TELENOVELAS, THE PRESS, MESSAGE BOARDS AND SPECULATION-ONCE MORE

In January 2008, I wrote about how the Venezuelan entertainment press was speculating about the protagonists of Leonardo Padrón's new telenovela. At the time, the author had not written a single line of such telenovela.

In the last few days we've seen how the story of speculation around Padrón's supposedly new telenovela repeats itself. This time, the original source of the rumor is an anonymous post in an Internet message board. The post was subsequently embellished, copied in other message boards, and repeated by the press (I apologize to English readers because these texts are in Spanish):

Nov. 5: In the message board NUEVO FORO DE TELENOVELAS DE VENEZUELA, an anonymous writer posts with the title--DUELO DE ROSAS NUEVA TELENOVELA DE LEONARDO PADRON :

LEONARDO PADRÓN YA TITULO A SU NUEVA AVENTURA ESCRITA DUELO DE ROSAS TELENOVELA QUE NO ESCATIMARA GASTOS PARA CONVERTIRLA EN PRODUCCIÓN INTERNACIONAL ANA KARINA Y EL REGRESO DE YANET RODRÍGUEZ Y UN POSIBLE GALÁN PADRÓN PIDIO A WILLIAM LEVY PORQUE EL PRESONAJE MASCULINO ES UN GUERRRO DE LA CIUDAD Y NO LE TEMÉ AL PELIGRO ES UN ALPINISTA.

In the same message board, anonymous posts exaggerate the original one and announce that Ana Karina Manco will be the protagonist:

Nov. 6: DUELO DE ROSAS HARA UN DOBLE PERSONAJE AL NO ACEPTAR JANETH RODRIGUEZ

Nov. 8: CONFIRMADO LA SUPERPRODUCCION DE PADRON SE LLAMARA "DUELO DE ROSAS" CON ANA KARINA MAN

Nov. 9: LA SUPERPRODUCCION DE PADRON DUELO DE ROSAS LA UNICA CONFIRMADA ES ANA KARINA MANKO

The Venezuelan press echoes the "news:"

El Sepulturero (Ultimas Noticias, Nov. 9): "proyecto Padrón, que, presuntamente, ya tiene nombre, el tema femenino como siempre de protagonista y el runrún de que su eterna musa, Ana KarinaManco, estará allí. Ella será Rosa en duelo con otra Rosa que haría de su hija. ¿Galán? Lo buscan como palito `e romero".

Chepa Candela (Diario 2001, Nov. 15): "les bato que parece ser definitivo que ANA KARINA MANCO será la “heroína” de la nueva historia que está armando Leonardo Padrón para VV, la cual verá la luz durante el segundo trimestre del 2010."

Nayib Canán (Diario Panorama, Nov. 25):

"Teclea Padrón, teclea... Así le dicen al escritor en Venevisión. Arriba, en “La Colina” le exigen al poeta que adelante su nueva telenovela, que hasta los momentos se llama Duelo de Rosas.

Como de costumbre, en el canal se maneja todo con el mayor de los misterios. No quieren que se cuele información, pero al final las paredes terminan oyendo, y mejor aún, difundiendo información “confidencial”.

Padrón se inspira nuevamente en la mujer para recrear su historia. Al parecer desempolva su gran obra “El país de las mujeres” para tomar algunos aspectos. Sobrarán personajes que enganchan por su fuerza, muy al estilo de “La Vikinga”, “Patria Mía” y “Chocolate”, hecho que no ocurrió en su última producción “La vida entera”, donde faltaron roles convincentes y originales.

¿Quien será la estrella de este proyecto? Ya suena fuertemente el nombre de Ana Karina Manco, la gran musa de Padrón en los 90.

Ella estaba renuente a regresar a los estudios de televisión, pero ante la propuesta no podría negarse. Los “chivos” de Venevisión están dispuestos a pagar lo que sea con tal de tener nuevamente en sus filas a la actriz.

Manco sería una de las “Rosas”, madre de Anastasia Mazzone, quien también llevará un papel de peso, así como Janette Rodríguez si decide aceptar el jugoso “contratico”.

La novela podría conventirse en una pasarela de ex misses, ya que el reparto estaría integrado por bellezas “cincuentonas” como Elluz Peraza, Judith Castillo y Tatiana Capote.

Otro que tendría un personaje impactante es el primer actor Gustavo Rodríguez, quien dejó muy buen sabor de boca con el “NapoleónDuque” de “La vida entera”.

Por los vientos que soplan, esta vez si habrá dinero para la producción. No se medirán con nada. Hasta piensan en traerse a Lupita Ferrer."

