Browsing by Subject "Soap operas"
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Item Imagined reality : black womanhood, telenovela representation, and racial discourse in Brazil(2016-08) Ribeiro, Monique H.; Vargas, João Helion Costa; Sawyer, Mark; Straubhaar, Joseph; Franklin, Maria; Gordon, EdmundAlthough Brazil is composed of an overwhelmingly large population of African descendants, they are usually underrepresented in the mainstream media, particularly in telenovelas (soap operas). The genre has been widely popular in South American countries for the past three decades but Brazil is the largest producer of this kind of programming, Afro descendant actors are generally seen in very small numbers and often portrayed in subaltern roles. Whenever a new soap opera is aired, its author makes his or her rounds in different television shows, magazines, and newspapers in order to publicize the new production. Watching these interviews, it becomes clear that that Brazil does not have any Black scriptwriters, which further complicates the situation, leaving white men and women to construct Black womanhood according to whatever way they see fit. This dissertation builds on research conducted during fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It focuses specifically on the relevance to black Brazilian women’s roles on Brazilian soap operas and how the messages contained in such television shows may or may not impact the process of black female identity formation. This ethnographic dissertation employs participant observation as well interviews with black women to demonstrate how their self-identity and quotidian experiences challenge the interpellation produced by telenovelas.Item Literary translations : telenovelas in contemporary Chicana literature(2008-12) Graf, Amara Ann; Perez, Domino Renee, 1967-Chicana literature is often discussed in relation to broad literary or theoretical movements (post-modernism, magic realism, or feminism) but these approaches often fail to account for or even consider other culturally derived sources of critical interrogation. For example, Chicana authors, through direct references or allusions, demonstrate that Spanish-language soap operas, known as telenovelas, have a cultural currency that can bridge people across generations, nationalities, and class differences. Telenovelas also have theoretical value, for these productions often feature stories that address issues of race, class, gender, nationality, language, and violence. Reading contemporary Chicana literature through the lens of the telenovela, including its history and status as a cultural form, reveals the ways in which Chicana authors not only rely on but also revise the form. They disrupt the rigid Manichean world view present in telenovelas by challenging heteronormative romance and traditional gender roles to allow for alternate stories, where endings are not always tidy or happy. Drawing on recent ethnographic research in communication studies, I examine the history of Spanish-language television within the U.S. to substantiate the cultural currency of and show how the telenovela permeates and informs Mexican-American identity. Relying on the work of Jesús Martín-Barbero, I trace the development of the melodrama and romance genres out of which telenovelas emerge, evolving from newspaper serials, radionovelas, fotonovelas, to comic strip novels or libros semanales. I focus on the literary roots of the telenovela genre (with its origins in 19th century European serialized fiction) in relation to early Mexican-American historical romance narratives (María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Jovita González, and Eve Raleigh). Based on Gustavo Aprea and Rolando C. Martínez Mendoza's definition of the telenovela genre, I examine how contemporary Chicana fiction (Denise Chávez, Ana Castillo, Sandra Cisneros, and Nina Marie Martínez) both conforms to and deviates from the generic conventions. I provide a culturally based critical strategy for offering alternate readings of Chicana literature to show how these authors use the popularity of the telenovela form to reach a specific audience and lend new insight into how viewers, familiar with the genre conventions, are comparable to literary critics.Item The soap opera and development : a history, critique and suggestion for an alternate practice(1990) Anjirbag, Feruzi; Not availableItem War stories TV tells : genre, gender and post-9/11 television(2018-05) Shannon, Katherine Maeve; Schatz, Thomas, 1948-; Fuller-Seeley, KathrynSince 2003, the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars have been present on television in ways that are distinct from previous conflicts, yet media studies have only begun to examine how these contemporary war narratives are becoming more commonplace on entertainment television. This study is an examination of television series that have depicted US conflicts abroad since the 2003 invasion of Iraq in order to survey the popularization of wartime narratives as they are seen across a wide range of programming. Jeanine Basinger and other scholars like Susan Jeffords have posited that war narratives and their reproductions are inherently gendered texts that tend to privilege men in combat while excluding women on the homefront. This exclusion functions to emphasize, celebrate, and restore traditional notions of masculinity tied up in the homosocial nature of war. This study then asks how entertainment television addresses war as a domestic medium that takes part in gendered formulas. Looking at and beyond dramatizations of ground combat so often invoked in limited series like Off to War (2005) and Generation Kill (2008), this study also highlights the proliferation of war themes in more “feminine” genres like the soap opera. What do female audiences and melodrama posit that more traditional combat genres cannot? And why do we insist that one informs more than the other? Looking closely at three series -- Taking Fire, a reality TV combat series on Discovery Channel; Army Wives, a Lifetime primetime soap; and Homeland, a “quality” spy drama with a female lead -- this study examines how genre and gender are negotiated on the small screen as they relate to contemporary US conflicts. Shannon argues that television’s assimilation of contemporary war is informed not by the nature of the conflicts themselves, but rather by gendered divisions embedded in TV programming and the generic formulas set forth by traditional combat films.