Telenovela Influence in the U.S.

 Telenovela Influence in the U.S.

When my roommates found out I was taking a class about telenovelas, my roommates’ first reactions were to call it my “Jane the Virgin” class. Similarly, when I was talking to my parents about my schedule, they both asked if I would be watching “Jane the Virgin” and “other soap operas” in this class. Honestly, I thought I would be watching it too. Obviously, this class was nothing of the sorts and we didn’t even talk about “Jane the Virgin” any more than mentioning it until we started talking about globalization. 

During one of the first days of class, I remember going through titles that we were already familiar with while learning if they classified as a telenovela. People asked about shows like “Narcos,” but what really surprised me to learn on the first day is that “Jane the Virgin” was not considered a telenovela. It has been marketed in the U.S. so much to be seen as a telenovela that most people’s assumptions, including my own previously, are that it is the American telenovela. 

I quickly, as quickly as the first day of class, learned that this class was not the “Jane the Virgin” class. I was having some trouble digesting a lot of these new titles and their backgrounds. Much of this was because I had never heard of them before. I could not understand why I had never heard of telenovelas like “La Reina del Sur,” which was supposed to be a massive success worldwide. 

I know that America is definitely in a bubble, I just had not seen it as much from the media point of view. I had never heard of things like “La Reina del Sur” or “El Clon.” I had never even heard of most of the telenovelas that we discussed during class, so I was struggling with understanding their global significance and success. I know that might seem sheltered and narrow-minded, but I had not been exposed to the massive world of telenovelas prior to this class. 

When we were on the Netflix and Telemundo websites clicking through titles and I did not know any, I got discouraged. I am a Spanish major and I have been able to go to Spanish-speaking countries and only use my Spanish since I was sixteen, but I had not even heard of any of these hugely famous telenovelas. I thought I was more “global” than a lot of other people, so I was getting frustrated that every single telenovela was unfamiliar to me. 

However, already knowing shows like “Ugly Betty” and obviously “Jane the Virgin” helped show me that I really have been exposed to telenovelas, or at least their themes, and their reach definitely is global. The massive amounts of remakes all over the world from “Yo soy Betty, la fea” as well as “Jane the Virgin’s” huge success in the U.S. are really testaments to the global success of telenovelas, I just did not realize it. 

Previously, I had written a blog post about how no one is immune to the reach of telenovelas. If anything, this blog post is a continuation of that idea. Although I was getting discouraged that I was not familiar with most, if not all, telenovela titles, what I was not yet aware of was the fact that I had already watched things with telenovelas’ influences. While American shows like “Ugly Betty” and “Jane the Virgin” are not telenovelas, they definitely were influenced by them. Although I quickly learned that I had not in fact watched a telenovela, I also learned that “Jane the Virgin” still was a great example not of a telenovela, but of their global reach and influence.

By Elizabeth Heuser