Finally, on November 27, Venevisión publishes a press release denying the "news:"

Venevisión no tiene contemplado la producción, a corto plazo, de una telenovela bajo la rúbrica de Leonardo Padrón, y mucho menos ha realizado casting alguno para integrar este dramático que supuestamente estaría protagonizado por la actriz Ana Karina Manco.

El único proyecto dramático que El Canal de la Colina se encuentra desarrollando en este momento, y que está en fase de pre- producción, es “Harina de Otro Costal”, que reúne en los roles protagónicos a la actriz Daniela Bascopé y Christian Mac Gaffney, en una historia original de la exitosa escritora Mónica Montañez.

Asimismo, Venevisión arrancará las grabaciones de “Harina de Otro Costal” en el mes de enero de 2010.

I've said it before, and I must say it again:

The entertainment press can and must be better. To repeat (without confirmation) something that is posted anonymously or using a pseudonym in an Internet message board, is not good journalism. It only reinforces the generalized opinion that the entertainment press is second tier. Journalism is a key and sacred profession for every society, regardless the beat it covers.

TELENOVELAS AND SOCIAL MEDIA

We live times in which the line between content producers and consumers is blurred. YouTube, message boards and blogs are samples of this. They're also examples of social media, in which communities are created around a certain definition of friendship and/or a common interest. 

Telenovelas are present in these communities. For instance, in Facebook, there are more than 500 groups related to telenovelas. Most of them boast membership numbers in the hundreds:

(NOTE: TO ENLARGE PICTURES, PLEASE CLICK ON THEM)

In particular, the telenovela I'm currently studying, LA VIDA ENTERA, has a Facebook group  with a discussion board in which participants post topics, in addition to the traditional "wall" comments, pictures and press reports:

Outside Facebook there are other communities dedicated to telenovelas. One of my favorites is: Comunidad todotnv, which is an offspin of wonderful webpage Todotnv:

And even though we will never leave completely behind the days in which telenovelas were discussed at our study and work places, these virtual communities definitely extend the conversation as they minimize geographic distance and blur the line between public and private.

Do you participate in any of these communities?

What has been your experience in them? 

DISTANCE: AN IMPORTANT WORD IN TELENOVELAS

There are some words that continuously pop up in my research about telenovelas. One is PARADOX, and I've written about it before and should probably write a whole lot more about. The other is DISTANCE.

After all these years studying telenovelas, I'm still amazed about the enormous distance that I find between the audience's perceptions of what happens behind the cameras, and what actually happens there. This distance, of course, is influenced by another distance that exists too often: the one between press reports and what is happening. 

There is also an important distance between the audience's perception of the relative importance of a particular telenovela character and what the actor believes about her/his character. I've talked with many actors who adored particular characters and considered them key in their careers, only to read later in Internet message boards how some audience members believe that those characters were unimportant and that the actor's talent was "wasted."

Another distance I must mention is the one between what the public knows/believes about the telenovela writing process and what really happens in a writer's mind and soul as she/he develops characters and plots. 

There is always a distance between the script and the mise-en-scene we see on our TV screens. 

Personally, the word distance defines my research since I have to "go" to it and come back periodically. I get closer and farther away from my case studies. It is in these coming and goings, in this stretching and reducing the geographic distance that I can get really close in an intellectual and academic sense. Soon I must travel and get closer to my new case study. Its first episode is about to be broadcast in Venezuela after I've been following and examining the creative process of its head writer. Meanwhile, the Internet and technology allow us to take a peek into this new telenovela I'm studying--La Vida Entera:

MODERATOR FROM FORO TVVI VISITS MY CLASS

In the past I've brought to my classroom (via phone or Skype) several people that work in the telenovela industry (Julie Restifo, Daniela Bascopé, Carlos Cruz, Edgar Ramírez, Marisa Román, Valentina Párraga and Leonardo Padrón).

This semester, on the last class of my honors seminar, I decided to invite someone from the consumption side of telenovelas. Therefore, Dragoons, who moderates the message board  Foro TVVI, came to our class via Skype.  

It was a fascinating conversation that allowed us to learn about the satisfactions, difficulties and dedication involved in the moderation of a message board that elicits a lot of  passion because it deals with television, in general, and telenovelas, in particular. 

Following is a brief video with an excerpt from our conversation:

We thank  Dragoons for his time and insights.

To end this post, here's a picture from our small end-of-the-seminar celebration. I cooked one of Venezuela's most typical desserts: a quesillo. Food is an important part of culture, and in this seminar we study how telenovelas are more than melodramatic love stories, they're a key place to examine the links between media, culture and society.

