Soap operas, holy places, and wrestling with angels

Days of Our Lives. As the World Turns. The Young and the Restless. One Life to Live. Neighbours. Television soap operas like these are enormously popular, not only in the United States but around the world.

What's their appeal? Probably the attraction that melodramas have always had. We want to know what will happen. And there's also the excitement of entering, as we imagine, the lives of the beautiful, the rich, and the powerful.

In terms of glamour, sexual excitement, and worldly success, our own lives could seem drab compared to "the soaps." But do such terms measure the "days of our lives" for anyone? If we had "one life to live," would any of us really want to live it as a soap opera?

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