Saturday, March 29, 2014
Weekend Discussion: Are Novelas Getting More Violent?
We've referenced this before, but with the recent incidents in Lo Que La Vida Me Robo, Mentir Para Vivir, and even the attempted rape in De Que Te Quiero Te Quiero we can't help but wonder whether novelas in general are going down a slippery slope that can't be tilted back.
In a previous discussion on this issue we seem to have come to the consensus that the rise of the narco stories came from the networks' desire to get more male viewers. I don't know whether that's been working for them, but edgier has been the order of the day in all television and we need to ask ourselves whether there should be a limit. In the US there is an irrational fear of sexual content in ad-supported television which until relatively recently hasn't affected the Spanish-language networks very much. We're complaining here -- and justifiably -- when we become aware of hot love scenes being censored because they are censoring mostly scenes that show couples who actually love each other and actors who have the right chemistry to do scenes like that. Why are television networks so afraid of the conservative moral watchdogs who -- if they were truly what they say they are -- aren't even watching these programs and theoretically shouldn't care about them? These people don't control all the money in this country although they are trying hard. We should not allow them to get a foothold into our private lives.
Why instead are they not censoring violence? Violence is the real obscenity in modern society and the constant exposure to it takes away much of its shock value. The occasional violent scene with bruises, bloodshed, etc., can be powerful; too many such and people will begin to shrug it off. Is this some unconscious Darwinian element nobody has identified?
Villains are also becoming more perverse as we continue down this path. Porque el Amor Manda gave us a female villain who emotionally abused her own child (as in 5 years old in the opening of the story), Amor Bravio had a male villain who raped his own niece, even planning it so that it happened just as she became mayor de edad, and a sexual blackmailer forcing the heroine into her Tosca moment (as an opera fan I sometimes wish she would have taken the same action). LQLVMR and PSMA are currently giving us villains of such extreme sociopathy they're making our flesh crawl. Not an episode goes by on this blog that someone doesn't comment on that.
At the moment in a series like LQLVMR violence is the price tag we're paying for the otherwise good writing and the chemistry of the two leads. I'm not ready to walk away from such a situation, but if Televisa reads this blog, this is to let them know that there is only so much violence we should be able to tolerate in the name of ratings.
Sound off, amigos.
Labels: bravio, Manda, mentir, robo, te-quiero, telenovelas, weekend
Jarifa
This world is mad.
Alegria
about the sex and resent the put down of conservatives.
If you are who you say you are , why do you watch the
violence? All we need is MORE sex on tv to sexualize
our children even more. Surely you must realize that
there are conservative fans of these programs as well as
conservatives, such as myself, who read Caray Caray.
It's not bad enough that I have to endure the coarse
language, now my belief system is being attacked. Why can't we just enjoy these programs as entertainment and find another forum to debate the
moral issues? (If we CHOOSE to)
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5r-UPuKy5qA
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4_3FV4IfO_I
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PTch6OIji4w
As for censorship of sexual stuff, it seems rather haphazard and almost capricious to me. It's almost like someone is given scissors and instructed to cut out a certain percentage of stuff to give the impression that an effort is being made to protect the audience.
Carlos
Carlos, I didn't see the more horrendous stuff in Ramona because that program got switched to daytime from prime time here before the worst of the violence happened. As to the murder of Alejandro it was in the book and couldn't be changed without compromising the integrity of the story.
Your take on the scissors may be because Univision puts more ads in and takes stuff out to make more room for them, as you can't add more minutes to an hour.
I have wondered whether the broadcast hour of PSMA in Mexico (4:15PM) is the reason for its low ratings there, as this program isn't suitable for that hour. It belongs at 8 or 9PM.
As to sexual content and children, my answer is always the same: If you're a parent, you can control what your children watch. Parents who cop out on that have only themselves to blame.
I personally, suspend all disbelief when it comes to watching TV/movies; it simply is for entertainment value. IMHO, it is easier to watch violence cuz we generally don't see it around us, therefore, doesn't seem real.
