World Building in Brazilian Telenovela : A Case Study
from the Top Five Most Remembered Characters
Maria Immacolata Vassallo de Lopes (Coord.)
Ligia Prezia Lemos (Vice-Coord.)
Larissa Leda Rocha
Andreza dos Santos
Lucas Martins Néia
Mariana Lima
Tissiana Pereira
Daniela Ortega1
In our theoretical and methodological readings on the
development of storyworlds that cross various media, we came across
a gap: few texts deal with the character in the issue of world building.
The creation of worlds – as well as the communities imagined through
the media – is a matter that has for long caught the attention of communication and culture researchers. For example, Anderson (2009) and
Appadurai (1996) take the idea of imagination for understanding the
role of the media in the production and constitution of subjectivities
of modern societies. While the former explores how newspapers and
novels provided the technical means for representing a national imagined community, the latter points out the ways in which electronic
media reconfigured the sharing of emotions, inasmuch as it offered
new resources for building “selves” and imagined worlds.
1
The following scholarship students of the Telenovela Studies Center at Universidade de São
Paulo (CETVN-USP) contributed to the research: Vital Soares da Silva Neto, Helena Sabino
Rodrigues Cunha, Diana Soares Cardoso, Gustavo Slachta Rodrigues, Leticia Stamatopoulos
and Marcella Medeiros de Oliveira Silva.
21
In the Brazilian case, it is well known that telenovelas historically
create an imaginary of Brazilian nation (Lopes, 2009). The concept of
“world”, far from being given, can refer to several ideas, such as social
and historical scenario, themes, images or even to general ideas and
an author’s philosophy of life (Ryan, 2014). At the audience end, it is
worth emphasizing that the acceptance of the work takes place through a game of make-believe, in which the public enters an imaginative
world and uses their vision to explain emotional reactions to these works
(Zipfel, 2014). It is fundamental to reflect upon these imaginary worlds,
which runs through characters, plots and ideas, and is an agreement
between producers and at audience end.
Our aim was to study the complexity of the worlds built from the
characters of telenovelas, using those that most called the public’s attention and its affectionate relationship with them. The long extension of the
narrative enables the telenovela to be confused with life, which tightens
the audience’s bond with the characters. The creation of the character in
the telenovela can be taken as a collective construction, which is born
from the author and goes through the director, the staging and the actor
to then reach the public, who dialectically transforms it, building worlds
shaped in the national imaginary, because they symbolize or express a
collective feeling. This perspective dialogues with the approach proposed
by Eco (2002) as regards interpretative cooperation in narrative texts.
1 Possible worlds: origin, concept, developments
The concept of possible worlds emerges in the second half of the
twentieth century, inspired by Liebniz’s philosophy, as a mean of solving problems in formal semantics (Ryan, 2012). Initially developed by
philosophers of the analytical school, the theory of possible worlds was,
in the mid-1970s, adapted to the fictional worlds by philosopher David
Lewis and literary theorists such as Umberto Eco, Lubomír Doležel and
Marie-Laurie Ryan.
22
Based on the idea that reality is an universe composed of a plurality
of distinct worlds, Ryan (2012) points out that the theory of the possible
worlds starts from the assumption that this universe is hierarchically structured by opposition to an element, which works as the center of the whole
system (Kripke, 1963 apud Ryan, 2012). The central element is known as
the “real” world, while the others are possible alternative or unreal worlds.
For a world to be possible, it must be linked to the actual world
by a relation of accessibility. The boundaries of the possible
depend on the particular interpretation given to this notion
of accessibility. The most common interpretation associates
possibility with logical laws: every world that respects the
principles of non-contradiction and of the excluded middle
is a possible world. (Ryan, 2012, p. 4).
Another development is the concept of storyworld, which comprises
in its genealogy a mixture of the legacy of possible worlds of philosophy
adapted to literary theory, represented by Richard Gerrig, David Herman
and Paul Werth (Ryan; Thon, 2014). Unlike what literary critics or readers
have in mind when talking about the “world of Marcel Proust” or the
“world of Friedrich Hölderlin”2, the concept of storyworld is projected
by individual texts – and not by the entire work of an author – where
each story builds its own storyworld.3
As for the influence of the concept of possible worlds4, Ryan and
Thon (2014) point out that, in literature, it is used to solve problems such
as definition of fiction, truth value, ontological status of entities, semantic
classification of literary worlds, relationships between worlds of distinct
texts, as well as the description of plot mechanisms in terms of conflicts
2
Which considers the typical social and historical scenario of the works of a given author or
the main themes and recurring images of this work.
3
Except in transmedial narratives, where the representation of a world is distributed across
texts of different media.
4
As concerns the worlds of cognitive approaches, studies focus on how these worlds are
constructed and “simulated” in the reader’s mind.
23
and general organization of the semantic domain as universe in which a
real world is opposite to a variable number of alternative possible worlds
created by the mental activity of the characters.
Based on the principle of internal non-contradiction, the concept
of storyworld contradicts the popular belief that nonfictional stories
are true and fictional stories are false (Ryan; Thon, 2014). Considering
that nonfictional stories can be true or false in relation to their reference
world, fictional stories are automatically true in the world about which
they are told.
