Pleasuring body parts: women and soap operas in Brazil

Critical Arts, July, 2009 by Lisa Brown

Tania introduced me to female viewers in the neighbourhood. My main respondents are twenty women soap opera viewers from fourteen households (comprising over 100 people), ranging in age from 16 to 72. (13) The majority are unemployed, and have low levels of formal education (0-4 years). Those of Helena's generation (35 and older) have an average of 10 children each. Like the majority of people in Salvador, all the women in this research are Afro-Brazilian. In contrast, the vast majority of soap opera heroes and heroines are white, and according to Zito they are increasingly likely to be blonde (2000).

Of the eight or nine telenovelas transmitted per day, the commercial channel TV Globo's prime-time telenovelas, or 'novelas' (novels), as the women call them, were the most popular amongst the women. There are two types of telenovela: the historical ones (usually a dramatisation of a particular period in Brazil's past), and modern ones. There are also Mexican telenovelas dubbed into Portuguese and transmitted on commercial channels such as SBT and Rede Record. However, rather than entering into an exhaustive account of all the telenovelas that the women watched during the period under research, I will leave the details of the telenovelas to emerge in the course of this article. Suffice to say that even telenovelas that contain elements of social and political criticism will also have the following staple ingredients: at least one story of social mobility (rags to riches), a number of wealthy white middle-class families, several complicated love stories, and a happy ending (final feliz). (14)

Suffering and pleasure

Tonight, there will be a grand climax on Terra Nostra (Our land), and, as it is Helena's favourite telenovela, she has invited me over to share the occasion. It is on the commercial channel TV Globo, the most economically successful producer and exporter of soap operas in Latin America--the first episode alone cost over one million reais to make. (15) In true telenovela style it revolves around the dramatic trials and tribulations of a central white heterosexual couple--in this case it is Juliana and Matheu, young Italian peasants who came to Brazil at the turn of the century to start a new life. However, when they arrive they are parted in the confusion and sent to work on separate coffee plantations. Juliana finds she is pregnant with Matheu's child. However, when the baby is born, it is whisked away by her wicked mistress, leading Juliana on a heartrending odyssey to find her long-lost lover and child.

In every episode Juliana and Matheu are brought closer together by a series of events, but at the crucial moment their paths do not cross. They each have parallel stories that unfold, involving them in hardship, yet Juliana never loses faith that God will reunite her with Matheu and their baby.

Helena calls to me from her scrap-wood doorway. She says to hurry, as Juliana and Matheu are finally to be reunited after so much heartbreak. The only pieces of furniture in Helena's room are a bed and a colour television set, and the concrete floor in-between is filled with a number of her eight children who are fighting for space in front of the screen. I join Helena and her friend, Nilzete, on the bed. When I ask why Helena's 13-year-old daughter has a black eye, she explains to me that it was because 'she was being rebelde (rebellious). She went down to the beach without permission, so her father had to discipline her.'