Soap operas, a magic mirror of life

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By CYNTIA MEDINA & ADRIANO PARRA*

Commentary on the recently released book by Soleni Biscouto Fressato

Do intellectuals watch soap operas? This is the question that headlines an article in the magazine New Moon, published in 1985, in which he questions some intellectual and political figures of the time.[1] This article brought back to the table the old question about alienation as the greatest stigma of soap operas, which had been raised in the intellectual field since the 1960s.

When asked “Do you watch soap operas?”, most of these personalities answered yes, whether frequently or sporadically. Although their justifications reinforced soap operas as mere entertainment, psychoanalyst José Ângelo Gaiarsa, filmmaker Zita Carvalhosa and lawyer and politician Rogê Ferreira attributed to soap operas an informative character about Brazilian reality.

However, it was sociologist Octavio Ianni who provided an auspicious answer that would open up an investigative path for this social phenomenon in the field of human sciences. In it, he expressed the need to establish a sociological understanding of soap operas that would go beyond their traditional social equation as synonymous with alienation. Thus, when asked “Do you watch soap operas?”, Octavio Ianni responded that “I would not like to talk about soap operas in an interview of this type without being able to develop a broader discussion on the subject.”

Therefore, an argument would be needed that transcended the simple 'yes or no' followed by sentences limited to a few lines. This need raised by Octavio Ianni was realized over the following decades based on the development of a critical mass of investigation on the subject. More and more new intellectuals and academics began to approach the phenomenon of soap operas as a substantive objectification of the country's sociocultural life.[2]

It is in this tradition, therefore, that the new book by historian and sociologist Soleni Biscouto Fressato is found, Soap operas, magic mirror of life: when reality is confused with the spectacle, recently launched at the SESC Research and Training Center and in the Florestan Fernandes room of the São Paulo School of Political Sociology Foundation (FESPSP),[3] in this year of 2024. In this book, Soleni Biscouto Fressato invites the reader on a journey through the images, memories and contradictory situations problematized by the main soap operas of the Globo since its emergence in the 1960s, starting with the title of the work, which refers to the novel Magic mirror, broadcast by the Rio de Janeiro station in 1977.

In it, as the author points out, we find in its formal-compositional base its own metalanguage, that is, a narrative composition in which the novel speaks of itself. This is the novel Magic mirror literally mirroring the behind-the-scenes of the daily lives of their respective characters, who embody the archetypes of the soap opera actors Love cocktail, represented in the plot of the work as a kind of second-order language of Brazilian dramaturgy at that time.

With this approach, Soleni Biscouto Fressato raises the following questions in the reader: do soap operas have something to say about Brazilian society? Or are they just a mere and typical mass and alienating entertainment? Furthermore, the author makes us question the very validity of these questions, since we are in times of a certain decline in the audience of soap operas, with a clear emphasis on the main channel of broadcasting of the genre, that is, the Globo.

Although the book does not address this last issue, clarifying it, based on the collection of data from reality, helps us to reflect on the first two issues problematized by Soleni Biscouto Fressato, being fundamental to historically situating the distinction of Soap operas, a magic mirror of life compared to other publications already released on the subject.

Are we facing the end of global soap operas?

The book launch Soap operas, a magic mirror of life It occurs at a time when news articles about the permanent downward trend in the ratings of soap operas are multiplying. TV Globo.[4] This fact coincides with a particular historical context experienced by Brazilian society marked by a frank productive-communicational reconfiguration, resulting from a persistent socioeconomic crisis that has been triggered for a long time.

This is a crisis that has led big capital to seek new fronts for accumulation in various economic sectors, including those directly involved with the so-called “cultural industry,” the birthplace of national drama. In this new scenario, we find an evident reorganization of the market for cultural goods based on the use of new information and communication technologies (ICTs), which have profoundly reformulated the forms of production and consumption of this specific type of goods.

As for this fact, by the way, we need only refer to the tree of series and programs made available in a way on-demand em streams increasingly popular, such as Netflix and YouTube, especially after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, this new scenario has affected the dynamics of production and consumption of soap operas, especially via television sets.[5]

In fact, this can be seen in the low audience ratings of the so-called “global soap operas”, especially the “nine o’clock soap operas”, with reduced averages of around 20 audience points.[6] Although they are suffering from historically low average viewership annually, this finding is far from revealing the end of soap operas as a cultural format with high consumption demand in Brazil. After all, Globo soap operas “reach more than 173 million people year after year, corresponding to around 81% of the entire Brazilian population”, according to Amauri Soares, from Estúdios Globo[7].