Defined by its horizon of possibilities, it can be said that, “If the
storyworld is someone’s world, this world is that of characters (Ryan;
Thon, 2014, p. 32). In this regard, Eco (2002, p. 89) states that fictional
worlds are parasites of the real world, that is, those points of fiction
that are not explicitly differentiated from what exists in the real world
correspond to “the laws and conditions of the real world”.
It is worth underlining the importance that Eco (2002) gives to
the character by borrowing from other disciplines – such as modal
logic –, emphasizing that his idea of possible worlds is only realized
from “furnished” worlds:
a world consists of a set of individuals with given properties. Since some of these properties or predicates are actions,
a possible world can also be interpreted as a development of
events. As this development of events is not real, but precisely
possible, it must depend on the propositional attitudes of
someone who affirms, believes, dreams, wishes, anticipates,
etc.” (Eco, 2002, p. 109).
Such a substantive notion of world has as its smallest unit, also described by Eco (2002, p. 111) as a semantic mark, the notion of property,
that is, characteristics that, as combined, will compose the individuals of
particular worlds. Such individuals are therefore “Spatiotemporal clots
of a number of physical and psychic qualities (semantically expressed
24
as ‘properties’), among which also the properties of being in relation to
other property clots, performing certain actions and tolerating others”
(Eco, 2002, P. 110-111).
In the worlds imagined and affirmed by the author – that is, when
the propositional attitudes start from the one who created and shaped the
story – the possibilities lie in the composition plane of the individuals
that integrate the plot, through property combinations chosen to act in the
narrative force field. From these properties, characters and readers may
weave propositional attitudes – the latter case equals the reader’s worlds.
The characters, with their actions, are primarily responsible for
gestating other directions and possibilities to the story – be it from its
creation by the author or its apprehension by the reader –, giving us the
illusion that they are, in fact, autonomous individuals. The properties
that constitute them, after all, were borrowed from the “real” world
of reference. Such statement finds support as we look at the Brazilian
telenovela: its tendency to naturalism creates correspondence between
the habitus (Bourdieu, 1975 apud Lopes, 2009) of the narrated world
and the lived world.
In discussing the individuals of storyworlds, Eco (2002, P. 112)
stresses “discussing the epistemological conditions of constitution is
a problem of delegating to other types of research as regards building
the world of our experience.” This is the challenge of our investigation,
because speaking of Brazilian telenovela is to refer to our greatest cultural, social and aesthetic narrative, able to reflect and refract our reality.
Accompanying Eco’s perspectives (2002) on the reader and his
role in constructing the meaning of a text requires understanding at first
that the text is incomplete, both because it depends on the receiver as
operator of rules that will make it intelligible and because it is always
interspersed by the “unsaid”.5 That which is not manifest on the surface
5
Eco (2002) makes it clear that his considerations were thought from written and narrative
texts. But it is reasonable to consider that his concepts can be used for narratives in other
languages, such as the audiovisual one.
25
must be actualized from “cooperative, conscious and active movements
on the part of the reader” (Eco, 2002, p. 36). These “unsaid” elements,
gaps that demand contribution to actualize their meaning, constitute
the text, built with the reader’s cooperation. The “unsaid” elements are
intentional for two reasons. The first is that, for Eco (2002, p. 37), the
text is a “lazy (or economical) machinery that lives on the appreciation
of the meaning that the receiver introduced there”. The second is that
the text leaves the reader the “interpretive initiative”, after all, “every
text wants someone help make it work.”
It is therefore possible to say that the text provides for the “model
reader”, who is an imagined reader that follows textual instructions or
even a set of sentences or other signs (Eco, 1994, p. 22). This guarantees
textual cooperation that would avoid the possibility of “aberrant” interpretations. This model reader is not the same as the empirical reader. He
has a spectral, speculative nature, but is someone able to participate of
the textual actualization, in a dynamic of completeness with the author.
If it is true, then, that the empirical author presupposes this model
reader, it is also true that he institutes his competence. So, he seeks to
articulate the text, make it move towards its construction, that is, the
text does not wait in inertia for the competence of its model reader, but
offers its contribution to such ability. And there arises the doubt: the text
would be less “lazy” than makes one think and would offer less freedom
than what it seems?
Eco thinks of two extremes in relation to texts – closed and open – the
distinction between the use and interpretation of texts, and, essentially,
understanding that the issue of model reader and model author rests on
the logic of a textual strategy. Intuitively, Eco (2002, P. 42) proposes to
understand the open text as one that decides “up until which point he
must control the collaboration of the reader, how it should be deployed,
where it should be directed, and where it must turn into a free interpretive adventure”. Possible interpretations do not clash but reinforce each
other. And it is necessary to make it clear that there are limits to these
26
interpretive possibilities that involve “a dialectic between the author’s
strategy and the model reader’s response” (Eco, 2002, p. 43). That is
the necessary distinction between free use of an open text and its interpretation. The latter does not take place without boundaries and without
cooperation, thought as a strategy between writing and reading, even if
aberrant and malicious readings can be made.
