Jess Walton "hysteria"? I think not!

I adore Sara Bibel's blog. She has this no-bullshit way of cutting through the melodrama (a task I fail at) and sort of offering an incisive analysis. She is usually spot-on, because she blends industry knowledge, phenomenological experience from the Y&R creative team, and a history as a ratings analyst. That ivy-league education doesn't hurt either.

But Sara espoused something about the recent Jess Walton contract negotiations that I disagree with. (For those not following every twist, Y&R issued a recasting call for "Jill", ostensibly because Walton was 'under the weather'. Sources indicated, however, that it was really part of a tense negotiation between Walton and Sony/Bell/Y&R in which TPTB sought to lower Walton's episode guarantee and/or rate. The recast notice was publicized by Soap Opera Digest last Friday, but by late Monday, initial word came that Walton had re-signed. In other words, one side or both blinked).

Sara said this:

Jess Walton is leaving The Young & The Restless because she’s sick! No, it’s because the show is going to cut her appearances to once a month and her salary to minimum wage! Deidre Hall is going to take over the role. No, Anna Stuart. Actually, Jessica Lange and Goldie Hawn are going to dye their hair and split the role in a casting coup. Even though the show can’t afford Walton. Wait, Walton just signed a new deal. Nevermind.

As for l’affaire de Walton, it seems like it was a standard contract negotiation that unfortunately played out in the press. Unfortunately, everyone in daytime is being asked to take pay cuts these days. Hell, everyone in America is. Nobody likes them. Rest assured, your favorite soap star won’t be showing up at your local food bank anytime soon. They’re still making six figures, just less than they were before. Soaps often take the step of putting out casting calls for recasts when actors balk. It isn’t a friendly tactic. Sometimes it backfires (see Byrne, Martha). But, it often makes people sign on the dotted line. That’s what happened here. The winner, in this case, in the audience who gets to keep watching Walton in the meatiest storyline she has had in years.

Hmmm. Internet over-reaction? Excessive support for an actress during 'customary' negotiations? After all, she won't go hungry (says the previously self-titled 'unemployed' writer).

My view on this is completely different. I think that "l'affaire Walton" demonstrates the new engaged, activist audience, and there are many lessons in the furious weekend of Walton scribblings. At Soap Opera Network, half the posters changed their avatars to Walton images for the weekend!

For the record, the word "hysteria" I use below is the connotation I took from Bibel's piece (and other writers and posters from the same period), and is NOT a quote.

1. Fans had a right to mistrust. A frequent term was the "ABC-Dification of Y&R"...used to refer to the fact that veterans on ABC have been set to recurring or low guarantees...and then become non-viable. This has happened trans-genre.
2. It was compounded by the fact that the LUMINOUS, REMARKABLE, BEST-WORK-OF-HER-CAREER Walton was finally back on the front burner after five years of -- ahem -- misguided storytelling. Now, finally, when Michael Jordan is back and scoring, you're gonna even THREATEN to cut him from the team? This part of the fan response was simply an expression of love -- not hysteria.
3. Y&R itself has a relatively recent history of "botching" (in the fan mind) many of these tense negotiations. While opinions are mixed, the loss of Heather Tom and Victoria Rowell is attributed by many to an unproductively unflinching TPTB. Injudicious cast cutting, in the eyes of some, cost us Jerry Douglas and Don Diamont. Ridiculous inflexibility led to long hiatuses for fan faves like Melody Thomas Scott (who reportedly cleared out her dressing room), Eric Braeden, Joshua Morrow, and Sharon Case. Nobody wanted that for "Jill", the sole "legacy character" who has been there from the beginning.
4. It is true that the news about the negotiations was remarkably 'real time'. Just a few years ago, I'd get my news about 'tense negotiations' from Soap Opera Digest, and by the time I read it, a new deal had already been made. Therefore, it is quite a sign of journalistic evolution that the news now was immediate. Was the fan response "hysteria". In my opinion, the new era of real-time news means that the fans were co-participants in the negotiation! Like a papal nomination, we were thronging outside the Vatican, looking for the color of the smoke.
5. "Tense" negotiations, eh? But they got resolved over a weekend! During that period, many people -- informed by the real time news -- sent notes of protest and support to CBS, Bell, Sony and Walton. One source (another fallacious internet rumor? maybe?) indicates to me that these notes DID reach TPTB, and that some executives WERE surprised at the level of pro-Walton support.

Let's pretend the last point is true? Maybe the fan voices ("hysteria"), in some small way, shifted the valence of the negotiations. Maybe the fan voices made it just a little harder for TPTB to maintain the claim to Walton of "you can be easily replaced". Maybe, just maybe, "hysterical" fans helped prevent the kind of painful, damaging, protracted negotations (often with "bad" outcomes from a fan perspective) that happened before?

Who knows. Even if the fan voices were irrelevant, one cannot underestimate the powerful well-being benefits of a little self-efficacy and locus of control. The illusion of playing a small role in affecting an outcome is -- itself -- a wonderful thing. If that weren't true, why else would many of us go out and vote in elections?

In the end, though, I love happy endings! Glad you're sticking around, Jess!

PS: Ms Walton, I hope you have given up smoking! (A lot of us were scared by that 'under the weather' comment)

What J. Bernard Jones Started (Part 2)

(Part 1 is here, Part 3 is here, and the source article that inspired this post is here. And thanks to Sound and Fury for the shoutout!).

=========

Part 2. Anticipatory Socialization and Illusory Control.