Furthermore, despite this low audience rating, “every week, a 21pm soap opera TV Globo, alone, reaches 70 million” viewers, a mark that some of the platforms streaming most famous ones like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, for example, take about a year to reach. That is, on a single opening night, Globo It obtains a soap opera audience that these platforms only reach in almost 365 days of offering their vast catalog.[8]

Furthermore, when they are not consumed directly via television sets, soap operas Globo are accessed digitally via social networks, YouTube channels and the broadcaster's own digital platform, Globoplay – on which, by the way, soap operas are its most consumed audiovisual infoproducts.[9]

This means that, if they are not consumed in traditional open TV programming, they are accessed through the new digital communication media available.[10] Furthermore, global soap operas continue to fulfill their structuring function for the broadcaster, interspersing and bringing together all of its programming, as well as remaining one of its main export products since the 1970s.[11]

Furthermore, soap operas, as prominent cultural assets on the national scene, have a significant audience reach in the so-called A, B, C and D classes.[12] It is no wonder that Netflix and Amazon Prime Video, for example, have been investing more and more in this type of format, encouraging the production of soap operas in several countries – with emphasis on soap operas of Turkish, Mexican and Colombian origin, as well as Brazilian ones of their own authorship, as we can see in their catalog.[13] This is clear evidence that companies streaming have increasingly recognized the marketing potential of soap operas to expand the consumer audience on their digital platforms, adding this specific genre of television drama to their traditional catalog of series and films.

Consequently, all this facticity shows us much more a reconfiguration around the production, dissemination and consumption of soap operas based on new (and old) modalities of their access (online e offline) than its actual decline or even its end. That said, if the intellectual still doesn't watch soap operas, paying attention to these facts about reality signals that they assume a significant role in Brazilian culture. A role that Soleni Biscouto Fressato, in Soap operas, the magic mirror of life¸ is willing to enlighten us. And it does so precisely around this sociocultural reconfiguration that must be considered when reading this work.

“When reality is confused with the spectacle”

Em Soap operas, a magic mirror of life, the author offers an original understanding of the historical constitution of soap operas and their role within Brazilian society. After all, if soap operas still have social appeal for millions of Brazilians via television and/or digital media, they would indeed have something to tell us about our own national reality.

Furthermore, it informs us about this “something” based on the already well-known and efficient fictional format of the melodrama narrative, with ample power to affect. The soap opera continues to entertain, excite and involve its audience through the appeal to the constant and contradictory interaction between the fruitful verisimilitude of the struggles of everyday life and the strangeness of its hyperbolic aesthetics and interpretation.

This novelistic contradiction between its plausible content and its potential aesthetic estrangement, with evident informative and recreational dimensions, does not go unnoticed by Soleni Biscouto Fressato's investigative scrutiny. Under the magnifying glass provided by the vast critical mass directed at studies of the then nascent cultural industry, the author highlights not only the possible market effects of the homogenization of cultural goods in their socioeconomic capacity for technical reproducibility,[14] also highlighting the way in which soap operas, by integrating the so-called “society of the spectacle”, in Guy Debord’s terms,[15] impact the psyche of their viewers.[16]

Given this sociocultural dimension present in soap operas, how can we understand them as a consumer good aimed at such enjoyment that interacts with the psyche and subjectivity of the audience, but that is not restricted to the 'old commonplace of simple entertainment and alienation'? Thus, armed with such a theoretical arsenal, Soleni Biscouto Fressato leads the reader on a reflective journey in search of understanding soap operas, identifying their conformation in the socio-historical processes constituted, simultaneously, in the cultural, psychic, economic and political relations of social life.

In this sense, the author leads the reader to “a [broader] level of abstraction” of the national historical reality, capturing constituent traits of soap operas within the social relations developed within the Cultural Industry itself. After all, as “cultural goods” for consumption, soap operas present themselves to society “in the form of commodities”.[17]

As such, their existence satisfies both the mercantile value of their producers and the use values ​​(of enjoyment) of their potential consumers/viewers. This contradictory nature of soap operas is due to the socio-productive organization around the commodity form in which they are established. As such, while they have the fictional purpose of entertaining, moving and affecting their audience, they never abandon their historical character as an object that arises from a process of specialization and expansion of the capitalist industry, which has also advanced in the production of use values ​​in the sphere of culture and entertainment. Above all, in the most diverse forms and genres of cultural goods, even those linked to the so-called Fine Arts or the vast field of cinema.[18]

This sociocultural dimension is discovered in reading Soap operas, the magic mirror of life, when Soleni Biscouto Fressato clearly exposes this historical processuality regarding the soap operas of Globo. They emerge as the broadcaster's main commodity in the telecommunications sector since the early 1960s; and are born amid the political-economic and ideological relations established with the Civil-Military Regime and with the American communications conglomerate. time-life.