Eco is speaking about textual strategy when he thinks on the
questions about author and model reader. On the one hand we have an
empirical author, the subject of textual enunciation, who establishes a
(hypothetical) model reader and, in doing so, translates such a strategy
into configuring himself as a subject of the enunciated – itself also a
strategy – and this organizes a textual operation. On the other hand, the
empirical reader – subject who concretely cooperates in the production
of the meaning of the text – configures for himself an idea of author,
the model author, precisely from the data of the textual strategy. The
model author and the model reader “are entities that become clear to
each other only in the process of reading, so that each one creates the
other” (Eco, 1994, p. 30).
2 Methodological paths
To make a diagnosis of the status of the Brazilian telenovela character and its possible worlds from the empirical reader’s perspective, we
followed a theoretical and methodological path composed of four stages:
(1) bibliographical research referring to the concept of character based
mainly on narratology; (2) questionnaire6 shared by a link to Google
Forms randomly on the social networks Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
WhatsApp and by email (Nov 2018 - Jan 2019); (3) interpretative analysis7
based on the variables: (a) five most cited characters; (b) gender of these
6
A questionnaire with three questions: age; most remarkable character of your life; the reason
for your choice(s).
7
With the aid of MaxQDA software. See: http://www.maxqda.com/brasil/. Accessed on: Jan 2019.
27
characters; (c) period of the showing of telenovelas; and (d) age group of
respondents; and (4) development of categories of “use and interpretation”
(Eco, 1994), based on the analysis and recurrence of reasons for “reader/
receiver” responses. There are ten categories with the same weight: acting, character construction, cultural memory, empathy, feminine/feminist
issues8, feeling, art direction, affective memory, repercussion and villainy.
In the universe of 716 answers, 360 characters were cited. We chose to
study qualitatively the top five most mentioned due to editorial limits. Thus,
the most cited were: 1) Carminha (Brazil Avenue, original title: Avenida
Brasil, Globo, 2012); 2) Nazaré Tedesco (Her Own Destiny, original title:
Senhora do Destino, Globo, 2004); 3) Odete Roitman (Vale Tudo, Globo,
1988); 4) Viúva Porcina (Porcina, the widow) (Roque Santeiro, Globo,
1985); and 5) Jade (The Clone, original title: O Clone, Globo, 2001).
One of the problematics revealed by the clipping of our object was
that of gender: the five most cited characters are women. This thickens,
but does not distort, the research problem. To Lopes (2009), it is in
the trajectory of female characters – as well as in the representations
of love and sexuality – that the capacity of the Brazilian telenovela to
agglutinate public and private experiences expresses itself in a more
well-finished way.
Aware of these issues, we set out to establish categories according
to relevant properties (Eco, 2002) which, based on our theoretical framework, we consider as structural when building storyworlds of female
characters in the Brazilian telenovela: romantic love (RL), confluent love
(CL), maternity (M), social rise/maintenance (SR), work (W) and villainy
(V). To measure the presence or absence of these relevant properties,
we prepared Chart 1, inspired by the diagrams proposed by Eco (2002),
where the + symbol means presence of the property, the – symbol means
absence, 0 refers to undetermined, and parentheses indicate essential
properties.
8
We understand as feminine/feminist issues the attitudes and behaviors of the characters that
violate behavioral prescriptions established by power relations between genders.
28
Box 1 - Relevant properties of characters with more mentions
Characters
RL
CL
M
SR
W
V
Carminha
Nazaré Tedesco
Odete Roitman
Viúva Porcina
Jade
–
–
(+)
(+)
(+)
(+)
(+)
+
+
+
(+)
(+)
(–)
0
+
(+)
+
(+)
(+)
0
0
–
(+)
0
0
(+)
(+)
(+)
0
–
Source: Obitel USP Team
We are, therefore, moving towards the definition of two categories
based on Eco (1994, 2002): use and interpretation, related to the reader’s
world; and relevant properties, linked to the author’s world and to the
world of characters. Finally, in the text, the words of the audience, our
reader, are highlighted by quotation marks and italics.
3 Corpus: The Top Five Most Remembered Characters
Table 1 - Quantitative Data 99
Character
% of votes
Predominant age group
Carminha
11.3
18-34
Nazaré Tedesco
10.4
18-34
Odete Roitman
4.1
35-49
Viúva Porcina
3.2
50
2.4
18-34
Jade
Source: Obitel USP Team
The most remembered character in the empirical research,
Carminha (Adriana Esteves), is the villainous protagonist of Brazil
Avenue10, a telenovela that galvanized the country’s attention and became
a successful case in the broadcaster’s exports.11 Revenge is the theme
of the story, centered on the conflict between Carminha and Nina/Rita,
9
The percentages presented are relatively low due to the large amount of caracters mentioned,
in addition to the number of telenovelas already shown on Brazilian television.
10
Globo’s 9 p.m. telenovela; 179 chapters; Mar-Oct 2012; by João Emanuel Carneiro, with general
direction of Amora Mautner and José Luiz Villamarim (nucleus direction by Ricardo Waddington).
11
Most licensed work in the history of Globo (more than 120 countries). Available at: http://www.
globotvinternational.com/newsDet.asp?newsId=351&random=1381768708310. Access on: Jul 2019.
