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Here we can link some similarities shared by the old form of serialized
written dramas with the contemporary Telenovelas. Both genres share
the suspense at the end of the episode that guarantees readers will
buy the next newspapers or viewers will tune in the next day. Another
commonality is the popularity that cuts through the social strata.
Characterizing telenovelas Lopez (1995) affirms: “these are
a prime-time entertainment for all audiences".
Martín-Barbero (1998, 1992) characterizes the feuilleton
as a “cultural matrix” for the telenovela, along with
the melodrama. Telenovelas include the episodic aspect of the feuilleton
and the dramatic tension and emotional excess that were characteristic
of the melodramas displayed in the “popular theatre”
of the eighteen-century. Around this time, the high culture's "official
theatre" was restrained and cold, in contrast to the representations
of the popular theater, filled with an abundance of gestures and
feelings. The authorities only allowed people to see representations
without dialogue. People, on the other hand, wanted to see actions
and great passions. Therefore, the exaggeration of visual cues was
the answer to the people's desire.
Martín-Barbero (1995) includes the telenovela or soap opera
genre into the realm of oral culture, which allows the stories to
be permeated with the same characters and plots brought by popular
forms of story telling. He cited the Mexican “corridos”
and the Brazilian “cordel” literature as examples of
this oral tradition. The “cordel” literature acquired
its name by the cord that holds the pamphlets together. The stories
are recited or sung and are sold at popular markets mainly in the
northeast region of Brazil. At the core of these genres lies the
melodramatic story line, permeated with secrecy, the son/daughter
that ignores his/her real parent, or the struggles of good against
evil. For Martín-Barbero (1995), the wide presence of the
melodrama in the Latin American cultural history is a form of expression
of resistance:
The melodrama speaks of a primordial sociality, whose metaphor
continues to be the thick, censored plot of the tightly woven fabric
of the family relationships. In spite of its devaluation by the
economy and politics, this sociality lives on culturally, and from
its locus, the people, by "melodramatizing" everything,
take their own form of revenge on the abstraction imposed by cultural
dispossession and the commercialization of life
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