I don't watch tv alone. I have the attention span of an ant, so if there's nobody watching with me I start doing other things. When the tv show in question is in a language I'm still struggling to comprehend, I can't just multi-task like that. As a result, my Spanish comprehension sucks. And maybe more importantly, I'm missing out on a whole genre of tv I think I would love– telenovelas.
Melodramatic television is my favorite form of television; I don't see much point in watching a drama that I could play out in my real life. I miss the days when tv shows came out serially instead of all at once, when cliffhangers were actually a thing. (Shoutout to Disney XD). I'm tired of binging shows which, while fun, leaves no room for anticipation. To top it all off, I'm trying to learn Spanish, so much so that I decided to double major in it, which may or may not end up working out, we'll see. Obviously, telenovelas are for me, it's just a matter of making myself sit down and watch one.
When I was looking for an FYOS, I highlighted all the ones that sounded fun and all the ones that were related to my major. It felt like fate when my eyes fell on "More Than Melodramas: Telenovelas". If I could turn watching telenovelas into homework then I'd have to watch them! I picked that one immediately.
I suppose I expected some analysis, but I thought there'd be more telenovela watching in class. That could have been disappointing, but I think it's actually more interesting to see snippets of a wide variety of genres. It keeps me, a newcomer to the genre, from typecasting it. There's so much more diversity of genre, theme, tone, and literally everything in telenovelas than I knew about from casually flipping through Cable, and I'm excited to learn more about that.
What this brings me to is why I'm interested in learning Spanish in the first place. Yes, obviously it's useful and makes me "employable", whatever. Learning to code would do that and you don't see me trying that anytime soon. I started learning Spanish because of my Dad. Spanish was mandatory in my school system starting in elementary school, but I didn't really care about it. One day, though, my Dad bought me a copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in Spanish because I was sad about being placed in lower level Spanish and told me that if I wanted to move up I could, I just had to try. I never looked back. That's how I learned to set goals and keep to them, and see how one goal can expand your world. I know that's a very different view of Spanish from many of my classmates, which is another reason why I'm glad this class has so much analysis. It stopped me in my tracks before I could begin to think of telenovelas as a means to an end. I came into this class because I wanted to get better at Spanish, but I'm sticking with it because I want to learn more about a form of cultural expression that I know next to nothing about.
Speaking of which, the fact that telenovelas can be social/political critiques is completely new to me. I thought of telenovelas as rosa, without knowing the actual term. The only telenovela I ever watched before this semester was La Rosa de Guadelupe, and that infrequently and before I knew any Spanish. So to me, unaware of anything about the show's culture or language, it seemed like the stereotype of all telenovelas everywhere. Learning about telenovelas de ruptura, I see a whole new side to the genre and I wonder how far it goes. In Brazil they critique racism with series like Xica da Silva and homophobia with Babalonia, which I did not expect. In the U.S. media hailed as "ground-breaking" for forcing the audience to embrace new ideas are often high-brow films and "serious" series, like Us or The Crown. The way that these serialized, popular telenovelas can touch people, though, is far more impactful. By reaching wider audiences and using plots that resonate, telenovelas affect culture way more than serious, artsy media can. Seeing how telenovelas use their appeal to teach lessons with the de ruptura style or alternately comfort their audiences with de rosa made me realize something profound about U.S. television and world media in general: the real cultural changers are those "light", serialized shows. They're what people watch, after all, and the ideas they discuss through their snappy plots both keep people's attention and impart messages. More often than not, this class showed me, those messages are intentional.
This led me to reflect on what audiences will and won't watch. I asked in class today how telenovela audiences receive queer representation, and Dr. A said that it comes bit by bit, expanding people's comfort zones. It made me think of how Star Trek portrayed the first interracial kiss on U.S. television in the middle of the Civil Rights Movement. At the time, it was a bold choice barely pushed past executives. Now, of course, the Star Trek franchise is alive and well, proving that, even though it made the audience uncomfortable, for the sake of watching their favorite show, conservative viewers were willing to put up with it and liberal ones welcomed it. Dr. A reminded me of this when she mentioned her friend who wrote gay characters into a telenovela and how the producers initially refused, fearing an adverse audience reaction. In the end, the show succeeded, and the parallels between that, Star Trek, and many other shows are hard to miss. It makes me wonder to what extent society shapes telenovelas and to what extent telenovelas shape society.
My last thought is about the extent of the social critique present in telenovelas. As I learned in class, telenovelas started in Cuba but migrated elsewhere after the Cuban Revolution understandably put a dent in the entertainment industry. We talked in depth about telenovelas critiquing racism, sexism, and homophobia/gender roles, but are there any that critique political systems? Going back to telenovela's origins as writers fled the communist revolution in Cuba, I wonder if that political exile influenced the political leanings of early telenovelas. Additionally, does that initial disturbance still have reverberations for telenovelas today? Are there any telenovelas that critique communism or, perhaps more interestingly, that critique capitalism? In class we discussed how the Cinderella Trope is so common in telenovelas because of the extreme wealth gap in Latin America, but in that trope the solution is for the pretty protagonist to get rich by marrying the Prince Charming. We touched on how Patria Mía rejected the Cinderella Trope, which makes me want to know how far the writers went with that.
That question is what I want to explore with the telenovela I watch for my report, whatever that ends up being (I'm still on the fence). I don't want to go all the way de ruptura because I don't like feeling sad, but I do want to see if there's a mostly rosa telenovela that probes a social norm such as race, class, or gender.
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