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DOI: 10.1177/1527476405279860
2005 6: 337 Television New Media
Christina Slade and Annabel Beckenham
Introduction: Telenovelas and Soap Operas: Negotiating Reality

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10.1177/1527476405279860 Television & New Media / November 2005 Slade, Beckenham / Introduction
Introducti on
Tel enovel as and Soap Operas: Negoti ati ng Real i ty
Chri sti na Sl ade
Annabel Beckenham
Uni versi ty of Canberra
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a
good fortune must be in need of a wife.
Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice ([1813] 1979)
Here, ina nutshell, is the plot of the traditional soapopera andtelenovela.
If a girl of good looks but lesser fortune enters the story, and if the romance
must surmount opposition from family and friends, then the young girl
and the single gentleman will almost certainly end up married. Elizabeth
and Darcy are not so different fromthe Cenicentas (Cinderallas) of the great
days of the Mexican Televisa telenovelas. When Jane Austen was writing,
the novel was popular culture, bemoaned by clerics as a distraction from
the serious reading of sermons andclassical texts. Younggirls were scrupu-
lously protected from their evil influence. Austen herself ridicules the
gothic novel in Northanger Abbey, and she distilled the form, her ironic and
amused tone transforming the simplicities of the basic plot. And of course,
George III adoredher works. The approbationof royaltyhelps. LadyDiana,
we shouldremember, was saidto have beendevotedto the Australian soap
Neighbours.
Telenovelas and soap operas are a much derided genre, the late-
twentieth-century opiate of the masses. Yet the impact and success of the
genre is incontestable. During the past twenty years, academic and indus-
try approaches to these television texts have movedfromratings models to
the investigationof the ways the genre creates social reality. The literature is
profuse and varied; the phenomena global in their reach. The conference
from which the articles in this issue are derived took a particular angle on
337
TELEVISION & NEW MEDIA
Vol. 6 No. 4, November 2005 337341
DOI: 10.1177/1527476405279860
2005 Sage Publications
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the phenomena. It looked at the ways that the soap operas and telenovelas
created in Latin America and Australia and NewZealand, well outside the
immense production machines of the United States and Europe, have had
extraordinary international success and impact and at the ways in which
the genre has developed in these areas.
First, a brief terminological note. There is a fruitless debate that distin-
guishes daytime soaps andeveningserials as if the genres were a difference
of kind, not of degree. More recently, the debate has been complicated by
the development of reality television, a variant of the soap opera that
incorporates stylistic characteristics of reportage and the game show. The
genre is in constant flux, as we shall see in this issue, and is best defined
functionally, in terms of the roles it plays in television culture and its rela-
tiontothe material conditions under whichit is produced. Soapoperas and
telenovelas originally sandwiched soap-powder ads. Indeed, many U.S.
soaps were, and still are, produced by the soap-powder firms. The format
was driven by advertising needs. The aim was to keep the attention of the
audience through the ads and between episodes and bring them back for
another ad-filled episode. Originally, the ads were for household goods,
and the stories employed domestic settings. Long-running family dramas
proved most successful.
What has thus emerged as the characteristics of soap opera and
telenovelas are a range of generic features: domestic settings, low produc-
tion costs, and romantic themes are frequent though not universal. In pro-
duction, there is an emphasis on the close-up shot of the faceof the emo-
tional suspense of watching a facebut again, this is not universal. What is
common is the narrative structure of the genre and the need to maintain
continuing audience attention. Interwoven plots and subplots in all the
variants gofromday today ina mimicryof real life that couldgenerally not
be more unrealistic. Scholars in this issue describe the multiple subgenres
and modifications of soap operas and telenovelas during the past decade
and the problematic links between the generic style and reality.