The sex/love scenes are acceptable, esp if tastefully done, and should not be censored, if violence is not. Parents should be in charge of censoring what their children can or cannot watch.
What separates a "hot love scene" from a "hot soft porn" scene? Is one okay and the other not okay? Where/what is the line between them?
Romy
Rape has always been present in telenovelas, unfortunately, so that's not new. In fact, the galán raping the protagonist happened a few decades back day commonly than today: Leonela, Guadalupe, La Indomable, Alma Rebelde, etc. The last time I saw it before LQLVMR was in Amor Real, so hopefully televisa got enough bad feedback for that that they will stop portraying their galán like that.
I do think that the narconovela is a new genre that has gotten popular in the last ten years and it takes some time getting used to. But again, that's the genre and it's easy to avoid them since you know what to expect.
Jarocha
In addition to the horrible villains, the galan as rapist (in Robo), while not common thank goodness, is horrible. Moreover, the martial rape has never really been dealt with and the galan still has serious anger issues. And recently, the third wheel, Jose Luis, has been acting like a villain as well.
What makes Robo even more disturbing to me is the violence men do to women, how its naturalized, and how the female villains are made to seem more reprehensible than the male villains. Though Pedro is beyond the pale, the actor who plays EZ makes his character possibly redeemable whereas no one thinks Gracie or Maria (expect for Carlos) can be saved. And the audience is supposed to forgive the galan for his bad behavior. Bottom line its seems very bad behavior for men (even galans) is OK but the same is not true for women.
And someone further up the thread also made a good point--sometimes less is more. In Cachito we only saw the victim dragged to a van and then being released from the van with bruises and tears. It was very clear what had happened and coupled with Esmeralda Pimentel's performance it was very powerful.
Same goes with sex/love scenes. I have seen some smokin' hot scenes in Korean dramas that were far shorter and involved fully clothed actors.
Interesting topic and comments.
That being said, I don't watch narconovelas b/c I don't want to promote that genre. I also don't like novelas with lurid sex scenes either. My favorite novelas 'Cuna de Lobos' and 'El Manantial' had none and I loved them because the stories are great. If you have to resort to lurid violence or sex to make a TN work, you're doing a bad job period.
In 'El Manantial' Adela Noriega and Mauricio Islas had smoking chemistry but they never had a sex scene, and you didn't realize it because the story was so good, you didn't lack for chemistry. Plus the fact that Adela's character had been sexually traumatized by another character prevented her from being with the galan character was part of the story as well.
As for sex, telenovelas, even the ones in Mexico that are "uncensored" are super tame by today's standards. They're basically PG, everything is left to the imagination. While some viewers want to see more, the producers have to please the general audience, which includes many who do not want to see more. So they hint at things. And that's fine. If you want to see more explicit sex scenes, there are many Spanish movies that can satisfy such craving.
In sum, I don't think telenovelas have changed much, and I like them the way they are.
They almost showed Ximena Navarrette's breasts as she was getting knocked up by William Levy.
I am glad they don't typically do the "galan raping the heroine" that much. It's actually the reason I stopped watching Lo Que La Vida Me Robo. I can't support an abusive rapist as a protagonist. I think novelas can sometimes get a little violent, but it varies. I'm worried more about how rape scenes an storylines are being handled. Some are truly disturbing. I'm recalling that one in Pasion when Liseta is in the carriage. That was truly haunting and longer than neccesary. Rape should be handled much better since it is such serious issue. I agree Sara, it is handled much better when it is implied.
Cassandra G.
The kind of violence in today's movies, however, is appalling.
LQLVMR hasn't gone into torture porn and I doubt it will. The decapitation in Pasion was historically correct. I don't remember seeing that scene, but I doubt that it was played inappropriately.
Sex in the cinema---If someone wants or must have sex to look at, there is always soft porn or
the xxx version. As for novelas or
let's say the movies in general---
remember in the "good old days" when sex was only implied? No one was complaining back then and no, there wasn't a rape scene in nearly every movie/novela either.
So I say again---tone it down and the novelas will still turn out just fine.
the gringo
Thanks for raising this topic for weekend discussion.
