Why aren't Soap Operas more "real life" than fantasy?

[Yong Fang]

Why arent soap operas more like real life? Which could ask the question, are all families "Soap Operas"?

In my mother's family, her mother was mentally ill and her husband,my grandfather hung himself in the basement. Afterwards my insane grandmother destroyed all photographs of him. I think everyone pretty much abandoned her after that.

My father's family I know better, and this clan IS A SOAP OPERA. My (sweet, wonderful, nice) aunt with two children who grew up thinking that her husband was their biological father, daughter married a black man who left her with a child, the brother is a raging alcoholic who is divorced from a woman he got pregnant in high school. His second son killed himself after being arrested for strong armed robbery and looking at penitentiary time.

Another aunt had seven children, one son was gay and died young (AIDS perhaps) with her youngest child (my cousin) killed in an automobile accident. Her functionally, moody, functioning alcoholic, chain smoking nat owning husband had a stroke which paralyzed half of his body, with my poor aunt taking care of him in a nursing home. Now I have seen her and she had brain surgery.

The youngest brother, my Uncle also has seven kids. One is married, five are divorced, and one isnt married. The cousin I saw, a great guy, his wife (who I never met) who he has been married since the end of high school was crazy, and the crazy kicked in a bad way after the birth of their only child, with her trying to hang herself and eventually running away. His grandson I think is the reincarnation of my dead brother (next paragraph), a grandson who is the son of his teenaged daughter who had him around 15 years old.

My parents had three living children, but I am the only one of the three who survived into adulthood, the older brother died of menengitis before I was born at 8 years old, (saw a picture of him with my mother and grandparents. Spooky as an only child that someone else was my parent's child). The younger child was stillborn who lived for 10 hours. Then I went crazy for awhile on hard drugs which necessitated me going to several rehabs, and eventually fleeing the country.

Alcoholics, drug addicts, dead children, interracial children, suicides, divorces, teen marriage, domestic violence, hospitals, death. I mean, I wish I could write, because CBS would pay a million dollars for a pilot. Call it "As the Corn Grows...." (Family is from Iowa).

My mother told me in the end that ALL FAMILIES ARE SOAP OPERAS. Which I think probably is true because I saw a lifelong friend and he went on and on about relatives, the snooty arsehole oldest brother who smuggled hashish while in the Navy, the broke sister who drinks and gambles her money away, her arrogant son and daughter with a layabout husband.

Dont need the amnesia, twins, body doubles, space aliens, love triangles, KGB agents, ad nausueum. Life itself is a big tragedy. Soap Operas needs to be more Shakespearan.