April 19, 2023: Soap Opera Studying: Telenovelas

[April 22nd will markthe 100th anniversary of the birth of the king of primetime soapoperas, . So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Spelling and other soap operacontexts, leading up to a crowd-sourced cliffhanger of a weekend post! So shareyour soapy responses and thoughts, you evil twins you!]

On twoways a classic short story helps us understand a soap opera sub-genre.

The MexicanAmerican author and educator SandraCisneros is most frequently and consistently associated with her wonderful debutbook, the short story cycle TheHouse on Mango Street (1984); that certainly includes this blog, whereI’ve written about House anumber of times. But while Houseis indeed one of the greatest debut books in American literary history(published when it’s author was only 30, no less), Cisneros has gone on towrite plenty of other compelling and important works over the nearly threedecades since. Among the best is the short story “Woman Hollering Creek” (1991),which tells the story of Cleófilas DeLeón Hernández, a Mexican American womanwho finds herself in an arranged marriage in Texas with an angry and abusive husband.Exacerbating that already fraught and painful situation is how distant it isfrom Cleófilas’ dreams of her ideal marriage and future, dreams that Cisneros consistentlyconnects to the character’s childhood in Mexico watching the national (and morebroadly Latin American) genre of soap opera known as telenovelas.

Telenovelasare a cultural genre linked more to other nations than to the U.S. (althoughcertainly part of AmericanTV and communities alike for many decades now, one of so many layers to thebroader ideaof creolization for which I’ve argued inthis space many times), and I’m not going to pretend to be able toAmericanStudy them in depth here. But I would argue that Cisneros’ story helpsus engage with a couple layers not only to that particular genre, but to soapoperas overall as well. The more obvious level to their role in “WomanHollering Creek,” and an important topic to analyze to be sure, is the way thatthe genre creates fantasy versions of men, romance, and marriage for youngwomen like Cleófilas. As Cisneros puts it in the story’s opening pages, in thefirst reference to telenovelas and the kinds of perspectives they have helpedcreate in our protagonist: “passion in its purest crystalline essence. The kindthe … telenovelas describe when one finds, finally, the great love of one’slife, and does whatever one can must do, at whatever the cost.” The problem isn’tsimply that Cleófilas’ husband Juan Pedro is far from a fantasy man; it’s alsoand especially that no person, and no love, is worth “whatever the cost,” notif the cost is abuse and violence like that Cleófilas faces.

Thoselimits and downsides to fantastic representations of romance and relationshipsare of course a relatively ubiquitousfeature of soap operas (and many other cultural genres as well, to besure). But I would say that Cisneros’ story also features a more subtle butequally significant second layer to what telenovelas can represent for acharacter like Cleófilas: a feminist, or at least female-centered, alternativeto the patriarchal violence she endures on both sides of the border. As thestory unfolds through both flashbacks and ongoing events in the present, we seethat Cleófilas has been under attack by many more men than just Juan Pedro,from her Mexican father’s patriarchal expectations to the harassment she enduresfrom men (Latino and non-Latino) in Texas. Her one source of escape andenjoyment is her occasional opportunity to watch telenovelas, “the few episodesglimpsed at the neighbor lady Soledad’s house.” “Soledad” translates tosolitude or loneliness, but of course those shared moments oftelenovela-watching are quite the opposite, one of the experiences ofsolidarity in Cleófilas’ present life. And those moments foreshadow the femalesolidarity that ultimately offers her a way out in the story’s hopefulconclusion, one that, perhaps, embodies not the fantasies of telenovelas buttheir shared, communal realities for an audience for whom they are far morethan just cultural escapism.  

Nextsoap-post tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Whatdo you think? Other soap opera contexts or stories you’d share?