates a highly convincing image of an will-less Alice who is motivated to do her job only by male charm. Irma is the only woman with a professional career and she is not a member of the Martini family. The portrait of Irma evokes many other stereotypical images of women with careers. She is ambitious and unscrupulous (Alice calls her a viper). Other women are medical secretaries, au pairs, beauticians or have some unspecified occupation. Does this picture faithfully represent the state of Italian society or does it just reproduce certain strong plots (Czarniawska and Rhodes, 2006), typical of soap operas?6 In Episode 6 of the second season Lele must participate in a professional conference in Turin. Only men, it seems, attend the conference. One professional woman makes an entrance: a photographer hired to create publicity for experimental Local Health Service units like the one headed by Lele. There is no opportunity to see her work. She turns out to be a teenage love of Lele and, upon transporting Lele and his collaborator to the conference, she sets about seducing the doctor. Lele, who is engaged to Alice by this time, tries to get on safe ground and suggests that they ‘instead of the past, talk about matters that interest them now’, and launches into a description of his experimental unit. The photographer cuts him off: she does not want to talk ‘about children and about work’, only about their past love affair. Meanwhile, Alice, who had a great deal of work to catch up with at the radio, concludes that her work is not so important after all and decides to surprise Lele at his conference. Thus, allegedly professional women make it clear to the spectators that love affairs are much more important than their work. In the same episode Jonis, an immigrant receptionist at the clinic, bravely defends a prostitute — an illegal refugee from Africa — from the assaults of her pimp. He shows cleverness, courage and compassion. While the event is an example of a progressive reframing of two social problems typical of Italy at that time — illegal immigration from Africa and violence against women — it nevertheless lands into another traditional template where good men save women from bad men, while simultaneously revealing their superior occupational skills — even in low positions in the hierarchy. In the third season, Lele and Alice, now married, have left for Australia and the Local Health Service has a new director — a woman. As one of the male doctors says in Episode 3, she ‘treats them like horses from her private stable’. She tends to interrupt all informal gatherings of the personnel with abrupt and hostile commands. She publicly accuses a newly arrived young doctor, Guido (who lives at the Martini house) of unspecified sexual misdemeanors at his previous workplace. In contrast, and in the same episode, Guido gives a masterful performance, revealing himself as a highly professional and deeply humane medical doctor. Four aspects of the series are of interest in the present context. Firstly, like most soap operas, A Doctor in the Family avoids explicit political dimensions. Secondly, unlike many soap operas, especially Brazilian telenovelas, located in unspecified historical times, it gives a broad review of social problems typical of Italy at the time. Thirdly, the series presents a steady contrasting portrayal of men and women at work. While women may be successful in various feminine occupations — housework, receptionist-cum-secretary, even a restaurant owner — when portrayed as having careers in traditionally male occupations they are caricatured by images of the iron lady or the viper. Fourthly, a marginal topic that runs steadily through all the episodes, however, is the love interests of the Martini girls: in contrast with the boys of the family, the two girls seem to think about nothing else. This




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observation may seem to be loosely connected to the main topic of this article, but the origin of working women’s behaviour can be traced to the behaviour of the girls. Alternatively, but with the same effect, the girls mimic the women. In sum, it appears that the series reflects (and reproduces) Italian reality, while simultaneously following the story-line of the typical soap opera. We turn to our next example to see if this pattern is repeated.

