Searching For "La Madrastra"

Late Friday night I posted an entry about the Final Episode of La Madrastra and since then a few hundred people have entered Clemenseando via search engines.

Well, actually I don't know that for a fact. It could be the same person typing out several dozen queries in English and Spanish through ninge different search engines over the course of a month. But that doesn't seem likely, either. I don´t mention this out of vanity (after all, we are talking about a pathetically low number) rather out of curiosity as to the identity of these folks. 

I am particularly intrigued by those searches in English. The data set is tiny but I'd like to hazard a guess. Namely, there is a population of English-dominant viewers out there watching telenovelas. (By the way, I hate the term English-dominant it reeks of S&M.) Furthermore, I am willing to pile rampant speculation atop my guess and suggest these English-language searchers might be Hispanics who do not feel comfortable writing in Spanish. Of course, my theory is built on a house of cards but I am attached to it. I have always thought if I were running a small station in Iowa I would buy telenovelas and air them dubbed or with subtitles.

Many people understandably heap scorn on the genre for its melodrama and low production values. Yet, you only have to watch a single episode of a popular telenovela to understand its stranglehold on people around the world.

Telenovelas are like crack cocaine and a whole lot of people are addicted.