SUMMARY:
Gender and Genre in “Taxa”:
Sensitive Masculinity and Mothers on Trial
The article looks at the new Danish prime-time
soap opera “Taxa”, asking why a usually
devaluated women’s genre as the soap opera
has succeeded in addressing the entire family
in prime time on Sunday evening. The serial
is discussed in the light of Christine Gledhill’s
statement that in the new prime-time soap
“melodrama and realism, women’s and
men’s culture, intersect (...) in a particularly
productive way”. I conclude that while it it
true that the male characters in “Taxa” are
multi-dimensional personalities, women in
this Danish soap opera are not only almost
absent as writers and directors, but the female
figures are also highly mythologized. Thus
the costs of the soap genre going mainstream
are marginalization and trivialization of
women.