Mexican Comedic Telenovelas As Vehicles for Lessons Against Homophobia

LAUGHING ALL THE WAY TO TOLERANCE?MEXICAN COMEDIC TELENOVELAS AS VEHICLES FOR LESSONS AGAINST HOMOPHOBIA Julee Tate Berry College [email protected] Abstract The use of telenovelas as didactic tools to educate the viewing public about a variety of social issues, ranging from drug abuse to domestic violence, is not a new phenomenon. In Mexico in particular, telenovelas have been used strategically for several decades to target particular groups with messages intended to curb or in some way alter behavior and attitudes. In recent years, an increasing number of Mexican telenovela productions have adopted a comedic tone and forgone the unrelenting melodrama that has defined the genre during its half century of history. Like their more melodramatic brethren, these comedic telenovelas entertain and, at times, educate the viewing audience about various social issues. Homophobia is a relative newcomer to the list of societal concerns that telenovelas address, and comedic telenovelas have proved to be fertile ground for the inclusion of didactic messages that promote attitudes of tolerance toward homosexuals. This investigation highlights this trend and examines how three telenovelas in particular, La fea mas´ bella (2006–2007), Yo amo a Juan Querendon´ (2007–2008) and Las tontas no van al cielo (2008), participate in an evolv- ing popular narrative of tolerance. Laughing All the Way to Tolerance? Mexican Comedic Telenovelas as Vehicles for Lessons Against Homophobia Telenovelas are Latin American melodramatic serials that are fre- quently compared to American soap operas. For decades telenovelas have been the most watched television format in Latin American households. Many of these telenovelas are produced in Mexico, which is home to one of Latin America’s most lucrative telenovela industries. The name Tele- visa, the company with a once monopolistic hold on Mexican television, is synonymous with telenovelas. Televisa and its rival network, TV Azteca, air telenovelas on their national channels for as many as six hours a day, and these are typically the time-slots that enjoy the highest ratings in terms of viewership. In their more than half century of existence, Mexican telenovelas have rarely deviated from the set formula that includes a melodramatic tone C 2014 Southeastern Council on Latin American Studies and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 51 The Latin Americanist, September 2014 and the stock characters that are familiar to viewers – a noble and wealthy hero, a tender and poor heroine and their envious antagonists. While, for the most part, the usual suspects continue to populate the scripts of telenovelas, the tone is not as predictable as it once was. In recent years, some productions have foregone the unrelenting melodrama and instead opted for a more comedic tone. Like their more melodramatic brethren, this new breed of comedic telenovelas aims to entertain and, at times, educate viewers about a range of social issues. This investigation focuses on the recent use of comedic telenovelas as vehicles for addressing the negative consequences of homophobia, a social issue that until recently was considered a taboo topic in mainstream Mexican media. The practice of using telenovelas for the purpose of educating viewing audiences about a variety of social and health issues is not a new one. In the early 1970s, Miguel Sabido, a Mexican telenovela writer, director and producer, designed a reproducible set of techniques for the construction of persuasive messaging in telenovelas (Singhal, 1999: xi). His design was inspired by the success of a Peruvian telenovela called Simplemente Mar´ıa, which was originally broadcast in Peru from 1969–1971. The telenovela is the rags-to-riches story of a poor maid who transforms her life with the aid of English classes and a Singer sewing machine, which, after the requisite hardships and setbacks, allow her to design and market her own clothing line and eventually become a successful designer. While the telenovela was originally written with the exclusive intentions of entertainment and profit (through the sale of commercial advertising slots), there were signifi- cant and surprising unintended consequences, including marked increases in sales of Singer sewing machines and the demand for English language instruction (Singhal, 1999: 41–2). Another important, and unintentional, impact of Simplemente Mar´ıa was an alteration in attitudes toward domestic help. In focus group interviews, Peruvian employers attested to a change in attitude toward maids, a change that they credited with recognizing, through the lessons provided by the telenovela, that domestic workers also had rights and aspirations. Such changes in mindset yielded real changes for maids, including better