The fascination with Latin American telenovelas is worldwide. Huge audiences that transcend nation, class, culture, age and gender differences sit daily in front of their television sets to watch these melodramatic serials. I'm a Latin American woman. Therefore, telenovelas have never been far away from my life. I'm also a scholar and telenovelas have been my chosen object of study since 1999.
We met Ruddy Rodríguez in the Miss Venezuela beauty pageant in 1985 where she received the first crown of "Miss World Venezuela". She made it into the final four of the Miss World pageant that year. Soon she was offered a small role in the James Bond film The Living Daylights.
Among the Venezuelan telenovelas in which she has been the protagonist we find Niña Bonita and Amantes de Luna Llena. In Venezuela, she's also remembered as Amores de Fin deSiglo's intriguing Lejana San Miguel.
During the 1990s, Ruddy was in several telenovelas outside Venezuela. In Spain, she was in the series Brigada central II with Imanol Arias and Margarita Rosa De Francisco.
She has also worked in several Colombian telenovelas. Among them, La mujer doble, Flor de oro, La ex and Cómplices. In 2009, she starred in the Venezuelan film Venezzia with Mexican actor Alfonso Herrera.
Here's the video of her conversation with writer Leonardo Padrón in Los Imposibles:
I organize my Telenovelas class using the same theoretical tool I deploy in my research: the Circuit of Culture. Hence, the course is divided in the following sections: Representation and identity, consumption, production and regulation.
After several weeks studying representation and identity, the students wrote papers analyzing the telenovelas they were watching.
In the second part of the class, we focused on reception and consumption. In this section, students make short class presentations (10 minutes) about some aspect of the reception of their chosen telenovela. And, like the last time I taught the course, I'm going to share here visual summaries of their presentations.
Here's the first installment.
Presenter: Harper Bridgers
Topic: The reception of Sin Tetas No Hay Paraíso
Sources: IMDB, blogs and telenovela message boards
Presenter: Caroline Smith
Topic: The reception of Dame Chocolate
Sources: IMDB, social media and telenovela message boards
Presenter: Danielle Sender
Topic: The reception of Rubí
Sources: IMDB, blogs, social media and telenovela message boards
Tercera entrega relacionada con las presentaciones de mis alumnos sobre la recepción/consumo de telenovelas.
