Between sitcoms and telenovelas

The unrecognized role of edutainment in defining Ivorian televisual genre

Bibliographic Data

ID2173183
AuthorsJulie Dénommée (Centre d’études et de recherches internationales CERIUM, Montréal, Canada)
Year2019
Volume31
Issue2
Pages242-256
Publication date2019-05-04
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of African Cultural Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1369-6815 • E-ISSN: 1469-9346
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13696815.2018.1547876
OpenAlexW2905922413
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited17

This article examines the interactions between Ivorian television genre and global genres, such as telenovelas and sitcoms. During the 2000s, Ma famille, an Ivorian TV show, was an unprecedented success throughout French-speaking Africa. The show presents family relations in a modern urban Africa, until then a topic hardly seen on television screens. Many attribute this innovation in Ivorian televisual genre to telenovelas’ omnipresence on West African screens since the 1990s. However, based on directors’ interviews and on a method informed by genre innovation dialectic, this article argues instead for the important role played by edutainment television shows in this process, which adapted the telenovela modalities to local formats. This strategy used by edutainment demonstrates the importance of tropes and themes recurring across a genre, highlighting a surprising course for telenovelas in Côte d’Ivoire and the centrality of Ivorian endogenous popular tradition in the process

Advertising · Art · Centrality · Dialectic · Ideology · Media studies · Movie theater · Omnipresence · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Visual arts · African history and culture studies · Cultural Identity and Heritage · South Asian Cinema and Culture · History

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