This
project is a study of Spanish Language Soap Operas or “Telenovelas” and the effect
on society and particularly in women. We
will see how women are portrayed and the stereotyping occurring in this type of
drama produced for television. We will
also study their influence on behavior
and general conduct.
We will also consider views on body image and how
sexuality is sold through these mediums.
The study is based in programs either produced in the United States as
well as in Latin American countries and which are viewed via Satellite or Cable
Television and packaged for consumption in the USA and over 100 countries in the world.
Besides stereotyping, we will also study how Patriarchy is ingrained in the viewer, defined gender roles and its effect on women. It is intended for the education of women but will serve as a tool to inform society in general.
This project contains still images in the form of a PowerPoint.
Essay - For Hardcopy:
Telenovelas-Spanish
Language Soap Operas Effect on
Women
and Society
For centuries women
have been accosted, denigrated, ostracized, objectified, ridiculed,
stereotyped, taken advantage of, dehumanized, sexualized, used as a punching
bag for male rage, rejected, broken, forsaken, denied their rights, used and
abused. We have also been the victim of
Sexist Advertisements; anything under the sun needing to be sold is usually
done through a woman catering to the eternal “Male Gaze.” Ads, films, television series, magazines,
daily journals, newspapers, cosmetic firms, the fashion industry, even the car
industry, have all influenced how women are perceived today. Our inherent human rights violated, we have
been forced to perform specifically defined gender roles to satisfy
society. In Latin America the
Telenovelas craze, is a perpetrator which has been charged with permanently
conditioning the minds and behavior of unsuspecting women. It perpetuates Patriarchal values and
subliminally yet aggressively changes how women perceive their gender.
Telenovelas
are broadcasted, during Prime Time, from Monday through Fridays and they total
100-200 episodes. After the conclusion
they are re-transmitted again during morning and late night hours. They have reached as far as Eastern Europe where many of the Mexican Telenovelas actors are as popular as their own celebrities. Chances are that as you are reading this page there are several Telenovelas from Mexico, Brazil, Colombia or Venezuela being broadcasted in several languages all over the world.
These series are part of a cultural phenomenon in Latin America. The usual plot centers on the Cinderella Complex; a beautiful, almost angelical, woman from the country side, lacking education, very poor, who falls in love with a wealthy, successful gentleman, member of a powerful elite family. The antagonist is the mother in law, an ex-girlfriend or a family member. Typical theme is love, betrayal, loss. There are narratives focusing on the narcotic industry which glorify the drug cartel leaders; as in Pablo Escobar el Patron del Mal (Pablo Escobar an Evil Boss) a prominent Colombian drug lord and Reyna del Sur, a powerful female cartel leader.
Another example is “Sin Tetas no Hay Paraiso” (Without Big Breasts There is No Paradise); where women also mingle with drug cartel members and alter their bodies through surgery in order to please the men running these organizations. Others are written to emulate Beauty and the Beast or the Ugly Duckling finding identity through beauty as in Betty la Fea, (Ugly Betty) which was first produced in Columbia, then Mexico and then adapted for the United States as a television series by Salmak Hayek. Ugly Betty has also aired in Hindi on the popular soap opera Jassi Jaissi Koi Nahin. There are also children Telenovelas like Mundo de Juguete, (World of Toys), Luz Clarita, Carrusel (Carousel), and Carita de Angel (Angel Face). These children series are strangely and surprisingly popular with adults.
These series are part of a cultural phenomenon in Latin America. The usual plot centers on the Cinderella Complex; a beautiful, almost angelical, woman from the country side, lacking education, very poor, who falls in love with a wealthy, successful gentleman, member of a powerful elite family. The antagonist is the mother in law, an ex-girlfriend or a family member. Typical theme is love, betrayal, loss. There are narratives focusing on the narcotic industry which glorify the drug cartel leaders; as in Pablo Escobar el Patron del Mal (Pablo Escobar an Evil Boss) a prominent Colombian drug lord and Reyna del Sur, a powerful female cartel leader.
