The Latin American Telenovela: Perspectives on the Feminine and the Masculine

Cassano G. · The International Encyclopedia of Gender, Media, and Communication (2020) · DOI: 10.1002/9781119429128.iegmc185

Resumen

This entry provides a theoretical reflection on the telenovela as a Latin American melodramatic product, its social and cultural significance, the way gender is represented in the characters it depicts, the themes it addresses, the characters, and situations it portrays. The stories of the telenovela build and consolidate the imaginaries of a society, particularly those of gender. We know that gender as a cultural construction condenses the meanings—that of sexual difference—each society elaborates. These meanings structure perception and establish a set of social mandates and expectations, configuring gender systems that establish different kinds of relations within each cultural group. The stories of the telenovela are not alien to these meanings; the representations that are produced and reproduced in them, respond to this set of expectations and mandates, but also represent breaks and fractures, changes and transformations around their meanings, since the telenovela is a symbolic production that has been transformed over time.