the telenovela

...Or should it be La telenovela? Hmm... my Spanish is pretty rusty nowadays. Luckily I have this summer to brush up until I have to take a Spanish class this fall. ["rusty"? "brush up"? Since when did I start talking with such pedantic idioms?]

Anyway, this morning I heard a lot of Spanish-speaking outside my room (long, wet story) and it got me thinking about... Mexico, I guess. And subsequently, telenovelas. In high school we would have to watch half an hour of Spanish-speaking TV each week, and I got hooked on this strange telenovela called "La Fea Mas Bella". It wasn't until later that I realized that obscure Univision show was actually a version of the insanely popular Columbian show "Yo soy Betty, la fea"; two predecesors of "Ugly Betty".

Interestingly, in that funny self-aware-meta way, "Ugly Betty" loves making fun of telenovelas, but I can't help but think about what makes them actually so popular. There are A LOT of them. More close to home: there are a lot of soap operas in the states as well. [Isn't it interesting how only foreigners call the US "the states"?]

What is the appeal? Are some people so dull minded that they'll sit through a soap opera five days a week? I'll admit, I was pretty addicted to one in middle school. I would get upset if the VCR missed taping just one day of the show. I'd act like I actually missed something important in the storyline. But see, I was in
middle school. My brain was not fully developed!

Oh, I sound like I'm making fun. Which, I am, but actually, the more I thought about it, the more I saw the virtues of such mindless entertainment. Or rather, came to accept the element of its draw. Because as failing shows like the realistic (and spectacular) "Friday Night Lights" prove, television truely is a lowest-common-denomintor form of entertainment, and if people really wanted some brain-food, they'd read a book.

The reason people love their soaps is because it is so disconnected from reality. We eagerly engage in entertainment that will take our minds off of the boring repitition of our lives. Soap operas generally operate in a world parallel to ours- one show equals one day for us- and watching someone going through such concentrated amounts of drama every single day becomes addicting because it acutely contrasts to our own. I'm not saying you have to have an utterly dull life to like soap operas, but the point of soaps are a hightend portrayal of life.

Imagine living in a world where every emotion you felt was overwhelmingly raw and sincerely felt. Where every high is the zenith of life, and every low is rock bottom. Every action has a consequence. Every moment is life and death. It sounds ridiculous... and it is. For while we watch these fictional lives play out every day, becoming obsessed against our better judgment, the other part of the draw is being about to watch with a critical (sometimes mocking, sometimes relating) eye from the comfort of our sofa. The sofa we bought with the money we earned from working our nine to five office job.

Because we grow to know these characters so intimately, five days a week, it is the ultimate example of living vicariously. Perhaps it helps satiate an innate human longing for drama when gossip just isn't enough. Perhaps it's nothing more than just a guilty pleasure, or background noise for when you're puttering around the house. I know that when I was addicted, I didn't really think about any of that, though. I just wanted to know if Miguel was finally going to pick Charity or Kay.