Soapoperas andtelenovelas, unrealistic as they are, have hada complex
relationshipwiththe societies theydepict. Their influence has been, inturn,
decried, particularly interms of the impact that soaps have hadonthe news
(e.g., Fuentes 1999; Habermas [1962] 1989; Hallin 1994), and praised (e.g.,
Livingstone 1992; Lumby1999; Morley1986; Slade 2002). Inthe first section
of this issue, titled The Power of Telenovelas, two theorists from Latin
America, Mauro Porto in Brazil and Reginald Clifford in Mexico, give fine-
grained analyses of the impact of telenovelas. Portos focus group discus-
sions of Terra Nostra, the highly successful Brazilian soap dealing with the
history of Italian immigration, shows that such historical stories provide a
framing or orientation for commentaries on modern political events. Clif-
ford, whoworks inthe industry inMexico, argues for a measurement of the
338 Tel evi si on & New Medi a / November 2005
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impact of the telenovela that goes well beyond ratings on one hand and
more theoretical approaches to audience reactions on the other.
1
Throughout the conference, it became clear that by focusing on the dif-
ferences and similarities of the Latin American and Australian product, we
could better see how the genre has developed. In the United States, the
United Kingdom, and Australia, soap operas are generally made by pro-
duction companies that work months in advance of shooting andshowing.
The industry structures are very different in Latin America. Brazilian and
Mexican producers of telenovelas are mainly profitable monopolies.
2
They
typically produce a telenovela ona particular theme daily for a nine-month
period. Actors and actresses do not even learn their linesthey wear ear-
phones and are prompted as they are filming, a factor that has accustomed
viewers to the long, significant glance between utterances. Generally there
is a two-hour summary of the weeks episodes on the weekendfor success-
ful telenovelas. The themes then must wind up before the summer. In Aus-
tralia and New Zealand, there is no such closure. These antipodean soaps
may run for years, even decades, on sets of continuing narrative threads.
Individual story lines may come to an end, but there are always others
unresolved to keep the audience coming back for serial denouements.
Telenovelas sell all over the world. Televisa claims its sales of telenovelas
were Mexicos largest export, with markets in 125 countries outside Latin
America, including the former Eastern Europe, Vietnam, China, and now,
France. Every telenovela producer, from Mexico to Brazil, has his or her
favorite story of the traffic stopping in Russia for the final episode of a
telenovela, of Vietnamese andRomanianfans, of the immense impact of the
stories across the world. Australian soaps, too, as Trish Dunleavy and
Graeme Turner describe in this issue, maintain a high international profile
and are particularly successful in the United Kingdom. It is a curious fact
that in spite of all the talk of cultural imperialism and the impact of U.S.
television in Latin America, the telenovela of Latin America and the soap
opera of Australia, bothproducts fromoutside the cultural mainlandof the
United States and Europe, have been highly successful in the global
television market.
In the second section of this issue, titled Synchronizing Soaps: The
Genre in Flux, the details of the patterns of borrowing of generic styles are
examined by a scholar from New Zealand, Trisha Dunleavy, who details
the way that the Australian soap opera has altered the way the British now
watchandproduce soaps. TwoU.S. scholars, Denise BeilbyandC. Lee Har-
rington, examine how the telenovela, in its Latin format of successive,
closed narrative books, or volumes, has colonized the United States.
Even when the telenovelas for the Latin American market are made in
Miami, as many now are, the social and cultural flow is definitely from
Latin America northward.
Sl ade, Beckenham / Introducti on 339
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The formats of Latin American telenovelas and antipodean soap operas
have not remained constant. In the third section of Latin American case
studies, transformations in the Mexican genre are describedby Rosalind C.
Pearson and Mara de la Luz Casas Prez in their analyses of the impact of
the newer style of telenovela in Cuernavaca. These Mexican case studies
illuminate the ways in which telenovelas have taken on the role of offering
criticism of and reflection on social issues. They, with Reginald Clifford,
make reference tothe revolutionaryTVAzteca telenovela of 1997, Mirada de
Mujer (A Womans Glance), the story of an older woman who, when aban-
doned by her husband, takes a younger lover.
Mirada de Mujer shows how resilient the format of the telenovela is.
