The Blue Monkey Review

During the past four months, I have sampled a wide variety of these televised narratives. Although they look interesting, the Brazilian telenovelas are impenetrable for me. Many of the Spanish language programs have such strange situations that it’s hard to gain a working context for the action in the course of one or two episodes. In one program I had trouble understanding much of the dialogue because of the background noise of rain in the scene, and then the scene switched to two well-cleavaged blondes in halter-tops, outside in the pouring rain and exercising their right to bear assault rifles. I could not understand enough to know what they disagreed about, who they planned to kill, or even why they kept abusing some poor dope who was their flunky.

Over the last month, however, Ruth and I have fallen into a regular telenovela habit in the evenings. We watch the nightly episode of Romantica Obsesión and then quickly change to Pink to catch the last 15 minutes of Apuesta por un Amor. I won’t try to explain the story lines or character development in these narratives. The one is too intricate, the other too subtle, to attempt in a simple blog. Plus, I’m not sure of some of the details. But some things have become clear as we’ve watched, and I want to share some of these lessons.

One benefit, of course, is the one we wanted when we decided to set aside the 8 to 9 P.M. hour. We’ve maintained contact with the Spanish language and have improved our ability to follow spoken Spanish. We’ve also picked up some vocabulary that, while it might have been known to us before, now we can use confidence. Of course, the many phrases expressing adoration don’t seem particularly valuable as far as I am concerned. But there are also many phrases that occur surprisingly frequently that might be considered emergency Spanish: ¡Suélteme! ¡Lárguete! ¡Vete! There also exists lots of phrases that express disapproval of someone, usually someone bad. ¡Maldito! is one we’ve heard a lot lately. And ¡me das asco! You never can tell when you will have to tell someone off. But the larger social lessons of the telenovelas are even more important.

The struggle between good and bad: The Mexico in these telenovelas has escaped from class conflict. Most of the characters are middle or upper-middle or even just upper class. But even people lower in the economic hierarchy seemingly have little resentment or anger toward wealthier people. They might want to acquire wealth by seducing, marrying, or entrapping the envied elite people. But the main conflict is not between those who defend class privilege and those who want to overturn it, but between good (though often badly misguided) people and bad (though often very clever and single-minded) people. And, while there is no one-to-one link between material and moral success, it is clear that those who do good usually do well.

Evil blondes: Blonde women are not necessarily dumb. But they have a very high likelihood of being bad. Both our telenovelas have evil blondes, always women. Of course, there are good blondes, too, even some who are women. And I’ve briefly watched telenovelas in which blondes seemed to be the principal female characters (ergo, good). But if a blonde appears on the screen, you need to give her the benefit of doubting her virtue. Romantica Obsesión, for instance, has a bad blonde and her daughter, who has light brown hair, both angling for the attention, affection, and money of two of the good guys in the show. And one of the above is competing with another blonde for one of the same guys. None of these women seem to have any scruples whatsoever.

Evil mothers: It makes some sense that a typically European appearance would signal compromised virtue to an audience made up mainly of mestizo people. But Latin America, and Mexico in particular, has a cult of motherhood with roots reaching far into pre-Columbian times and nurtured by Catholicism since early colonial times. How, then, do we explain the presence of mothers who cause many of the worst things that take place in the telenovelas? Romantica Obsesión has two wicked mothers, one the blonde woman mentioned above and the other a beautiful morena whose son and husband are the two main good guys in the show. Apuesta had to get by with just one bad mother, but she was the source of almost all the horrible events in the show until she was shot down by a Mexican police sharpshooter. Now, even though she has departed, much of her bad work is being carried on by her daughter, who, by the way, is blonde.

Bad make-up and bad people: If being a blonde or being a mother raises questions about a person’s moral character, pink, mauve, or purple eye shadow pretty much clinches it. This is TV, right? So everyone wears make-up. But if it is noticeable, it signals trouble. Even lower-class women, even women with, uh, questionable pasts, have more restrained lipstick colors than upper class women who mean trouble. And, I have to admit, this is something I’ve always more or less suspected.

