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This article presents comparative results about the ways Brazilian working-class and middle-class youth interpret class messages in telenovelas. This work thus explores class differences in light of the current context of Brazilian peripheral modernization and argues for the continuing centrality of telenovelas in communicating to cross-class audiences about modernity. It further develops a systematic methodology for reception studies to account for the complexity of everyday sociocultural interactions and how hegemony functions. The conclusion suggests preferred and negotiated readings of poverty may be associated with telenovela viewing, which, in turn, promotes faith in personal merit and obscures Brazilian inequalities.