Telenovelas from the Perspective of the Uninitiated

             My goal with this blog is to document my personal journey as I dive into the vast and ever-growing world of telenovelas. If I am to be fully honest with the reader, the idea of a formulaic, melodramatic romance is not immediately appealing to me. The reason why I have a predisposed distaste for the telenovela is not so much based on direct experience with viewing or reading the genre, but more so due to judgements I have made based on what I have seen from second hand sources. Witnessing friends and families become enamored with stories that tailor towards the archetypal telenovela pattern, and listening to them describe what they are watching usually leaves me rolling my eyes or shaking my head. To me, these kinds of stories appear too cleanly cut to be taken seriously. Of course there are moments when the story gets intense or the romantic relationship suffers some turmoil and maybe even the main character makes a mistake, but there is zero doubt that the main character will remediate their errors, fully overcome their antagonists, and happily ride off into the sunset in an ideal union with their desired partner. 

    While I may not have watched a telenovela, I have been exposed to story arcs that roughly accord with the structure of one, and every time I have found it boring. My appreciation for fiction comes from its ability to insert fundamentally real circumstances into the lives of unreal characters living in an imaginary world. It is completely fine if a story has a lot of fictitious elements and even elements that are cliché; in fact, that is what people wish to see in fiction. If people wanted nothing but real life stories they would just watch the news all day instead of watching movies or shows. We consume these entertainment mediums to escape, but I do not believe we can ever fully escape; or that we wish to fully escape. What is meant by this is that we still need to carry with us our sense of what its like being an actual person. Our experiences of living in a difficult and complicated world should inform how we perceive fiction, and in turn, fiction should inform us on how we perceive the world. I judge stories by their ability to establish this back and forth relationship with the viewer and from my uneducated and unexperienced standpoint on telenovelas, I believe that they would fail to connect with me in this manner. 

    To further clarify my initial criticism, it appears to me that  telenovelas excessively remove the aspects of life that are complicated, making them easy to consume but difficult to find much interest in. The perfect protagonists matched up against the obviously evil villains, the satisfying resolutions to problems, justice prevailing in the end; all of these seemingly essential features of telenovelas entirely contradict anything most viewers are familiar with in their lives. The best stories I have seen do not have a clear distinction between hero and villain. The viewer typically knows who they are expected to root for but this is still constantly being put into question. Main characters can commit immoral or even heinous acts while the presumed villain may display moments of vulnerability that inspire compassion within the viewer. Great stories also do not necessarily have endings where the protagonist concludes their arc in paradise and the villain rightly finds themselves condemned to punishment. Instead, heroes are left at the end victorious in some aspects but defeated in others and the villain can find themselves on top even when the viewer would prefer otherwise. These aforementioned story characteristics are what I find to be incredibly interesting in a story, but they are interesting not because they provide a fantasyland that agrees with my idyllic dreamworld. On the contrary, these story elements spark intrigue because they represent fundamental features of life for everyone. Everyday life is replete with examples of moral ambiguity, injustice, and unfulfilling endings to conflict. What happens when we see these complexities reflected through our stories is that we develop a profound connection between ourselves and the fictitious events. The story transforms from a made up fiction to something visceral and present. For me at least, this transformation is what makes fiction compelling.

    The main issue with everything I have just said is that for one I have never watched a telenovela so I am attacking a heavily stereotyped strawman, and also not everyone enjoys fiction through the same lens that I do and I wrote this blog as if that was not the case. I chose this first year odyssey partly for scheduling reasons, but also because I hope to be proven wrong. By watching a telenovela, I will invite the possibility that either my prior opinion on telenovelas will be revised or my framework for appreciating fiction will change (or even both). Maybe I can learn how to absorb myself in a world of fantasy and enjoy the unrealistic scenarios and simplistic but pleasant characterizations. Or it is very much possible that the telenovela I watch will be very complex; disproving my notion that telenovelas are unable to form a material connection with the real life of a viewer. Being able to appreciate more things in life is generally a good thing; so I will go into my viewing experience with a positive outlook. As I continue to write these blogs, hopefully a change in opinion can be noted by the reader.