“What do you mean you’re my daughter, I thought you were my mother!!”

Hey people,

Long time no blog. This is probably due to the fact that nothing of interest has happened, or nothing interesting enough to inspire a post.

But then something amazing happened. I was stuck in bed with a horrible stomach-thing, so I decided to watch the ever infamous Spanish telenovela. I have heard of people watching them even if they speak no Spanish, although, why you would want to do that I have no idea. Anyway, the one particular one that I decided to watch is called “mar de amor”, or, “sea of love”, and is actually not one of the worst that I have seen. If you care to look it up, believe me, there is an awful lot worse invading people’s TV screens.

Anyway, I’m moving off the point. Now, I do quite enjoy this series. It’s Mexican, so at times the Spanish is a bit different to what I’ve learnt, and I don’t really like the accents, but it’s interesting to watch, if only for the absurd story lines, the acting, the camera shots, the music, the makeup, the wardrobe....oh the list just never ends. The great thing about one of these series is that, even if you have missed the first 1000 episodes, you can pretty much catch up after one half an hour sitting. Which is good for someone like me, because very often I have to pretend to be busy and can’t sit in bed watching telenovelas all day. (I tell a lie, it’s all I do- but, it’s good for learning Spanish, right?)

I’ll begin the absurdity by talking about the storyline of this particular series (if you would like to watch it yourself, then please do not read this paragraph.) I figure the series is coming to the end, and the two protagonists (a girl who is referred to lovingly by her enemies as “la pescadora/the fisherwoman”) and the old man (sorry, older man) who has two children and has decided to shack up with the fisher woman have to deal with the old man’s nut-job of an ex-wife, who is suffering some kind of brain disorder where she can’t move one of her arms and legs, but still manages to walk to the circus to trap the clown who she has hired to kill her ex-husband in the lion pit where the clown meant for just the ex-husband to get eaten. *breathe* Did you get any of that?
And that’s only one storyline. There are others which include, baby-knapping, an unsolved murder, and a group of young women sitting in their flat talking about something (I still haven’t quite worked out what, but they do about ten minutes of talking per thirty minute episode, so it must be important.)

Something which makes me laugh is the music. In a film, or even just in a television series, the music can be the make or break of the mood, the scenery, the atmosphere. It can change something from good, to magical. And then you have the use of music in a Mexican telenovela. Now, I’m going to add this comment here first so that what I shall say later will make sense. Once, I was watching Hollyoaks with my friend (which is an English TV-series if you did not know) and my friend, poor girl, wasn’t a regular viewer. I think I do this in general, but I made comments whenever something happened. So, for example, if someone said something that I didn’t agree with, I would say “oh no she didn’t!” or make a disgusted noise. My friend made jokes about this, but as she told me, it was very useful for her to work out what exactly the storyline was and what the significance was of what was happening.

Believe me, with a Mexican telenovela, you wouldn’t need a commentator like me to let you know what was happening. Even if you speak no Spanish, or had only been watching for two minutes, the music lets you know how you should feel about what you are watching. But this is no ordinary music. If someone turns up at the door, someone who shouldn’t be there, we have a long camera shot of about 1 minute directly at their face, and a very deep, “boom boom boooooooom”, but a very cheesy boom boom boom. If you understand what I am trying to convey to you. Or, if there is a joyous scene, there is the sound of what seems like 20 trumpets all declaring that you should be happy at this moment in time. When I watched one with my mum, she couldn’t quite get over the music either. But, I must say, it does add to the whole atmosphere.

I mentioned the camera shots earlier. I’m not quite sure whether they hire professionals to do the shooting, or whether they just drag anyone in off the street so they have more money to pay for the mountains of makeup they use on the cast (more about that later). They zoom into actors' faces, and then pan out, in the space of thirty seconds, they move the camera around, they continuously go back and forth to one character’s face during a conversation between two other characters. This happened the first time I watched this series, and I found it quite bizarre- this character was not talking, but it seemed to be essential that they showed her reaction (which, by the way, never changed) to the conversation between her parents who were talking at the time? Again, bizarre.

Now to the makeup. Every character wears so much. Even the men. It reminds me a bit of "The only way is Essex" although, thankfully, these people are slightly less orange. But, they are always made up to the nines. Their makeup is always perfect (unless they’re meant to be a tramp, and then they just have an awful lot of black on their face), and their hair is always “just so”. The one thing that always gets me: the crazy ex-wife that I mentioned earlier, who cannot use one of her arms as it has gone numb (every episode she has to demonstrate this by constantly hitting hit, shouting at it, saying “WHY CAN’T I MOVE MY ARM!” and holding it constantly) always has perfect makeup. I know, I know, these programmes aren’t supposed to be real. But every time I see her I just think, how does she get her makeup that perfect if she can only use one hand? How is her hair always so perfectly curled like that? I’m silly I know. But give her props- every time she’s on screen I watch her to make sure she doesn’t move that arm. Lo and behold, she hasn’t moved it yet. She may just be an Oscar winner.

Well, I feel I’ve done that series justice enough. Seriously, if you can speak any Spanish, I would tell you to give it a look, because, although I’ve been quite critical, it is one of the best Mexican telenovelas I’ve seen. I watched quite a few when I was in Barcelona last year, and compared to them, this is pure gold.
I will, of course, continue to watch it. I want to see if the crazy ex-wife finally gets her revenge.

:D