Formatos híbridos y melodrama en televisión: El caso de Belén Esteban como heroína postmoderna. Estudio de Recepción.

Abstract

This article investigates the hybrid nature of the media stories about celebrities-in-relation (that is, tose celebrities which are famous for being related to other celebrities). The media persona of Belén Esteban illustrates the relationship between this kind of narrative and the soap opera: she was constructed as the heroine of one of these series by the participants of a Reception Study in which a good part of this work is based. Moreover, La Estebanis also related to reality shows, especially because she works as a commentator for one of them in Telecinco. Classic soap operas and reality shows offer different worldviews: the first group offer a maniquean version of reality whilst the second group offer a more complex and perspectivisticapproach. In this way, the article seeks to investigate the range of potential interpretations offered by the story of Belén Esteban, which can be decoded in several ways by people with different sensibilities. These differences are, at the same time, connected to structural and cultural changes of ‘modernisation’ and ‘post-modernisation’ of society