Soapie Life

[Anaya]

Soapie Life

The Age (theage.com.au)

April 12, 2009

Actor Jodi Gordon admits that her Home and Away character leads an outlandish life.

Humdrum lives have no place on the small screen - and we wouldn't have it any other way, writes Scott Ellis.

Television has a lot to answer for when it comes to body image.

How is a young girl - or boy for that matter - expected to cope with a world where almost everyone is tanned and trim, and those who aren't are told in no uncertain terms to fix themselves via shows with "loser" or ""makeover" in the title?

Television, by its nature, specialises in the quick fix - people are rushed under the knife, fashion faux pas are hurriedly corrected; the behaviour of loutish young ladies is adjusted to meet finishing school standards.

But tele doesn't just offer us a glimpse of our inadequacies on the outside, oh no. There's also plenty for us to feel inadequate about in other facets of our lives.

Television's episodic format can lull us into a false sense of how easily fixed some of life's problems can be - the standard resolution time on the box is 22 minutes - 30 including ads.

Once upon a time the soaps were - believe it or not - the way we had "ordinary" life reflected back to us, home to a range of characters who could be hanging out the washing next door or having a beer at the pub.

When Number 96 showed us the reality of living in an apartment block and coping with ratty neighbours, it became the most popular series in the country because, by and large - pantyhose strangler aside, they were lives we could relate to.

But these days the average soapie character lives a (usually young) life so packed with high drama it makes your head spin.

Consider, for example, Martha MacKenzie (played by Jodi Gordon) of Home and Away.

Named after Martha Stewart - of the Summer Bay Stewarts, not the American domestic goddess and former jail inmate - she was introduced to the series just over three years ago.

Abandoned by her family as a baby, she arrived in Summer Bay after meeting her grandfather Alf (Ray Meagher) in New York and things have been going up and downhill ever since. Fast.

She's fallen in and out of love at least eight times, been blown up, survived a helicopter crash, lost two babies, battled alcoholism, dabbled with drugs, worked as a pole dancer, was stalked then dropped down a mine, diagnosed with cancer, recovered from cancer, was lost at sea and is now a widow. All in a little more than 36 months.

Even Gordon admits it sounds faintly ridiculous when the events are strung together, but she says she loves the chance to act out a range dramas and then return to normal life.

Then again, Gordon's "normal life" is as the face of Australian lingerie brand Crystelle and Tony Bianco shoes and she's dating Ryan Stokes, son of billionaire Seven Network chairman Kerry Stokes.

To some extent, that's the way soapie life has to be - if we were to watch large blocks of people being "normal" - doing homework, weeding the garden, listening to an iPod - we'd all turn off pretty quickly.

We carry a few extra kilos, have hairstyles that could use a bit of help and we're generally nothing like the very attractive families that hang around on set.

And for all the frustration that watching an unattainable life that might create, and the issues it can cause, nobody would want it changed.

Plain people doing nothing is not quite the indulgent, escapist television that audiences crave.

Even the producers of Seven's Packed to the Rafters, the closest thing to a normal life portrayed on screen, admit they have to push the boundaries to keep viewers interested.

Dave Rafter (Erik Thomson) might wear a flannel shirt and struggle with the mortgage, his wife Julie (Rebecca Gibney) might be juggling work with running the home - but if that were the extent of their lives, nobody would tune in. Fortunately for us, they also have three grown-up kids, a sprinkling of eccentric friends and a little Rafter on the way to keep things moving apace.

"The one thing we try to do is make the drama interesting and just putting up a mirror to a normal family would probably make for quite dull television for the majority of viewers," says Seven's head of drama, John Holmes.

"The key to Rafters, for example, is the personal identification people have with one or more of the characters.

"They either know someone like that, would love Julie and Dave for their parents or would love to be in a family like that and that's often seen as being the reality of the show.

"But we have to tell our stories at a much faster pace than real life would dictate, otherwise people would be falling asleep in front of the television."

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It seem her 'billionaire heir' bf Ryan Stokes has made the grade again, getting his as per usual mention .

[superman's girlfriend]

Television's episodic format can lull us into a false sense of how easily fixed some of life's problems can be - the standard resolution time on the box is 22 minutes - 30 including ads.

Consider, for example, Martha MacKenzie (played by Jodi Gordon) of Home and Away.

She's fallen in and out of love at least eight times, been blown up, survived a helicopter crash, lost two babies, battled alcoholism, dabbled with drugs, worked as a pole dancer, was stalked then dropped down a mine, diagnosed with cancer, recovered from cancer, was lost at sea and is now a widow. All in a little more than 36 months.

"But we have to tell our stories at a much faster pace than real life would dictate, otherwise people would be falling asleep in front of the television."

Interesting!