Skärgårdsdoktorn, Sweden The Archipelago Doctor was first transmitted from 13 October 1997 to 8 May 2000 and then repeated in the autumn of 2006. The 18 episodes of 55 minutes each were shown in sets of six over three seasons. A feature film of the same title is being released in 2011 (Wikipedia n.d.b). The series is situated in the beautiful environment of the Stockholm archipelago. It revolves around the encounter between the tough, hard-working locals and the rich, sometimes glamorous, summer inhabitants and tourists, who are often ignorant of the conditions of living beside and at sea. The relationships among these groups are illustrated by various accidents and illnesses, which bring the tourists to the archipelago clinic. In Episode 1 of the first season, the then head of the archipelago clinic, an elderly doctor named Axel Holtman, is setting the table with a nurse in the clinic, a woman called Berit. They are awaiting the arrival of his daughter, Eva, who has been working with Doctors Without Borders in Rwanda for several years. Holtman is looking forward to the return of Eva and her family to run the clinic. Berit’s brother enters the room and throws a large, fresh, unwrapped fish on the kitchen bench. This short scene symbolizes the traditions of life in the archipelago before the arrival of tourists. It also portrays the traditional order of the home in the archipelago: fishermen who, still dirty from their work, delivered to the waiting woman their trophy — a contribution to the dinner. In the next scene, Eva’s husband, Johan, also a doctor, arrives with their 12-year-old daughter, Wilma. It turns out that Eva has chosen to stay in Africa, as ‘they needed her much more’. Holtman is deeply disappointed at this news. But there is no alternative; the running of the clinic passes to Johan Steen, who becomes the archipelago doctor of the title, although it is suggested that a woman could have taken this position. Women in the series are all employed and they usually have a university degree or the equivalent. This situation can be seen as typical of Sweden, where women and men participate in the labour market to almost the same degree and where the majority of all university degrees is granted to women. The story-line in The Archipelago Doctor revolves around two women. One of them is Eva, who thinks that the suffering people in Rwanda are more important than the hung-over summer guests on the archipelago. As a consequence, she is mostly absent from the lives of Wilma and Johan. The other is Berit, the nurse. She is a mature, down-to-earth woman who graduated from university while her brother ‘cultivated his originality’. She is presented as energetic and professional, supporting Johan in taking care of the patients. She is also the one who — in all kinds of weather — perfectly pilots the doctor’s boat. Running this boat is a truly demanding task as it requires driving skills and the ability to read nautical charts as well as a familiarity with the rapidly changing conditions in the archipelago. In Episode 13 (the first of the third season), Berit runs the boat aground for the first time in 30 years, the viewers are told; and is full of indignation over this incident. She then consults every available chart and takes her brother with her to the place, in order to sound its depth. It turns out to be an unknown shallow and, to her great satisfaction, she receives an apology and a commendation from the authorities at the end of the episode. Berit’s preference for manly exploits is also shown in her relations with Wilma. In Episode 1 of the first season, Berit runs into Johan’s office: ‘Do you know that Wilma is sitting outside your office trying to phone Africa on the clinic phone? Whatever you expect, I will do no babysitting!’ Here is a clear deviation from a typical soap opera plot, in which a single male parent can be expected to receive support from the women around him. When male friends are doing the job, the genre is comedy7 (The Archipelago Doctor is classified by the Swedish TV as a drama).



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Johan is portrayed in the series as a single parent trying to handle work, emergencies and his daughter. Every now and then Wilma has something important to say when Johan is either busy with a patient or is being called to an emergency. His standard remark is: ‘Not now, Wilma; we’ll have to talk later’. It is suggested that he feels guilty about it. In Episode 12, the last of the second season, Eva finally arrives from Africa, accompanied by a female colleague. Eva has been presented as a highly skilled physician but in this episode her skill is put to a test. After a couple of days Johan and her father claim that Eva’s colleague is sick, while Eva insists that the woman is just tired from the journey. When the woman faints, she is sent by ambulance helicopter to the city hospital, where it is discovered that she is suffering from a tropical disease. In the hospital waiting-room Eva asks Johan ‘What kind of doctor am I really?’ The viewers, who have just seen two male doctors from a small island in the North correctly diagnose a tropical disease that has gone undetected by a woman who practices medicine in the tropics, may share her doubt. In Episode 13, the first of the third season, 2 years later, Eva receives a phone call from a male friend, Dr Sam Maloo from Africa, who invites her to lunch in the city. At lunch, two other UNICEF colleagues are present: Dr John Barese from Africa and Dame Roystone, an executive at UNICEF. After greetings, the conversation (in English) develops: Dame R: I’ve heard so much about you, Eva. We considered a great number of persons but ... Dr M: Please, please, later. First some food. You must be hungry. [After food has appeared on the table, Dr Maloo explains that the children’s clinic in Rwanda has been newly rebuilt, that they have many patients, and they would like Eva to become the clinic manager.] Eva: Indeed it is a great offer; but I have my family and my work here in Sweden. Dr M: Bring them with you! Your husband has enough qualifications for this kind of work. Eva: No, I am afraid my husband has settled down in Sweden for good. Dame R: What about you? Eva: I am sorry, but I have other plans. [Dame Roystone and Dr Maloo exchange glances, perhaps implying that she has no such plans] Dr Maloo: Can you consider our proposal for at least a week? [He gives her a videotape showing the renovated buildings and greetings from her former colleagues.] Eva: Thank you but I’m afraid my final answer is no. Dame R: So, Eva, tell me about your plans. [End of scene, which, again, seems to suggest that Eva has no plans.] Back on the island, Eva leaves the videotape on a table where Johan finds it. He looks at it and later asks why she has not mentioned the offer, and whether she is going to take it. Eva explains that she feels useless in the archipelago. Johan says ‘So you were going to accept the proposal?’ Eva: ‘That’s where I can make a contribution’. Johan: ‘So you have made up your mind?’ (She has.) Three aspects of the series are of interest in the present context. Even if The Archipelago Doctor does not seem to have a political dimension, social issues such as immigrants, abortions, handicapped children and elderly care are all present. Furthermore, both men and women are presented primarily as working people and sometimes as parents, which, as mentioned before, accurately portrays the Swedish labour market and educational situation. Working life hinders men and women from taking care of their children, however, and as a result they are mostly absent from the lives of their youngsters. Whereas men try to cope with this difficulty, women such as Berit and Eva are so engaged Volume ** Number ** ** 2011