It was from this conglomerate that the Globo received foreign capital, circumventing the legislation of the time that established rules contrary to this type of business. The production and dissemination of soap operas, in fact, assumed a crucial role in this negotiation between the broadcaster, foreign capital and the political regime then in force, since they would act as ideological vehicles for maintaining the social order that, in the Brazilian case, was violently imposed by means of a dictatorship committed to preserving Brazil's historical economic-peripheral condition in the world market.

It is at this point, therefore, that Soleni Biscouto Fressato brings the reader closer to the particular character of soap operas, that is, to the cultural relations of a psychic and subjective nature that shape them, without losing sight of their constitution in the more abstract social relations such as those presented previously. In addition to their commodity form, soap operas have particular characteristics. Their narrative-melodramatic format, by having as its centrality the successive actions of characters acting and responding to everyday events, manages to establish a plot that easily interweaves the fictional dimension of everyday practice with the real dimension of the lives of its viewers.

In other words, everyday pragmatism and the sociomaterial process are worked on in the fictional novelistic narrative in order to highlight the socially determined context in which the audience is situated.[19] This, on an individual level, creates a verisimilitude between the fictional story and the reality of the audience, capable of promoting a strong power of identification with its public. It is no wonder that the narrative-melodramatic format is the matrix in the production of American series and films, demonstrating the historical success of the ideological hegemony of the style. American way of life and the sociomaterial reproduction of the capitalist mode of production along the lines of the United States around the globe.[20]

Under these conditions, global soap operas have achieved a similar hegemonic place in Brazilian culture, since, under this narrative-melodramatic language, they produce “reference images” which, according to Soleni Biscouto Fressato, “construct ways of thinking and acting, conveying significant symbolic elements in the formation of subjectivity”, establishing a psychic process of continuous mobilization of an “imperative of enjoyment”.

That is, the viewer feels the pain and delights of the characters themselves, prioritizing the dimension of fictional pleasure as the peak to be reached and experienced in their subjectivity. An emblematic example of this cited by the author was her mother's experience in front of an idyllic scene of the representation of Heaven in the novel. The trip, from 1975. This image triggered her memory, making her believe she had seen her father, who had died in 1969.[21]

This dynamic of constructing reference images is analyzed by Soleni Biscouto Fressato based on some soap operas that portray themes of everyday life such as ways of conceiving love, family, women, men, authority, ways of dressing and speaking, the path to success, work, social organization, etc. This symbolic capacity demonstrates how much global soap operas assume an important role in mobilizing the audience, disseminating ideas, concepts, tastes, behavior and consumer stimuli.[22] Even in situations where there is no degree of verisimilitude between the viewer and the fictional daily life of the soap opera, its reference images open space for projections of behaviors and concepts to be pursued by its own audience.

In fact, soap operas with this symbolic capacity are enhanced by their inalienable commercial nature. As such, they are subject to the primary interest of their owners, who aim not only to promote the appreciation of their investments (through profits from advertising space, for example) – as is the case with Globo soap operas – but also to disseminate their political and ideological interests. This contributes to a clear tendency for the role of Globo soap operas in the consolidation of the peripheral capitalist order on which the material reproduction of Brazilian society is based.

However, even in the face of this mercantile condition, soap operas are not limited to the instrumentalization of these interests. As in any creative process, especially in the symbolic field, the agents involved in the production of soap operas elaborate them based on their own subjective internalizations, which were only effective when they were confronted with various social objectifications in their respective daily experiences.[23] It is precisely these lived social objectifications that are the cultural broth that involves the externalization of soap operas as products of creative work.

Whether this externalization is produced consciously or unconsciously, whether it is carried out in a disruptive or conservative manner.[24] And this process cannot be fully controllable, despite the economic interests and ideological guidelines imposed by the holders of their intellectual property.

All of this, by the way, becomes evident when Soleni Biscouto Fressato brings the reader some images and projections that challenge the predisposed tendencies of conservation of the so-called “Globo production standard”, present, above all, in his analyses of soap operas. Babel Tower (1998-1999) and old boy (2016). The first soap opera shown, for example, dealt with issues such as femicide, same-sex relationships and drug addiction. Given the strong conservative reaction of the audience at the time, sparked by such issues, the author Silvio de Abreu imposed the outcome on his characters according to the conservative expectations of the public: the violent husband redeems himself, the same-sex couple and the addicted boy die in the explosion of the Tropical Towers shopping center.

