Soap opera rapid aging syndrome

"SORAS" redirects here. For the Rwandan insurance service group, see SORAS Group Limited. For the Indian ethnic group, see Sora people.
Not to be confused with Progeria.

Soap opera rapid aging syndrome (SORAS) is the practice of accelerating the age of a television or film character (usually a child or teenager) in conflict with the timeline of a series or the real-world progression of time.[1][2] This allows, for instance, storylines around a pregnancy and birth to be relatively quickly followed by storylines around the travails of that child as a teenager or young adult.[1] This is usually accomplished by recasting the actor playing the part,[3] although in some cases the character is not shown onscreen, only mentioned, until after they have been "rapidly aged".

The process originated (and is most commonly used) in daytime soap operas,[4] though it is also sometimes used in prime time shows. On sitcoms, a newborn infant character is sometimes aged quickly into a kindergartener, for greater comic potential, as was done with the character Chrissy Seaver on Growing Pains in 1990.[5]

The term was coined by Soap Opera Weekly founding editor-in-chief Mimi Torchin in the early days of the magazine, which began publishing in 1989.[6] It is now widely used in soap operas[7] and is sometimes used as a verb as well ("the character was SORASed"). Torchin has jokingly called it "my one greatest contribution to the world of soap operas."[6]

  1. ^ a b Clayton-Millar, Kim (April 24, 2006). "Soaps' rising stars". Tonight. Independent News & Media. Retrieved December 12, 2009.
  2. ^ Ford, Samuel Earl (2007). As the World Turns in a Convergence Culture (PDF) (M.S. thesis). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved August 30, 2017.
  3. ^ Bird, S. Elizabeth (2003). The Audience in Everyday Life: Living in a Media World. New York: Routledge. p. 135. ISBN 0-415-94259-4. Retrieved December 12, 2009.
  4. ^ Pennington, Gail (October 15, 2008). "Now or when? Tricks of time keep TV shows hopping". Pittsburgh Tribune-Review. St. Louis Post Dispatch. Retrieved December 12, 2009. On daytime soaps, children often jump ahead in age, suffering from SORAS -- 'soap opera rapid-aging syndrome.'
  5. ^ Bloom, Ken; Vlastnik, Frank (2007). Sitcoms: The 101 Greatest TV Comedies of All Time. New York: Black Dog & Leventhal. p. 149. ISBN 978-1-57912-752-7. Retrieved December 12, 2009.
  6. ^ a b Daytime Confidential #244: Mimi Torchin Interview. Daytime Confidential. May 23, 2008. Event occurs at 26:54. Retrieved December 15, 2009.
  7. ^ Baym, Nancy K. (September 1995). "The Performance of Humor in Computer-Mediated Communication". Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. 1 (2). ISSN 1083-6101. Retrieved 2009-12-12.