Long overdue celebratory applause to the uniquely flamboyant artistry of the scripted television drama.
Shared perspectives on the heyday of the daytime and primetime soap opera.
Cultural critics Druckman and Sen are adoring longtime soap opera fans who infuse their enthusiasm and analysis into a dozen “episode” essays examining the ascent and fanatical obsession of these serials as well as their incremental replacement by modern “reality” versions. In a delightful introductory piece, the authors quiz each other about how their fascination with soaps began (Druckman in the mid-1970s, Sen in the late 1990s) and is currently sustained through media streaming platforms and wildly opinionated fan-frenzied online message boards. They examine how drama teacher and actress Irna Phillips created the first scripted, serialized daytime soap opera, Painted Dreams, in the 1930s and why the show would evolve into the progenitor of a parade of soon-to-become wildly popular daytime television serials. The authors spotlight the feminist perspective of pivotal soap opera plots like Erica Kane’s abortion on All My Children, combined with more convoluted riffs on paternity, twins, AIDS, race, queer characters, split personalities, and more. Druckman and Sen credit provocative prime-time dramas like Dynasty, Dallas, and Falcon Crest with beefing up the soap playing field through controversial storylines, commanding performances, dazzling costume design, and outrageous cliffhangers. Though the plotlines are frequently repetitive and consistently ludicrous, production staff would weave in human interest issues to balance the preposterous with the socially responsible, like Guiding Light scriptwriter Agnes Nixon, who introduced a uterine cancer storyline to inform viewers about the importance of triennial Pap smear testing. Chatty and personable, the authors’ volleying discussion is informative and entertaining, and includes updated profiles of long-term soap actors as well as a forecast of the future of the genre, and informed opinions on the advent of the soap series reboot. From the “shoulder-padded brio” of Dynasty to more recent productions like CBS’s culturally significant Beyond the Gates, these essays appreciate the soap opera as an artform that’s “eternal and eternally changing.”
Long overdue celebratory applause to the uniquely flamboyant artistry of the scripted television drama.Pub Date: May 12, 2026
ISBN: 9781324075561
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.
The veteran actor, comedian, and banjo player teams up with the acclaimed illustrator to create a unique book of cartoons that communicates their personalities.
Martin, also a prolific author, has always been intrigued by the cartoons strewn throughout the pages of the New Yorker. So when he was presented with the opportunity to work with Bliss, who has been a staff cartoonist at the magazine since 1997, he seized the moment. “The idea of a one-panel image with or without a caption mystified me,” he writes. “I felt like, yeah, sometimes I’m funny, but there are these other weird freaks who are actually funny.” Once the duo agreed to work together, they established their creative process, which consisted of working forward and backward: “Forwards was me conceiving of several cartoon images and captions, and Harry would select his favorites; backwards was Harry sending me sketched or fully drawn cartoons for dialogue or banners.” Sometimes, he writes, “the perfect joke occurs two seconds before deadline.” There are several cartoons depicting this method, including a humorous multipanel piece highlighting their first meeting called “They Meet,” in which Martin thinks to himself, “He’ll never be able to translate my delicate and finely honed droll notions.” In the next panel, Bliss thinks, “I’m sure he won’t understand that the comic art form is way more subtle than his blunt-force humor.” The team collaborated for a year and created 150 cartoons featuring an array of topics, “from dogs and cats to outer space and art museums.” A witty creation of a bovine family sitting down to a gourmet meal and one of Dumbo getting his comeuppance highlight the duo’s comedic talent. What also makes this project successful is the team’s keen understanding of human behavior as viewed through their unconventional comedic minds.
A virtuoso performance and an ode to an undervalued medium created by two talented artists.Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-250-26289-9
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Celadon Books
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
PERSPECTIVES
An exquisitely original celebration of American Blackness.
A potent series of “notes” paints a multidimensional picture of Blackness in America.
Throughout the book, which mixes memoir, history, literary theory, and art, Sharpe—the chair of Black studies at York University in Toronto and author of the acclaimed book In the Wake: On Blackness and Being—writes about everything from her family history to the everyday trauma of American racism. Although most of the notes feature the author’s original writing, she also includes materials like photographs, copies of letters she received, responses to a Twitter-based crowdsourcing request, and definitions of terms collected from colleagues and friends (“preliminary entries toward a dictionary of untranslatable blackness”). These diverse pieces coalesce into a multifaceted examination of the ways in which the White gaze distorts Blackness and perpetuates racist violence. Sharpe’s critique is not limited to White individuals, however. She includes, for example, a disappointing encounter with a fellow Black female scholar as well as critical analysis of Barack Obama’s choice to sing “Amazing Grace” at the funeral of the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was killed in a hate crime at the Mother Emmanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina. With distinct lyricism and a firm but tender tone, Sharpe executes every element of this book flawlessly. Most impressive is the collagelike structure, which seamlessly moves among an extraordinary variety of forms and topics. For example, a photograph of the author’s mother in a Halloween costume transitions easily into an introduction to Roland Barthes’ work Camera Lucida, which then connects just as smoothly to a memory of watching a White visitor struggle with the reality presented by the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama. “Something about this encounter, something about seeing her struggle…feels appropriate to the weight of this history,” writes the author. It is a testament to Sharpe’s artistry that this incredibly complex text flows so naturally.
An exquisitely original celebration of American Blackness.Pub Date: April 25, 2023
ISBN: 9780374604486
Page Count: 392
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Jan. 18, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
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