|
|
|
THE GLOBAL PANDEMIC OF THE TELENOVELA - PART 3
Mexico’s Biggest Export to the World Is an Endless, Gushing Fount of Insane Television
BY PABLO HELGUERA,
TRANSLATED BY MEGAN MCDOWELL
PHOTOS BY STEFAN RUIZ
|
| “This is a wind machine to make it look like the actors are outside and stuff’s blowing around. It’s on one of the most popular telenovela sets. For some of the fancier ones with larger budgets they’ll go to Acapulco and shoot outdoors.” |
|
|
Since the first days of the institute’s research, I began to notice common patterns in the way each country related to telenovelas, and, at the same time, the way in which a country’s relationship to telenovelas revealed something unique about it. A Canadian researcher, Denise Bombardier, described it perfectly with her phrase “Give me a telenovela and I’ll give you a nation.” In general terms, however, telenovelas implement what the critic Tomás Lopez-Pumarejo (my principal theorist at the Institute) described as “the drama of the subconscious”: They are stories that revolve around ontological questions: “Where is my son?” or “Where is my love?”
There is a clear relationship in the way in which the telenovela soap operas explore the social tensions of a country and convert them into collective therapy. This process worked very well in countries that had recently emerged from communism, where people were casting about in a psychological search to deal with the class taboos that had dominated for so long. As a result, a drama centered on the impossibility of love because of social or economic obstacles was extremely powerful. Several studies of the time during which Los Ricos También Lloran was broadcast in Russia indicate that programs simultaneously broadcast from the US (such as Dallas and Dynasty) were popular but never generated the same level of interest, because Russians could not identify with the family problems of an oil millionaire in Texas. The higher production quality of those programs didn’t seem to matter either, and so companies like Televisa did not overly concern themselves with investments in production. It was the drama, the emotions worn on the sleeve, and in part the exotic settings that gave the telenovelas a special attraction.
“The woman sitting in the chair was a student. I shot her on the day that the class was practicing kissing in the living room. It’s pretty amazing to watch because the couples really go for it and everyone cheers them on. The other guy I don’t know much about except that the apple he’s eating is fake.”
The dramatic structure of the telenovela operates in mysterious ways, alluding to our repressed fears and desires, and sometimes creating them. The telenovelas’ power of persuasion was precisely their founding principle. Everything began in the 1930s in Chicago, when a detergent company decided to launch a radio commercial in which a mother and son passed their time talking, with the conversation always ending in the purchase or use of the detergent. Over time, the dialogues between the characters became more elaborate, to the point that the commercial reached the proportions of a program in itself, but always keeping the product as the leitmotif of the action. From this comes the term “soap opera,” referring both to the original commercial and to the overflowing melodrama of the program.
TO BE CONTINUED
THE GLOBAL PANDEMIC OF THE TELENOVELA | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
See all articles by this contributor Anonymous, on Nov 24, 2008 wrote:
When I was a grade school kid in the Philippines, I had to endure telenovelas that have Thalia in the starring role and they were horribly dubbed in Tagalog from Spanish. Ugh. I moved to the States 7 years ago and never thought that telenovelas would never come to haunt me again. I was wrong. Now I have to endure that nightmare all over again whenever I’m doing my laundry. | | Anonymous, on Jul 18, 2008 wrote:
They use that crappy dubbing technique to this day in Russia. | | Anonymous, on Jul 17, 2008 wrote:
The thing about telanovelas is that the villais are always played by the brown person, and the good guys are always light skinned. Latinos are fracking racist man! I know I’m brown and have had more discrimmmination from my fellow latinos that whitey any day of the week! ha ha but I love Muchachitas, and Maria Mercedes! And Pobre Diabla! Two of them are poor girl rich boy! Love that story | | Anonymous, on Jul 11, 2008 wrote:
i really cant believe they adore mexican novelas in europe. it makes me laugh, but at the same time, i understand. they are just so bad, they are great, addictive, stupid, but smart in a way. televisa is corruption, it is all a contradiction. We middle class mexicans enjoy them, hide our love for them, kind of a guilty pleasure, because it is not considered a tasteful choice. I personally never was interested, but since i was a little girl, all my girlfriends, aunts, teachers and every female i met, talked about it, and when we did not have any cable, that was all i could watch... i did prefer doing so many things before surrending to the novelas, but they just simply hunt you down, so i let myself. i love that phase of my life, "soñadoras" y "la usurpadora" we`re the ones i would NOT ever miss... i watched many many more, until i realized i needed to get a life. So now, i still dont have cable, i rather save up the money and watch Entourage, the L word, Big love and all that american shows... and i admit it. those are novelas too.
oh shit | | Anonymous, on Jul 11, 2008 wrote:
las novelas son la mamada | | Anonymous, on Jul 2, 2008 wrote:
advertisement of soap:) | | Anonymous, on Jul 2, 2008 wrote:
the term “soap opera” comes, just because in the good old days there was advertisement inbetween the episodes of these idiotic telenovelas | | Anonymous, on Jul 2, 2008 wrote:
the term “soap opera” comes, just because in the good old days there was advertisement inbetween the episodes of these idiotic telenovelas | | Anonymous, on Jul 1, 2008 wrote:
"cuna de lobos"? !! | | |
| |