29
the antiheroine. Carminha wants to stay rich under the appearance of
happy wife of Tufão, whom she married just to ascend economically and
socially, while having an extra-marital relationship with Max. Her main
weakness is the love for her son Jorginho, who feels deep rejection to
the mother. Marked by a comic and ironic tone, she eventually becomes
humanized and is surrendered at the end of the plot. She has the opportunity to take revenge but chooses to confess (the murder of her former
lover) and be punished. As she leaves jail, she makes up with Nina/Rita,
at this point Jorginho’s wife and her grandson’s mother.
Nazaré Tedesco (Renata Sorrah) came second in the reader’s
memory. She is the antagonistic villain of the character Maria do Carmo in Her Own Destiny12 and responsible for the kidnapping of two
children – one of them raised as her daughter - and a few murders. The
story begins during the military dictatorship, with the young Nazaré as
a prostitute. She has a lover, to whom she lies about being a nursing
assistant and being pregnant just to marry him. The plan works out and
life improves: she leaves the outskirts of Rio and goes to Copacabana,
becomes wife of a deceived husband and mother of a kidnapped baby. In
the second phase, Nazaré continues with the sham undisturbed, until
her picture with the baby on her lap on the kidnapping day is shown to
Maria do Carmo’s boyfriend, a journalist. Nazaré’s goal is to keep the
love of her daughter, Isabel/Lindalva, and the sustaining lie. For the sake
of it she will lie, assault, murder and seduce. But she also suffers the
consequences throughout the plot, which is not common in telenovelas,
where villains are usually punished in the end. The author, Aguinaldo
Silva, acknowledged inspiration from Tom & Jerry13, creating an almost
caricatured, clumsy villain with a strongly humorous tone and hyperbolic
narcissism, the victim of her own set-ups.
12
Globo 8 p.m. telenovela; 221 chapters; Jun 2004-Mar 2005; by Aguinaldo Silva, with general
direction and nucleus direction by Wolf Maia.
13
KNOPLOCH, Carol; JIMENEZ, Keila. Naza teve a quem puxar. Estado de S. Paulo, Oct. 17,
2004. Available at: http://bit.ly/2LCneMd. Access on: Jun 2019.
30
The character Odete Roitman (Beatriz Segall) of Vale Tudo14 was
voted as the biggest villain of the Brazilian telenovela ever in a poll
by newspaper O Estado de S. Paulo in 2004, with spontaneous answers.15
Authoritarian and strong, she took over as president of the Almeida Roitman
group since her husband’s death. She lived in Paris but had apartments
in other cities. She hated Brazil, where she traveled to only when strictly
necessary. She had conflicts with her daughter, Heleninha, whose weaknesses she would not forgive. She did not accept the idea that her son,
Afonso, wanted to live in Brazil. She manipulated the lives of children and
humiliated subordinates. She only wavered in her goals in the name of her
lover, César. She was murdered (by mistake) in the final chapters, causing
a national commotion over the mystery: Who killed Odete Roitman?
Viúva Porcina (Regina Duarte), in Roque Santeiro16, with exaggerated makeup and fancy colorful costumes full of accessories, stood out
among the inhabitants of the fictional city of Asa Branca in the northeastern interior. The sparkle of the jewelry and turbans complemented by
high heels alluded to exuberance and sensuality. Her trajectory is marked
by the condition of widow, a sham supported by her lover, Sinhozinho
Malta, a rich landowner and politician. The myth of the widow begins
when the then clerk Porcina (from a neighboring town) meets Roque, a
sculptor and seller of saint statues. The two of them would have fallen in
love and married. Then Roque returns to Asa Branca and is apparently
killed while defending the city from the bandit Navalhada, becoming
considered as a local patron saint and raising Porcina to a prominent
place. With the return of Roque, it is then discovered that Porcina was
neither widowed nor married, which did not stop them from starting a
relationship soon.
14
Globo 8 p.m. telenovela; 204 chapters; May 1988-jan. 1989; from Gilberto Braga, Aguinaldo
Silva and Leonor Bassères, with general direction by Dennis Carvalho.
15
AGÊNCIA ESTADO. Enquete elege Odete Roitman a maior vilã da tevê. Estadão. Estadão,
Oct 18 2004. Available at: http://bit.ly/2NDjsow. Accessed on: May 2019.
16
Globo 8 p.m. telenovela; 209 chapters; Jun 1985-Feb 1986; by Dias Gomes and Aguinaldo
Silva, with general direction by Paulo Ubiratan.
31
Finally, Jade (Giovana Antonelli) is one of the main characters
of The Clone17 and, unlike the other four characters, is not a villain or
an antiheroine, but the goodie18 of the story. A hallmark is her ambivalence: Jade is divided between two cultures, since she is both a Muslim
and a Moroccan, but, raised in Brazil, she does not accept the social and
religious impositions linked to her origin. The love story of Jade and
Brazilian Lucas guides the plot. Loving but rebellious, she seeks not
only love but also personal fulfillment. She cherishes the desire to be a
student and have freedoms similar to those of Brazilian women. Giving
in to family pressure, Jade marries Said, a Muslim with whom she has
a daughter. Her dilemma, then, lies in choosing between her love and
living with the girl – which would be limited due to family, social and
religious impositions.
