HAPY NEW YEAR!!

Today, the last of this year, I'm thankful for all the blessings received in 2007: health, love, family, friends, students, experiences, learning and achievements.

Best wishes in 2008 to all who accompany me in this blog and its version in Spanish.

And for telenovelas, I wish:

-More coherence and less circus
-More archetypes and less stereotypes
-More depth and less superficiality
-More acting talent and less beauty devoid of talent
-More genuine television criticism and less gossip and speculation from the entertainment press and its followers
-More commitment to a better television and less consideration of the telenovela as an easy business deal
-More respect and less underestimation of the audience
-More originality and less repetition/"adaptation"

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2008!!

AMONG TELENOVELA WRITERS: DELIA FIALLO AND LEONARDO PADRON

Telenovela writers are key for the genre’s existence and survival. For those of us who study telenovelas, it’s essential to learn about these women and men. We read their interviews and their writings as they ponder about the colossal job that writing a telenovela is.

An excellent reference is the recent book by Valentina Álvarez, Lágrimas a Pedido (Editorial Alfa), where we find the voices of some of the best known authors as they detail the process of writing a telenovela.

For me, it’s particularly interesting to find the rare moments in which we can witness an exchange between telenovela writers. One of these occasions is when Venezuelan writer Leonardo Padrón interviewed Cuban author Delia Fiallo (Lucecita, Esmeralda, Cristal, Kassandra, Leonela, Rafaela….to name only a few of her telenovelas) in the first season of his radio show Los Imposibles (Caracas, Onda) on November, 2005.

Like all his interviews in Los Imposibles, Leonardo Padrón begins the conversation by reading a “postcard” that he has written especially for the person to be interviewed. Following is the postcard that Padrón wrote for Delia Fiallo:
(If you understand Spanish and prefer to listen to it, click here)

Fifteen years ago, a massive combination of destiny and randomness placed me in Miami so I could meet the mother of the Latin American telenovela. Her name? Is it necessary? We’re talking about Delia Fiallo. I was about to write my first telenovela and it would be an adaptation of one of her stories. César Miguel Rondón and the legendary Juan Lamata decided that I should meet in persona the queen of telenovelas. I thought it was a ritual moment in my life, a sort of initiation, that was taking me to the major sanctuary of the Latin American telenovela. And there she was, in her house in Miami, petite, beautiful and categorical, willing to share with this unknown man the secrets of the most denigrated and powerful job in the history of television. Allow me to remind you that telenovelas are Venezuela’s most important non-traditional export, and the main responsible for this miracle is Delia Fiallo. When we talk about the illustrious origins of the telenovela we all mention Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas and even Balzac. But, no one has written more scenes of impossible love in the 20th Century than Delia Fiallo. For better or worse, depending on who you talk to, she established the aesthetic codes of the most popular massive television genre. Today, fifteen years later, I’m again in Miami sitting in front of a woman who’s impossible to erase from the mind of the Latin American imaginary. Welcome, Delia Fiallo.

The interview details Delia Fiallo’s journey writing telenovelas, her discomfort with the way Mexcian television has “remade” her stories (“they make me sick”), and her considerations about the many telenovelas she wrote: He major succcesses (Esmeralda, Cristal and Kassandra), her best written telenovela (Leonela), her biggest failure (María del Mar), and the one that had to wait for “The End” of its competition to bring out its best plots (Emilia, which waited for the end of Estefanía).

The conversation between these two authors, who happen to have opposite writing styles, was cordial, interesting and very informative. It would be impossible to detail it here. However, there’s a question-answer that is particularly fascinating to me:

Is Delia Fiallo willing to say that the telenovela has reached the point in which it can be called a literary genre?

Yes, of course. There are very good and very bad telenovelas. In the same way as there is good and bad theatre, and good and bad literature. What you can’t do is judge the telenovela with a theatrical play, because you can’t compare different genres. She must be judged within her own genre.

