Something Netflix's decision-makers have taken into account recently is the significant historical preference of a large portion of Latin American audiences for telenovelas from Televisa, Caracol, O'Globo, and other broadcasters on the continent. This phenomenon has spread to various parts of the world and is still very much alive, although somewhat less so since the emergence of Turkish soap operas.
For this reason, the American giant began producing soap operas, which only change the name of the format—that is, they sell them as series, even though they aren't—and thus blow their budget, which is much more generous than usual for the genre.
These are given a much more noticeable presence of sex/violence than in the tear-jerker soap operas of the area, which are partly curtailed by being broadcast on open channels during peak hours.
By passing them through the filter of the red N algorithm, they are transformed into soulless and identity-free products, all set in lavish bourgeois mansions and featuring bodies cured in the gym or through digital physical transformation.
The camera observes these anatomies in the most lubricious and exhibitionist way possible, as in La venganza de las Juanas (2021).
Several of the actresses who play the female characters in these new glass menageries display attributes that are the result of plastic surgery, not genetics.
In these materials (many of them broadcast in Cuba), sex is childishly gratuitous and the glorification of hedonism borders on shameful levels, especially when we consider that express intention –so empty–, in the midst of a world dominated by too many urgencies that have no relation to such luxurious spaces or bubbles, in which only the bed, power and evil are of interest.
The trend (which has provided huge dividends to Netflix and has the powerful and uncritical international media support that the platform can afford) began in 2020 with Dark Desire and continues to the present, through the recently released Medusa, Unspeakable Sins and The Host.
Along the way, there were Who Killed Sara?, The Revenge of the Juanas, and Pálpito, all loaded with scenes constructed to serve the exhibition of bodies, not the development of the stories.
Such dramatic outrage can only result in counterfeit works, lacking logic or argumentative or staging criteria, which prioritize sensory dazzlement and the sharing of the epicurean imprint of the characters to a dazzled spectator, trapped in the territory of the most crude evasion.
They divert attention from the anorexia in their plot by constantly scanning the impossible bodies of actors/models, much like Rodolfo Salas, whose pecs and abdomen are the voracious targets of photography in Perfil falso. The same thing happened with actor Eugenio Siller in ¿Quién mató a Sara?
As could not be otherwise with the opportunistic Netflix, these titles also affiliate themselves, with unusual fervor, with the times of "inclusion" and falsely ingratiate themselves with the LGBTQ+ universe, by means of forced—and unnecessary for narrative purposes—supporting of characters and plots.
Fake Profile (2023), for example, at times transmutes into a frenetic ordeal (the subject also appeals to Unconfessable Sins); time and again, the story follows encounters of fake torrid poses, threesomes, foursomes, or whatever comes to mind.
Far from vindicating the virtues of the gay community, such materials only lead to the erroneous idea that it is made up of primal individuals, totally dominated by desire 24/7, beings without real love or values.
Taken from Granma