Many wonder whether telenovelas may have hadtheir day. There was con-
siderable interest at the conference in the impact of transnational reality TV
formats, such as Big Brother, on the localized characteristics and wide suc-
cess of soaps and telenovelas and in comparison of soap and reality televi-
sions narrative forms. How this phenomenon will interact with the estab-
lished genres of soap opera and telenovela is of concern to both industry
and academia. Industry figures in Mexico, such as Cuauhtmoc Blanco,
claimthat reality television will never succeedandthat the escapist aspects
of the telenovela will remainthe key to its continuing success. Others argue
that Latin America will succumb, with the rest of the world, to reality
televisions attractions.
In the final section of this issue, titled New Directions: The Local and
the Real, Graeme Turner, fromAustralia, discusses the Australian version
of Big Brother as case in point to examine the relation between television
soap opera and cultural identity, the structural parallels of soap opera and
reality television, and the degree to which the discursive influence of the
soap opera on Big Brother in Australia reconnected the international fran-
chise toestablisheddiscourses of local cultural identity. Daniel Matodraws
the economic and political landscape in which Latin American telenovelas
are now being developed as transnational products.
Many wonder whether the rise of reality television will lead to the
demise of the soap and the telenovela. Reality television is, of course, no
more real thanthe soapformat, but it is evencheaper to produce anddraws
viewers inif only to vote someone off. But reality television does share
one of the most fundamental aspects of soap operas and telenovelas, in so
far as it provides viewers a vicarious life, romantic anddomestic issues per-
sonified, and a space for moral debate about suitably removed people. The
livelyattentionpaidbythe contributors here tothe formations, transforma-
tions, spread, andeffects of the genre suggest that it will continue andpros-
per. Like the gothic novel of the late-seventeenth and eighteenth century, it
is a formof story telling that contains within itself the roomto develop and
transform.
340 Tel evi si on & New Medi a / November 2005
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Notes
1. In Mexico, where the scripts of telenovelas are finalized only a week before
shootingand that a week before screeningCliffords data are used to decide the
course of the plot. If a plot does not please the audience, then the plot changes.
2. In Mexico, until quite recently, all telenovelas were produced by the
Azcrraga family company, Televisa. El Globo in Brazil was also a monopoly but
worked with much higher budgets and produced far more risqu telenovelas
nudity and sex and social issues were common.
References
Austen, J. [1813] 1979. Pride and Prejudice. London: Penguin.
Fuentes, C. 1998. La Primera Telenovela Global. Reforma, January 27, p. 7A.
Habermas, J. [1962] 1989. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Trans. T.
Burger. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hallin, D. 1994. We Keep America on Top of the World: Television Journalismand the Pub-
lic Sphere. London: Routledge.
Livingstone, S. 1992. The Resourceful Reader: Interpreting Television Characters
and Narratives. In Communication Yearbook 15, edited by S. A. Deetz, 5890.
Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Lumby, C. 1999. Gotcha. Sydney, Australia: Allen and Unwin.
Morley, D. 1986. Family Television: Cultural Power and Domestic Leisure. London:
Comedia.
Slade, C. 2002. The Real Thing: Doing Philosophy with Media. New York: Peter Lang.
Professor Christina Slade is Dean of Humanities at Macquarie University and Pro-
fessor of Media Theory at the Universiteit Utrecht. She has taught at the Universityof
Canberra, at New York University and at La Universidad Ibero Americana and the
ITESM, in Mexico City. She holds B.A. (A.N.U., 1st class honours) Ph.D. (A.N.U.)
and a Dip.Ed. (U.N.E). In 1996-7 she was Harkness Fellow in New York and from
1976-7 a Commonwealth Fellowat Somerville College, Oxford. Her most recent pub-
lication is The Real Thing: Doing Philosophy with Media, (Peter Lang, NewYork.) In
1993 she edited volume, Media Images of Australia/Asia: Cross Cultural Reflections.
Her text with Glen Lewis, Critical Communication, (second edition, 2000) is widely
used. She has written over seventy articles, and produced several short videos.
Annabel Beckenhamis the deputy Head of the School of Professional Communication
at the University of Canberra. Her research interests focus on technology and social
relations. She is an unreconstructed feminist and a recovering technophobe.
Sl ade, Beckenham / Introducti on 341
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