This interview can be read in its entirety in the book Los Imposibles: Conversaciones al Borde de un Micrófono (Padrón, 2006). It’s a jewel because it helps us understand both writers, breaks with speculations about them, and fosters our comprehension regarding the difficult job of writing telenovelas.

TELENOVELA MESSAGE BOARDS

Contrary to what those who denigrate telenovelas as simplistic shows believe, this television genre is fascinating because of its many facets which beg analysis. There isn't a boring angle to the study of telenovelas. It's a highly competitive genre that generates passionate debates and discussions among its followers.

There are many Internet message and discussion boards focusing on telenovelas. Below, some of them:

Foro de Puerto Rico
Foro Telenovelas en España
Foro Univisión
Foro Televisión Venezolana e Internacional (TVVI)
Foro Recordar es Vivir: Las Telenovelas del Ayer

These communities have their own rules of coexistance and communication. Their participants sometimes are under the misperception that they are representative of the population at large. However, we must always remember that each message board is only representative of its active participants.

These message boards offer a wide range of content. From valuable information to the repetition of gossip and press speculation of the worst kind. We can also find in them specialized voices coexisting with small campaigns designed to manipulate these virtual communities. Participants range from those who see telenovelas as an art form, to those who consider it exclusively as a source of entertainment gossip. Here we will find polite and impolite people.

In these communities there are enlightening in-depth discussions. At the same time, we often observe how contradiction and speculation reign. Some times arguments generate more heat than light. For me, however, the observation and understanding of these boards is essential because these inflection points help me deepen my knowledge about telenovelas. Furthermore, it's in contradictions where the paradoxes inherent to this genre live, and where the questions that need to be answered are hidden. And, it's in these message boards when I can find and read people from around the world who are passionate about telenovelas.

There's a delicate and important aspect of these boards that I need to touch on. When one observes them we need to be aware that behind the participants' pseudonyms and nicknames there could be anyone. For personal and/or professional reasons, some participants feel the need to hide their true identity. They usually lurk and participate very little. It's rare that they would do any harm. There are others, however, who take advantage of the anonymity that their "nick" provides them, to carry a particular agenda: either promote/defend or denigrate/attack a particular telenovela product, network, artist, etc. These latter kind of pseudonyms merit close attention. If you follow them through time, their agenda is eventually evidenced. And these agendas are great pointers to the strong competitive undercurrents present in the telenovela world. (Sometimes in time even their true identity becomes obvious).

These people who hide behind a "nick" to promote their agendas are part and parcel of these virtual scenarios where we can also find the true lovers of the telenovela genre. For those of us who study telenovelas (and those who participate in these boards), it's essential that we learn to distinguish between agendas and genuine opinions, and between those who use a pseudonym to manipulate and those who honestly and generously exchange opinions and knowledge about telenovelas.

MI PRIMA CIELA: WHEN EVERYTHING WORKS WELL

Last night in Venezuela RCTV (now international) broadcast the final episode of Mi Prima Ciela, written by Pilar Romero as a remake of two of her previous telenovelas, Elizabeth and Maite.

In Mi Prima Ciela the elements of a good telenovela worked successfully together:

-A good script. The author adapted and mixed well her two previous scripts. The only weakness I felt was in the way she administered the dramatic knots of her story.

-Protagonists with terrific chemistry and "angel:" Mónica Spears and Manuel Sosa.

-Talented actors in almost all key roles.

-A nice mise-en-scene.

- A story that has worked well ever since Erich Segal wrote in 1970 his Love Story, which made a whole generation cry as they read and watched the film version with Ali McGraw and Ryan O'Neal:



Later, other books and other movies have told similar stories. For example: A Walk to Remember (Mandy Moore and Shane West), Sweet November (Charlize Theron and Keanu Reaves), Autumn in New York (Winona Ryder and Richard Gere), Here on Earth (Leelee Sobieski and Chris Klein), among others. In all of them, as in Mi Prima Ciela, the protagonist dies, but love conquers all and leaves lessons for the living.

There are stories that are perfect for telenovelas because they are so emotional. Death as the antagonist is one of them.