The US Spanish-Language Telenovela as a Globalized Genre

By Juan Ramos

US Telenovela: ‘Pasión prohibida’

Criticisms • Hybridity • Mexican protagonists• ‘Neutral’ Spanish• Homogenized version of Latin America• Lack of authenticity• Second-rate acting• “Tendency to dissolve cultural difference into

cheap and profitable exoticism” (Martín-Barbero, 1995: 284).

• Globalization or the production of telenovelas in Miami has not caused genre homogenization

• The imperative to succeed domestically before export

• “Transnational Latin American identity” (Mato, 2001)

• US Latinos as a heterogeneous audience• Miami as a new telenovela territory.