Thursday, September 17, 2009

Destilando Cinderella

The name of the Mexican telenovela I am watching is "Destilando Amor," and after learning about what makes a telenovela story a cinderella story, there is no doubt in my mind that this is a cinderella story nearly scene for scene... except for one main difference.
In Destilando Amor, the protagonist, called Gaviota, is a rural farm worker, lower class, she is exceptionally beautiful and light-skinned, she is a virgin, good-natured and naive... until she travels and becomes more wise! She goes as far as Paris (where she is hit by a car and loses the baby she is pregnant with, of course) and when she returns to mexico, she and her mother move to the city. She easily adapt to urban life and goes through socioeconomic ascent as she gets jobs and is promoted to manager's assistant in a huge corporation. As long as this storyline will continue to follow Dr. A's predicted cinderella plot line, I expect to soon see a more complete transformation of the protagonist and hopefully a bit of revenge.
Destilando Amor does, however, challenge the typical cinderella story's machismo. You see, the male protagonist is also a virgin at the beginning, and he will only have sex with his true love, Gaviota, even despite being in another marriage (he proclaims "no intimacy" between them) and resisting his wife's continual attempts at seduction. It has been two years wince Gaviota and Rodrigo have been together, and they both remain faithful to each other while apart. Rodrigo's character strongly challenges the hegemony of male sexual freedom.
However, hegemonic machismo still persists, as shown in one scene where Rodrigo's cousin accuses Rodrigo of being gay, an assumption he made because he knows his cousin has not had sex with a woman yet. But when the cousin discovers Gaviota's (lost) pregnancy, he congratulates Rodrigo for his sexual 'success' and finally respects him as a man... because it is sexual conquest that makes a man strong and able, while it is merely expected for the woman to be the source of this ladder-up for the man.
Stay strong, Rodrigo, and wait for the reunion with your true love!

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