Elizabeth Taylor

Sad news today that Elizabeth Taylor - truly the last of the great movie stars - has died aged 79 after many years of illnesses.

I thought she was astonishingly beautiful in her heyday, and not a bad actress despite making many not so great films - but in her good films she really was terrific. I loved her in National Velvet, Jane Eyre, Suddenly Last Summer and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. Even in her lesser films she was always good.

She was so glamorous but seemed to have a wonderful earthy and self-deprecating sense of humour - in interviews she was always witty and seemed not to take herself too seriously.

Yes, she had that soap opera life with all the marriages, the illnesses and near death experiences, and all those diamonds she collected. But she also did much fine and pioneering work for AIDS research, and by all accounts she was kind, generous, loyal and very funny person in her private life.

With her dying, there are no more real movie stars left.

Rue McClanahan dies

And then there was one – Betty White is the last remaining Golden Girl with the death of the fabulous Rue McClanahan.

Blanche was my favourite Golden Girl , and Rue McClannahan so clearly loved playing the part, often saying of the part for which she was most famous ‘People always ask me if I’m like Blanche, and I tell them that Blanche was a vain, self-absorbed mankiller from Atlanta, and I’m not from Atlanta.’

Last year I read Rue’s autobiography, and thoroughly enjoyed it – the title alone (My First Five Husbands) tells you that you are going to be in for a great read, and that is what it is. She writes with frankness and candour as though she’s chatting with a girlfriend and even rates her (many) lovers on an excitement scale.

Here is a classic Blanche moment from The Golden Girls:

Falcon Crest

I have just received my DVD copy of the first season of one of the best (and funniest) nighttime soaps - I speak of course of Jane Wyman's latter day triumph, Falcon Crest.

I am absolutely loving this early episodes of this great show - whoever thought that wine making could provide so much material for a melodrama (nine seasons worth).

I just hope that Warner Brothers continues to release the subsequent seasons, unlike Knots Landing which has had only a pathetic two seasons released.

Classic catfights

Well, having posted links to some YouTube clips of Dallas the other day, I thought I should give some exposure to that other '80s supersoap, Dynasty. It did not have JR and Sue Ellen, but it did have Krystle and Alexis and their annual catfights.

The first one was the best one, when Krystle tears Alexis's studio apart after an entire season of being bullied by Alexis and snapping when she finally realised that Alexis was responsible for causing her miscarriage. It was the highlight of the 1981-82 season.

The second one is probably the most famous, and in fact I saw it at the new permanent exhibit at ACMI the other day. It is of course the lily pond.

After that they seemed to have at least one fight a year, perhaps the most innovative being a mudslide rip-off of Romancing the Stone. Over the years the somewhat tacky value of girl-on-girl action was increasingly exploited by Dynasty as Alexis was forced to battle Dominique and Sable, and the younger girls like Sammy Jo and Fallon also got their share of catfights. To me, this all seemed to be a bit low-brow, whereas these first two catfights between Krystle and Alexis were so shocking and new - no one had really seen women behave like that on TV before.

One thing that is always amusing about the Krystle/Alexis catfights, and particularly obvious in the first clip here, is how little there is of Joan Collins - it is patently obvious that most of the "Alexis" we see is a stunt person in a wig. Famously, Joan Collins hated to do any of the 'physical' scenes and used a double for all but the most necessary shots, while Linda Evans apparently loved getting into the fights and did as much of her own stunt work as possible. The violence emanating from Krystle/Linda at the end of the first clip where she smashes Alexis's portrait of Blake is truly frightening. Although the two actresses spent years claiming to be friends in real life, Joan Collins recently dished the dirt in a rather tacky article in which she claimed that Linda physically abused her during a recent 'reunion' play the two women did. I guess some of that animosity, whatever was at the core of it, must have contributed to what made the on-screen hatred between Krystle and Alexis seem so realistic. And it sure made for some good catfights.

