Introduction

In this chapter, I treat The Bold and the Beautiful as a device, as a social force or agent of change—an apparatus that reorganizes domestic and public space, introduces new tastes and nuances, and provides possibilities of rearranging family relations, redefining love, and reorienting gender relations in societies. This soap is an example of a device that the West uses to stir up social change in the South, whether intentionally or unintentionally. I believe that the discussion of this soap opens up the discursive spaces in which various taboo subjects such as love and sex, marriage and divorce, gender equality and equity, class, and power in Kenya can be discussed. This soap represents alternative areas in which debates on key social and moral questions regarding Western influence in Africa can be held, using Kenya as a case study. I demonstrate that soaps such as The Bold and the Beautiful have contributed extensively to the founding of democratic public and private spheres while undermining local cultural traits. Soaps elicit creative tension, inscribing certain behavior patterns, ideas, and values in the minds of the viewers while simultaneously critiquing discourses of the “normal” in societal perceptions of love and sexuality, marriage and divorce, and gender relations in general. My investigations and my conversations with a cross-section of Kenyans with regard to their viewing of The Bold and the Beautiful revealed that the soap has significantly impacted on Kenya's social and cultural spaces.