Hombre de Misterio:
How nice to see you, Hombre! I have not noticed telenovelas becoming more sexual.Romance has always been key in melodrama.
Hi, gringo: Great to see you too.
What I HAVE noticed is that the violence that has always been implicit in melodramatic plotting is now SHOWN in a much more GRAPHIC way. It seems that back in the day bad, violent actions took place, but most of the explicit action of, say a man beating a woman, took place off camera. Recapping LQLVMR I have caught a number of epi's recently that were very dark, and especially bloody.
I also feel that the shows used to have a few more 'action' good guys who moved the plot forward.
It seems that now we get whole cabals of bad guys who never seem to be given worthy opponents.
And the good guys spend a lot of time in jails or wringing their hands.
EJ
I think your thought about the OTT violence in video games influencing telenovelas is a good one.
I have no hard data to support a 'yes' on that subject, but it sure resonates with me as intuitively correct.
Surely somebody is studying these things, No?
Urban, what institutions or think tanks are doing good scholarly work on these subjects?
Karen, do you know of media studies being done now to link video gamimg with violence in young men?
EJ
Like, the scene where Carlota in ENDA kills Macarena by throwing her off the balcony and you get that big OTT fall full of special effects that I just couldn't take seriously, while Carlota looked down on her with this cold and evil face. In Cadenas de Amargura the Macarina (named Natalia there) character had such a long and drown out dead scene, she was a diabetic and she was lying in bed slightly blind begging her sister to help her because she felt so bad and Evangelina (Carlota) kills her with an insuline overdose, afraid that just moments before her sister had discovered some of her evil deeds and had promised to leave her alone, after Evangelina realizes that she had just killed her sister and before she actually died you see her suffering having realized what she had just done. I guess you could say the fall is more violent but the insuline overdose and long and painful death of a lovely, good hearted character was just more gutting and it felt more violent.
And just to compare, this scene was made in 1996 *warning: it's bloody*:Fausto's death in Cañaveral de Pasiones
And this is the same scene in 2012: Augusto's death in Abismo de Pasión.
I personally prefer the Cañaveral scene, even if it is more graphic, because I felt it's just overall better made and it set the point of no return for the Dinorah character, who was a three dimentional villain you cared for as a viewer. In contrast, the Carmina character had already killed, she was less sympathetic and she wasn't tormented by her own actions.
So I guess what I personally noticed in these remakes was that the evil characters are just less human, they do more evil deeds and their evilness feels more overwrought but the actual scenes don't seem more graphically violent to me. Not when back in the late 90's you could see decapitations, dismemberments and and very bloody images in some novelas (especially in the historical ones and ones that dealt with drug crimes).
Jarocha
Governments would have their own agendas in looking for this information, as would religious institutions.
As an advertising professional I can tell you that most statistics can be spun to say anything you want them to.
There was a Law & Order episode that dealt with the issue of television violence during a trial and a witness who compared television violence by decade. The conclusion was that the violence in television programs of the 60s had a moral context and showed that "crime doesn't pay." Lots of fictional violence these days seems to pay so that it becomes glamorized. You also wouldn't have seen torture porn back then.
To someone else's earlier comment about female villains suffering worse punishment I think this is probably true in the case of toxic parents. Mothers have the potential to inflict more lasting damage on their children that plays through their adult lives. Most toxic fathers in novelas have limited weapons, their victims are already adults over whom they are feeling loss of control, and their weapons are mostly purse strings, keys, and locks. Mothers inflict psychological damage starting much earlier. That means that many toxic fathers have greater redemption potential. However, I think that peer villains are pretty equal at Karmageddon.
since the relaxed view of sex, especially among unmarried young people, has led to an increasing number of children being born into situations in which
they are improperly trained and unsupervised and get into a life of crime, drugs, and violence.
The world is spiraling into a wrong direction and we are keeping a blind eye to everything and this wont end well
fault, but I feel that we all need to do our small part to
improve the situation.l
Hanna
<< Home
© Caray, Caray! 2006-2022. Duplication of this material for use on any other site is strictly prohibited.