Soap Operas

I broke my TV. It was an accident of course. Maybe I should clarify; I broke the back of the television that connected the viewing tube to the converter box. Now I can't watch anything unless it's in cd format and accepted by my PS2. I should’ve known that was going to happen. I was trying to "organize". Last time I tried that, I broke my bed. I am sometimes possessed by what seem like brilliant ideas and execute them by going from point A to point E. The night I broke my bed for example, I had the genius idea to move my room around and thought the quickest way would be dragging my bed, right? Wrong. My bed is huge and heavy. Apparently, I was supposed to remove the mattress and springboard first, to reduce the weight -- but how was I supposed to know? No one told me.

Anyhow, my television is now broken. At least it wasn't new. It was old, really old. So now, if I want entertainment I need to pop in a DVD. Lucky for me, I finally bought my four favorite soap operas - the Maria trilogy (Maria Mercedes, Marimar, and Maria la del Barrio) and Rosalinda. They're amusing in all of the unrealistic, sadistic, masochistic drama. Watching them leads me to question so many things.

I remember writing my thesis and concluding that soap operas are nothing but social commentary ridiculing the absurd gender role expectations in different cultures. I mean, what woman is so good (and stupid) that is willing to wait for some dude that just screwed her over, slept with her cousin, who is truly her mother and keeps her from seeing their child, while accusing her of being a whore? "Jose Armando, te amo y sin ti no puedo vivir". Come’n, you know that's a joke. Or is it? I mean, are women really that stupid? One would hope not. But (yeah, there's a but - scary), now that I'm older and more "experienced" (note that I use the term loosely), I can kind of see and almost, somewhat, slightly understand how that can be.

Love, or infatuation or hormones can be toxic and blinding, leading a perfect cynic to behave in uncharacteristic ways. I guess how far women are willing to go or how much they're willing to sacrifice for what they deem as "worthy" is subjective; it varies from woman to woman and from experience to experience. What I may constitute as total humiliation, may be nothing for another woman, or absolutely too much for another.

Now, I'm not saying that soap operas are realistic in any way but just they're not as scornful as before. I'm also not as utterly disgusted with the classic love story of Romeo and Juliet. I still don't like it, but it doesn't have the same excruciatingly obnoxious effect that it did 5 years ago, or even a year ago. It can somewhat make sense. A couple of weeks ago, re-watching Marimar, I was able to sympathize in a way I had never been able to before. Strange, how experience can lead one to view and approach things differently. Don’t get me wrong, I still feel that if I ever act that pathetic, someone should take me outside and put me out of my misery. The difference is that now I say it with a deeper understanding because I now know you can’t control your sentiments.