Another example is “Sin Tetas no Hay Paraiso” (Without Big Breasts There is No Paradise); where women also mingle with drug cartel members and alter their bodies through surgery in order to please the men running these organizations. Others are written to emulate Beauty and the Beast or the Ugly Duckling finding identity through beauty as in Betty la Fea, (Ugly Betty) which was first produced in Columbia, then Mexico and then adapted for the United States as a television series by Salmak Hayek. Ugly Betty has also aired in Hindi on the popular soap opera Jassi Jaissi Koi Nahin. There are also children Telenovelas like Mundo de Juguete, (World of Toys), Luz Clarita, Carrusel (Carousel), and Carita de Angel (Angel Face). These children series are strangely and surprisingly popular with adults.
Although
the children series seem innocent and harmless they also contain the hidden
messages we hear in Telenovelas produced for adults. Telenovelas reinforce conduct through hidden
messages in the storyline. In these
series viewers are being told “you are not valuable unless you have a partner,
love is forever, you can do anything for love; lie, cheat, steal, Jealousy is
part of love, women must be well groomed at all times; even when they wake up
in the morning and your value lies in your beauty. It also conveys pretentious realities which
are, if not impossible in real life, almost unattainable. Things like a woman having not even an
elementary school education marrying a college graduate with a doctorate degree.
This builds a false expectation in
women and some actually wait for a prince charming to come along on a white
horse and make everything o.k.; this is a reinforcement of the patriarchal system.
By being constantly
exposed to these shows women become vulnerable to the patterns of conduct being
conveyed. Viewers copy the dress code, manners,
behavior, speech patterns, and even the way they relate to the opposite sex. Typically they become dissatisfied with their
bodies and seek to produce changes through surgery, anorexia and/or bulimia in
order to achieve the ideal body type represented in the Telenovela they are
watching. In Making Movie Magic, Bell
Hooks states “Strong texts work along the borders of our minds and alter what
already exists. They could not do this
if they merely reflected what already exists.”
This is a clear and powerful indication that when women are exposed to
images they are being directly influenced and learn discontentment with their
body among other things. It is also a
declaration of how images become a role model for women.
In The New York Times article “Flattery Will Get and Ad Nowhere”, Pamela Paul states “Apparently it doesn’t take much to make a girl feel plain. Just looking at an object intended to enhance beauty makes women feel worse about themselves, according to a study from the April 2011 issue of The Journal of Consumer Research. The study looked at how women responded to an image of something depicted in an advertisement and a simple photograph with no advertising context. According to the authors – led by Debra Trampe, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands – advertised products, unlike unadvertised products affect both whether and how the viewer thinks of herself afterward. In other words, an image of the high-heeled shoe in a stylish advertisement is likely to trigger a sense of inadequacy”. This was so well communicated by T. Adams, in the Observer, October 26, 2003 in the following statement “Each one of us has a complex lifelong relationship-with our body. We exult in it, feel betrayed by it and given the chance, would change some aspect of it.”
In The New York Times article “Flattery Will Get and Ad Nowhere”, Pamela Paul states “Apparently it doesn’t take much to make a girl feel plain. Just looking at an object intended to enhance beauty makes women feel worse about themselves, according to a study from the April 2011 issue of The Journal of Consumer Research. The study looked at how women responded to an image of something depicted in an advertisement and a simple photograph with no advertising context. According to the authors – led by Debra Trampe, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands – advertised products, unlike unadvertised products affect both whether and how the viewer thinks of herself afterward. In other words, an image of the high-heeled shoe in a stylish advertisement is likely to trigger a sense of inadequacy”. This was so well communicated by T. Adams, in the Observer, October 26, 2003 in the following statement “Each one of us has a complex lifelong relationship-with our body. We exult in it, feel betrayed by it and given the chance, would change some aspect of it.”
Telenovelas also impact
language use of its viewers. Latin
America use the Spanish language in different ways since words used in one
country have a different meaning in others.
