“Soap operas, known here as novelas, have long triggered fads in Brazil. After “The Clone,” a soap set in Brazil and Morocco, aired in 2001, belly dancing became the rage. Brazilian girls started wearing yellow flowers in their hair after a character was so adorned on the 1994 soap “Four by Four.” And this year’s prime-time hit “Caminho das Indias,” or “Passage to India,” has made all things Indian — from saris to vacations to the subcontinent — hugely popular.
But in Brazil, a country that watches more television on average than any other besides Britain, novelas have a more lasting effect by influencing lifestyle choices, researchers say.
“Novelas have become very much a part of the fabric of Brazilian society,” said Antonio La Pastina, a professor at Texas A&M University who has studied the influence of the programs on Brazilian society. “It’s hard to think of contemporary Brazil without thinking of novelas.”
New Lifestyles
The Inter-American Development Bank released two studies this past year that found a link between the consumption of novelas produced by Rede Globo, the network that dominates the industry here, to declining fertility rates and rising divorce rates in Brazil. The fertility rate in Brazil fell sharply over the past half-century, from more than six children per family in 1960 to about two by 2000, the study noted. This drop is comparable to that of China, but without any government family-planning measures.”
- Source (more here)
My Take
Sorry, Brazilians but novelas (and the like) are brainwashing wastes of time. It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone that soap operas could lead to damaging results, especially when they are created by one or two networks with huge political and societal influence. Major media exists to bring you to a predetermined conclusion about what you should and shouldn’t be doing and thinking. Turn off your TV, you’ll thank me later.
I tend to agree with you that TV shows can be damaging, but I think the case of novelas in Brazil goes to show that they also have the potential to affect people in a positive way. Is it bad, for instance, that people are being more sexually responsible and taking charge of their reproductive lives (including what size family they want) by using more birth control?
Well, as far as it being bad, I would say that is the choice of the individual and should not be enforced legally nor predictively programmed into people via the media. So I’m for individual choice but also for being knowledgable about what people allow to be put into their head.
Thanks for your thoughts
No one is forced to buy birth control just because they see it on a novela :o)
Agreed, but if a novela is a part of someone’s daily life, then it can have effects on the person without them realizing it. When watching TV, especially dramas, it’s easy to get sucked into the story.
Couldn’t we blame //any// and //all// possible influences on novelas, then? Shouldn’t the viewers take //any// responsibility for their actions (namely, watching the novelas)?
That’s what I’m saying, the viewers should be mindful of what they allow to influence them…even though my statement in itself sounds a bit off, because if they are watching TV on a regular basis in the first place, they are being influenced.
Uups, that should have been:
No one is forced to buy birth control if they see it on a novela :)
The point is, what I see soap operas doing here, I see CNN doing in USA… But the TV Globo news are taking the same path, now the lies are absorbed here more easily than at 10 years ago.
Yes, I see lies being absorbed everywhere more easily as time goes on. It’s the zeitgeist.
i hate novelas