The Force of Myth on Popular Narratives: The Case of Melodramatic Serials

Abstract

Melodramatic serials such as American soap operas and Latin American telenovelas work with the narrative logic of myth and can be endowed with the cultural and performative power of myth. The properties of melodramatic serials, historicity, collectivity, syntagmatic flexibility, and paradigmatic parsimony, are in important ways common to mythical narratives. The textual affinity between melodramatic serials and mythical narratives suggests that melodramatic serials might function as myth, that is, as a pedagogical and enculturating discourse. Important implications for the practice of education-development and entertainment are derived. It is suggested that the opposition between entertainment and education might be ideological and logical but not performative. Entertainment and education continuously overlap into a general activity of social enculturation that does not recognize the formal boundaries of ideological discourses.

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