A Culture Clings to Its Reflection in a Cleaned-Up Soap Opera (fwd link)

[George Ann Gregory]

Here is an interesting article.

http://news.yahoo.com/man-fights-license-test-hawaiian-191014442.html


On Fri, Aug 2, 2013 at 12:24 PM, Phil Cash Cash <weyiiletpu at gmail.com>wrote:

> TIHOSUCO JOURNAL
>
> *A Culture Clings to Its Reflection in a Cleaned-Up Soap Opera*
>
> By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD
> Published: August 1, 2013
>
> TIHOSUCO, Mexico — It might be the cleanest Mexican soap opera around.
>
> The screening was held near the ruins of a temple in Tihosuco.
>
> The passionate love scenes that are a staple of the genre were reduced,
> bowing to conservative local sensibilities, to a few pecks on the cheek and
> hand-holding as innocent as junior high schoolers on a first date.
>
> It was not the only accommodation made by producers of what is considered
> the first “telenovela,” as soap operas are known here, entirely in an
> indigenous language, Maya, and with a story line rooted in the community.
>
> For starters, María, the love interest, cannot bring herself to say “I am
> falling in love with you” when her beau-to-be, Jacinto, finally gets his
> act together. Because while phrases of desire like “I love you” are roughly
> translatable into Maya, it is trickier to express being “in love” in the
> language.
>
> “It’s more like ‘the heart of my heart is happy,’ ” said Hilario Chi
> Canul, a professor of Mayan language and culture. He also helped write the
> script and also plays the leading man in the telenovela, called “Baktun,”
> which makes its debut this month on Quintana Roo State public television.
>
> Access full article below:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/02/world/americas/a-culture-clings-to-its-reflection-in-a-cleaned-up-soap-opera.html?_r=0




-- 
George Ann Gregory, Ph.D.
Choctaw/Cherokee
Fulbright Scholar

"...everything on the earth has a purpose, every disease an herb to cure
it, and every person a mission. " Mourning Dove (Salish)
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