I'd been wanting to post on this since I learned about it.
I love the idea of despecho. Absolutely love it.
Having this concept of full-blown grief, of drinking yourself stupid and singing songs of "You-bitch-how-could-you-do-this-to-me-I-love-you-no-come-back-I'll-kill-you"...MAN, we Americans can't stack up to that!
Despecho is something I would describe as a superemotion. It's emotion to its most extreme, so involved and intense that the idea of it involves specific actions on top of specific feelings. If you haven't wanted to grind broken glass into your bare palms to substitute the pain of your broken heart...you're not there yet.
The most interesting thing to me is that in a way we DO have that sort of emotion here. However, instead of being embraced as it has in Latin culture...we pass it off as being emo. It has negative connotations, and when people are experiencing it they're told to "suck it up."
America will never fully understand the concept of despecho until we can learn to embrace emotion the way Latin culture does.
And until then, American soap operas do not stand a chance of being anything NEAR telenovelas.
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I totally agree with the fact that Americans push our version of Despecho away. We are taught not to let others, especially trifling exes, dictate how we feel and how we deal with our emotions. Maybe that's why Americans are seen as coldhearted individuals who think only of themselves. Latinos on the other hand are seen as passionate. If America wants to change how other countries see us, we first need to learn to accept an emotion that is fundamentally human.
ReplyDeleteI agree, a lot of times Americans push it off as if we don't have time for emotions - much less the emotions of other people! It's awful because it reflects on family/friendship values sometimes. I think one thing that draws me to the Spanish culture is the openess of emotions, because agian, this openess flows into other aspects of life.
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