Gorham A Kindem writes: >How did we get from the word "soapumentary" to "soupumentary"? >Is the latter a truly postmodernist pastiche or simply a >misspelling, a telephone chain game mistake, or a Rosanne > Rosannadanna (Saturday Night Live) misunderstanding? As the original perpetrator I can assure my good friend Hap Kindem and others that it is indeed an accidental misspelling, but as a certain old Viennese doctor taught us , misspellings arent truly accidental. "Soup" is, in Norwegian, apart from the commodity found in Campbell cans, also a synonym along the lines of the English "mish-mash" - denoting several ingredients thrown together, and I guess that the heterogenous character of this documentary subgenre was at the bottom of this slip of the word processor. As to his questions "What precisely do these series and soap operas have in common? Aren't the conventions as well as the audience assumptions and beliefs concerning these programs radically different from daytime soap operas?" my answer would be that conventions and audience assumptions just *appear* to be different. The attraction of prying into other peoples life seems to be a central common denominator for both genres, and the establishment of an aura of authenticity adds an extra titillating ingredient. There is a longstanding tradition in "shockumentary", with perhaps the "MONDO CANE" films as the foremost example. Now I have no doubt that the idea behind programs like AN AMERICAN FAMILY were quite different, but from what I have read about the series it seems evident that the introduction of a camera team to the family in question functioned as a catalysator for the inherent conflicts in that family. On that background I am a little amazed that the film has not raised more fundamental debate on a theoretical level. (Bill Nichols refers only briefly to the film in his "Representing Reality". But maybe the fact that I havent actually seen the film has led me to raise far too high expectations as to what could be derived from the film? "THE REAL WORLD" sounds interesting,too. Does anyone have any idea whether it has been aired on MTV Europe? Bjorn Sorenssen University of Trondheim, Norway