Latin America's Contested Pasts in Telenovelas and TV Series

Latin America's Contested Pasts in Telenovelas and TV Series
Author: Mónika Contreras Saiz
Publisher: de Gruyter
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2024-12-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 9783111166506

In Latin America, the production of telenovelas and TV series about the region's recent and traumatic past has grown considerably in the last 20 years, affecting societal perceptions of the past, historical consciousness, and political culture. While these TV products are usually perceived as trivial, they do provide a historical framework to a wide audience, which finds it easier to relate to the national past through fiction than through history books, journalistic articles or documentaries. History as Fuel for Entertainment analyzes the historical culture of Latin American society embodied in telenovelas and TV series from the 1960s to this day. It compiles regional case studies on the televised representation of 20th-century dictatorships in Chile, Argentina, and Brazil, as well as the war against drug trafficking and the armed conflict in Colombia. Highlighting the political and social relevance of fictional television, the contributions offer interdisciplinary insights into its discourses and narratives, from the heroization of criminals to the search for reconciliation and the construction of a historical memory.

Drugs, Thugs, and Divas

Drugs, Thugs, and Divas
Author: O. Hugo Benavides
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2009-03-16
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 0292782969

Soap opera speaks a universal language, presenting characters and plots that resonate far beyond the culture that creates them. Latin American soap operas—telenovelas—have found enthusiastic audiences throughout the Americas and Europe, as well as in Egypt, Russia, and China, while Mexican narco-dramas have become highly popular among Latinos in the United States. In this first comprehensive analysis of telenovelas and narco-dramas, Hugo Benavides assesses the dynamic role of melodrama in creating meaningful cultural images to explain why these genres have become so successful while more elite cultural productions are declining in popularity. Benavides offers close readings of the Colombian telenovelas Betty la fea (along with its Mexican and U.S. reincarnations La fea más bella and Ugly Betty), Adrián está de visita, and Pasión de gavilanes; the Brazilian historical telenovela Xica; and a variety of Mexican narco-drama films. Situating these melodramas within concrete historical developments in Latin America, he shows how telenovelas and narco-dramas serve to unite peoples of various countries and provide a voice of rebellion against often-oppressive governmental systems. Indeed, Benavides concludes that as one of the most effective and lucrative industries in Latin America, telenovelas and narco-dramas play a key role in the ongoing reconfiguration of social identities and popular culture.

From Telenovelas to Netflix: Transnational, Transverse Television in Latin America

From Telenovelas to Netflix: Transnational, Transverse Television in Latin America
Author: Joseph Straubhaar
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2021-12-07
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 9783030774691

This book is about television in Latin America. Its national and regional industries create most television programming there within genres developed over time in the region. However, part of the programming has always come from the U.S., Europe and elsewhere. With cable, satellite and now streaming TV, that inflow of foreign programming has increased substantially. While many in the audience still prefer national or regional programs for their cultural proximity, an increasing number among the upper-middle and middle classes, particularly the young, are turning to the new foreign services, like Netflix, Amazon and Disney for class distinction, cosmopolitanism or other motives. Among the television industries, global, regional and national actors are creating a variety of programs and channels (broadcast, pay-TV and streaming) to segment and appeal to different parts of the audience.

Telenovelas in Pan-Latino Context

Telenovelas in Pan-Latino Context
Author: June Carolyn Erlick
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2018
Genre: Television soap operas
ISBN: 9781138681743

Discovering telenovelas -- Change agents: beyond the melodrama -- Beyond Betty: gender and sexuality -- Gay love, gay kisses -- Black, white and brown: telenovelas and race -- Narconovelas: beyond the news

Argentinian Telenovelas

Argentinian Telenovelas
Author: Gabriela Jonas Aharoni
Publisher:
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2015
Genre: Television soap operas
ISBN: 9781845197117