Air NZ naked flight safety video

I've flown with Air New Zealand several times. I think they're a great airline with friendly staff, clean and comfortable planes and quite tolerable food. Despite the general antagonism that many Australians, including me to some extent, feel towards them for their role in the destruction of our former and best domestic airline Ansett (as a recap, Air New Zealand bought Ansett, then effectively raped and stripped it bare, and then shamefully cut it loose and hung it out to dry), I can accept that times have moved on and I still prefer to fly Air New Zealand when crossing the Tasman (note: only New Zealanders refer to the Tasman Sea, cringingly albeit affectionately, as "the ditch", or as they say it "the detch", just as they are the only nationality I have ever heard refer to the continent of Australia, rather than a person from Australia, as "Aussie" - but all joshing aside, I love New Zealand and New Zealanders).

Recently, the airline has been remaking its image in some sort of nude form, with a TV commercial featuring naked staff and a naked CEO. Today, they've garnered some "good news item" headlines for their new air safety video, which features naked cabin crew members in body paint uniforms. It's guaranteed to get even the most jaded frequent flyer to glance sideways from their magazine during the safety demonstration (not that you see anything even remotely jiggling).

It looks like the participating crew members all enjoyed themselves. I wonder how they auditioned? And more pertinently, after watching it, I do wonder if the safety video is subtitled into English?

Michael Jackson dies

Unexpected news this morning that Michael Jackson has died. I was never a huge fan of Jackson's but his talent was undeniable, initially as a child performer and then later as one of the true innovators of the "video clip" pop music age of the 1980s. From the peaks of those successes he became, I think, something of a tragic figure, and I've always seen his descent into the realms of the truly bizarre as an indictment of the strange, shallow, invasive and ultimately destructive so-called cult of celebrity that seems to define our times, and of which Jackson arguably was a victim. I wonder what will happen to his unfortunately named children?

In praise of the second banana

A while ago I was watching a re-run of I Love Lucy and I was suddenly struck by an undeniable truth: for all her acclaim and adoration, Lucy Ball was simply nowhere near as funny or interesting as her more subtle sidekick Vivian Vance. Lucy’s broad farce and hammy humor may have won her legions of fans and ensured her several decades as one of TV’s most powerful stars, but the fact remains: to a modern audience Lucy’s over-the-top slapstick is dreadfully dated. Her sidekick Vivian is much funnier. Her droll turn of phrase and eye-rolling runs rings around Lucy’s physical gags, and in retrospect it is clear that an important component of the show’s success was the chemistry between the hammy lead and her deliciously underplayed sidekick.

Edina and Patsy. Mary and Rhoda. Cybill and Maryann. Grace and Karen (and Will and Jack, sort of). The list of female comedic duos whose success is attributable to the star/sidekick dynamic is considerable and traces back to the dramatic “women’s pictures” of the 1940s. The prototype for the sidekick was pioneered by the likes of Eve Arden and Thelma Ritter, women who made whole careers out of playing supporting parts and often stole the picture with their clever characterizations of the sidekick. In her book All About Thelma and Eve: Sidekicks and Third Wheels, Judith Roof suggests that it's the "perversity, middleness and implied queerness" of these minor female roles that makes them so fascinating to viewers.

Eve Arden’s delicious portrayal of Joan Crawford’s best friend in the classic 1945 film noir/melodrama hybrid Mildred Pierce, an interesting film on many levels, not least because of its depiction of a female friendship, is one of the best known early "best friend" parts. As Crawford’s pal Ida, Arden creates a vivid, multi-layered character at once glamorous, experienced, and insightful – she sees the train wreck coming well before the tortured lead Crawford. Ida is totally glamorous and deliciously cynical, speaking her mind in a way the Crawford character is never permitted to do. Because her screen time is so limited, the audience always wants to know more about the rather mysterious and often acid-tongued Ida – we can’t help but wonder, in the back of our minds, about the exciting and man-filled life Ida must be living off-screen.

The Ida prototype became a staple of women’s films, serving the important purpose of speaking for the audience and providing a much-needed confidante for the suffering lead. Thelma Ritter played a sort of Ida without the glamour as Bette Davis’s wonderfully quick-witted and insightful maid Birdie in All About Eve – and her character is the only one to see through Davis’s scheming rival. In women’s pictures the sidekick is always cynical, quick-witted – and wise.

