Nick Morgan

Sex, soap, and society: telenovela noir in Álvaro Uribe's Colombia

This article explores the phenomenon of the narconovela, a variant of the telenovela which emerged in Colombia in the 2000s, gaining huge audiences and dominating the ratings. Taking as its starting point the seminal work of Jesús Martín-Barbero in the 1980s and 90s, it examines the critical reaction to these sensationalist crime stories, questioning the common assumption that their popularity confirms a decline in the moral values of the viewing public. Drawing parallels with film noir, it notes how the pleasure taken in viewing melodramatic and dystopian fictions reveals a number of social tensions without implying that what is in any case a highly diverse audience approves of what it sees on screen. Rather, it understands the narconovela as a dramatisation of the darkest aspects of Colombian common sense which is interpreted in different ways by different social subjects. As part of the argument, it provides a detailed analysis of Sin tetas no hay paraíso, the series which inaugurated the new subgenre, and concludes with the consideration of two small viewer surveys.

¿Lo decimos con cariño? Articulating Blackness in Colombia: Affection, difference or inequality?

Abstract For all its well-publicised problems, Colombia, like several other countries in Latin America, is often presented as a ‘racial democracy’, a nation in which the very issue of race is largely irrelevant given the predominantly mixed nature of its population. The interesting question of whether Colombia can really be considered a democracy escapes the scope of this article, but the claims of those who would argue that the ‘problem of race’ has largely been resolved here would appear to be supported by recent legislation, most specifically the 1991 Constitution, that not only codifies the principle of multicultural nationhood, but also goes some way towards recognising the interests of certain Afro-Colombian and indigenous ethnic groups. 1 As Jaime Arocha puts it, ‘[t]he new Colombian constitution attempts to build the nation neither by integration nor by segregation but by pursuing unity through the preservation of ethnic diversity’. 2

Política e identidad cultural en la desesperanza de José Donoso

Este trabajo analiza la importancia politica de la construccion de la identidad nacional en la novela La dececperanza, del escritor chileno lose Donoso. Aunque gran parte de la critica actual subraya el aparente realismo de esta novela, el presente estudio se enfoca en la manera como la novela construye un conflicto discursivo entre varias concepciones de lo chileno. La tesis central del articulo es que la fuerza critica de La dececperanza reside en su exposicion ironica de los valores imperantes de la clase media chilena, los cuales tienen su origen en un racismo intimamente relacionado con los prejuicios clasistas que han estructurado la sociedad chilena desde la epoca de la Colonia.