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Soap opera speaks a universal language, presenting characters and plots that resonate far beyond the culture that creates them. Latin American soap operas—telenovelas—have found enthusiastic audiences throughout the Americas and Europe, as well as in Egypt, Russia, and China, while Mexican narco-dramas have become highly popular among Latinos in the United States. In this first comprehensive analysis of telenovelas and narco-dramas, Hugo Benavides assesses the dynamic role of melodrama in creating meaningful cultural images to explain why these genres have become so successful while more elite cultural productions are declining in popularity.

Benavides offers close readings of the Colombian telenovelas Betty la fea (along with its Mexican and U.S. reincarnations La fea más bella and Ugly Betty), Adrián está de visita, and Pasión de gavilanes; the Brazilian historical telenovela Xica; and a variety of Mexican narco-drama films. Situating these melodramas within concrete historical developments in Latin America, he shows how telenovelas and narco-dramas serve to unite peoples of various countries and provide a voice of rebellion against often-oppressive governmental systems. Indeed, Benavides concludes that as one of the most effective and lucrative industries in Latin America, telenovelas and narco-dramas play a key role in the ongoing reconfiguration of social identities and popular culture.

Since the debut of These Are My Children in 1949, the daytime television soap opera has been foundational to the history of the medium as an economic, creative, technological, social, and cultural institution. In Her Stories, Elana Levine draws on archival research and her experience as a longtime soap fan to provide an in-depth history of the daytime television soap opera as a uniquely gendered cultural form and a central force in the economic and social influence of network television. Closely observing the production, promotion, reception, and narrative strategies of the soaps, Levine examines two intersecting developments: the role soap operas have played in shaping cultural understandings of gender and the rise and fall of broadcast network television as a culture industry. In so doing, she foregrounds how soap operas have revealed changing conceptions of gender and femininity as imagined by and reflected on the television screen.

The first comprehensive study of dizi, a television genre unique to Turkey akin to soap opera or telenovela. 

Standing at the crossroads of folklore, media, and performance studies, Arzu Öztürkmen explores the rise of the dizi genre in Turkey since the 1970s, when national television broadcasting began in the country. The Delight of Turkish Dizi approaches this unique genre—not quite soap opera or telenovela—as an art form that developed with the collective creative input of writers, producers, directors, actors, editors, musicians, and, lately, international distributors. Öztürkmen shows how dizi-making is a marathon run by sprinters, where production and broadcasting processes have been tightly interwoven, offering a mode of communication and consumption that is distinct to the Turkish television industry. The research consists of oral history with key figures in dizi production and ethnographic surveys of film sets, international content markets, and award ceremonies. This first-ever monograph on Turkish dizi will be a valuable addition to the field of performance and media studies while delighting the general reader as well.