Character Development and Dynamism
Throughout watching my telenovela of choice, The Marked Heart, one character stuck out to me as the most dynamic and developed in the entire drama. Most notably, he almost completely shifts roles in one of the most popular tropes in the traditional telenovela, “ Cinderella”. At the beginning of the course, Dr.A introduced the “Cinderella” trope for gender. In this trope, the main female protagonist is represented as a beautiful, naive, pure, and poor woman who gets elevated in status by “the prince” whom she falls in love with.
The Marked Heart seems to begin its story at what could be the ending of a “Cinderella” trope. Our main female protagonist, Camilla, is a photographer who falls in love with a well-known political strategist, Zacarias, whom she originally did not believe she could ever fall for. It seems these two have gotten their happy ending when the telenovela begins; however, things quickly change as tragedy and life-changing choices arise. Camila still remains the “Cinderella” in the story, but the face of “the prince” shifts to Simon, the main male protagonist, when she discovers Zacarias’ true evil nature and he starts to represent the antagonist character. While the audience may know from the beginning of his true nature, the duality of Zacarias’ character representation from Camilla’s point of view is very interesting and fascinating to watch unfold in real-time. In the beginning, she sees him very much on par with “the prince” character as a wealthy, handsome, flawed yet good man, and then slowly realizes his manipulative, selfish, and malicious nature.
While Zacarias may be one of the least likable characters, he is most definitely the most interesting and well-developed in the telenovela and because of that, is my favorite character despite him being one of the “villains” in the story. He is set up to be a very dynamic and determined character which makes him very interesting and entertaining to watch. While I was never necessarily rooting for him and his motives, I always found myself on the edge of my seat in preparation for what he would do next.
Hi!! I love the way you described the way Zacarias presents himself differently to Camila than he does to others. I haven't watched the show, but I feel I have a good enough consensus of the plot from your post. As an audience-member, seeing both sides of a two-faced character seems like it would be so intriguing, and it makes you wonder who could be using the same manipulation tactics in real life. I feel this two-faced nature of Zacarias could be an interesting opportunity to analyze his behaviors so that we can notice things like this in the people around us and develop better judgement of character. Melodramas may just serve as something engaging to watch every once in a while, but why not use them to teach us lessons, too? Maybe I'll start watching this show when I finish mine. It looks super interesting and I'm glad I was introduced to it through your post!
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