4 Analysis of the author’s world and the character’s world according
to property categories
Unlike passionate love, a universal phenomenon (GIDDENS, 1992),
the notion of romantic love (RL) is culturally specific and essentially
feminized. Arising in the late eighteenth century, it is present in television fiction in the search for the soul mate and the encounter with the
masculine (LOPES et al., 2015).
In the case of the characters analyzed, the issue of romantic love
remains strong even if we consider that only Jade is a goodie. Fruit of
a structure already consolidated in melodrama (Lopes et al., 2015), the
enduring nature of love by men who validate the female self-identity is
something that – in different ways – is structurally present in the charac17
Globo 8 p.m. telenovela; 221 chapters; Oct 2001-Jun 2002; by Gloria Perez, with general
direction and nucleus direction by Jaime Monjardim.
18
The characters considered as “goodies”, the heroines, linked to the good, are present in all
telenovelas, originating in the archetypes, from the Greek archetypes (primitive model) of
Jungian psychology: “the goody/heroine constitutes one of the main ingredients of a telenovela. An element inherited from feuilleton, melodrama, fairy tales, literature in general” (Brandão;
Fernandes, 2015, p. 14
32
ters Jade, Odete and Porcina. On the other hand, Nazaré and Carminha,
even as lovers, cherish feelings of love for their respective partners and
break a paradigm: formal marriage is only a means of abandoning a
position of oppression – poverty, in the case of Carminha; prostitution
in the case of Nazaré – and ascend socially.
As a result of female emancipation and sexual autonomy, confluent
love (CL) refers to an active love, which presumes equality in emotional give-and-take and clashes with the “forever” and “only one” of
the notion of romantic love (Giddens, 1992). In the Brazilian telenovela, confluent love, strongly linked to the sexual liberation of female
characters, was the only category that united all the characters, which
evidenced the way these different relationships are, as a whole, more
based on equality and intimacy than on subordination or compliance
with the law (Lopes et al., 2015).
Considering, for example, that despite being a Muslim, Jade seeks
a sex life associated with love, it is easy to see how feminine autonomy
features all the telenovelas. From the rich and elegant Odete to the
gaudy Porcina, we see women that are different – as regards religion,
taste, social class, nationality – but sexually liberated. Some may even
be open to romantic love, as long as that does not interfere with their
goals (Rocha, 2016).
Maternity (M), a highly valued theme and one of the main female
representations in telenovelas (Sifuentes; Ronsini, 2011), continues to
appear as fundamental in women’s lives, associated with femininity
and “maternal affection”, very firm conceptions of female sexuality
(Giddens, 1992). Pictured in four of the five characters analyzed – Nazaré,
Carminha, Odete and Jade –, the weight given to the theme is so great that
even villains find in motherhood their goal (Rocha, 2016) or weakness.
If, on the one hand, motherhood is present in the lives of almost
all the characters – except Porcina, who is not a mother –, on the other
it does not necessarily appear associated with love for children. Carminha, for example, had an unreasonable love for Jorginho, although
33
she despised her other child, Agata, for being a woman and fat. And the
controlling and authoritarian Odete manipulated the lives of children
from her own interests.
It is also worth mentioning that, before being mothers, they are
women: even if extremely zealous about her daughter Isabel/Lindalva,
Nazaré never annulled herself as a woman, seeking her own pleasure, be
it sexual, economic or otherwise. Jade, in turn, considered leaving her
daughter to stay with Lucas. This way, oscillating between stereotypes
and disruptions over the feminine, these women build a hybrid and
contradictory world, where – as it happens in Latin America – the new
and the old meet and clash all the time.
Martín-Barbero (2003) lists social ascension as one of the themes
worked on by the feuilleton in order to respond to the social aspirations
of the XIX century. Consolidating itself in the imaginary of the Brazilian
viewer from Dancin’ Days (Globo, 1978) – when the telenovela begins
to retro(feed) on the lower classes’ desire to ascend to the class portrayed
on television (Straubhaar, 2007) – social rise/ maintenance (SR) means
power of action for female characters – mostly the villains –and enables
them to move other nuclei of which they are part (Rocha, 2016).
Looking at the relationship between social rise/maintenance and
female villainy (V)19 in Brazilian telenovelas, we realize how much the
construction of these characters is also structured from a moral becoming:
the woman who longs for class mobility – like Nazaré, Carminha e Porcina
– or the maintenance of her social status – the case of Odete – is mostly built
under the stereotype of the ambitious, calculating and ruthless villain. Keeping up with and often anticipating liberalizing behaviors, telenovela
19
Developing the villainy column offered a challenge regarding Viúva Porcina. After all, her
attitudes during Roque Santeiro do not grant her the status of goody, nor can she be classified
as a villain. Based on the classification system proposed by Eco (2002) regarding the presence
and/or absence of relevant properties, we seek to find the signifier most suited to the antiheroine
condition – on a gradual scale, zero (0) seemed what would best represent this property. Porcina
shares characteristics that fit the kind of anti-hero that Vogler (2015) describes as tortuous – the
one that is “forgiven” at the end of the story. According to Rocha (2016), this is the most common
anti-hero type in telenovelas due to the moralizing role inherited from melodramatic pedagogy.
