Soaps take the lead on nuanced storylines about queer life

Making

WBEZ Chicago

Society & Culture

4.6 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2025

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Before the mainstreaming of Ellen and the hit show Will and Grace, soaps did their best to bring tenderness to LGBTQ+ storylines. That’s the nature of the form: It gives room for anyone and everyone to be complex, fleshed out, loved and hated all at once. From supporting roles to legacy characters to complex depictions in their full humanity, from respectability politics to sometimes making missteps, soaps have found ways to evolve their depictions of queer life. Ryan Phillippe played a gay teen in the 1990s on One Life to Live. Eden Riegel played Bianca, Erica Kane’s gay daughter in the 2000s on All My Children. Today, progress looks like a villain, according to Days of Our Lives actor Greg Rikaart. “I came on as the ‘gay villain,’ if you will, and to me, that felt like the ultimate equality, in that I didn’t have to just say the right thing and follow the rules in order to be palatable to the audience,” he said. “And when I would get blowback from some people … I would just argue all those things: That that is further pushing the envelope open by saying, ‘Yeah, we can be multifaceted. We don’t all have to be good guys.’ ”

Transcript

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0:00.0	From WBEZ Chicago, I'm Natalie Moore,
0:05.0	and this is Making Stories Without End.
0:09.0	Here, I take you on a journey to learn about daytime soap operas
0:14.0	and their broad reach on television.
0:17.0	Many people don't know that the serial started right here in Chicago.
0:29.6	Join me as we talk about the social impact, history, and lasting legacy of television's unique immersive storytelling.
0:43.7	Queer television representation left a lot to be desired in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. Come a knock on our door.
0:46.8	Many of TV's first were side characters, wisecracks, or one-dimensional people plopped in to elicit an audience reaction.
0:55.5	On Three's company, Jack Tripper was a punchline.
0:59.1	My being in bed with you and you being a, uh-uh-uh.
1:02.0	Tinkerbell?
1:04.1	People are liable to get the wrong...
1:05.9	On Dynasty, Blake Carrington killed his son's lover.
1:09.0	Get your hands off my son.
1:11.0	Dad, we were...
1:11.6	I said, get your hands off.
1:17.0	On In Living Color, gay men were a cheap joke.
1:21.5	Hello, I'm Blaine Edward.
1:23.6	And I'm Antoine Mayweather.
1:25.2	And welcome to men on films.
1:27.8	The show that looks at movies from a male point of view.
1:32.2	Before the mainstreaming of Ellen, before Woolen Grace, soaps did their best to bring tenderness to LGBTQ plus storylines.
	...

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