This is a class blog run by Dr. Carolina Acosta-Alzuru and her students in the course "Telenovelas, Culture and Society" at the University of Georgia during Spring 2011

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

One Tree Hill vs. Telenovelas

During class we have talked about the the ups and downs of a telenovela and how there is always ups and downs and chaos until the very end. In high school, I was a sucker for the show One Tree Hill, which was a teen drama about the lives of two half brothers in a small southern town.

Like a telenovela, the protagonists (Lucas and Peyton) meet when her car breaks down on the side of the road. Unlike a telenovela rosa, Peyton is not interested initially in the smitten Lucas. They are separated by class differences (Lucas is a loser, Peyton is a popular cheerleader). However, once Peyton's best friend Brooke moves in on Lucas, Peyton's relationship heats up with Lucas, causing the first love triangle of the season.

Along another love line, Lucas's half brother Nathan falls madly in love with Lucas's nerdy best friend Haley. As the popular jock, and Peyton's ex-boyfriend, everyone is skeptical about his intentions with her. This fits along the telenovela lines of the class differences and the fact that Nathan is the bad boy manipulating the good, sweet girl.

Lucas's and Nathan's family is also drawn into the mix when the audience discovers that Lucas's mother, Karen, and his father, Dan were high school sweethearts who got pregnant their senior year. Instead of staying with Karen, Scott leaves her and hooks up with Deb in college. Less than 3 later, Deb is pregnant with Nathan. The love triangle that caps them all is obviously this one.

All of these scenarios play out within the first few episodes. The seasons continue to develop the characters. Haley and Nathan get married at 16 and deal with married life and high school. Peyton, Brooke, and Lucas work out their relationships with each other and their love lives.

As the relationships grow and deteriorate in this drama, I can't help but be able to compare OTH to what we have talked about in class with telenovelas. Between the love triangles, social class differences, and the marriage shockers, this tends to fit a more contemporary style of a telenovela.

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