In his excellent "Soap on a Rope" blog entry, J. Bernard Jones wonders:

Once a particular narrative has taken hold in the minds of fans it can be hell trying to ask folk to consider a slightly different view. Nonetheless, I think it's worth a try.

I am willing to admit that I could be completely wrong. However, I am reminded of something that my late mother used to say all the time: when you speak things into existence, they are liable to come true. Another way of saying it is "be careful what you wish for..."

Do the fans want Soap Opera do disappear? No, I do not believe we do. But there is something a little off in the incessant negativity in some quarters about the possibility/probability of it all, as if some fans are all but waiting for the final episode of General Hospital or the last fade out of Y&R to say, "See, we told you so! Nobody listened to us! If they had paid attention to the fans this genre would have been saved! We're the fans! We know everything there is to know about this genre and if the idiots in charge had only listened, we would still have love in the afternoon!"

This is powerful stuff. You need not look very far to see the incredible negativism in most quarters regarding soaps. Where does it come from?

I think there are two main sources (beyond group-think...which is really an important factor on internet message boards and has personally influenced me; when bright, articulate people make passionate and persuasive arguments, and there is widespread agreement...it is hard not to follow along): anticipatory socialization and illusory control.

===========

Let's start with the definitions.

Per Wikipedia:

Anticipatory socialization: Anticipatory socialization refers to the processes of socialization in which a person "rehearses" for future positions, occupations, and social relationships.

A typical example cited here is that of an older married woman who experiences the death of many of her friends' husbands. Even though her husband is still living, she knows his time is likely to come too...and she, like her friends, will be an older single woman. So, in her mind, in small subtle ways, often unconsciously, she starts rehearsing for life without him. She makes sure she knows where the paperwork is. She makes sure she has a credit card in her own name. She even thinks, in her daydreams, sometimes, about how she will handle parties and responsibilities, etc, when he is gone.

This is the process, it is said, that often makes widowhood relatively easier for older women than for younger women. For younger women, it is a total shock...they didn't expect it! But for older women, while still sad and life-altering, the shock is blunted by expectation. (I'm not being sexist here. This is mostly a female phenomenon since, on average, men do not expect to outlive their wives. I'm also not being homophobic; this is pretty much a unique phenomenon of heterosexual marriages). There are other times when this kind of socialization occurs, as in when a loved one is passing from a long, protracted terminal illness. Or when a teenager practices, in their own mind, for adult roles.

Illusory control: the tendency for human beings to believe they can control, or at least influence, outcomes that they demonstrably have no influence over.

The same source has this nice illustration:

One simple form of this fallacy is found in casinos: when rolling dice in craps, it has been shown that people tend to throw harder for high numbers and softer for low numbers. Under some circumstances, experimental subjects have been induced to believe that they could affect the outcome of a purely random coin toss. Subjects who guessed a series of coin tosses more successfully began to believe that they were actually better guessers, and believed that their guessing performance would be less accurate if they were distracted.

An illusion of control over certain external events could be a basis for belief in psychokinesis.

==========

Okay, I think you know where I am going here.

I do not think the animus that many of us have encountered about the soap genre is simply function-less, free form negativism. I think that what we are seeing are typical, normal, healthy emotional responses to a "terminal condition". It doesn't surprise us that both anticipatory socialization and illusory control are often discussed in the context of "dealing with death". It is all about going through grieving steps.

This anger is a "rage, rage against the dying of the light". We talk (and talk and talk) about the soap-less days to come, in part, because it will blunt the pain when that day (soon) comes. This is not being done with relish or pleasure. Instead, it is like bracing for a blow. Moreover, for lovers of the soap genre, we need to do it.

Take Another World for example. The people who were most hurt by that cancellation were those who felt it could be avoided. The protesters, the people who blamed the network and TPTB. When the show was cancelled, some even boycotted NBC. The anger was a roaring fire in them. That is because they had not, in advance, accepted the inevitability of the outcome.

I contrast this with the current fan animus about Guiding Light. The writing is so UTTERLY on the wall, it might as well be hieroglyphs. But, honestly, I think the fan-bashing of Ellen Wheeler and the show is ultimately a way of focusing a diffuse anger about the myriad factors that brought us to this point. In other words, Ellen is a convenient target. GL dropped to the near-bottom of the soap rankings in the EIGHTIES. Ellen was still playing Marley when that happened. Where GL is today is only, in SMALL measure, her fault.

So why all the rage? First, for mental preparation.

But second, to give the illusion of control.

I get my angriest comments and emails when I write about the idea that "no matter what, no matter who was creatively in charge, soaps would still be where they are today." I have written, on a soap board, that "Irna Phillips and Bill Bell and Douglas Marland could come back from the dead, and still the soaps would be in their current state". People HATE when I say that. Because it implies that broad a set of social forces is responsible for the state of daytime...not creative and corporate malfeasance.

The thing is, if you look at my last post, daytime really is going where all of US broadcast TV is going. This is NOT just about daytime.

But people--especially we Americans--have a very very hard time with concepts like "inevitability", "uncontrollable", etc. The "blame TIIC" theme that is across the board is a very American reaction to the current daytime situation. The must be someone to blame. There must be a way to fix it. There must be hope and optimism that if only a "savior" came along, daytime could be fixed.

I don't think so...I really don't. Zoot suits are gone, except as nostalgia items. So are genuine-article 1960s Thunderbirds. So are eight track cassettes. Each of these had their day. There is no one to blame...this is the march of time and the evolution of fashion, fad, and technology.

Who killed Cock Robin? (err...I mean daytime). All of us.