By Edith McClintock I like my entertainment soapy—romance, drama, intrigue!—as does much of the world. I figure this is a good thing. It’s easier to connect with people, easier to find amusement, easier to translate between cultures. Certainly easier to survive three months living with a Georgian family, especially when 90 percent of the time we had no common language beyond charades. And I did survive, thanks largely to telenovelas: campy, silly and melodramatic. Where the women wear more make-up than a South Beach drag queen on Halloween. Where a man’s jaw is always clenched, his fists ready for a fight. Where furrowed brows and tears speak louder than words, and I FEEL the pain.
Unlike their
American soap opera cousins that run for years, telenovelas average around six months and play nightly on primetime, which makes them highly profitable and exportable to new and growing audiences the world over.
In Georgia,
we watched telenovelas every evening on a small television above the kitchen table.
True, I could barely communicate with the women gathered around the table. Nor
could I understand most of the words on the television, although I’d catch
snippets of random Spanish in the background thanks to atrocious dubbing.
But I could
stare at the smoldering Alejandro, a man I understood without words. A man who
didn’t like the restriction of shirts, or chest hair, but if he absolutely must cover his magnificent, rippling
torso for a dinner party with his no-doubt-evil mama, only white linen or pink/turquoise
silk would touch his perfectly bronzed skin. And, por supuesto, buttoning said shirt was never an option.
I
understood Alejandro completely. No matter how many times he swept his
pregnant, teary wife, Maria José, into his arms for a passionate kiss, I knew
the truth. She did too, which explained her many tears. But until poor Alejandro
moved out of his mother’s house (and
killed his jealous stepfather, who needed to tone down his atrocious highlights)
he would never find happiness.
I left
Georgia before Sortilegio (Love
Spell) ended, but I felt sure it had a happy ending (they always do) and Alejandro would live happily-ever-after with
his true love, José.
Turns out
the real plot, which I just looked up on Wikipedia, was way more convoluted
than anything I dreamt-up, but still, the series ended with Alejandro happily
married to his wife, Maria José. Disappointing.
As for Alejandro,
the star of Sortilegio? In the real
world his name is William Levy, a Cuban American from Miami, my hometown, and
like his character, he too finds shirts restrictive. It
is hot.
I obviously
should have been watching telenovelas while I lived in Miami, where many are
now filmed, although most are produced in Mexico, Venezuela, Brazil, and
Colombia. My Spanish would certainly be better, and I could have bonded with my many Miami friends who watch telenovelas strictly
“with their mothers.” Never on their own.
And I would
have known about this massive international star from my hometown, a man who
was ubiquitous when I returned to the U.S.—on Dancing with the Stars, dating J.Lo, being sued for sexual
relations with a woman. Shocking.
And despite
what Miami friends claim, it’s not just abuelas
tuning in to telenovelas each night. They’ve long since taken over the world—in
the U.S. twice as many people now watch telenovelas as soap operas, with more
than half of them between the ages of 18 and 49.
And while
most telenovelas have a romantic struggle as the main plot point, in more
recent years they’ve introduced topical issues such as corruption, racism, and
domestic violence, or social messaging such as portraying gay characters and
relationships in a positive light.
So yes, I
had to move to Georgia to catch-up on telenovelas (and William Levy), and it’s also true I haven’t watched any since (although I do seem to know a lot about
William Levy), but I still like my entertainment soapy.
And no
matter how much my brother may want to dispute this, my current favorite, Game of Thrones, is nothing more than an
expensively produced telenovela with a fantasy twist. That said, I’d like Game of Thrones even more if the women
took off their shirts a bit less, the men a LOT more. And they should consider
adding William Levy to the cast.
Watch the
opening to Sortilegio below (you must) and prepare to be
amazed/alarmed when Maria José gets knocked around in the opening frame and immediately
transitions to making-out/dancing with Alejandro. The music! The drama! Who
needs words? Although perhaps there is
still some work to be done around social messaging.
