How television fiction shaped a country: a cultural history of Brazilian soap operas (1963 to 2020)

This book follows the cultural history of telenovelas in Brazil, aiming to explore instances where television, culture, and society intertwined since the airing of the country’s first daily TV fiction. The primary data for this research comprised 677 telenovelas broadcast between 1963 and 2020, analysed in terms of spatiality. Four predominant spatial constructs were therein identified: the city of São Paulo; the city of Rio de Janeiro; Brazil’s countryside; and overseas. This information was then compared to previously proposed periodisations for the historical process of the Brazilian telenovela. Our diachronic journey was thusly parsed out: (I) fantasy or sentimental (1963 to 1968); (II) national-popular or realist (1968 to 1990); (III) interventionist or naturalist (1990 to 2015); and (IV) neofantasy or neosentimental (2015 onwards). Through this walk, readers will witness how melodrama — which is the cultural matrix of these narratives — has orchestrated aesthetic and emotional experiences capable of reshaping meanings in the arena of representations of national identity over the past 60 years. This highlights the role of TV fiction as an important agent in the reorganisation of senses of Brazilianness and belonging.