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

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Nada Personal and government critique

Nada Personal and government critique

I have begun watching Nada Personal and I love the realistic problems and issues which this telenovela attacks. I was reading some background info on the telenovela and found out that it is based on the life of Carlos Sortinas de Gortari, former president of Mexico (1988-1994). He was known for keeping shady company around him and his life has quite a wild plotline to boot. Already I have been able to match some of the events of his life to specific problems within the telenovela. Among some of his more notorious doings: two suspicious shut downs of the computerized voting system while votes were being cast and counted during his election day, spending tons of government money on self promotion, a self imposed exile to Ireland (in which he of course found himself a new wife), and his eventual return to Mexico support his own book release. His on-screen scumbag personality is played by Rogelio Guerra in the role of a crooked cop boss, Comandante Fernando Gómez Miranda, or 'El Águila Real'. In the first episodes of the telenovela ‘El Aguila’ has already killed his good friend and honest political figure while developing a profound interest in his newly widowed wife. I realize that such a direct criticism of a recent government (Nada Personal aired in 1996, just two years after Gotrari’s term ended) can be hard to get approved in many corners of the world, but I wonder if Mexico’s government at the time saw it as potentially beneficial smearing of Gortari and his party, and were therefore more willing to let real problems for them such as police corruption and drug problems to air at the cost of political gain. It will be something worth looking into as I get to watch this story unfold.

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