Bruce Dean Willis

is Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at The University of Tulsa. His research and publications focus on diverse aspects of poetry and performance, and expressions of Indigenous and African cultures, in Latin American literature, particularly Brazil, Chile, and Mexico.

TIME FOR CHOCOLATE is available for purchase through One Act Play Depot! A brief description:

An intoxicating evening of music, poetry, and chocolate... in pre-conquest Mexico!
Based on a fifteenth-century dialogue among nobles schooled in rhetoric and philosophy, the play pits father against son in a war of words over the power and beauty of artistic expression.

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Novelas I'd Like to See

Attention Latin American telenovela producers:
PLOT IDEAS!! FEEL FREE TO STEAL THEM!!

Although I don't have much time to watch novelas, there have been a few over the years that I've enjoyed tuning in to view with my family (plus + great language practice!), such as Catalina y Sebastián (Televisión Azteca), América (Rede Globo), or the more recent En Nombre del Amor (Televisa). Telenovelas form a huge part--the most profitable--of Latin American primetime and are exported not only within Latin America but all over the world. The Rede Globo machine in Brazil, and certain Televisa efforts in Mexico (Carla Estrada productions), set the bar for excellence in all respects: filmography, acting, script, costumes, music. The best novelas not only excel in these areas but also engage with the viewers' social, political, and economic concerns and desires. A few suggestions for (tele)novelas I'd like to see:

(1) Setting: Chiapas, 1994. Daughter of rich hacendado falls for daring, but poor, Zapatista revolutionary. Yes, the same old formula, but it would be a way of getting a Mexican telenovela to actually deal with political realities in Mexico.

(2) Setting: Contemporary Brazil. Two non-white Brazilians, of different ethnic and geographic backgrounds, meet and fall in love. Protagonists' gender: open.

(3) Any novela produced in Mexico, Chile, Colombia, etc. that dares to set its story outside the country of origin. Brazil (Rede Globo) seems to be the only country that does this with any frequency, and I admire what it implies about the country's imagination and ambition. They've set novelas in Morocco, Greece, Mexico, even the US (for example, New Mexico of the Old West in the singular farce Bang Bang).

(4) A Mexican novela that dares to feature a main relationship that is not heterosexual.

(5) More of the lushly filmed Mexican historical novelas, like Carla Estrada's Amor Real and Alborada, but more proactively rehistoricized regarding women's roles and the roles of indigenous and African characters.

(6) More of the brightly comic, and satirical, Colombian novelas in the tradition of Betty la Fea and Pedro el Escamoso (and the current Chepe Fortuna, with its bald, though secondary, satire of Chavez's Venezuela).

More ideas / más ideas / mais idéias?

No comments:

Post a Comment