reuse, recycle, repurpose…
yearning for the world as it was…
reuse, recycle, repurpose… Instead of “from the archives,” as I noticed how many people are describing previously published pieces they’re posting, I decided to evoke my family ethos: reuse, recycle, repurpose. I’ve been getting ready to finally begin Unraveling Soap Opera’s Elusive History, which is going to be a long haul — and there are two another projects are demanding to be written — so it could be a while before I post new material. Which is why I’ve been scouring my Red Room “archives” for some articles to post in the interim. Reading through these pieces from 2008-2014, I can track how my thinking about soaps has evolved over the years. I wrote my first article for Soap Opera Weekly in 1990, followed by a handful of others, but nothing after 1996. In 2005, I connected with Sam Ford, who was doing a master’s in Comparative Media Studies at MIT and writing his thesis on As the World Turns. I became an outside reader on his thesis committee, and CMS co-founder, Professor Henry Jenkins, asked me to write something for his blog, Pop Junction (formerly Confessions of an Aca-Fan), the first of many critical observations I’ve beeing writing about soaps. As I writing this piece, I came to realize that the personal essay would become my métier. From 2008: A Critfan Yearns for the World As It Was. More to come…
Your critfan essay directly identifies the ongoing tension many of us experienced in the last decade or so watching our old favorites - processing the show as it is (or was, at those times) and simultaneously absorbing and comparing those episodes to the shows living in our memories.
thanks — i’ve got plenty of material to post. what i would love to know is your thoughts on ‘yearning for the world as it was.’