The In-Lawfuls - Liu, Alexander J. (University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, 2019)
FORMAT: Hour-long soap opera. ‘The In-Lawfuls’ is a timely soap opera that is neither wholly American, nor wholly Singaporean. Although set against the backdrop of Singapore, ‘The In-Lawfuls’ is a show that takes the familiar American tropes of a wealthy family and the outsiders that seek both acceptance as well as the insiders that seek distance that has defined American soap operas for many generations, and applies them to a fish-out-of-water setting in a culture foreign to most American audiences. Ultimately, the show is focused on understanding family politics from the perspective of the black sheep, and in order to do so, applying the framework of the black sheep effect to family dynamics. To understand this effect, consider a family as an in-group. When a black sheep is introduced to this group, how damaging is the potential for that individual’s actions to the group, when compared to a member of an out-group? The black sheep effect assumes that the potential for damaging negative effects of this in-group black sheep far outweighs the potential for any member of an out-group to inflict upon said group’s identity, whether that be personal identity or group identity (Marques & Paez, 1994). ‘The In-Lawfuls’ will have Jamison, the son of the Goh family, representing the black sheep effect as we watch his actions affecting the family to a greater scale than the slights made by characters not directly related to the Gohs’.