treatment by employers and, in some cases, more flexible work schedules that allowed them to pursue their education in the evenings. (Singhal, 1999: 42) Another important, and perhaps more enduring, effect of the telenovela was that it was noticed by Miguel Sabido who studied the unintended consequences of the Simplemente Mar´ıa phenomenon and created a methodology with the aim to be intentional in the use of telenovelas to speak to certain issues and audiences. In order to further refine his methodology, Sabido worked closely with Albert Bandura, a Stanford University psy- chologist credited with the development of social learning theory. (Singhal, 1999: 52) Bandura’s theory essentially states that learning can and often does take place when individuals observe the behavior of other individuals, either in real life or in the media. According to Bandura, there are three kinds of models: positive, negative and transitional. Based on the behavior 52 Tate of a given individual or character, the person observing understands them to be a good model, whose behavior should be replicated; a negative model, whose behavior should be eschewed; or a transitional model, who is negotiating their own understanding of negative and positive modeling, all the while transitioning toward one of the poles. (Bandura, 1977) Sabido employed these models in his methodology in order to offer the viewing public examples of pro-social and anti-social behaviors. Of course the archetypically good characters demonstrate pro-social behaviors while the archetypically bad characters demonstrate anti-social behaviors. Social scientists Arvind Singhal and Everett Rogers credit Sabido as a pioneer of entertainment-education (E-E), which they define as “the process of purposefully designing and implementing a media message to both entertain and educate, in order to increase audience knowledge about an educational issue, create favorable attitudes, and change overt behavior.” (1999: xii) Between 1975 and 1981, Miguel Sabido produced six entertainment-education telenovelas in Mexico with these aims in mind. The first Sabido E-E soap opera, Ven Conmigo (Come with Me) aired on Televisa, Mexico’s national channel, between 1975 and 1976. The educational message of the production was intended to promote adult literacy. Statistical findings demonstrated that the message was recieved as 600,000 more people registered for adult literacy classes between 1975 and 1976 than had done so in the previous year, which amounted to a 63% increase in enrollments over the previous year. (Brown, 1989: 44) Subsequent productions, which dealt with a variety of issues yielded similar results. For instance, Acompa´name˜ (Accompany Me) was the second E-E production headed by Sabido, and its focus was family planning. During the time that it was broadcast (1977–78) the number of people adopting family planning through clinics increased by 560,000 and sales of contraception increased throughout the country (Brown, 1989: 44). Such statistics leave little doubt of the potential of E-E programming to influence attitudes and behavior. Significantly, not only were these productions successful in terms of raising awareness and promoting pro-social behaviors, they were also commercially successful. (Singhal, 1999: 52) This dual success attracted the attention of social scientists, including the staff at the John Hopkins Population Communication Services, who have employed Sabido’s strat- egy in at least 75 countries, including India, Pakistan and Kenya. (Singhal, 1999: xi) Aspects of Sabido’s methodology continue to be used in Mexican telenovela productions, as well. The telenovelas examined in this study each employ aspects of E-E, perhaps most notably the inclusion of positive, negative and transitional role models as good characters demonstrate tolerant behaviors toward gay characters, while bad characters exhibit ho- mophobic tendencies. Meanwhile, transitional characters are used to show that an evolution from intolerance to tolerance is possible. In his contribution to the collection that is a must-read for understanding the history and development of Mexican telenovelas, Jesus´ Galindo emphasizes the privileged position of the viewing audience in the creative 53 The Latin Americanist, September 2014 process of telenovela production: “La audiencia existe en la imaginacion´ de los que hacen la telenovela, como gustos, como experiencias, como anhelos, como valores, como comportamientos. Son varios los eslabones de la cadena donde la audiencia es considerada al elaborar el producto” (1998: 140). (The audience exists in the imagination of those who make the telenovela, as tastes, as experiences, as longings, as values, as behaviors. There are many links in the chain wherein the audience is considered

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