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in their professional life that there is no room in it for children. Family considerations are not a reason for women to abstain from a career; the UNICEF woman takes this for granted and knows how to make Eva accept the job proposal (pressing her to admit she has no professional plans of her own). All in all, The Archipelago Doctor allowed us to conclude that men are able to cope with work demands and at least partly with parenthood demands. Contemporary women find career more important than family. Children, therefore, must reach adulthood early and solve many problems on their own. Is this good? Is it bad? The series does not offer any clear judgement, attempting, its creators say, only to portray the contemporary life of middle-class Swedes (Smålandsposten, 2008). The comparison between the Italian and the Swedish series reveals a similar picture, with a great many local differences. In both, the world is changing: women leave the home and this produces many disturbances. In Italy these disturbances occur mostly in the workplace; in Sweden, they occur mostly in the home. The picture of Sweden seems to show a more modern, and more equal world. Yet Lele’s retired father gladly works at home together with the au pair, Cettina, while Eva’s father shows a gentle interest in his granddaughter but does not take a house-working role. This seems to confirm the stereotypical views of dignified roles for elderly men in Italy and Sweden: Italian men cook, Swedish men take care of the children, but not the other way around. Lele needs an au pair to take care of the children and Eva’s father only helps Berit to set the table — he does not cook the fish. The career women, Eva and Berit in Sweden, Irma, Alice, the photographer and the new head of the medical unit in Italy, are portrayed in contrasting ways. The Swedish women abandon family values for their professions and the Italian women bring family intrigues into their professions. The common message is that the combination of love and family with professional work is packed with tensions, especially for women. It seems that women need to choose, yet men may attempt the combination successfully, if at a cost. Could this be a common denominator for the medical profession, for soap operas as a genre or perhaps for western European society as a whole? The next example thus maximizes the difference by moving to another continent and out of medical profession.

Isidingo, South Africa The Isidingo series has been shown in South Africa since July 1998. It is broadcast by SABC3 from Monday to Friday at 18.30 (at the time of writing it has reached Isidingo XIII) (Wikipedia, 2011a). Each episode is 30 minutes long. On 12 February 2007 Isidingo celebrated its 2000th episode. In the same year, a ranking of prime time soaps broadcast in South Africa placed Isidingo second, with between 1.3 and 1.8 million viewers a day.8 The setting and the story-line in Isidingo reveal more similarities with the US and Latin American soap operas than with European ones. The developments in the series concern many more love affairs than business affairs, as its homepage revealed: The creative energy of the collective ‘Isidingo’ writing team overflows every 3 months as they thrash out who will be sleeping with whom, who will murder whom, and who will have whose baby. (Wikipedia, 2011a) As in many other soaps the series is built around sexual intrigues but it also deals with topical issues in contemporary South Africa. The series is described as innovative compared to its South African competitors: Isidingo was the first series in South Africa featuring a mixed marriage, a gay character, a polygamous marriage and a HIV-positive person (Wikipedia, 2011a). Over the years many characters have entered and left the series, but in this text we focus on the characters that were active in the autumn of 2006. The protagonists are the members of the Haines family. Barker Haines is an entrepreneur in his sixties and a major stakeholder in ON!TV, a broadcasting company in Johannesburg. Cherel Haines is Barker’s wife, who also works at ON!TV. She had a tough youth, making a living as a prostitute. In time, she managed to become the secretary of the mine manager, whom she seduced and then married. She is described as ‘a modern-day witch’ in the character presentation, as she has made her way into the higher levels of business life by seducing and manipulating men.