By the 1960s, though, the big screen sidekick had developed some new elements; primarily, she was losing her dignity. Ritter’s sidekicks in the Doris Day sex romps still had the best lines and the subversive cynicism, but she was often a drunk and man-hungry (Ida was man-hungry too, but she really could have had her pick of them). Perhaps the sidekick was becoming too much of a threat to the lead and her appeal needed to be neutralized by making her an alcoholic, emphasizing her comedic appeal?

Through the 1960s and ‘70s the women’s picture died and the sidekick found her way onto TV sitcoms. The Mary Tyler Moore Show was an important program from a feminist perspective, but looking at it today the perpetual doormat character of Mary is just plain annoying and irritatingly naïve. Her sidekicks, however, the blunt Rhoda (Valerie Harper, a fabulously droll graduate of the Vivian Vance school) and prickly Phyllis (Cloris Leachman) were vastly more interesting and doubtlessly underrated factors in the show’s early success and its enduring appeal. Rhoda was everything a woman could want in a best friend: funny, supportive, and stylish. She was also allowed to have a lot of other, more interesting, personality traits which Mary was not allowed to have: she was overtly man-hungry, appealingly self-deprecating, and she could be quite the bitch. She even had a more interesting family than Mary, capitalized upon in the spin-off program Rhoda (and in which, fittingly, the show was often stolen by Rhoda’s own sidekicks, her frumpy sister and her passively aggressive mother). On Mary Tyler Moore, Rhoda’s appeal came from the fact that, as a secondary character, she could say and do the things that goody-two-shoes Mary could never get away with, and it is this aspect of the sidekick that is the crux of her enduring appeal: she is more interesting than the lead because her secondary status allows her to be far more multi-faceted, cruder, sexier, and therefore ever so subversive in espousing counter-establishment opinions.

The sidekick never irritates us because she does not have to carry the show: we always want to see more of her and hear more of her homespun wit or her raunchy one-liners, but often we just want the whining lead to shut up. We never see enough of the sidekick to get annoyed with her – that’s also why she usually gets the best lines.

The height of TV’s popularity in the 1980s brought a dearth of female buddies employing the sidekick dynamic. Women were sworn enemies in the popular soap operas of the era (Krystle and Alexis in Dynasty being the most notable example), while the most important female-driven sitcoms featured aloof, acidic career women curiously lacking in female friends (Murphy Brown), or ensemble casts with no second bananas (The Golden Girls) – although Roseanne used the classic sidekick dynamic with its engaging relationship between the crass, overweight Roseanne and her slightly neurotic, slightly sexy and sometimes bizarre sister Jackie (Laurie Metcalf).

The 1990s brought the return of the sidekick with the seminal British comedy Absolutely Fabulous. Alcoholic tramp Patsy is totally over-the-top and light years from the wisdom and glamour of Ida in Mildred Pierce. Although Patsy (Joanna Lumley) still fulfils that vital role of gal pal and ostensible second banana (and in classic sidekick style Patsy always steals the show), Patsy’s femininity is totally exaggerated to the point where she looks like a drag queen and behaves like a gay man. This new sidekick persona introduced a new element of subversion: she could be totally immoral and never suffer consequences that the lead would. Unlike the all-talk man-eating Ida or the desexualized Ritter of the ‘60s sex romps, this latter day sidekick drank like a fish and screwed around as much as she wanted to. The female lead could never get away with such immorality without being punished in the end: Edina was usually humiliated in one way or another, but Patsy just went about her business.

This raises the question: when did the sidekick turn into such a lush, and why? Cybill Shepherd’s showcase comedy Cybill proved her a competent comedienne, but it was her hard-drinking gal pal Maryann (the elegant Christine Baranski) that won all the laughs, much as the ever-drunk Karen (Megan Mullally) famously stolen the show from her less interesting gal pal (and series star) Grace in Will and Grace. Perhaps the drinking is another way to neuter the sidekick and ensure the audience never takes her too seriously, but there is something more happening here: nastiness. Maryann and Karen, and even Patsy, are aggressive towards their supposed friends, often belittling and undermining them, often quite bitchy, and not at all like the supportive best friends of Ida or Rhoda’s days. Maybe they are resisting their secondary status? Maybe it’s a post-feminist backlash against the disappointments of sisterhood?