34
villains shift from the Christian ethos of renunciation and redemptive
sacrifice, sweetness, self-denial and family value to a representation that
authorizes feelings and behaviors previously relegated to men, linked to
structures of power and freedom, to personal and selfish desires.
One of the possibilities open to female characters from the 1970s,
according to Hamburger (2014), was the world of work (W), which dialogues with the fact that women’s inclusion in the Brazilian labor market
is constant and intense from this period (Dantas, 2018). However, in both
the “real” world and the fictional worlds of telenovelas, this movement
still has disparities between races, classes and genders. Issues like money,
employment and rationality, in the ideological-cultural division promoted
by patriarchy, traditionally make up the masculine order (Rocha, 2016).
Furthermore, character trades and tasks are often addressed superficially.
The persistence of gender stereotypes is revealed by the fact that the
question of work (W) is relevant to only one of the characters. Odete
Roitman is the only character presenting this property as primordial in
its construction; It is worth noting, however, that she is also the only
one whose absence of maternity (M), in the aforementioned senses, is
a structuring condition. Nazaré, on the other hand, has taken action to
shirk the responsibility to work; her counterpoint in Her Own Destiny,
the young Maria do Carmo, reinforces this perception, since one of
her main characteristics is precisely her devotion to work, the way she
thrived in life. For the other characters this question is almost irrelevant.
Given the above, we emphasize that, anchored on a logic that catalyzes the development of Latin America’s audiovisual industry with
“the old stuff and anachronisms that are part of the cultural life of these
peoples” (Martín-Barbero; Rey, 2001, p. 115), the Brazilian telenovela
can be perceived as a field of expression in permanent formation and
transformation. Oscillating between themes already recurring in melodrama and approaches that change, the characteristics that emerge from
the characters provides us with an exercise in reflecting on the changes
in gender relations in our own society.
35
5 Analysis of the reader’s world from questionnaire responses classified as use and interpretation categories
Carminha seen by the public was essentially remembered by the
character construction and the actress’s acting. Her ironic comicality,
mixed with a significant dose of ambition and malice, gave a tone to the
character that was memorable to viewers: “She was comic, solar, despite all
the evils.” The actress’s interpretation is another key point in this construction.
The character is increasingly identified with the actor who embodies it,
transformed, therefore, “in a psychological and moral entity, charged with
producing an identification effect in the spectator” (Aumont; Marie, 2007,
p. 226). Other elements have to do with feminine/feminist issues that allow
the emergence of strong and powerful women, who fight for something, are
revolutionary, free and full of ambition, as well as for the fact that they are
villains. Villainy appears as a feature that almost suffices to define why the
character is remembered: “Carminha, an unforgettable villain”.
The fascination with wickedness, characterized by an ironic and
perverse comicality, in a character that is finally surrendered by the force
of good, seems to have been the character’s seduction equation with the
audience, who built a sense for Carminha and leaves her in a comfortable
position of having the “good villains combo. Bad, good humored and popular.” And even though she is constantly remembered for her charisma
and mockery, Carminha is the protagonist in a recently aired narrative
with impressive audience numbers and remarkable repercussions on the
digital social media. Other characteristics can be understood based on the
Carminha read and constructed by the reader, a strong female character,
bad, funny and ultimately human that was played by an actress who knew
how to bring it to life by creating an empathetic and ironic villain, with
freedom to speak and live what people can only achieve by proxy through
the character. There is, in this repeated response of Carminha being the
most remembered character of all, a dose of explanation that is at the
work of character construction done by the author’s world, another in
36
the reader operation in giving Carminha the contours that appear in their
memories (and answers in our questionnaire) and, finally, some justification that can be understood by the positioning of Brazil Avenue in the
market context of the national cultural industry.
The leading role of Her Own Destiny is played by Nazaré in direct
opposition to Maria do Carmo. It was then expected that, for the readers,
villainy was a category that would appear insistently in their reasons for
reminding the character, an “authentic villain”, “incredible”, “villain
archetype”. Two other striking categories from the reader’s world are character construction – “first crazy villain that captivated me enough to
pay close attention to her story” – and the actress’s acting. He memorable
phrases of marked derisive and comical tone resist oblivion. “Nazaré
to this day is remembered for her lines and expressions.” Issues related
to empathy, from Smith’s (1995) perspective of understanding its functioning as a matter not of sharing but of imaginative substitution, are
present as well, although the character is a villain. Nazaré “revealed a
side that everyone has but does not show through social filters, regarding
comments and behaviors”, leading, after all, the reader to want to be as
successful as the character – “the fact that things go wrong with her made
her so close to the viewer that it was hard not to cheer for her.”
Nazaré is the second most remembered character in the empirical
research, but it is necessary to consider that the telenovela is eight years older than Brazil Avenue. However, Her Own Destiny has already
been reprised two times and is also a success story.20 But it is its repercussion on digital social networks, resignifying the character through
memes and GIFs, that allows its permanence in cultural memory:
“The character goes on today because of the memes that went viral in
social networks, making it impossible to forget it”; and even in readers’
affective memory: “I was underage and felt very afraid of Nazaré. Then
20
Prime time audience leader, considering the previous nine years. It was sold to more than
20 countries. Available at: http://memoriaglobo.globo.com/programas/entretenimento/novelas/
senhora-do-destino/curiosidades.htm. Accessed on: Jun 29, 2019.