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Leone ‘Lee’ is Barker’s daughter, who earned her MBA early in life, measuring up to her father’s expectations. She now works at ON!TV and struggles to avoid getting caught up in her father’s ideas and ways of doing business. There are other working women in the series outside the Haines family, three of whom we mention here. Maggie Webster works in a restaurant. Agnes Matabane saved her family by selling chicken feet at a local taxi rank. She has since achieved success in running her own small business. She is also described as the peacemaker in her family and as a strong Christian. A third woman, Siyanda Mazibuko, is an ambitious accountant. She is willing to work hard to reach her goals of making money and securing a high position. She has had many boyfriends but is presently single. There are also some men worth mentioning. Steve Stethakis is of Greek descent and works at ON!TV. He is gay and has just found the love of his life — the chef, Luke. Rajesh Kumar is big stakeholder of ON!TV as well as a programme manager and a commissioning editor. Rajesh grew up in a wealthy family that own businesses in South Africa and India. He is a Hindu and is fond of Indian traditions and culture. Thus ethnic and sexual diversity is fully documented and serves as an accurate reflection of the present situation in South Africa. Lee and Cherel are often seen at work, mostly in meetings and discussions with various people involved in ON! TV. Although work-related issues are discussed, it is sexual deceit and love affairs that take the series through new twists. Cherel is a woman who gets what she wants, as shown in the following conversation between herself and a man named Butch, who has been contacted to provide wrestlers for a new TV show, ‘Total Fight Club’. They are looking at pictures of various wrestlers: Cherel: Can I meet these guys to compare to the other ones? Butch: Tomorrow night. Maybe this is exactly what our show is going to be about! Cherel: My show, my show. Not our show. Butch: I just thought ... Cherel: Well don’t think. You work for me, I pay you. Got it? Butch: Loud and clear. Sorry about the little mix-up. See you tomorrow, boss. Butch does not give up the fight for dominance; instead, he threatens Cherel at a meeting with the wrestlers in a restaurant. Cherel seems to feel a bit uncomfortable and asks Rajesh for help. They set up a new meeting with Butch, who arrives with a well-built wrestler, already sounding aggressive at the beginning of the meeting. Rajesh explains ‘how things work in the TV business’, trying to make it clear that Butch and his men cannot decide the rules of the game. After a while Butch loses his temper and threatens Cherel again. Rajesh stands up and beats up Butch and the wrestler (end of scene). It later turns out that Rajesh, although rather short, practiced martial arts for many years. Thus, although portrayed as a woman who is capable of handling both business and men, Cherel needs to be rescued by a man in a tough situation. Rajesh becomes the hero who has managed to beat up the two aggressive men. In accordance with one stereotypical plot, this rescue must be recompensed: a few episodes later, Cherel and Rajesh end up kissing and then going to bed. In another episode, Lee is interested in buying a property, which could be used as a TV studio. Talking to her father, she discovers that he had already set up a meeting between her and the man who was selling that property, before the auction at which the property was to be sold. Lee meets the man, who surprisingly agrees to a very low price. Lee decides not to buy the property directly, however, but to let it be put on auction. She then buys it for 18 instead of 12 million South African Rand. Here is the part of the scene in which Lee finishes her transaction on the phone. Lee: Yes! Okay put down a deposit and I will speak to you later. Sold, ha! [puts down the phone] Barker: And you could have had it for 12, you idiot. Lee: Tell me daddy. You have seen the assessments on that building, how much do you think it is worth? Volume ** Number ** ** 2011



