In this article, one of the arguments that Saldivar makes is that mass media, such as telenovelas shape women's conciousness and delimit their knowledge of the world. She uses several example from the short story Woman Hollering Creek to support her. Cleofilas does indeed compare her life a few time to telenovelas, but she is struck by reality when she realizes that her marriage will not have a happy ending. I do agree that women, not only Mexican women are influenced very much by stories such as telenovelas. Many american women grow up listening to fairy tales where young girls are rescued from their awful lives by Prince Charming. These fairy tales and telenovelas do impact us a lot, but I don't believe that they "shape our conciousness." Cleofilas did wish for her life to be like the telenovelas, but don't we all at some point expect a Prince Charmig? Telenovelas are simply made for enternainment, and I do not believe they delimit Mexican's women,or Cleofilas knowledge of the world. Cleofilas simply expected a happy marriage and was let down, just like all the other divorced women all over the world.
Great Jackie.
ReplyDeleteYou make a nice critical intervention in S-H's argument. While I would have liked to see you develop it a bit more, you rightly point out that even though S-H is trying to suggest a specifically Chicana feminist difference between Cleofilas' experience and that of other women, there are, in fact, many resonances with women all over the world. The question is, are those women "third world women" like those to which Cherríe Moraga alludes?