Loyola Professor Finds Another World in Her Study of Soap Operas

Suzanne Frentz is living the dual life of a soap opera character.

Faster than an Erica Kane love affair, the Loyola Marymount University professor’s words switch from “soap speak”--the melodramatic summaries spit out by soap opera fans--to the highbrow language of an academic trained in dramatic literature and criticism.

One minute she is reciting story lines from her beloved “The Young and Restless” like any other devotee: Nathan married Olivia, but Olivia’s sister, Dru, fell in love with Nathan. Now the jealous sister is trying to break them up, with help from Neil, who’s in love with Olivia.

The next minute, she is describing the same show in terms of its thematic element, genre and character development.

It’s all a day in the life of an avid soap opera fan who analyzes the serial dramas in her role as a professor of communications and popular culture expert.

Frentz, 47, an associate dean at the Westchester-based college, grants that soap operas may be more intense than real life, but she says the highly popular mass medium features many of the same important issues that confront real people. She examines episodes for their social currency, cultural themes and handling of race and sex.

Frentz is the first to admit that there is a difference between Aristotle and “All My Children.”

“I guess in the grand scheme of knowledge, (the study of soap operas) comes way after the Greeks,” she said. “It’s not a mainstream area of research. It doesn’t have a huge body of knowledge, but it is a genre that people have embraced since Dickens.”

Research for Frentz is relaxation to the nation’s roughly 20 million other soap opera fans. She sits in front of the television on weekends with a remote control in her hand watching videotapes of the past week’s segments. She is now monitoring social trends on “The Young and the Restless,” “The Bold and the Beautiful,” “As the World Turns” and “Guiding Light.”

Reactions to her specialty vary.

She is a big hit among soap opera fans and is a popular guest speaker at conferences and community meetings. But Frentz still recalls the quip from a woman at graduate school who learned that Frentz taught a class about television: “What is there to teach? Just turn it on.”

But she is not alone on the soap opera circuit.

David Feldman, a New York writer who taught classes on soap operas in the 1970s at Bowling Green State University and at the University of Maryland, said the serials are a legitimate area of study.

“I could teach some of the same themes with either literature or soap operas,” he said. “The show became our text, in a sense. . . . We looked at certain conventions in soap operas and what they said about the audience. We asked whether there are certain formulas or themes that recur in certain art forms that tell us about our culture.”

And many people see soap operas as their guiding light.

Bob Benn, a spokesman for the Institute for Mental Health Initiatives in Washington, said his group is aware of the influence soap operas have on viewers and has hired interns to conduct studies of the soaps.

“Many, many, many people watch soap operas and take their cues on how to act based on the shows,” he said.

Frentz, a former soap opera writer, has delivered papers on how the audience, network, sponsor and pressure groups all influence soap opera writers. She has compared British and Australian soap operas to their U.S. counterparts and noted the paucity of meaningful roles for blacks and Latinos on the shows.

In a look at sex on the soaps, Frentz found that intimations of intercourse were common, but birth control was rare. She found that characters often discover they are pregnant very late in their terms, eliminating abortion as an issue.

“On ‘All My Children,’ ” she wrote, “the passionate attraction between Natalie and Ross cannot be denied, even though Ross is married, pretty happily, to Ellen--Natalie’s friend. . . . Natalie voices concern, trying to deny Ross’s advances, but whenever he kisses her, she melts in his arms, out of control.

“At no time during any of the passionate interludes was any mention made of any life that may have been created or of any disease that might have been contracted.”

Frentz is a member of the board of directors of the Popular Culture Assn., an international group of 3,000 academics devoted to other seemingly non-academic topics like comic books, tattoos and circuses.

Frentz, who heads the soap opera division, is adding to a growing body of soap opera research:

* The Institute for Mental Health Initiatives has studied the way anger is handled on the soaps in hopes of pressuring the shows into coming up with nonviolent ways of managing anger.

* A British researcher has devised a theory called fetal soap addiction, a condition in which fetuses become familiar with a soap opera theme song because of repeated exposure to the show.

* And Frentz is editing a book due out this summer, “Stay Tuned to Soap Opera” (Bowling Green Press), that compiles other soap opera research: gender differences in soap opera viewing at several East Coast colleges, the handling of AIDS on the soaps, how strong the nuclear family remains on soap operas and a look at radio soaps in Africa.

Frentz turned a love for soap operas into a career after earning a doctorate in theater and hunting in vain for a teaching job. A close friend who works on “The Young and the Restless” offered an unusual alternative: becoming a soap opera writer.

Frentz worked at the CBS drama from 1976 to 1982, specializing in social issues, such as teen pregnancy, venereal disease and cults, before accepting a post-doctorate position at Purdue University. There, she taught a class on television and wrote a soap opera that was produced at the university.

In her academic mode, Frentz views soap operas as one of television’s most cutting-edge forms.

“I love soap operas because here’s a genre that is giving us a microcosm on how to live a better life,” said Frentz. “You can learn something about your own life and prevent certain things from happening to you.”

Soap operas allow viewers to emotionally experience issues before they have to face them in real life, she said. The soaps also provide a springboard for meaningful conversations on difficult-to-discuss issues like sex, AIDS and relationships.

When Frentz wrote a segment on runaways for “The Young and Restless,” she put the national runaway hot line phone number on a poster in the background of the scene. The hot line reported many calls after the segment aired.

“That means that there were runaways who watched the soap and called to get some help because of our show,” she said. “That was really rewarding.”

Frentz’s 12-year-old daughter Sarah is already a big soap opera fan herself, but having an expert mom around means that soap operas are a learning experience that one analyzes, discusses and speculates on. Despite their scholarly potential, however, Frentz says Sarah will not spend all summer watching soap operas.

“She’s also reading two books.”