Night 12

Put on the television and found that all sorts of shows from the states are on here. Just great. The difference is yep, just like Japan many of the shows are dubbed. Seinfeld however is not.

Well every night Brazil stops to watch their novelas. In the states these shows are on in the early afternoon, to compete with those reruns of MASH, but here in Brazil most people, well those who watch t.v., tune into Globo (the NBC of Brazil) nightly and watch whatever the new series is.

The latest series, "Viver a Vida", although not that interesting, was useful to familiarize myself with the language back in Japan. Last night was the season finale where the main character who had spent the entire season in a wheel chair gave birth to twins among other things and then resumed her modeling career in the final scenes. It seems like they are desperately trying to become more politically conscious. I like the effort, but it is laughable because they are falling short.

Its important to point out that the three major networks Globo, Record TV, and that other one, sign actors, and under contract cannot work for any other network. So the same actors are recycled and spread out through their entire weekly lineup. This practice feels stale after a while. The casts are often racially diverse with the exception of Asians, in a country where there are nearly 1.5 million Japanese, the highest population outside of Japan, and nearly 30,000 Koreans it is surprising these three networks are not trying to sign more asian talent.

Globo's,"Viver a Vida" is one of the very few novelas to feature an asian actress, Daniella Suzuki, in their lineup. In television journalism there are even fewer Asians featured. With the exception of Record TV who for the past five years has had Catarina Hong as their daily correspondent in Tokyo; there are few others. I hope this new move featuring models facing adversity indicates a new face for Globo: where actors and journalists eventually represent all of Brazil's demographics proportionately.