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Barker: Ahhh ... I don’t know but I would reckon about 20 or something. Lee: Exactly. And I just got it for 18, fair and square. It’s a done deal. I don’t have to sleep badly and it isn’t going to come back and bite me. Barker: You paid 6 million more than you had to, that will come back and bite you. Lee: I don’t think so. Barker: Really? It is going to affect your margins. In fact it could scupper the whole project. Lee: I’ve done my homework daddy. It is still viable at 18. Barker: You never learn how to take advantage of the angles when they present themselves to you. Lee: I presume you talk about the legal angles. Barker: I did nothing illegal. Lee: Please. Mr Ladera, he was so nervous he was practically sweating bricks. Daddy, there is something you need to know about me. I do things in a certain way. I need to be honest. And if you want to collaborate with me in projects then that is the rule. Lee seems to announce new times: she does business differently from the way men do it, and is prepared to fight against corruption and dishonesty. The behaviour of both Barker and Rajesh in the episodes described here reproduces gender stereotypes: they help women, in a rather paternalistic way. But Lee challenges her father when he tries to help, which she takes to be interference. Not all the men in the series are busy reproducing gender stereotypes, however. In a discussion between two gay men who are getting married, they both make it clear that their love is more important to them than their careers (one of them refused a job offer from London). It could be claimed, however, that this is a part of an image of gay men that it is on its way of becoming stereotypical. Two aspects of the series are of interest in the context of this article. One is the mixture of stereotypical and non-stereotypical gender behaviour. Three women in the series are portrayed as occupying positions of power but two of them are relatives of the man in charge, Barker Haines. Cherel could be seen as an iron lady but is also one who uses her sexuality in a traditional way. Lee is dependent on her father but she is determined to change the ways of doing business and in general plays a role usually reserved for the son of the family. Siyanda has traditional male priorities, focusing on work rather than on family, like Berit in the Swedish series. It can be said that their characters reproduce another stereotypical image — that of many professional women described in the literature on careers (see for example, Guillaume and Pochic, 2009; Strober and Chan, 1999). Also, in contrast to women who focus on their careers, there are men who prioritize love over career, whether because they belong to a younger generation or because they are gay. There are many possible interpretations but the message of new times and another generation is relatively clear. The second issue is the answer to the question: Does Isidingo reproduce a generic plot of soap operas or does it construct a local one? What could be seen as a generic or strong plot is the series’ insistence on the centrality of the sexual intrigues. This ingredient has long been a part of the recipe for soap operas in such popular US series as Dallas and Days of Our Lives, for instance. At the same time, this plot acquires in Isidingo a contemporary version with a local touch. The series deals with issues specific to contemporary South Africa, but also with global novelties such as same-sex marriage. Although English is the main language, other local languages are sometimes used as well.9 This may be a signal that the production team behind Isidingo wanted to appeal to multicultural South Africa.10 In summary, the South African series amplifies the plot present in the Italian one — women bring sexual intrigues (far beyond the family) into their workplaces — but also adds a new element. Lee, a woman of a new generation, may be free from traditional burdens and, if she can successfully (in business sense) liberate herself from her dependency on her father, she can, together with gay men,



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start a new era in business and in gender relationships at work. No such hope could be held out for Lele’s daughters, and as with Wilma, the daughter of the archipelago’s doctors, predictions for their fate are uncertain. Wilma will probably have to go to a therapist to deal with the issue of the absent parents (soap operas encourage predictions from the spectators!)

