Oscar Wilde claimed "life follows art". I guess he wasn't thinking of the transformative power it could have over millions of lives, and might have debated whether soaps are "Art".
Who wants to watch soaps about pious mothers-of-8? Our choice of role-models is about who we want to become, and perhaps one of the success factors for TV is that it offers poor people a vision of The American Lifestyle ... something to aspire to (at least from their perspective). On the other hand, I've never figured out why anybody watches Coronation Street, a half-hour banging my head on the wall would be better spent.
A soap character who's beautiful, charming, popular, wealthy, witty, racist, xenophobic, homophibic, antisemitic could be a very dangerous thing indeed. If TV becomes a tool for manipulating culture, it could get nasty in the wrong hands.