37
I understood and began to love.” Renata Sorrah, interpreter of Nazaré,
commented that the character changed her career more after it was co-opted as a meme in digital networks: “There is a whole generation that
is a fan of Nazaré without ever seeing the telenovela. The memes were
really a transformation in my career.”21 The @nazareamarga profile,
for example, dedicated exclusively to the production of memes with
the character, has 5.7 million followers on Instagram and 97,000 on
Twitter.22 “It became a cult character of sorts, folks keep doing memes
about her.” This scope of consumption, repercussion and reappropriation
of telenovela content gives shape to a collective imaginary that is also
woven by viewers’ historical and affective memories.” Nazaré surpassed
the limits of the small screen. It won the Internet and remains alive to
this day, many years after the end of the telenovela Her Own Destiny. It
became an expression and part of the life of the Brazilian.”
The construction of the character and the interpretation of the
actress certainly guided the receivers to choose Odete Roitman. One
of the reasons for the preference for Odete is her “striking, ironic and
acidic memorable lines about Brazil that still make sense these days.”
Thus, the character was mentioned as “the portrait of Brazil”, besides
representing a “current reading of society”, validating that verisimilitude
in the Brazilian telenovela is important for the viewer. Its function as a
narrative of the nation allows the telenovela to operate as an agent of cultural memory – in the case of Odete, exemplified by the repercussion
around her murder – insofar as the boundaries of collectivities become
inseparable from the uses and appropriations of television.
Another reason cited for choosing Odete Roitman was her villainy:
“The best and biggest villain of Brazilian telenovelas” with “the delicious
character failings we will never forget.” The villain is the antagonist who
gives impetus to the narrative through his actions (Propp, 1984). Odete
21
Available at: http://revistaglamour.globo.com/Celebridades/noticia/2017/03/senhora-do--destino-renata-sorrah-comenta-os-memes-de-nazare-tedesco-e-volta-da-novela-em-2017.
Access on Jun 28, 2019.
22
Data collected on: Jun 27, 2019.
38
was “a sophisticated villain who was wealthy, powerful, authoritarian
and a successful businesswoman” (Rocha, 2016, p. 215). Even so, the
public identified with the character, quoting her as “icon”, “striking” and
“charismatic”, revealing empathy. For Smith (1995), the functioning of
empathy is double: first, it acts as a search light in our construction of
the narrative situation; and secondly it generates in the viewer, somehow
attenuated, the predominant emotions of the characters in the world of
the story. And the fact that she is an “ambitious” woman “with feminine
force” shows us that feminine/feminist issues are also there.
Viúva Porcina was remembered by readers especially by “exaggeration”, “humor” and “mockery”, characteristics that, besides her looks,
were present in the loaded Northeastern accent, in gestures, in laughter and
in the acting, considered by readers as “perfect, fun and playful”. So, the
character, according to viewers, was “iconic”, “charismatic” and “funny”
because “for the time it was remarkable, until today we remember, her
unforgettable way of speaking and posture”. Due to her morally dubious
behavior, Porcina was interpreted by readers from her “feminine empowerment”, a woman “ahead of my time, determined... beloved... extravagant”,
“bold” and “authentic”. So feminine/feminists issues contributed to the
rupture of the ideal of servile and well-behaved woman, establishing the
counterpoint with the character Mocinha – Roque’s bride, who, after his
“death”, made a vow of chastity and swore not to marry again. Porcina
then broke with conservatism by following the dictates of her life as a
false widow and subsequently composing a love triangle with Roque and
Sinhozinho Malta, which made her be seen as “determined” and “strong”.
Finally, Jade is especially remembered for launching fashion. The
actress Giovanna Antonelli is recognized for being able to overflow her
characters from the world of story to everyday uses and appropriations,
which makes her an important value in marketing terms for the broadcaster. Her charisma, coupled with the character’s eccentric costume, inscribed
Jade in cultural memory: “She was marked for the exoticism of the character,
beauty and dance”; “For introducing me to a different culture as a child, I
39
found it beautiful to see her and other characters dancing.” Although she
was from a highly male-dominated culture, Jade “was a strong young lady
that fought against the family and Muslim religion because of the love of her
life”– feminine/feminist issues that run through many of the readers’ words.
6 Final considerations
Each of the characters carries the synthesis of the worlds of telenovelas
to which it belongs and is interpreted in this work from the cooperation
between the author’s world and the reader’s world. Even after becoming
rich, Carminha brings with her the stereotype of the popular taste of Rio
de Janeiro north zone – embodying the boundary between the suburban
and south zone delimited by the avenue that gives name to the plot in question. Nazaré, in counterpoint to the prosperous Baixada presented in Her
Own Destiny, summarizes the consolidated individualistic life standard of
the Copacabana nucleus, where the rich are decadent and live to keep up
appearances. Odete Roitman is an exponent of the maxim expressed in the
title of her telenovela: Vale Tudo (Anything goes) – from allying herself
with an ambitious (albeit poor) woman, controlling her children and even
turning a blind eye to suspicious business in her companies. Viúva Porcina,
“the one who was without ever having been”, expresses the trajectory of
Roque Santeiro himself, the one “who died without losing his life”, and
works metaphorically as a representation of coronelismo (colonels’ rule) in
times of the New Republic. And Jade brings with her the threshold between
western and eastern culture, narrative motto of The Clone.