My friend Maria, born in the Dominican
Republic, an assiduous Telenovela viewer, particularly those of Television
Espanola Internacional, a Channel from Spain seen in New York, has been
linguistically influenced and is now using words such as “grifo” (water faucet
in Spain) instead of the typical word she learned in her country of origin
which is “llave” and “ordenador” for “computadora.”
To
demonstrate the influence of Telenovelas across Latin America and Latinos in
the United States the BID s El Banco Ineteramericano de Desarollo (Interamerican
Development Bank-BID) held a study centering on Global Vision in Brazil
on Telenovela viewers and concluded as follows.
BID Study on the
Influence of Telenovelas on Women and Society:
“This
paper has explored the effect of television expansion on the pattern of marital
dissolutions in Brazil over the period 1970-1991. Building on the empirical
strategy used by La Ferrara, Chong and Duryea (2008) to study the impact on
fertility patterns, we focus here on divorce and separation rates. Our analysis
draws on the experience of a country where television viewing, and in
particular soap opera viewing, is extremely widespread and cuts across social
classes. We find that exposure to modern lifestyles as portrayed on TV, to emancipated
women’s roles and to a critique of traditional values was associated with
increases in the share of separated and divorced women across Brazil’s municipal
areas. Our findings have potentially important policy implications for
developing countries and confirm previous research by Jensen and Oster (2008), La
Ferrara, Chong and Duryea (2008) and Paluck (2008), which suggest that media
programs have the potential of targeting specific groups at low cost and may be
employed as a public policy tool. This
paper focuses on fertility choices in Brazil, a country where soap operas (novelas)
portray families that are much smaller than in reality, to study the effects of television on individual behavior. Using
Census data for the period 1970-1991, the paper finds that women living in areas covered by the Globo signal have
significantly lower fertility. The effect is strongest for women of lower
socioeconomic status and for women in the central and late phases of their fertility
cycle. Finally, the paper provides evidence
that novelas, rather than television in general, affected individual choices.*Soap Operas and Fertility:
Evidence from Brazil By Eliana La Ferrara*,Alberto Chong**,Suzanne Duryea**,
*Bocconi University and IGIER**Inter-American Development Bank. Inter-American Development Bank, Banco Interamericano
de Desarrollo (BID) Research Department, Departamento de Investigación, Working
Paper #633 Fertility study.”
On
their Fertility study the following was concluded “This paper focuses on
fertility choices in Brazil, a country where soap operas (novelas) portray
families that are much smaller than in reality, to study the effects of
television on individual behavior. Using Census data for the period
1970-1991,
the paper finds that women living in areas covered by the Globo signal have
significantly lower fertility. The effect is strongest for women of lower
socioeconomic status and for women in the central and late phases of their fertility
cycle. Finally, the paper provides evidence that novelas, rather than television
in general, affected individual choices.*Soap Operas and Fertility: Evidence
from Brazil By Eliana La Ferrara*,Alberto Chong**,Suzanne Duryea**, *Bocconi
University and IGIER**Inter-American Development Bank. Inter-American Development Bank, Banco
Interamericano de Desarrollo (BID)
Research
Department,Departamento de Investigación,Working Paper #633 Fertility
study
Bibliography
– Works Cited
http://www.iadb.org/es/investigacion-y-datos/lista-de-publicaciones,3183.html?pub_type_id=LAB
http://www.iadb.org/...pub_desc.cfm?language=Spanish&PUB_ID=RIT-146
Alejandra
Matus http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/culture/telenovelas.htm
http://www.iadb.org/es/investigacion-y-datos/lista-de-publicaciones,3183.html?pub_type_id=LAB
Soap Operas and Fertility: Evidence from Brazil By Eliana
La Ferrara*,Alberto Chong**,Suzanne Duryea**, *Bocconi University and
IGIER**Inter-American Development Bank
Inter-American Development Bank
Banco Interamericano de
Desarrollo (BID)
Research Department
Departamento de Investigación
Working Paper #633
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