After all, as Soleni Biscouto Fressato rightly shows, soap operas are cultural assets endowed with “symbolic images” that need to be consumed in the commercial sphere. In the case of old boy, contrary to the dramaturgy of Babel Tower, the plot presented questioned the role of agribusiness in the country's socioeconomic development, having been broadcast on an open channel precisely in the midst of Globo's pro-agriculture campaign, represented by its repeated slogan: “agriculture is tech, agriculture is pop, agriculture is everything”.

Although soap operas are widely conceived as ideological vehicles, this character is not found only in this specific type of cultural good, but extends to other products of human labor carried out under the capitalist order. From the historical moment in which the generalization of exchanges occurs and, with it, the expansion and specialization of labor, this capitalist society establishes its own social atomization. Under these conditions, we lose the dimension of reality in its entirety, leaving us to subjectively internalize only unilateral parts of human objectifications. This contributes to the difficulty of understanding social life in general – the social objects that are produced in it will also bring to some degree this alienated, absent part, so that the real understanding of a given context will only be possible through the recovery of its historical mediations.

Thus, as epiphenomena of broader social processes, the images, ideas and social facts conveyed by soap operas tend to appear to the general public in a mystified manner, arousing in part of their audience a daily apprehension loaded with appeal to “emotions and impressions of a moral nature”. That is, they often reveal themselves as mere products of “high ideological content” that, nevertheless, aim to defend and reinforce a kind of “internal coherence” that would be “naturally” inherent to the already established social order itself.[25]

Therefore, as Stuart Hall rightly observes,[26], the field of cultural practices is historically the one that most makes the current social contradictions explicit, as it is a privileged space for the dispute of minds and hearts, whether for the maintenance or disruption of status consciously or unconsciously carried out. They are minds and hearts mobilized by a dispute over individual psyche and subjectivity within this long-massed productive-cultural logic. This moment is precisely “when reality is confused with the spectacle”, as Soleni Biscouto Fressato explains in Soap operas, a magic mirror of life.

It is she who, with her new publication, prompts us to reflect: if intellectuals still do not watch soap operas, they continue to be unaware of part of the Brazilian historical-cultural constitution; undoubtedly a landmark of our Cultural Industry. And as for this, there is nothing else to do than follow the reflections of our author, raising our heads towards the mirror that invades Brazilian homes daily.

*Cyntia Medina is a postdoctoral fellow in sociology at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp).

*Adriano Parra is a PhD candidate in sociology at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp). Author of the book Dialectics of experience (sundermann).

Reference


Soleni Fressato Biscuit. Soap operas, magic mirror of life: when reality is confused with the spectacle. São Paulo, Editora Perspectiva, 2024, 208 pages. [https://amzn.to/3BQnzXR]

Notes


[1] NEW MOON. Intellectuals watch soap operas? Lua Nova: Culture and Politics Magazine, v. 2, n. 1, p.29-30, 1985. Among the personalities interviewed at the time were politician Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, philosopher and university professor José Arthur Gianotti, sociologist and former union leader Roque Aparecido da Silva, filmmaker Zita Carvalhosa, economist Lídia Goldenstein, anthropologist Carmem Junqueira, sociologist Octávio Ianni, president of the São Paulo Justice and Peace Commission Margarida Genevois, political scientist and journalist at the time André Singer, artist Rodrigo de Andrade, economic commentator Marco Antônio Rocha, psychiatrist José Ângelo Gaiarsa, federal deputy Irma Passoni, writer Fernando Gabeira, economist Maria da Conceição Tavares, lawyer Sílvia Pimentel, and politician and lawyer Rogê Ferreira. For more details, access here.

[2] BACCEGA, Maria Aparecida. Fictional television narrative: encounter with social issues. communication and education: soap opera and social issues, distance education and digital technology, Year IX, n. 26, p.7-16, 2003. In this text, Baccega presents a series of seminal studies on the theme of soap operas and society developed since the 1980s. In 1989, the author, in partnership with university professor Renata Pallottini, coordinated the XNUMXst Latin American Seminar on Soap Opera Dramaturgy at the Memorial da América Latina, in São Paulo. For more details, visit here.

[3] The book launch Novels, Magic Mirror in São Paulo that took place at FESPSP can be accessed here.

[4] NASCIMENTO, Sandro. Soap operas fail, scare away Globo's audience and bring a historic crisis to prime time. On the small screen, UOL, 2024. Access here.

[5] DIAS, S. & RUSSO, E. Teaching case: the internationalization of Brazilian soap operas in the streaming era: the case of Grupo Globo. Internext: International Manager Business Review. v.19, n. 1, p.24-41, 2023. For more in-depth information, access here.

