BeastEnders: Pets and soap opera

Mills, Brett (2025) BeastEnders: Pets and soap opera. Critical Studies in Television, 20 (3). pp. 317-330. ISSN 1749-6020

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Abstract

While soap operas typically focus their storylines on human characters, animals serve significant roles in them too. Focussing on the most common animal in the series – dogs – this analysis examines the functions animals play in EastEnders (1985-present), foregrounding species-based hierarchies and popular culture’s normalised anthropocentrism. The focus here is on how pets function as symbols of the domestic, the familial and human-animal relationships. Drawing on Animal Studies and Critical Animal Studies approaches the analysis shows how soap operas make use of representations of pets, and the functions these fulfil in terms of the particular pleasures long-running, episodic soap operas offer.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	animal studies,eastenders,pets,soap opera,cultural studies,communication ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/3300/3316
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Media, Language and Communication Studies
Related URLs:	http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?... https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	19 May 2025 11:30
Last Modified:	22 Oct 2025 00:14
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/99297
DOI:	10.1177/17496020251340357

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