Arnold’s Telenovela Plot Line Less Fun In Real Life

I remember back when I first started joining my tías in watching telenovelas, the main character was one of those ever-pure types who somehow manages not to consummate her marriage to a man she does not love. Because, you see, she was really in love with someone else. In another, the women of the house begin to fall in love with the hired help, in yet another, the maid becomes the master’s victim or lover. We’d all watch, and criticize, and laugh, and scream at the TV, because it was all in good fun. It wasn’t real.

But when telenovelas become real, it’s not fun anymore. And what we’ve seen from the past few days’ worth of news coverage, when telenovelas become real life — as is the case with former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the child he fathered with a former member of his household staff, a Latina — these things just simply are not as entertaining. Actually, they hurt. Quite a bit.

If you want more details about this deal, you can read our coverage here, but what I think is important to underscore here is that these themes we watch in telenovelas as entertainment — betrayal, adultery, lust, greed, heartbreak — are so captivating because they’re the things we fear most in real life. Think about it, there really isn’t anyone that wins in this whole painful ordeal. There’s his wife and children who feel betrayed and lied to, he’s lost his family, his former mistress was relegated to being the maid and his hapless, hidden son is now being thrust into the spotlight, having never really been able to know his father.

Que tristeza.

I guess if you want to get political, we can say that this shows just exactly what Schwarzenegger is made of. After all this is an immigrant who voted for the anti-immigrant Proposition 187 in California, who vetoed a bill to giving immigrants driver’s licenses, who now wants to joke about how bad Arizona’s immigration law is and has been asked by President Obama for advice on how to deal with the immigration issue in the country. This is the same guy who, after fathering a child without telling anyone with a Latina, called a Latina lawmaker “hot” tempered because of her ethnic background.

At the end of the telenovelas, the bad guys always get theirs and the good guys always see their dreams come true. But I can’t say what that would look like in real life in this situation. Will María forgive Arnold? Will his son become a part of the family? What happens next for the woman forced to be “la otra mujer” as she cleaned up after Arnold’s other family? Whatever the answer, I’m sure as is wont to happen in our culture, Arnold will be just fine, even as the women and children in his life are forced to pick up the pieces from his broken telenovela.

Follow Sara Inés Calderón on Twitter @SaraChicaD