The context in which telenovela characters develop is distinct from U.S. soap operas or primetime television. The telenovela is a historically and politically aware genre; it attends to the class conflicts and institutional problems that its audiences face. As such the telenovela’s focus on love, marriage, and the reconstitution of the nuclear family comes from an effort to romanticize stability. Cinderella stories of impoverished “good” girls who fall in love with rich men temper concerns about poverty and social mobility. In Jane the Virgin, these themes play out in much the same way, and the question of the women’s financial security is woven into romantic storylines. Alba’s backstory reads like a fairy tale: She fell in love with a rich boy who came from Venezuelan oil money, but her parents didn’t approve. He gave up his fortune and decided to move to America with her. When Xiomara rekindles her romance with Rogelio, a rich and famous telenovela star, she too seems headed for her own happy ending.

But telenovela heroines must earn their happy endings—by establishing their moral superiority over their rivals. Morality and religion play a big role in telenovelas, much like they do in the everyday lives of many Latinos and Latin Americans. In Jane the Virgin, Catholicism is deployed to test the women’s views on sex and motherhood, as seen in the abortion storyline of the first episode. This comes up again in a later episode when Jane, already pregnant, decides to have sex with her fiancée, Michael, despite initially wanting to wait until marriage. The show renders their decision a practical one—after all, what does Jane have to lose now that she’s pregnant? But it’s harder than anticipated for Jane to let go of Alba’s well-intentioned but overwrought proclamations about the sacredness of Jane’s “flower.”

But perhaps the most important way Jane the Virgin reveals itself as a show with an inherently Latino perspective is how it deals with issues of citizenship. In an unlikely sequence of events, Alba ends up in the hospital in a coma. Xiomara is informed that because Alba’s in the country illegally, she’ll be deported when she wakes up. At this moment, text appears onscreen that reads, “Yes, this really happens. Look it up. #immigrationreform.” The possible separation of Alba from Jane and Xiomara threatens the stability of the show’s emotional center, but this medical-repatriation plot point isn’t just played for dramatic effect. It’s of the same tradition as other telenovelas like Tierra de Pasiones (Land of Passions) and El Alma Herida (The Wounded Soul) that also explicitly deal with immigration issues.

Jane the Virgin is the rare show that builds the culture of the people it’s depicting into its very DNA. It so expertly deploys tropes, styles, and themes familiar to Latino audiences—while still being accessible to a broad range of viewers—that it almost seems crass to call it a successful case study of what happens when a network commits to “diversity.” What Jane has accomplished in its first season is admirable, and not all shows depicting underrepresented groups can strike a perfect balance between entertainment and political awareness. Perhaps to blame is the prevailing belief that actors of color should most aspire to roles with no racial component. But color-blind casting just makes televisual worlds look more like reality: As Jane the Virgin proves, the messy, beautiful specifics are what bring that reality to life onscreen.

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