ZAPPING: The Right to Dream

Talking about a soap opera will always be a risky exercise, because you will rarely go down well with everyone. Almost all soap operas are liked by some and disliked by others, and everyone defends their truth, even with plausible arguments. Although this comment is not final - we always prefer to wait for the television series in question to finish; here are some considerations about *The Right to Dream*, the Cuban soap opera that Cubavisión broadcasts.

The mere fact of dedicating a soap opera to the not always well recognized art and craft of making radio, in many of its features, from drama shows to the general programming, from actors and announcers, to technicians, scriptwriters, directors, managers... and do all this by articulating a vision of the history and projection of that media in Cuba, connecting stages, highlighting marks, fabulating based on emblematic figures and events, all of this is already believable... because it has also been done with narratives, taking into account the nature of the genre.

In other words, this radio macro-theme brings together a range of plots that cover several conflicts, with heroes and villains, with the much-needed confrontation between values and reprehensible attitudes, and of course, with the great motive of a soap opera, the ups and downs of love.

Beyond specific promotions to stations, or the recreation of work dramas, the radio is space, context, guiding line and axis of a network of situations. This is  not propaganda, radio promotional material, an advertising drama. It’s a soap opera through and through. And that may disappoint some who are looking for the document, the report, that is, the radio as it is. There will always be a certain fictional agreement here.

Now, one thing is soap opera stuff, the ability to generate adventures that move the story, with successive turning points, which happens here... and another is that those motives, that those events convince by their consistency. A soap opera is like a puzzle, and the pieces must fit together very well. It does not always happen in The Right to Dream, where there are situations that are forced, weakly supported, as if placed with pincers in the plot line.

It's as if some of the characters could not justify their attitudes with complete rationality. It’s not entirely convincing, for example, the emotional swing of the leading character, some of her actions... although her conflicts are interesting. She is not an impeccable protagonist, an impeccable heroine, there are distinctions.

A point in favor of this soap opera is that there’s mystery, things to be solved, unknowns that may hold surprises. Let's wait for the end.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff