The Many Faces of Telenovelas

At the beginning of this semester, I wasn't sure what direction this class would take. I remember in high school, when I was first taking Spanish classes, I wanted to expose myself to as much of the language as possible. I began watching one of the Spanish channels in my area. I found a show called Clase 406. Little did I know that this was my firsts exposer to a Mexican telenovela. I knew nothing of this genre of television and I could barely understand what they were saying.
It wasn't until we first began to discuss telenovelas in class that I realized that what I had been watching was in fact a telenovela. At first when we were assigned to choose a telenovela, I didn't put much thought into the choice of my telenovela. I thought they were all the same, plus or minus a few characters and of course the actors would be different. I didn't know that each telenovela depended on the writer and the country that it would be aired. However, just from these few presentations on the different telenovelas, it was so clear how different one telenovela could be from another.
I realized how different my telenovela was from the rest during the first day of presentations. Each telenovela had its own plotline.... and some like Sin Tetas no Hay Paraiso and Rubi, were so intriguing that I've even made it a goal to watch both. From these presentations I've realized that each telenovela can and does tackle a wide range of issues that one would not necessarily connect to that type of show. These issues range from drugs, prostitution, violence against women, and Alzheimer's.
With this realization, it is easy to see how important telenovelas are to not only Latin American countries, but countries around the world.