The In-Lawfuls
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Liu, Alexander J.
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University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point
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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’.