This work explores the way in which telenovelas (TV serial dramas) give voice to contemporary and historical Argentinian social and political issues. Telenovelas have multiple layers of socio-cultural message - local as well as global - and are invariably laden with appealing drama and emotion, and sometimes comedy. The discussion focuses on how telenovelas reflect society's perception of, and adjustment toward, issues of globalization. They are a means of portraying how individuals and families rationalize and incorporate rapid social and economic changes. The book explores how telenovelas might offer a subversive interpretation of reality or provide a channel of dialogue with the government's political aims. The author challenges the assumption that they are merely a reflection of historical, political and social circumstance. One of the many telenovela examples addressed in this book is whether the serial Padre Coraje constructs a parallel between the current Kirchner government and that of Juan Pern, fifty years earlier. The serial explores the two leaders' relationship with the Church and implicitly presents President Kirchner as Peron's successor. Explaining telenovelas as cultural texts (they are not soap operas) provides the primary basis for this study, backed by Argentinian newspaper articles and secondary sources on Latin American history, Culture and economy, as well as TV and cinema studies. The result is a more profound and nuanced interpretation than hitherto of Argentinian telenovelas. Analysis Enables Identification of the links between the serials' storylines and contemporary political and social events. These popular culture texts brimg new meaning to the Argentininan historical narrative, and for TV viewers puts the processes and effects of economic and social globalization on a local multi-cultural level perspective.

Telenovelas

Telenovelas
Author: Ilan Stavans
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2010-02-09
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

Drama! Excess! Men in bee suits! Often erroneously compared to soap operas of the United States, outside of the necessary and sometimes fantastical dramatic story arc, however, the telenovela differs greatly from U.S. soap operas and have regional and cultural distinctions throughout Latin America. In Telenovelas, Ilan Stavans has gathered over two-dozen essays covering the telenovela for readers to better understand the phenomenon and its myriad layers. Branching off from radionovelas, the telenovela was exported from pre-Castro Cuba during the 1950s. The essays found in Telenovelas covers a broad view of the genre, television's impact in Latino culture, as well as more in-depth discussions of specific telenovelas throughout the Spanish-speaking television audience in the North America. Also explored is how telenovelas depict stereotypes, respond to gender and class roles, and examines the differences in topic and thematic choices as well as production values unique to each country.

From Telenovelas to Netflix: Transnational, Transverse Television in Latin America

From Telenovelas to Netflix: Transnational, Transverse Television in Latin America
Author: Joseph Straubhaar
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2021-12-06
Genre: Performing Arts
ISBN: 3030774708

This book is about television in Latin America. Its national and regional industries create most television programming there within genres developed over time in the region. However, part of the programming has always come from the U.S., Europe and elsewhere. With cable, satellite and now streaming TV, that inflow of foreign programming has increased substantially. While many in the audience still prefer national or regional programs for their cultural proximity, an increasing number among the upper-middle and middle classes, particularly the young, are turning to the new foreign services, like Netflix, Amazon and Disney for class distinction, cosmopolitanism or other motives. Among the television industries, global, regional and national actors are creating a variety of programs and channels (broadcast, pay-TV and streaming) to segment and appeal to different parts of the audience.

Telenovelas in Pan-Latino Context

Telenovelas in Pan-Latino Context
Author: June Carolyn Erlick
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 198
Release: 2017-10-02
Genre: History
ISBN: 1134811950

This concise book provides an accessible overview of the history of the telenovela in Latin America within a pan-Latino context, including the way the genre crosses borders between Latin America and the United States. Telenovelas, a distinct variety of soap operas originating in Latin America, take up key issues of race, class, sexual identity and violence, interweaving stories with melodramatic romance and quests for identity. June Carolyn Erlick examines the social implications of telenovela themes in the context of the evolution of television as an integral part of the modernization of Latin American countries.

Living with the Rubbish Queen

Living with the Rubbish Queen
Author: Thomas Tufte
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 290
Release: 2000
Genre: Art
ISBN: 9781860205415

An examination of the role of telenovelas -- a Latin American sister to the Western soap opera -- this book looks at their impact on the everyday lives of Latin American audiences. It seeks to explain telenovelas' cultural and commercial success; the meanings, identities, and social actions articulated through watching telenovelas; and how audiences -- often first- or second-generation migrants in the huge cities of Latin America -- use telenovelas in coping with urban life and modernity.