Covering The Coverage: Entertainment Weekly Discovers Novelas Exist
16 January 2009, 12:14 PM. By Alex Alvarez
Entertainment Weekly has discovered telenovelas - those secret, Spanish-language soap operas that millions of people have been watching for decades.
Specifically, EW has become smitten with Televisa’s “Cuidado con el Angel” - the popular novela starring William Levy and Maite Perroni.
The magazine seems genuinely shocked that the show contains over-the-top acting, cases of mistaken identity and love triangles. Where do these “bold! sexy!” Latinoids come up with all this weirdness?
American viewers more used to “General Hospital” may find the dialogue risibly overdone, but telenovelas like “Cuidado con el Ángel” are no joke. As English-language networks struggle to hang on to their audiences, these Spanish-language soap operas, which have been around since the early 1950s, are kicking culo on Univision, which airs “Cuidado” here in the U.S. five nights a week at 8 p.m.
Doesn’t “General Hospital” contain mob bosses, various kidnappings and the occasional evil twin? [Ed. note: Yes. I know this because one of my former jobs included watching soap operas all day, and "General Hospital" was one of my beats. Along with "Passions." So don't tell me something like "Cuidado con el Angel" is crazy unless it suddenly adds frozen zombies, talking dolls and incestuous lovers to the mix.] What, exactly, is so utterly zany about Spanish-language soap operas that doesn’t appear in their English-language counterparts? Besides a plethora of sexy, 21-year-old housekeepers.
One of the only real distinctions between novelas like “Cuidado con el Angel” and something like Days of our Lives also happens to be one of the most interesting: The actors on CCEA don’t have time to actually learn all their lines, so they have every word - and “state directions” - fed to them through a tiny earpiece.
The article also describes Televisa’s training workshops for wannabe telenovela actors, often emphasizing how over-the-top and exaggerated their acting style is… It’s a soap opera. Jesus. It’s supposed to have heightened emotions and present a warped version of reality - one of the stars happens to be an angel, after all. That’s why we love them and love to hate them!
So we’re glad that a mainstream English-language publication has a five-page article on the popularity of telenovelas. But maybe we can move on from marveling at the fact that they exist and think more about, oh, how they emphasize (or reflect) gender roles and class differences and not just on how quaint and silly and chock-full of SUPER HOT PEOPLE they all happen to be.
Telenovelas: Inside the Bold, Beautiful & Totally Bizarre World of Univision Soap [EW]
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Over It: Why Does It Take A Telenovela To Get A Message Out To Latinos?
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American soaps lack a lot. They don’t take place in a world where mascara runs, the hair is huge, and leopard print never goes out of style. I miss my novelitas. In the UK we get three crap ones that make the American ones look like pure drama.
The best part about our telenovelas is that they eventually end, after the requisite bout of amnesia, a case of blindness, separation, unplanned pregnancies & faked deaths.
and i love that there are only three possible endings for the villanos- they either die, are sent to prison or my favorite- they end up in an asylum
i totally wrote like 4 papers for my Women’s studies class about telenovelas gender normatives and the impact they have…also no supe that they didnt know their lines…i guess the cara “de deja que se me baje la comida” they always have on screen makes sense now
“i guess the cara “de deja que se me baje la comida” they always have on screen makes sense now”
I almost lost my comida on that. LMAO
So funny! Guess Ugly Betty is really making the gringos take notice… and although I am addicted to CCEA, I have definitely seen better novelas back in the day when I was like 10. .. William Levy is super HOOOOOTTTT!
Dos mujeres, uuunnnnn caminooooo
My sister loves this soap opera and I’ve seen snippets of it here and there, but I’m still a bit confused: Isn’t Levy’s character, the heroe’s rapist? Right? He raped her as a kid and she remembers after they got married, but still loves him?
If true, that is really messed up.
Oh, and yes, thank God for telenovelas in terms of hotness. Perroni is beautiful. Naturally so, too. Usually you see all these plastic “women” trying to look like even trashier gringas. I wish she’d show a bit more skin though.
Jeez, I go to Vegas for three days, and come back to find my Guanaformat all changed, and learn that telenovelas are now beloved by Ent Weakly. But at least I have learned that my Favorite Penis Model, “Willy I Am” Levy, is back on the tee-vee comiendo el escenario (yeah…I know that expression doesn’t translate well into Spanish, but I like saying “comiendo” when I think of Levy’s Willy…I mean, Willy Levy.