BeastEnders: Pets and Soap Opera

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.