Escape fiction is tailored purely for entertainment. The plot is simplistic and predictable with a happy ending. The moral to the story is quite obvious and does not require understanding. Escape fiction falsifies reality the reader or viewer takes the story merely for what it is a story for entertainment. The soap opera The Young and the Restless is an example of escape fiction that deals with the everyday life of so called ordinary people. Viewers use this soap opera as a guideline of how their own life should be; which causes a distorted view of reality and has profound negative influences on the viewers. .
The problems that characters on this soap opera have are resolved very quickly, so it leads us to think frustration is unacceptable in society. The characters do not have serious problems such as money complications, or depression so viewers believe that if they have major problems in their own life they are less of a human being. .
All of the characters on this soap opera have everything; they have a lot of clothes, a nice car, beautiful home, attractive furnishings, major social life and they seem like they have all of these things without working. Viewers think that they must have all of these materialistic items, and great social life in order to be happy; so viewers become depressed if they think that their life does not measure up to the kind of life that is being portrayed. .
On this soap opera all of the characters are attractive and skinny. The grandmothers look like moms and mothers and daughters look like they can be sisters. When viewers see this they start to believe that they have to look young in order to be beautiful and accepted by society. A considerable amount of people in North America are getting botox and plastic surgery in the hopes of feeling good about themselves. When viewers see skinny people on television they think that that is the ideal weight one has to be in order to beautiful and desired by others.