Real Life Woes: Should Soaps Be Reflecting Our Troubled Times?

Politics, natural disasters, incurable diseases, terrorist attacks… they’re a part of life. But should they be a part of your soap?

Over 18,000 viewers let us in on how they felt about real-life events being injected into their daytime dramas!

Balancing Act
It’s not like soaps are devoid of social issues. We can go all the way back to Guiding Light’s Bert Bauer getting a pap smear, All My Children’s Amy protesting the Vietnam War, David and Valerie’s interracial love story on Days of Our Lives, and Robin’s HIV diagnosis on General Hospital.

Even now, there is the latest sex-trafficking tale on The Young and the Restless, and the five seconds The Bold and the Beautiful spent on telling kids not to text and drive.

So the PSAs are already there, and 42% of you are cool with it — as long as the real-life messages come in moderation.

Escape From It All
No, shout a vocal 33%! It’s bad enough Thanksgiving at your house has a tendency to devolve into screaming fights about politics and who, exactly, is to blame for everything wrong in this country and the world in general.

The last thing you want is to drop in on the holidays at the Hortons, Quartermaines, Forresters, and Newmans just to experience more of the same!

We Do Not Live In This World Alone
Soaps exist in the same world we do, counter 25%. They have elections and battle illnesses and worry about how to keep their families safe. If they didn’t, their lives would seem even more artificial.

You wouldn’t be able to relate to them. And you wouldn’t be able to pick up pointers from your favorite characters about how they handled a crises you might be facing, too. So bring on the real life issues! We’re all in this together! And that includes the folks of Salem, Genoa City, Port Charles, and Los Angeles.