Television as Cultural Programming Tool

"The Azcárraga empire has shaped at least three generations of Mexicans. According to studies conducted by the National Consumer Institute, an average Mexican child spends about 1,500 hours a year in front of the television versus less than 1,000 hours in school. Statistics like this raise doubts about which of the two has had greater influence."

"More than 80 million regular viewers are exposed daily to models and expectations that are very rarely met in reality. This sociocultural influence has had obvious superficial manifestations. Since the 1950s, when blonde actresses arrived on television and advertisers preferred people with fair skin and brown or blonde hair to present their products, sales of blond hair dye increased."

"Less obvious was that the casting of light-skinned women for the roles of heroines, whose characters were based on the mestizo majority—maids or chambermaids, for example—created a tension at the beginning of the telenovela. The poor blonde, often played by a well-known actress from an affluent class, looked out of place in a situation of poverty. That tension helped give the telenovela an initial impetus and to arouse interest in the story: how would the heroine find happiness in the white-skinned world of the upper class, to which she so clearly belonged? The final integration of the white woman into that society offered viewers the assurance that the world not only possessed a natural justice but a natural racial hierarchy."