DOÑA BARBARA AND "THE PICTURE IN MY HEAD"

 Doña Bárbara premiered last night in  Telemundo. I write these lines after watching only the first episode. My purpose isn't to analyze the telenovela. Instead, I want to reflect on the distance between what Walter Lippmann called “the pictures in our heads” and what's outside our heads. 

Like many Venezuelans, I grew up reading Rómulo Gallegos. His novels are an essential ingredient of any school curriculum. This is why there's a picture in my head of  “my” Doña Bárbara. She's not María Félix or Marina Baura.


She's “my” "devoradora de hombres", the one I built in my mind throughout the many readings of Doña Bárbara I've done in different stages of my life. 

There's always distance between "the pictures in our head," when these come from reading a book, and the image we see on a movie or tv screen. There's always negotiation between these images, until we either accept or reject the on-screen one. 

Last night I had trouble reconciling “my” Doña Bárbara and Doña Bárbara/Edith González. I should mention that she only appeared in the last 10 minutes, but I acknowledge thatI had difficulty accepting her. This isn't a reflection on González's talent or the way the character is written. It's a product of the strength of that picture I have in my head which doesn't match González physique and Mexican accent. It's also the consequence of the unavoidable conflation between my Venezuelan identity an my reading of this audiovisual text that is written and produced using the so-called "international" telenovela codes, where we're never told the particular country where action takes place, even though the Arauca River is an important element.  I'm sure that I'm not an isolated case. Probably, many Venezuelans will experience the same difficulties, while viewers from other nations won't have this problem. 

Interestingly enough, I walked seamlessly the distance between  “my” Santos Luzardo and Santos Luzardo/Christian Meier. Maybe because the emblematic character is her, not him. The relationship between "the pictures in our head" and the outside world is complex. It's also a fascinating facet of media consumption: the relationship between identity and media reception.   

I will continue watching Doña Bárbara while I observe myself as I negotiate the distance between "the pictures in my head" and the ones I see on the television screen.  

ENTERTAINMENT PRESS, MESSAGE BOARDS AND SPECULATION

I've written before about how the entertainment press and Internet message boards feed from each other. Many times they repeat information that hasn't been confirmed. I've also written about the entertainment press' problematic tendency to speculate without confirming the news via the source. 

There's a particularly illustrative case in today's Venezuelan press. In the message board, TVVI

, there's a participant who frequently posts "confirmed cast" lists for this or that telenovela. I don't doubt this participant's dedication. She has sources inside  RCTV. However, her cast lists are mostly based on her reading of the entertainment press. Hence, these cast rolls frequently have mistakes and omissions that are the product of the press' speculations, which often doesn't distinguish a confirmed fact from a baseless supposition.  

This doesn't bother me a lot since it comes from a message board participant, and in these virtual communities participants handle a certain level of speculation. The problem is when the transmission of information follows the inverse route: from message board to the press. Today, the prestigious Venezuelan daily  El Universal, repeats verbatim the message board participant's post. The story carries some important mistakes: the telenovela's title and three of the actors listed, who aren't in the cast.  This is unacceptable. In order to be respected and respectable, the entertainment press has to do and be better.

Surely, there will be readers who will ask me: What's wrong with this?
Personally, I believe that journalism is a key profession/activity for the social formation, since it defines the version of reality that frames our day to day. In the entertainment world in general, and the telenovela world in particular, the levels of speculation and disinformation are extremely high. This deforms the public's perceptions in important and unfair ways. It also explains the immense differences I've observed through the years between what people think happens behind the cameras and what actually happens. 

TELENOVELAS: THE AUDIENCE AND THE WRITERS

The semester began and with it my lack of time to write. This term I'm teaching Graphics Communication and a doctoral seminar on Qualitative Research Methods. At the same time, I continue the analysis phase of telenovela Ciudad Bendita. Both the analysis and writing stages of any research study are lonely and particularly introspective times for a researcher.

In this brief post I want to highlight three fascinating interviews that appeared in the message board TVVI (TV Venezolana e Internacional). In these interviews, the questions were asked by board participants. I've written before about the quality range regarding discussion and information that we can find in Internet message boards.

These interviews are jewels worth reading since exchanges between the audience and telenovela writers are rare. And even though the quality and tone of the questions have a wide range, we can find facets of these writers that we probably didn't know:


Pilar Romero (Mi Prima Ciela, Elizabeth, Maite, Toda Mujer, Drama de Amor en el Bloque 6, Días de Infamia)
Alberto Barrera (Aunque Mal Paguen, Géminis, Nada Personal, Demasiado Corazón, La Calle de las Novias)
Leonardo Padrón (Amores de Fin de Siglo, Contra Viento y Marea, El País de las Mujeres, Amantes de Luna Llena, Cosita Rica, Ciudad Bendita)