In any case, today it seems that the sidekick has once again been relegated – for now at least. But rest assured, she’ll return some day. Personally I just hope she’s more in the guise of a glamorous cynic like Ida, or a witty sage like Birdie, or even or lovable loudmouth like Rhoda, rather than the nastier, more recent incarnations.

The sexual politics of 'Knots Landing'

I have already disclosed on these pages my penchant for American soap opera Knots Landing which ran from 1980 to 1993 and followed the improbably eventful lives of the residents of a fictional upper middle class suburb in southern California. It was a terribly interesting show, renowned for its wit, clever plots and more “realistic” characters (in comparison to shows like Dynasty which chronicled the lives of the super-rich), as well as its famous end-of-season cliffhangers. It’s been called “the original Desperate Housewives", a comparison that I cannot comment on as I’ve never watched Desperate Housewives. I have started watching Knots again recently on DVD and I am really struck by the underlying sexual politics, and the way in which the rise of 1980s feminism, characterised by the increase of women in the workplace, was so sharply, and sometimes brutally, reflected in this deceptively innocuous little soap opera. So I thought darn it, if it's good enough for Camille Paglia (a noted fan of the melodrama genre), then it's good enough for me!

The show initially revolves around four married couples living in a cul-de-sac. Three of the women are housewives, and the one that works is a school teacher. All of the women are dependent upon men and their stories revolve around domestic concerns, their children and fretting over their husbands. But there is trouble brewing: intelligent Laura is frustrated with her arrogant yet strangely lovable and deluded husband Richard and decides to start working, eventually becoming a successful real estate agent and the primary household breadwinner, much to Richard's chagrin. She is forced to apologise for her success because it has offended his masculine pride, which even takes violent form when he has a breakdown and takes her hostage. His constant attempts to pull her back into his orderly patriarchal existence also extended to accusing her of a lesbian affair with her friend ill-fated Ciji (an affair the program was clever enough to leave ambiguous; Laura may well have been exploring her sexuality as part of her prolonged emancipation). Laura does not give in to Rochard though: she continues to work and her character evolves into a strong, smart and very witty independent woman. Meanwhile, naive but kind country girl Val plays the good wife to her philandering alcoholic husband Gary, but when she finds him in bed with her supposed friend Val finally draws the line, loses her grating Southern accent, throws Gary out, develops some self-respect and becomes a bestselling novelist and a woman of independent means. Val is the program's long-suffering heroine, perhaps the least easily read as a feminist to any extent, enduring many of the staples of soap opera (amneisa, being kidnapped, having her children kidnapped, unfaithful husbands, disappearing husbands, abusive husbands, mental illness, being the victim of stalking, being the victim of attempted murder etc), but she was certainly resilient and refused to compromise her values for anyone. Her best friend, housewife Karen, is probably the character that most reflects the 1980s American zeitgeist: she progresses from storylines in which she is constantly worrying about her brood of children and unpacking groceries, to negotiating the dating world after the surprise death of her first husband, and later becomes a businesswoman, taking over her late husband's business, then, as the 1980s/Trump/Greed is Good era progresses, she became a property developer, and in the 1990s, during the talk show craze, she became a talk show host and an environmental campaigner often involved in politics - although of course Karen's list of maladies was nearly as long as her neighbour Val's (difficult children, pregnancy, miscarriage, prescription drug addiction, paralysis, being widowed, being kidnapped, being shot, being stalked etc). Laura, Val and Karen were all heroines that in different ways reflected the move of women generally out of the kitchens and into the public sphere. As friends, the three of them also depicted something rarely shown on television: female friendships untainted by competition for men or careers. These pals drew their strength from each other and the "girlfriends" aspect was an important part of the storyline.

Just as interesting as the "girlfriends" aspect though was the recurrent theme of mother/daughter conflict: Karen's relationship with her teenage daughter Diana was constantly fraught and they were eventually estranged; Val was estranged from her adult daughter and had a difficult relationship with her own mother, Lilimae, who had abandoned her as a child (they later reconciled as adults). Business tycoon Abby (more of her in a moment) also had a challenging relationship with her rebellious daughter Olivia. So if Knots emphasised the strength of female friendships on the one hand, it also emphasised the fragility of the mother/daughter relationship on the other.

