Love, Tears, Betrayal ...and Health Messages
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The power of fiction
An early indication of telenovelas' enormous potential came in 1986, when a character on Venezuela’s Cristal was diagnosed with breast cancer. The episode led to an avalanche of female patients getting check-ups in Venezuela and in Spain, where the series also aired. But there were even earlier experiences. In Entertainment Education: A Communication Strategy for Social Change, Everett Rogers and Arvind Singhal analyze the success of Simplemente María (Simply Maria), the story of a Peruvian country woman who moves to the city, becomes pregnant, is betrayed and must carry and give birth to her baby alone. After the show aired in Peru in 1969 (it was readapted later in several other countries), there was a marked increase in enrollment in classes for literacy and sewing—the two things that helped Maria overcome her obstacles and move on in life. Unintentionally, Simply Maria had produced social change.
Los hijos de nadie (Nobody's Children) was among Mexico's "telenovelas for development." The show sparked a national debate about abandoned children.
(Photo courtesy Miguel Sabido)
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Observing these successes, Miguel Sabido, former vice-president of the Mexican network Televisa and a pioneer in "edutainment," produced a series of seven programs between 1975 and 1978, socalled "telenovelas for development," that combined education and entertainment. One, titled Caminemos (Let’s Go), promoted sexual responsibility among adolescents. Nosotras las mujeres (We Women) promoted the notion of gender equality in Mexican society and Ven Conmigo (Come with Me) encouraged adult education.
"My intention was to have commercial television produce social benefits through telenovelas, which are viewed by the very people who most need to become better informed," says Sabido. "I wanted to provide those viewers with the tools they need to improve their own lives. I set up study groups to analyze behaviors and ways of incorporating positive messages without betraying the rules of the genre. I capitalized on the shows’ capacity for moral reflection about good and evil and showed how all this could be done without hurting their ratings."
In 1994, Colombia’s Ministry of Health coproduced Santa María del Olvido (Saint Mary the Forgotten), a telenovela about social and health issues aimed at a female audience. Last year, officials from Brazil's Ministry of Health acknowledged that the theme of drug addiction in TV Globo's El clon (The Clone) in 2001 had done more for the prevention and treatment of drug dependency than many government campaigns. As the troubled young Mel watched his life fall apart because of drug abuse, the show’s screenwriters inserted snippets of testimony from real-life drug addicts between the dramatized scenes.
| Brazilians give for life
Brazil's TV Globo network has been incorporating social themes into its telenovelas since 1990. According to the most recent edition of its annual report Social Marketing: Entertainment Serving Social Good, in 2002 more than a thousand episodes of telenovelas included social themes, ranging from condom use and organ donation to caring for the environment.
To demonstrate telenovelas’ potential for promoting social change, TV Globo producers carried out a study in which they tracked changes in health services during the airing of Lazos de Sangre (Blood Ties), whose protagonist, Camila, was diagnosed with leukemia. The study, titled "The Camila Effect," found that in November 2000, during the show’s early episodes, Brazil’s National Registry of Bone Marrow Donors reported an average of 20 new registrations per month. In January 2001, when the leukemia plot had become more established, there were 900 new registrations. Similarly, "Disque Salud," a Ministry of Health call-in service that provides information and referrals for organ and blood donation, received 67 calls in November 2000 but 458 by January 2001. The Hematology Institute of Rio de Janeiro registered 10 blood donors in November 2000 but 154 the following January.
During the airing of El Clon (The Clon), which dealt with drug addiction, calls to the National Anti-Drug Society of Brazil increased from 900 in January 2002 to 6,000 in May of the same year. Other organizations working on drug dependency observed increases of up to 120 percent in calls requesting information and help.
Responding to such success, producers, writers and public health advocates have been working together to reinforce health themes through week-long public awareness campaigns aired in conjunction with the telenovelas. El Beso del Vampiro (Kiss of the Vampire), for example, was aired the same week as International Blood Donation Day. |
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"It occurred to me that testimony from people who were really suffering from drug problems would be more effective and less moralistic than psychologists babbling about how bad drugs are," says screenwriter Gloria Perez. More than 45 million viewers watched the telenovela’s final episode.
As Camila, of Blood Ties, battled leukemia, Brazil saw a dramatic increase in blood and bone marrow donor registrations.
(Photos courtesy TV Globo)
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In Brazil’s Blood Ties (2000), Camila, the star, needed blood and bone marrow donations to help her fight leukemia. In the days following the leukemia episode, interest in real-life donations increased dramatically. A similar result followed a 1992 episode of De cuerpo y alma (Of Body and Spirit) about the need for a heart donation.
Perez notes that while telenovelas cannot singlehandedly solve social problems, they can make a significant contribution. "When telenovelas spark national interest, organizations working on the same issues should take advantage of the heightened interest and carry out public-awareness campaigns," she says.
Currently, the Hollywood, Health and Society program at the University of Southern California (USC) is working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to train screenwriters and producers on health issues. Recently, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) helped Suriname import the South African soap Soul City, whose plots cover such issues as AIDS, teenage pregnancy and drug addiction.
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