Macho is for losers: I’ve said so much about women so far that you might wonder if there are any male characters in these serials. There are and they include the usual range of rich and poor, good and bad, smart and dim. Although poor good guys can be a bit on the dull side, it doesn’t make much sense to have a rich and good guy scripted as stupid. These alpha males, though, are subject to the testosterone-driven emotional storms that result in attitudes and decisions that are inevitably disastrous. Alejandro, for instance, in Romantica Obsesión is madly in love with Mariana but frequently ends up believing some suspicion planted in his mind that she harbors feelings for Oscar, one of the worst people who ever lived. It doesn’t help that Oscar, Alejandro’s mother, Mariana’s stepmother, and Tamara (an evil blonde) all conspire to dupe both Alejandro and Mariana. It also doesn’t help that about half the male characters in Romantica Obsesión are in love with Mariana. [My question is: What is wrong with the other half of those guys?] But, once duped, Alejandro goes into jealous fits and does some really stupid stuff.

Presumably the telenovelas have an overwhelmingly female audience in Latin America, an audience that might have a deep aversion to the more egregious forms of machista behavior. From our small sample of telenovela episodes, it seems that although these stories don’t challenge male privilege, they portray what we might think of as the Latin male version of “mastery” as admirable but misguided at best, and as completely vicious at its worst. In fact, the most typically macho character we’ve seen is Alvaro, in Apuesta por un Amor. He comes from a rich family, but on top of being unscrupulous and kind of dim, he also treats his wife (one of the rare good blondes) with disdain. He cheats on her and is abusive. Right now he’s hooked up with the serial’s bad blonde, and together they plan to...well, I don’t want to give away too much.

Alvaro’s father, Don Julio, provides the most compelling image of male mastery. In the episodes we have seen, Don Julio has spent a lot of time getting angry and making peremptory demands on his family. Driven by pride, he has made one disastrous decision after another. The current example of bad parenting: His daughter, Soledad, has made a mistake in sleeping with a man she doesn’t love. She is repentant, her fiancé, Leandro, has gone into a macho, and Don Julio has kicked her off the hacienda. But all this mastery and anger comes at a price. Even though we have only watched the program for a few weeks, in 15 minute segments, we’ve seen Don Julio suffer two cardiac episodes. Alvaro and Don Julio together add up to a pretty clear message that the traditional Latin male attitudes are corrupt, sick, and vicious.

Leandro may represent a hopeful trend for Latin males. He’s a regular guy, hardworking, with a generous spirit. He’s also physically courageous if not a little out of control at times—he’s already had a fist fight with his rival for Soledad. But he’s also suffering from impotence, has seen a doctor about it, and is currently in therapy. Now, we suspect that his rival, Samuel, who seduced Soledad, has caused Leandro’s e.d. through witchcraft (the bruja in this story is another mother whom I’d hesitate to describe as good). But the willingness of Leandro to acknowledge his problema and seek therapy probably signals a good trend for the Latin male and for the makers of Viagra (TM).

The telenovelas contain many positive messages, even to my overly intellectualized view of things. Romantic passion is a good thing, but as a passion it can also drive the morally ambivalent toward bad behavior. The Catholic religion also comes off well in the telenovelas, though again the portrait has its ambiguities—the most religious woman in our two serials is also one of the evil mothers. Romantica Obsesión contains an extended discussion of the morality of divorce, something that probably seems anachronistic even to viewers in Latin America. But, if anything could be done to ease the burden of problems faced by these characters, it would be clear, deliberate communication. In Romantica Obsesión every other episode has one of the good guys or girls telling another one of the good people, “You have to talk to her (or him) about this.” Perhaps this reflects some influence of U.S. culture in Latin America. I can’t say. But it is clear that the good people in these stories stumble into the land of harmful beliefs and actions only when confused by the machinations of the bad people. And the longer they refrain from speaking plainly to the ones they love, the longer they stay there.