An interesting contrast to the other female characters is, of course, the character of Abby, the conniving, unfaithful, ambitious blonde bombshell unafraid to use sex as a means to getting the money, power and influence she wanted. Glamorous and always heavily made-up (the show even made an in joke of her eye make-up, with one of her husbands joking to her that he would finally see her without make-up the morning after the way were married; he entered the steamy bathroom to find her in a towel and full eye make-up). Abby had no female friends and was openly aggressive with Laura, Val and Karen, even "stealing" Val's husband (deliciously announcing to him after the wedding: "I've wanted you from the first moment I saw you. I love getting what I want"). An "unlikely feminist icon" (Interview magazine), Abby embezzled money from her various husbands, defrauded her business partners, was compulsively unfaithful, a constant liar, frequently involved in shady business dealings and political skulduggery, and yet she had her ethics: the "how far will she go?" aspect was what made her interesting. Would she allow her love rival Val's children to be kidnapped and say nothing about it, even though it suited her for the children to disappear? No, she would not. Would she bury a body in cement to protect her daughter from a possible murder charge, or would she coerce lovers into taking the rap for her shonky business deals when they blew up on her, sometimes framing them as well? Yes, she would. Through it all, Abby almost always kept her cool and her sense of humour - an admirable trait.

Abby was also a single mother, one of the first working single mothers portrayed on TV. When her teenage daughter developed a drug addiction in the middle of her own scheming and conniving, Abby put aside her business ambitions and devoted herself to getting her daughter clean again. Abby was constantly shown juggling the demands of her work life and her home life in a realistic manner that was not often shown on television, where women tended to either be stay at home mums or effortless superwomen. Unlike those unrealistic women, Abby had to do a lot of juggling.

Camille Paglia's interview with Donna Mills, who played Abby, is quite revealing in that it explains how the character was constructed. Mills had played many blonde victims in her career and was determined to play Abby as strong and unapologetic, characteristics that reverberated with the female audience. Mills famously declared of early attempts by producers to soften the character that "the last thing this show needs is another sympathetic woman!", and refused to allow Abby to ever cry or show weakness in public situations.

The feminist jury is out on whether Abby was a role model or part of the problem for women. In her book Prime Time Feminism, Bonnie Dow criticises the "competitive individualism" of the "bitch" characters of soap operas such as Abby in Knots or Alexis in Dynasty, who accepted the need to make peace with the patriarchy and learn how to fit in, competing with men and with women to achieve their feminist aspirations. Women such as Abby were powerful figures, but their power came via men (husbands, etc). Dow rejects the potential subversive reading that soaps such as Knots and powerful female characters like Abby undermine the stability of patriarchy; with their aggressive rejection of sisterhood in their pursuit of money and power, these sorts of characters, Dow argues, instead represent backlash thinking.

It's true that Abby's money, and power, came to her via men, but she was always the one with the brains and, as Mills observes in the Paglia interview, no matter what the obstacles, Abby always won. She operated in a male dominated business world, and she played by the men's rules, but she was always victorious. To me, that makes her a feminist role model, even though we may not approve of her methods, especially her casualness about mixing sex and business. On the other hand, JR on Dallas unapologeticly and ruthlessly mixed sex and business.

In conclusion, let's let the lady speak for herself. Here are some wonderful words of wisdom from Abby, the unlikely feminist:

• Episode 24: “A State of Mind” (1981) Abby establishes herself as an independently-minded woman who works as much for personal fulfillment as for money, telling her ex-husband that she likes being single and defending her decision to her earn her own money rather than living off his alimony because “this is the 1980s”. She rejects his assertion that she cannot be a good mother if she’s working.
  
  
• Episode 36: “The Surprise” (1981) When Abby’s ex-husband Jeff kidnaps their children in an attempt to force a reconciliation with her. Tricking him into believing she has consented to his demand and that she will remarry him, she leaves him at the altar and has him served with a restraining order preventing him from seeing her or his children again. Asked by Karen why she did this so cruelly, Abby replies simply: “He hurt me – nobody gets away with that.”
  
