Psy-drama from Martín-Barbero’s perspective

ABSTRACT In 1992, Jesús Martín-Barbero and Sonia Muñoz co-authored a book called Televisión y melodrama: géneros y lecturas de la telenovela en Colombia (Television and melodrama: genres and readings of the telenovela in Colombia). There, the authors proposed some ideas that allow us to understand the new forms of entertainment, typical of the culture of the algorithm, at the dawn of the TVIV era. This article is arranged in the following sections: first, by way of introduction, a distinction is made between soap opera and telenovela in order to show that the analysis of these authors applies to both audiovisual products, now in decline; secondly, the way the audio-visual transition from TVIII to TVIV has experienced a boost during the last years is shown; thirdly, how the authors’ insights on television melodrama find accommodation within the Mediation Theory and in the cultural context of the 1980s and 1990s is explained; finally, the article concludes by highlighting Barbero and Muñoz’s lens (on social typology of screen time and other important conceptual tools) to understand new drama series on streaming media platforms within the context of a psychologized culture.