Images of Heaven
2013 Update
The Internet is a lot bigger than it was when I originally wrote this page over a decade ago. With Twitter, it’s a lot easier for famous novela stars to reach out to their fans; I have had two stars in the novela I’m currently watching (La Tempestad) interact with me there.It comes to no surprise that Mariana Torres now has a Twitter and is much easier to reach than she was when this page was originally written.
Mariana Torres and her worshipers
Something possessed meAn image of you my love
Video visions
That play on my mind
Recently, I was looking for information on a Mexican soap opera called Como en el Cine (roughly translated: "Like being in the movies"). Performing a Google search, I found myself on a web page which a fan set up for one of the actresses, whose name happens to be Mariana Torres.
The pages were the standard fare which I have seen countless times on the Internet; someone with one of those hi-tech TV capture cards videotaped some programs and made images from those programs available on the web for everyone's enjoyment. The words on the web page, though, ended with a personal dedication from the person who made the web page to the actress in question.
It was interesting that, of all of the actresses in this particular soap opera, that this one was chosen to be the object of someone's adoration.
I need to describe Como en el Cine to explain.
To make a complicated, well, soap opera simple, the story has two main parts; one part consists of some grown-up women who alternate between singing and dancing for the audience of an imaginary club, and hang out and argue over love in said club. These women wear far less clothing than any sane latina would be caught wearing in public. I would expect that the object of one's objection would be one of these women; they are quite attractive. In fact, TV Azteca's (the network that makes Como en el Cine) home page links to a photo gallery of these actresses, labelled "Look at our Jewels".
In addition, there is another subplot which involves girls at a private preparatoria (roughly the equivalent of a high school in the US); being a Catholic school, the girls are almost always wearing conservative school uniforms. These girls, like the girls in the club, at times perform songs and dances for the television viewing audience; just before Christmas, for example, they were performing Christmas carols.
I would expect that the girls in the club subplot would get the most fan web pages; however, it was an actress playing one of the girls at the imaginary Catholic high school that got the one and only fan page I have found for Como en el Cine.
2013 update Back when I wrote this, showing appreciation for an actress took a little more time than hitting the “follow” button on Twitter. I think the reason that the only Como en el cine fan page was for this then-teenager is because the only people who spent enough time on the Internet in Latin America at the time to set up a web page were high school students who would tend to be more attracted to someone their own age instead of a “grown up”.
This fan page also has a guestbook, opening up the guestbook, I found a number of impassioned pleas for this actress' love. People wrote things such as
"I once had the oppertunity to go to the TV station ... I had the great fortune of meeting her in the elevator; I have stayed in love with her since then"The number and intensity of pleas from her fans was incredible, I could not believe that an actress so minor as to not even be found when doing a search at tvazteca.com for "Mariana Torres" could obtain such a following."I think she is the most beautiful girl ever to be on TV ... P.S. Mariana, I love you; please write me"
"I just want to tell you that I'm your #1 fan ... My deepest wish is to one day get to know you"
"You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my entire life"
"You are the most incredibly perfect actress"
"You are the most beautiful girl in the universe"
"Know, Mariana, that you are beautiful, that you are a princess, that you are a goddess, that you are the very essence of beauty; I hope one day you send me photos so I can always have you with me"
"I loved her before even knowing her name"
"What an incredible surpirse when this princess appeared on my TV"
"I do not know how to tell you that you are so amazing . Words can not describe how crazy I am for you"
"Mariana, you're awesume and I never miss your soap opera ... I hope that one day you email me"
2013 update I wonder if her now long-term boyfriend Armando Torrea was one of the people who signed this guestbook with such adoration for Mariana. Somehow, I doubt it. Then again, he does claim to adore her as much as anyone who signed that guestbook so long ago.
Nobody blessed me
with power to reach my love
When you're an illusion
You can still be divine
2013 update Thank you, again, Twitter, for making it easier for fans to connect with the actors and actresses they adore
I finally hit the point I grew tired of lurking. I posted to the guestbook. I told the people on the board that I found it strange to be declaring love to somone that they do not know. I also said that I would write up a web page in English describing this phenomenon. Hence, the web page that you are reading.
Peter Godwin's classic new wave hit Images of Heaven, the source of the poetry which I quote above, very well describes the situation Mariana's fans are in. The very impersonal mass media can produce fantasies in the imaginations of people who yearn for true contact in today's often times very dehumanizing society.
I shamelessly stole the above picture of Mariana from the Spanish-language Mariana fan web page; they, in turn, shamelessly stole the image from the television show "Club Disney" (That is the word ordering; Spanish places the adjective after the noun and both words are the same in both languages).
Links
- Mariana has a Twitter. How the Internet has changed since I originally wrote this page.
- The fan page in question (In Spanish) Amazingly, still up after all these years.