Soaps, women, work What picture, or pictures, of women in the context of work do these soap operas convey? In brief, the Italian series suggests that work and career are but of marginal significance in a woman’s life; the Swedish series proposes that women are unable to combine work and career with family duties and the South African series suggests that women’s success in work and career is built on sexual manipulation. Thus, on the one hand, almost all traditional stereotypes are present; on the other hand, there are distinct attempts to construct or to depict new roles. In this sense, the series are truly realistic: is it not the same in our everyday life and work? This can be interpreted in two ways: that the series offer a largely accurate image and thus invite reflection and, possibly, change, or that they stabilize and reify the existing order. Thus it can be pointed out that the (possibly unintended) message projected by the Swedish series — women abandoning the home for a professional career upset the patterns of children’s upbringing — relies on an assumed picture of a golden past, when women stayed at home and took care of children. This period possibly occurred in the 1950s in North America and in other countries, like Sweden, which were under a strong US influence (Löfgren, 1993). In other times and places, women in poor families worked and women in upper-class families had other women to work for them. The exception was the growing middle class. It has also been stressed that the US and UK radio series during the Great Depression and the two world wars focused strongly on women’s work (Anger, 1999). Recent US movies (Far from Heaven, 2002; Revolutionary Road, 2008), also work to abolish the legend of a golden past. The Italian and the South African series carry another recognizable message: women bring family (especially sexual) intrigues into a workplace. Here, we return to the observation of Hassard and Holliday (1998): the traditional depictions of organizations have tended to avoid such issues, not because they were not part of everyday organizational life but because they went against the requirements of the genre of organization studies. Many film portrayals of exclusively male organizations clearly demonstrate that sex and intrigues do not demand a female presence. As to what women actually did bring into the workplace, Calás and Smircich’s (1993) observation showed women being called into workplaces — first as secretaries, then as place managers — in order to carry on home-like duties: taking care of men when they were in the office and taking care of the offices when men were abroad in their exploits. Perhaps the most poignant observation is that of Arlie Hochschild (1997) — that the boundaries between home and work are blurring more and more. The South African series contains one character who has no equivalent in the other soap operas: the young woman Lee, who seems to symbolize change and renewal that is possibly difficult, but does not imply the danger of destroying the family and the workplace. It needs to be pointed out that, stable and repetitive as soap operas are, the world as portrayed in them is changing. Gone are the Dallas days when everybody quarreled about the amounts of money they all had. Now everybody works for money in soap operas, including women. Conspicuous employment has replaced Veblen’s conspicuous leisure; consumption may remain in its place but is mostly taken for granted. Work is omnipresent but the sites change. One example of the development in time is the shift from the mining industry in the early episodes of Isidingo to the mass media business in later episodes. Television has become a significant part of the economy, as big money is spent on commercials and many people actually do work in the television business. The experimental gender roles in the series cast men like Lele’s father, Libero, into work at home; daughters like Lee into sons’ roles, and women in general, like Cherel and Siyanda, into careers, or like Eva the physician and Berit the nurse, into professional fulfillment. But being occupied with work also reveals the problems faced by women. Working women in all three series, with the exception of Lee, are Volume ** Number ** ** 2011



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presented as being ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’. And even if none of the series portrays women’s work as undesirable — in fact it seems that women have to work to become competent citizens — there is a moral dimension to their work. The message seems to be that women must not seduce men or abandon their children in order to develop their careers. A subtle but persistent message to women seems to be that they should work but must not count on ever becoming the perfect worker. Yet, Lee’s character in the South African series suggests that series can teach new practices, especially discursive practices, as Eco (1990) suggested. The series under analysis, however, seem to confirm traditional interpretative templates in relation to working women rather than offering novel ones. It is to be hoped, as Traube (1992) suggested, that such templates may provoke both submission and resistance and that more critical readings, like the one we attempted here, will encourage more resistance.

In place of conclusions, a question: could it be otherwise? The conclusions are both obvious and depressing, so we decided to replace them with a question. The first answer could be limited to the soap operas themselves: could they be different? A counter example could be the UK series Absolutely Fabulous, analysed by Rhodes and Westwood (2008). Although these authors selected the TV series for analysis using a different criterion from ours (they looked for sitcoms portraying work and workplaces) ‘Ab Fab’ conforms more to our rule of choice. We also share Rhodes and Westwood’s opinion that comedies have higher potential for promoting change and resistance (see also Rhodes, 2001). Ab Fab is a hilarious comedy and, although many of its nuances are certainly lost to the non-UK viewer, its success is truly trans-local. As Rhodes and Westwood pointed out, the series presents women in ways that clash with most gender stereotypes, while including a strong critique of the social and economic context of UK in the 1980s and 1990s. Still, the authors worry that ‘[t]he programme may, in fact, serve to reproduce the very desires and longings it mocks and works against’ (p. 115).11 Furthermore, foreign viewers may discount the deviant behaviour of the Ab Fab women as a ‘British eccentricity’: undoubtedly amusing, but bearing no relation to their own lives. The popularity of the three series described here indicates that it is dramas — with a touch of humor but certainly not comedies — that find the most faithful audiences. One can therefore conclude that such dramas can only confirm the existing stereotypes. But Christine Geraghty (1991, p. 129), who compared US and UK soap operas, noted that the genre also contains the possibility of including utopian elements and practically an obligation (because of the length of time series run) to follow social changes. Whereas classical utopian genres such as romance end in stable situations, the fact that soaps practically never end requires them to incorporate continuous pressures for change. The series described in this article illustrate this point well: they contain both conservative and conserving elements, but also elements of a utopian character12 (Lee as the symbol of incorruptibility), together with a testimony to social change. Soap operas are meant to educate and to convey information (especially in times of crises, Anger, 1999), but they also teach and model actual behaviour in unintended ways. This article was dedicated to such teaching and modeling, based on the belief that the unintended messages need to be carefully documented and analysed. While not properly deconstructionist in its analysis, our work nevertheless joins other attempts of those organization scholars who are convinced that popular culture has enormous relevance for practices of organizing and managing in workplaces. It could be that people, especially young people, learn more about organizing and managing from television programmes than they learn from business school curricula. Mapping the total variety of ways in which popular culture exerts an impact on these activities therefore becomes an urgent task for organization scholars. The study reported here covers but a small part of this vast area, but it is meant to signal the importance of tracing both local and trans-local influences. It is commonly assumed that everybody watches the same (Anglo-Saxon) series; this assumption is both correct and incorrect. Some series are watched practically around the globe; some exist in local variations; yet others exist only locally. Their mutual influences are also of importance in understanding local practices.



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Yet another topic may be of interest to future organization studies: how does the organization of production influence popular culture in general, and soap operas in particular? Although cultural critics have already addressed this issue (such as Nochimson, 1992, in the USA; Hobson, 2003, in the UK; and Anger, 1999, in both countries), the gaze of an organization scholar could complement their insights from another perspective.

Notes 1. 2. 3.

4. 5. 6.

7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

Diane Vaughan (1999) addressed yet another dark side of organizations: mistake, misconduct and disaster. A special issue of Organization will be dedicated to such matters. From a US radio series sponsored in the 1930s by the soap manufacturer Proctor and Gamble (for a history of soap operas, see e.g. Hobson, 2003). After a heated debate about subliminal marketing that lasted for at least a half century, recent studies show that such a phenomenon does exist (Fransen, 2009), though it is not due to some quasi-magical manipulation, but to a short exposure not encouraging, or even not permitting reflection, as Zajonc (1968) postulated long time ago. There is surprisingly little written about Latin American soap operas (mostly Brazilian and Mexican) and their astonishing popularity in Eastern Europe (for exceptions see Baldwin, 1995 and Lopez, 1995). Book clubs are one exception to an individual reading of literature, but universities as workplaces are not exceptions to daily discussions of soap operas (at least ours is not). Although soap operas, by definition, have no central plot, they do include smaller stories that can reach their climax within the same episode or over a few consecutive episodes. These stories are often plotted in predictable ways, conforming to what Czarniawska and Rhodes (2006) called ‘strong plots’ — plots remaining for long periods in a collective cultural repertoire. Although Three Men and a Baby (1987) is not a TV series, its sequels made it into a film series. For a merciless reading of the movie, see Modleski (1991). The series 7deLaan took first place with an average 1.9 million viewers, and Egoli third place with 900,000 viewers (Roos and Prins, 2007). The 11 official languages of South Africa are: Afrikaans, English, Zulu, Xhosa, Swati, Ndebele, Southern Soto, Northern Soto, Tsonga, Tswana and Venda. (Wikipedia, 2011b). The term ‘Rainbow Nation’ has been used for many years to refer to South Africa’s cultural diversity; by former President Nelson Mandela, for example. In the same vein it has been suggested that Dilbert cartoons are a cause rather than an effect of work alienation (Hutchins, 1999). Ang (1982, p. 122) does not agree, but she analysed only the early US soap operas. Obviously, the genre has changed and developed over the last 30 years but it is also possible that utopian elements are more frequent in European than in US soaps.

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