LOOKING CRITICALLY AT THE TELENOVELA EL CLON

The telenovela “El Clon” is a production by three television networks from the U.S., Colombia and Brazil (Telemundo, Caracol and Globo respectively), released in 2010. It portrays, according to its cover, “a love that challenges the established between two conflicting cultures”, referring to the American and the Moroccan culture.

The telenovela reinforces the imaginary of the West and the East as complete opposites, associating the West with secularism and sexual liberation and the East with oppressive values and practices, derived from Islam. After watching the first twenty episodes of the telenovela, I found the messages portrayed in El Clon problematic, in that they reinforce stereotypes and normalize violence. These attributes contribute to further stigmatizing Islam in the U.S. and affirming an imaginary of superiority of the West.

​In this set of collages I focus on several strategies deployed in the telenovela for making visible this imaginary, in relation to the portrayal of women and how the American and Moroccan societies are depicted.

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​PIECE No. 1
YOU LOOK GREAT TOGETHER
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Miami and Fez, the two cities where El Clon takes place, are depicted in the telenovela as complete opposites in terms of cultural, economic and social values. These sharp differences are evident in the visual elements chosen: While Miami is depicted as progressive and modern, everything about Fez is backward and outdated. The aim of this piece is to bring the two cities together in an inseparable conundrum. The composition includes elements of both cities making it in some cases difficult to see which city they belong to.
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PIECE No. 2
SALVATION
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In episode No. 14, Cristina (on the right) visits Jade to advise her on romantic relationships. The script illustrates an attempt for rescuing Jade from her conservative roots and incites her to “leave everything behind” at the cost of finding love. Jade agrees with Cristina.
In this piece I take the dialogue of this scene and make small interventions in Jade’s responses, for the audience to imagine a more reflective, less condescended perspective on her values and her story.
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PIECE No. 3
LETTER TO JADE
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Addressed to the protagonist of El Clon, this letter aims to resolve the overcomplicated dilemma of belonging and identity, which haunts Jade, the protagonist, throughout the telenovela.
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​PIECE No. 4
GLOBO'S STATEMENT OF SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY (ILLUSTRATED)
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This piece displays the declaration of social responsibility by the TV network Globo, taken from their official website. Globo refers to "social merchandising" as an innovative practice of dealing with social topics in their telenovelas. However, it is not acknowledged how telenovelas portray such topics, usually causing harm to society by reinforcing stereotypes and normalizing domestic violence. El Clon is mentioned in the statement as a telenovela that deals with chemical dependency: a topic that appears around episode No.100 and is not nearly as relevant to the story, as the portrayal of Islam. Over the simplistic descriptions of social responsibility by Globo I have placed images from two scenes of El Clon where woman are slapped, as punishment for their sexuality. The main graphic element is distortion, both in the text and the image, suggesting the ability of the TV industry to distort messages and meaning, even when adopting the language of social responsibility.

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​PIECE No. 5
MEN AS A SYMBOL
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Muslim men are strongly stereotyped in El Clon as authoritarian, aggressive and in charge of protecting and deciding over women’s lives. These attributes constitute the main Muslim male character: Sidi Ali. On the contrary, there are a variety of profiles depicting Western men, like scientists, millionaires and entrepreneurs.
However, what is communicated behind the portrayal of these differences is an overarching component of male authority and patriarchal values that define all male characters regardless of cultural background. The male is then just a symbol of superiority that remains unchanged. This piece collects six western characters of El Clon, and places them in juxtaposition with Sidi Ali, who embodies the iconic symbol of male supremacy.