  
• Episode 48: “Shadow Waltz” (1982) Abby sleeps with a senator to get a bill favourable to her business approved and then justifies it on feminist grounds to shocked friend Val, telling Val she could learn from her.
  
  
• Episode 82: “Sacred Vows” (1982) Abby marries Val’s ex-husband Gary, telling him after the wedding “I’ve wanted you from the first time I saw you. I love getting what I want.”
  
  
• Episode 84: “Money Talks” (1983) Abby, newly married to Gary, tells Senator Sumner she wants him to assist her in getting a planning variance for a shady real estate development she is secretly undertaking with Gary’s inheritance, in exchange for her directing Gary’s contributions to Sumner’s reelection campaign. She refers to the contributions as an investment she expects to pay off. Sumner says he’s not for sale. She seduces him instead. She later tells him that he is a politician on the rise and she is a businesswoman on the rise and they can help each other and enjoy an affair with no threat to either of their marriages: “I like my marriage, and I assume you like yours. Our lovemaking has nothing to do with that, because if I have to make a choice between love and money, money’s going to win every time.”
  
  
• Episode 96: “No Trumpets, No Drums” (1984) Abby explains to her pre-teen daughter Olivia why people judge her so harshly: “Listen to this, because it’s important. If a man were conducting his business the way I’ve conducted mine, he’d be admired for his aggressiveness. But if a woman does it then she’s a shrew.” Olivia replies that she does not understand. “Neither do I”, says Abby. “But it’s so. But I’ve never let it hold me back and, when the time comes, I really hope you don’t let it hold you back, because a career is just as important for a woman as it is for a man.”
  
  
• Episode 98: “Finishing Touches” (1984) Abby, thinking her husband Gary murdered as a result of her business dealings, explains her grief to those who might call her hypocritical: “I loved my husband. You may find that hard to believe. I had my affairs, skimmed profits and other things, but I did those things for me, not to hurt him. He counted in my life.”
  
  
• Episode 189: “Don Not Fold, Spindle or Mutilate” (1987) When younger rival Paige theorizes that Abby dislikes her because she feels threatened, Abby wastes no time putting Paige in her place: “I’m so flattered that you want to be like me, but don’t flatter yourself into thinking we’re at all alike. Everything I have, I’ve earned. Everything you have, you were given. I know it galls you, it galls people of your class, to see a woman like me who’s earned what you think should be yours by birth. People like you are threatened by people like me because, deep down, you’re afraid you wouldn’t be able to cut it without your trust fund. You know something? You’re right.”

He used to send me roses...

Why, oh why, don't TV shows have theme songs anymore?

I have been thinking a bit about this lately (well, not a lot, just now and then, in the shower usually when I want to sing something to myself, usually The Love Boat theme or similar, because it's camp, snappy and short). TV shows used to have great theme songs, such as the theme to Prisoner - so melancholy, so touching - when you heard it you just knew how awful it must be to be a woman in prison.

This week, while I should have been writing essays, I stumbled across some interesting versions of some of my favourite classic TV themes. First, here is a cover version of the usually hypnotic Prisoner theme song by none other than the Living End. Quite different isn't it?

Second, here is a cheesy disco version of the aforementioned Love Boat theme, "performed" by Charo. It makes me want to get aboard.

Finally, here is the version of the wonderful EastEnders theme song with very clever lyrics, Anyone Can Fall in Love. It was recorded by cast member Anita Dobson who played every one's favourite neurotic alcoholic with a heart of gold worn on her sleeve, unforgettable pub landlady Angie Watts. This song was never used in the actual show, it was just recorded to cash in on the show's success. The lyrics are so cleverly matched to the theme music, offering sage advice about how you must work to keep your love alive - advice that in my memory was seldom followed by any of the characters in the show, whose love affairs were always brief and usually ended with a dramatic revelation of infidelity in the pub in front of all their friends and family. I love how they use the whistling from the actual theme tune - what a shame they could not also have used those famous drums!

And on those drums, apparently the EastEnders theme tune and those dramatic drums that mark the close of each episode, is more recognisable to Brits than their national anthem! Blimey.

