Abstract
Researching the history and trends of television and media is a huge task to undertake, especially when the work focuses on the history and trends of groups that are as under-studied or complicated as Latin Americans or Latinos in the United States. This is exactly what the authors of From Telenovelas to Netflix: Transnational, Transverse Television in Latin America undertake as does Mary Beltrán in Latino TV: A History. While these books cover different subjects – Straubhaar et al. television in Latin America and Beltrán Latinos and television in the United States - they highlight the importance of contextualizing and exploring television and media beyond the US-centric lens that pervades much of television studies. To do so, both look to the past to understand the current trends and relationships that Latin Americans and Latinos have with television and media.
Straubhaar et al. historically contextualize contemporary television and media culture in Latin America in order to understand not only the relationship between global and national media in Latin America but also the current dynamics, in the steaming era, between various audience demographics. The authors dig deeper into what is often identified as the unique aspect of Latin American television trends: the dominance of national programming within their respective countries. They analyze data to determine if this underlying assumption about Latin American television is correct and remains relevant in the streaming era. The book concludes that the assumption continues to be true to an extent but that recent trends are chipping away at it. The authors emphasize that cultural proximity – the referencing of national and regional ideas – is a huge reason as to why Latin American audiences preferred national programming (such as telenovelas from their respective countries), but, with a growing middle class obtaining an increased cultural, economic, and linguistic capital, cultural proximity is no longer the sole explanation. While cultural proximity is still important in understanding Latin American television consumption, the authors argue that it is also important to apply the concept of transversality – the intersection of spaces of existence – as streaming and other forms of media create globalized content to appeal to the growing middle and upper class in Latin America.
This ambitious research aim of tracing the genealogy of Latin American television consumption is methodically done through qualitative and quantitative means in each chapter. The six main chapters follow a loosely historical organization as the authors trace the trajectory from the arrival and growth of television in Latin America to the viewing trends in the streaming era. Within each chapter, an extensive literature review is provided for each subtopic: the growth of Latin American television; loyalty to national broadcast television; the popularity of U.S. television in Latin America; changing television trends in the 21st century; streaming and transnationalism; and social and class relationships in the viewing of streamers. Accompanying each literature review, qualitative data shows how Latin American countries support or deviate from prior scholarly research. Along with the general data analysis of television viewing in Latin America, there is also an emphasis on providing case studies of various countries within Latin America in order to explore how these trends work within specific countries. This research is clearly outlined and explained, and the use of smaller case studies helps drive the argument and places the collected data in context with the secondary research.
While the focus of this book is on the national television markets in Latin America, the most illuminating chapters come from the research and case studies focusing on Latin American streaming culture. For example, Chapter 6 explores how various streaming platforms’ strategies, especially those of Netflix, have helped break into the Latin American market by focusing on global rather than regional content. This is done in various ways from tailoring content that focuses on genre or taste preferences, to partnering with major national Latin American television networks and to increasing accessibility of foreign shows through subtitles or dubbing. Such methods allow streaming shows to cross national boundaries with much less risk of failure. Unlike the traditional television network model with its focus on the national productions, streamers are creating content that is transnational with shows based on taste preferences regardless of geographic, linguistic or cultural boundaries.
From Telenovelas to Netflix is an impressive project that culminates in an extremely informative and detailed genealogy of Latin American television from its inception to the modern day. Overall, the book’s main strength lies in the direct way it outlines not only the history and theorization of Latin American television but also the recent trends that deviate from current scholarly understandings. It provides an insightful overview of where the scholarship has been and where it is going and, while the content in the text can be dense, it is extremely enlightening. This book is well suited for those who are already well versed in television or Latin American studies but wish to know more about the intersection of Latin America, television, and streaming.
Latino TV shifts the focus away from Latin America and looks at Latinos within the United States. Beltrán uses this book to survey the history of Latinos in U.S. television (both behind and in front of the television screen) and uncover the glimpses of Latino perspectives and cultures within television. Beltrán further narrows down her scope to look at scripted content – television shows produced with scripts – that contained Latino representation either on or off the screen. Using case studies beginning with the 1950s, Beltrán outlines a genealogy of Latino television history that is untold and under-studied. Discussions of Latino representation are not unusual among those who study Latinos in film and media but Television Studies generally has not devoted space to unpacking the impact of visual representation of Latinos. Beltrán comments that television is not only an important space for cultural discourse but also a site where various ideas of a nation compete with one another simultaneously. She argues therefore that paying attention to the representation and visibility of Latinos on television is vital as a way of recognizing Latinos’ status within the American imagination.
Rather than looking at quantitative data as Straubhaar et al do, Beltran uses archival research, interviews, and textual analysis to understand Latino television history and to emphasize that Latinos have been a part of American television history almost since its inception. Working chronologically, Beltrán discusses the evolution of Latino representation and labour in television history and traces the depiction of stereotypes from TV westerns of the 1950s, as seen in The Cisco Kid (1950-56), to the 2010s when shows such as One Day at a Time (2017-20) have Latino showrunners and writers. By providing these case studies and organizing them chronologically, Beltrán highlights how Latinos within the television industry have worked to claim ownership of their culture and history. Latino TV also provides a call to arms as it acknowledges the successes of Latinos throughout television history and pushes for further improvements within the American television industry.
Latino TV’s strengths lie in its wide accessibility due to its clear writing style and the focused case studies. It is a text that could be included in an introductory television class while still providing complex ideas that pushes the reader to think further about representation within television. Additionally, Beltrán balances Latino TV with case studies from well-known television shows and shows that are not commonly researched. For example, in Chapter 3, Beltrán juxtaposes two case studies from the 1970s – Viva Valdez (1976) and Chico and the Man (1974-78) – to highlight the differences between two prime-time shows that contained Latino representation but no Latinos behind the screen. Viva Valdez – a sitcom that focused on a Mexican American family – was a failure even though the depictions of its characters were deemed respectful whereas Chico and the Man – focused on the cultural clash between a bigoted white man and a Mexican American – became a success while containing problematic representations of Mexican Americans. Beltrán argues that the success and failure of these shows highlights how the television industry imagined and constructed the notions of Latino identity and the place that Latinos had in the American imagination. The analysis of both well-known and unknown works extends the appeal of this book to television studies scholars who do not focus on Latinos in the US or who may only have a cursory knowledge of the subject.
Both From Telenovelas to Netflix and Latino TV provide a history and genealogy of their chosen subjects, albeit through completely different methodologies. Through these markedly different approaches, each book successfully tackles a wide range of material and achieves the goals set. While one text may be more accessible to a wider audience than the other, both books make an important contribution to the fields of Television Studies, Latino studies, and Latin American studies.