This is a class blog run by Dr. Carolina Acosta-Alzuru and her students in the First Year Odyssey Seminar "More than Melodramas: Telenovelas"

Telenovelas-FYOS-2014

Telenovelas-FYOS-2014

Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Telenovelas and Korean dramas

When I was signing up for this class, I wasn't really expecting much. To be completely honest, I wasn't necessarily interested in the topic, but after my first class, I found that telenovelas are actually really interesting. I guess I never really bothered to take interest in them because they're in Spanish. As we went over all of the different genres of telenovelas and the factors that contribute to their making, I realized that telenovelas are extremely similar to Korean dramas. I'm not exactly sure, but I feel like Korean dramas stem from telenovelas or were inspired by them. The different plots we went over like the prince and the pauper or Romeo and Juliet are all similar to plots in Korean dramas that I've watched. After realizing this similarity, I'm more interested in telenovelas. They seem very interesting and I like that there's such a wide variety of genres I can choose from. From horror to romance, there's such an abundance that I don't even know where to begin!

Growing up in a Korean household, my mom was always watching Korean dramas. Because of this, I grew up watching scenes of an evil stepmom splashing water onto her daughter-in-law's face or twins switched at birth. The short clips of scenes from telenovelas remind me of all of the dramas I've watched in the past. The dramatic music and the over-dramatized scenes are so familiar to me. A lot of the scenes seem ridiculous because there's a lot of emphasis put into the actors' facial expressions, tone of voice, and background music, but it's entertaining and once you get into it, you can't stop! After watching one episode, I found myself getting hooked because I wanted to know what horrible thing could happen next. I noticed that there's no end to all of the misfortune a protagonist undergoes. The fact that the scriptwriters can come up with such a twisted plot amazes me because it takes a lot of skill and talent to write such a dramatic script. I love the way the scriptwriters leave cliffhangers so that the audience will come back for more. Overall, telenovelas are familiar to me because of my past experience with Korean dramas, but they're different in the fact that they are Spanish and have the Spanish culture incorporated in them. I'm excited to learn more about the Spanish culture as I watch telenovelas!

1 comment:

  1. This is incredibly interesting! I love how you incorporated Korean culture into your entry. Most people I guess do not realize the similarity and differences between cultures. I first noticed how dramatic Korean television was when I was traveling out of the country and stumbled upon music videos from a Korean culture. Although they are not really closely related to Korean dramas they still showed a huge difference between American culture as well.

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