Realist and Realism.

Soaps are a example of Realism as they explore the domestic and personal worlds of their characters, which make the audience become more fascinated with the everyday drama of relationships and any issues in the community. Soaps are specifically revolved around a particular established location for example a square, area, pub, cafe or street. Some Soap, such as Doctors and The Bill are known to be occupational soaps, being set and being revolved around a workplace. The key factors in Soap are the community and the specific places or areas where everyone 'hangs out' as everyone knows each others business etc which helps makes story lines a lot more possible. The Local pub is a place where gossip can be spread fast and enemies cannot avoid one another. Scenes like the clip of a cat fight in the local pub shows realism, as it does happen in real life, and many people can relate or admit they've either been in a pub brawl or witnessed one.

A huge part of the Soap Opera's popularity is realism, which is the dominant mode of representation in Television and Media. As audiences can relate to the issues within the soaps which do happen in real life. For example affairs, deaths etc containing a variety of different types of people such as homosexuals, drug addicts, alcoholics etc. Soap's attempt to represent an external realism and verisimilitude within the soap to accurately reproduces the part and culture of the world its referring to. The uses of conventions help keep a sense of realism with the soap for example, if everyone in Eastenders lived in mansions and all drove Ferrari's it wouldn't match the reality of it happening in East End London. Although soaps sometimes have dramatic or exaggerated story lines or plots the have always connected to their audience using realism. As the soap opera will have to consist of people who the audience can identify and relate with. In conclusion for realism in soaps, there are realists who create everyday situations, characters an dilemmas all in a verisimilitude manner.In comparison, most people wouldn't class Doctor Who as being realist, as their are supernatural monsters and aliens etc in the show, however Doctor Who is a realist programme because in the actual 'Doctor Who world' those things would actually happen so therefor there is a sense of realist and realism. So in other words in real life it would be un-realistic for us to travel in and out of the future in a 'police box' fighting 'darleks' but in the actual world of Doctor Who it would be real.