It is interesting to realize that even if it is configured as a force line
in the projection of a multicultural and progressive society in Brazil
(Lopes, 2009), the telenovela continues to build its characters and worlds
from archaic models and ideas, establishing a negotiation with the
viewer about the limits of how much the fictional worlds must advance
in relation to the real world. These negotiations, based on the articulation
between the poles of production and reception – that is, in the encounter
40
between the authors’ worlds and the reader/viewer’s worlds – must be
understood as cooperation in the construction of the worlds of Brazilian
telenovela. Such cooperation, more effective in the period when the
telenovela is being aired due to its character of open work, continue to
occur longitudinally due to the memory work of readers/viewers from
characters whose possibilities insist on acting in an imaginary marked
by aesthetically and culturally conditioned conditions.
This exploratory study is not meant to be exhaustive. What motivated
us was to present the complexity of the theme and stimulate the development of new investigations based on research findings. Exploring a path
that runs through the author’s world and reaches the reader’s world has
proved to be an epistemological exercise that opens different perspectives
for future theoretical and methodological experiences.
References
ANDERSON, B. Comunidades imaginadas. São Paulo: Companhia das
Letras, 2009.
APPADURAI, A. Modernity at large. London: Un. Minnesota Press, 1996.
AUMONT, J.; MARIE, M. Dicionário teórico e crítico de cinema. 3. ed.
Campinas: Papirus, 2007.
BRANDÃO, C.; FERNANDES, G. M. As mocinhas/heroínas das telenovelas:
“meu destino é sofrer”. In: CONGRESSO BRASILEIRO DE CIÊNCIAS DA COMUNICAÇÃO, 38., 2015, Rio de Janeiro. Anais [...]. Rio de Janeiro: Intercom, 2015.
DANTAS, S. G. Gerações femininas em (re)construção: o discurso da série
televisiva 3 Teresas. 330 f. Tese (Doutorado em Ciências da Comunicação) – Escola
de Comunicações e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, 2018.
ECO, U. Lector in fabula. São Paulo: Perspectiva, 2002.
ECO, U. Seis passeios pelos bosques da ficção. São Paulo: Companhia das
Letras, 1994.
GIDDENS, A. A transformação da intimidade. São Paulo: Unesp, 1992.
41
HAMBURGER, E. I. Ficção televisiva e relações de gênero. In: MICELI, S.;
PONTES, H. Cultura e sociedade: Brasil e Argentina. São Paulo: Edusp, 2014.
p. 295-314.
LOPES, M. I. V. Telenovela como recurso comunicativo. MATRIZes, São
Paulo, ano 3, n. 1, p. 21-47, ago. /dez. 2009.
LOPES, M. I. V. et al. Brasil: tempo de séries brasileiras? In: LOPES, M. I.
V.; OROZCO, G. (Org.). Relações de gênero na ficção televisiva. Anuário Obitel
2015. Porto Alegre: Sulina, 2015. p. 117-159.
MARTÍN-BARBERO, J. Dos meios às mediações. Rio de Janeiro: UFRJ, 2003.
MARTIN-BARBERO, J.; REY, G. Os exercícios do ver. São Paulo: Senac, 2001.
PROPP, V. Morfologia do conto maravilhoso. Rio de Janeiro: Forense, 1984.
ROCHA, L. L. F. Má! Maravilhosa! Lindas, louras e poderosas: o embelezamento da vilania na telenovela brasileira. 299 f. Tese (Doutorado em Comunicação
Social) – Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, 2016.
RYAN, M.-L. Possible worlds. Interdisciplinary Center for Narratology,
Un. Hamburg, 2012. Disponível em: http://wikis.sub.unihamburg.de/lhn/index.php/
Possible_Worlds. Acesso em: maio 2019.
RYAN, M.-L. Story/worlds/media: tuning the instruments of a mediaconscious
narratology. In: RYAN, M.-L.; THON, J. (Ed.). Storyworlds across media. Lincoln/
London: Un. Nebraska Press, 2014.
RYAN, M.-L.; THON, J. (Ed.). Storyworlds across media. Lincoln/ London:
Un. Nebraska Press, 2014.
SIFUENTES, L.; RONSINI, V. O que a telenovela ensina sobre ser mulher?
Reflexões acerca das representações femininas. Revista Famecos, Porto Alegre, v.
18, n. 1, p. 131-146, jan. /abr. 2011.
SMITH, M. Engaging characters. New York: Oxford Un. Press, 1995.
STRAUBHAAR, J. D. World television: from global to local. Los Angeles:
Sage, 2007.
VOGLER, C. A jornada do escritor. São Paulo: Aleph, 2015.
ZIPFEL, F. Fiction across media: toward a transmedial concept of fictionality.
In: RYAN, M.-L.; THON, J. (Ed.). Storyworlds across media. Lincoln/London:
Un. Nebraska Press, 2014.
42