Growing up Mexican, I distinctly remember my mom cooking and having a telenovela played in the background. I remember late nights with my mom and dad in the sala (living room) watching El Senor de Los Cielos and faintly hearing them gasp. When I entered UGA and heard about the FYOS freshmen are required to take I immediately hoped for an FYOS that talks about Latin culture. I was worried I wouldn't find one, but as I searched for one I stumbled across this telenovela seminar. I was immediately intrigued and was even more intrigued once I found out my professor was Venezuelan. I was excited to meet more people of similar ethnic backgrounds as me and talk about and watch telenovelas in class, but I quickly learned that my class was mostly caucasian, and watching telenovelas was merely what we did. At first, I was a bit disappointed, but I was taken by surprise when I learned that Americans are also fond of telenovelas and that telenovelas are not only part of Latinx culture, but are also part of Turkish culture. I'm extremely excited to get closer to the professor and build a stronger closer community with my class peers.
Although I haven't watched telenovelas as much recently I want to touch on this one telenovela that I watched back in high school, La Reina de Flow. La Reina de Flow is based in Columbia and it's about a middle-aged woman, Yeimy, who as a young teenager wrote music in Columbia. Yeimy, as a teenager, had this crush on this guy from her school, Charlie. Charlie had aspirations to become a musician, so with his friend, Juancho, they started a duo. Keep in mind that Charlie's uncle is a drug lord in the neighborhood where Yeimy, Charlie, and Juancho are from. One day Yeimy's songbook was taken up by her high school bully who at the time was Charlie's girlfriend. Charlie got a look at Yeimy's songbook and was impressed by how musically talented Yeimy is. Charlie's manipulative self got close to Yiemy and even pretended to have feelings for her to get closer to stealing her work. Charlie suggested that he, Juancho, and Yeimy should start a band. When they started to get big and recognized they had the opportunity to travel to the United States. For Charlie to steal her work, with the help of his druglord uncle, Charlie put pounds of cocaine in Yeimy's suitcase, and eventually, Yeimy was stopped and arrested at the airport on their way to board the plane. Remember how Charlie's uncle is a drug lord? Well, I don't know if you know this, but typically druglords own properties and in this case, Charlie's Uncle owned the neighborhood where Yeimy and her family stayed. As Yeimy's family's rent was past due, Charlie's uncle paid a visit to Yeimy's parents and suggested if the rent wasn't paid in the next week then bad things will happen to them. A week passed by and Charlie's uncle had one of his loyal workers murder her parents. SHOCKING!!! I KNOW RIGHT!! The whole time Yeimy didn't know that Charlie was related to the guy who was responsible for killing her parents. The same bloodline not only killed her parents but also imprisoned her for possession of drugs. Years later Yeimy got the opportunity to work for the FBI to capture Charlie's uncle and change her identity, and seek revenge on Charlie for stealing her music which lead him to become a famous pop star in Columbia.
This telenovela which by the way is currently on Netflix has been by far the best telenovela I had ever watched that wasn't a telenovela that my parents watched at night. From the moment I watched the first episode I was immediately hooked on it. There are so many love triangles that at points it gets difficult to keep up. I mean the plots and twists are crazy! I would love to talk more about the plot, but I would be spoiling it all! I believe why another reason why I was hooked on was that La Reina de Flow was a different type of Telenovela than what I grew up watching in my Mexican household. This Telenovela showed me the Columbian culture. I watched how Columbians interacted with one another, I saw what the neighborhoods look like in Columbia, and I picked up the slang that Columbians use. I even developed a slight Columbian accent when I spoke Spanish. I felt like I emerged into the culture when I watched the telenovela. One thing that I recollect from the telenovela that aligns with what I learned in our class was that in this telenovela they reused the same character. In La Reina de Flow, the actor who played the young version of Charlie in the backstory of the telenovela was reused again in the present time and played as Yeimy's long-lost son. Another thing that La Reina de Flow aligns with what we discussed in class is that each episode ends with a cliffhanger that leaves the viewer yearning to watch the next episode. This factor was the reason why I constantly had binged periods on this telenovela.
As much as I would want to talk more about La Reina de Flow, I also want to touch on the negative sides of Telenovelas in this blog post. As a young girl watching telenovelas, I did not realize the subconscious effect it had on me. Now that I am older, I see why when I was younger I wished I had lighter skin and pin-straight hair. This was because of the colorism that is portrayed in the Latinx community, especially in telenovelas. We will see the pretty girl and the man every woman wanted were played by a paler-skinned Hispanic, but the maid or the antagonist were always portrayed by a darker-brown Hispanic. Being darker was always portrayed as degrading, and it had a negative connotation. No one wants to be the maid cleaning up others' mess or being the bad guy. Colorism is a big issue that is within the Latinx community. As a kid, I remember my mom will always tell me to not wear bright colors as those colors enhanced my browness. It was like she wanted me to hide the fact that I'm brown. I do not blame my mom for this mindset as she was taught this growing up. I believe that the Latinx community has the chance of erasing colorism in our culture by starting off with the producers in telenovelas and implementing people of color as the protagonist and even implementing paler-skinned Hispanics as the maid or the antagonist. Another negative side effect that telenovelas created is the stereotypical stereotypes that are now being implemented in the Latinx community. For example, a stereotype Latinas face is that we have a vulumptious, curvy, small waist, big butt body, but the case is that this is not always true. This stereotype has been raised because the women who played in the telenovelas only have this body type. Another stereotype that has been raised due to telenovelas is the "Spicy Latina" stereotype. The "Spicy Latina" stereotype is that each Latina catches a quick attitude, we have little patience, we have a feisty personality, and we are VERY dramatic. I can confirm that this stereotype has been applied to me by peers and even teachers. It has come to a point where some Latinas have accepted these stereotypes, but we have so much more to offer. We are uniquely different, but at the same time culturally connected.
Although telenovelas are interesting to watch and can send you into a spiral to binge-watch, we can't ignore the harm that they have caused to the Latinx community. As a community, I believe we have the power to change starting off with telenovelas as they are essential to the Latinx culture. I do appreciate how telenovelas are something that connects the people of my culture and even other cultures together. I am excited to learn more about telenovelas throughout this semester and encourage others to take this FYOS in the future to further their knowledge about this cultural phenomenon.
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