The slow death of soap

I just read two quite interesting articles (this one and this one) analysing the factors behind the slow decline of a type of television program that was once a staple of broadcast media, the soap opera.

I confess that over the years I have been a fan of soaps. As a child I enjoyed Australian dramas like Sons and Daughters with its outrageous plots as well as British shows like Howards Way, and of course the American hits Dynasty, Dallas, Knots Landing and Falcon Crest, and I am enjoying watching some of those again now on DVD. I was also a semi-regular fan of Days of Our Lives, Santa Barbara and Another World when I was a teenager (I always thought that the opening catchphrase for Another World, which I think ran for 30 years or so, was particularly evocative: "We do not live in this world alone, but in a thousand other worlds' - there is something quite profound and literary in that I think).

Days of Our Lives is still popular on Australian daytime TV and my grandmother remains a devoted fan of that program, although I understand its days are numbered.

I also watched The Bold and The Beautiful for many years, from the time it started in 1987 until sometime in the 1990s I suppose. At some point then I started to prefer the UK shows like EastEnders. These days the only soaps I watch at all are DVDs of Dallas and Dynasty and Knots Landing, partly because I don't have time in my hectic life schedule for television and partly because I don't have a television. Also, of course, I think I got a bit bored by soap operas, which seemed to lose some of their cleverness as well as their wit and sparkle sometime in the 1990s.

The heyday for the soaps was the 1970s (from which era this fabulous Time magazine cover comes, featuring the "super couple" Bill Hayes and Susan Seaforth Hayes from Days of Our Lives) and the 1980s, but a combination of factors including massively diminished daytime audiences due to increased workforce participation by women, rising production expenses, declining advertising revenues and not least of all changing viewing preferences combined with the fact that so many other programs such as talk shows, "reality" programs and more off-beat and risky cable television programs all "stole" that peculiar domain of racy voyeurism once the sole province of daytime soaps have contributed to the decline of the genre.

There is of course also the overall decline in US network television audience - when millions of people watched Dallas to find out who shot JR, for instance, there was no internet, no cable, no DVD - and this makes programs like scripted drama more of a risk for television producers than a cheap reality show. It seems that the soap opera is likely to become a thing of the past in the foreseeable future

It's a shame though - re-watching Knots Landing and (early) Dynasty on DVD reminds me of how escapist, fun, entertaining and sometimes very clever the soap opera format can be.

Debbie Harry

I am an unabashed fan of Debbie Harry and Blondie, so you can imagine my delight on my recent trip to San Francisco in finding this Andy Warhol portrait of her plastered all over town.

The poster was advertising a Warhol exhibition at the very cool De Young Museum in SF, which is all about his work inspired and influenced by musicians and music from Elvis Presley to Liza Minnelli and, of course, the Velvet Underground and that banana. I bought a tote bag at the museum shop with this huge picture of Debbie Harry on it.

I was lucky enough to see Blondie in concert in Sydney in 1998. They were truly fantastic live (of course). I have all of Blondie's albums as well as Debbie Harry's solo albums. I'm listening to 'Die Young, Stay Pretty' as I type this :)

Farewell, Bea Arthur

I was in San Francisco when the beloved, unique and very talented comedic actress Beatrice Arthur died. I heard about it on the tram where a group of teenagers were discussing it sadly. Yes, teenagers! I do believe that San Francisco may well be the only place in the world where teenagers know who Bea Arthur is/was. Later that afternoon I was walking down Valencia Street and saw a beautiful picture of Miss Arthur, from her Maude era, displayed in a shop window - no tacky "in memory of" poems, just a simple photograph. What a classy town this can be.

And as for Miss Arthur - what a tremendous talent! I loved her in Maude, and I loved her in The Golden Girls. I never saw her on stage but I do have a CD of her live show from a few years back and she is marvelous.

A few years ago I read an interview with her where she said she had no idea why Golden Girls was shown on TV repeats so much more frequently than the more confrontational and political Maude (of which only the first season has been released on DVD), but she thought that Maude would do the world a lot more good if it was rerun. I agree with her. Maude was a wonderful role model, and of course her portrayer will be forever loved.