[6] DALCIN, Jurandir. Check out the soap opera audiences between 08/13 and 04/2024/XNUMX. Portal Comments, 2024. This is a relatively low score for this type of soap opera shown in the so-called prime time of Brazilian television. This is compared to the once successful audience standards of global soap operas between the years 1970 and 2008, around 52 points, according to the average ratings since the soap opera Brothers Courage, from Janete Clair to Two face, by Aguinaldo Silva, according to TV Globo Wiki. For such information, access respectively this site and this other website.

[7] DORES, Kelly. Trending on TV and streaming, soap opera remakes bring back emotions. propmark, 2024. For more details, access here .

[8] Id., 2024; VAQUER, Gabriel. 'Renascer': Globo soap opera attracts men and young people and steals audience from streaming. F5, Folha de São Paulo, 2024. For more details, visit here.

[9] KOGUT, Patrícia. Soap opera consumption on Globoplay is growing. Find out which are the most watched. The Globe, 2023; TOLEDO, Mariana. Of the ten most viewed content on Globoplay, seven are productions by Grupo Globo. Tel Aviv, 2024. These articles demonstrate that soap operas are among the top programming options on the list of top 10 from Globoplay. For more details, visit respectively this site and this other website.

[10] DIAS, Tiago. Are soap operas still relevant? Yes, and they are invading streaming…, Splash, Folha de S.Paulo, 2024. For more information, visit here.

[11] GILARD, V.;WOLFF, E.; NUNES, S. Check out the 10 most exported Brazilian soap operas and the countries that buy the most. gshow, 2021; DIAS, S. & RUSSO, E. Op.cit., 2023. According to these publications, Rede Globo exported its soap operas to 86 countries in 2001, although this number varies depending on the soap operas shown.

[12] FELTRIN, Ricardo. See the profile of those who watch soap operas on Globo, SBT and Record… 2018. In 2018, the nine o'clock soap opera Second sun, by João Emanuel Carneiro, was watched by 33% of classes A and B, 30% of class C1, 26% of classes C2 and 12% of classes C and D. Its average audience rating was between 30 and 40 points, that is, low compared to the gigantic ratings of the 1985 soap operas, such as Melee e Rock Santeiro, with 52,67 and 62,30. This downward trend in audience ratings has been occurring as seen in the current nine o'clock soap opera, You Mania, by the same author João Emanuel Carneiro. Since its premiere on September 9, 2024, the soap opera has maintained its audience rating around 20 points. And its audience profile is composed of classes AB and C2, representing 52% of viewers. For more details, access here.

[13] THEIR IG. 12 soap operas to watch on Netflix or Amazon Prime. 2024. To view some of these novels, access here.

[14] Thus, Fressato mobilizes in his work some reflections of Adorno and Horkheimer, also passing through the observations of Benjamin and Kracauer about the technical reproducibility of cultural works.

[15] DEBORD, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Rio de Janeiro: Counterpoint, 1997.

[16] In this case, Fressato mobilizes in his work prominent authors of psychoanalysis such as Erich Fromm, Giles Deleuze & Félix Guatarri, Eugênio Bucci & Maria Rita Khel, Vladmir Safatle, among others.

[17] PARRA, Adriano. Dialectics of experience: culture, work and urbanity in the housing issue. São Paulo: Sundermann, 2021, p. 97.

[18] MEDINA, Cíntia. The cinematographic work as a historical source: towards a critical-materialist approach. Marx and Marxism Magazine – Niep Magazine, Niterói, v.8, n. 15, p. 360-387, 2020.

[19] MORETTI, Franco. Signs and styles of modernity: essays on the sociology of literary forms. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2007.

[20] Id., 2007.

[21] According to Bosi, “an individual’s memory depends on his or her relationship with family, social class, school, church, profession: in short, with the social groups and reference groups that are specific to that individual. If we remember, it is because others, the present situation, make us remember. Most of the time, remembering is not reliving, but redoing, reconstructing, rethinking, with images and ideas from today, the experiences of the past”. In this case, the experience lived by the author’s mother demonstrates how a dramatic scene is capable of mobilizing collective images that synthesize significant personal experiences for those who consume them. BOSI, Ecléa. Memória e sociedade: memórias de velhos [Memory and society: memories of old people]. São Paulo: Edusp, 1987, p. 17.

[22] For example, in the specific case of the author of this review, she came across a young man from Georgia in 2008 who introduced himself to her with the unforgettable wrist shake of the character Sinhozinho Malta, from the soap opera Rock Santeiro 1985. Then, she was welcomed by two happy Romanians with the expression “chocolate with pepper”, the title of the 2003pm soap opera from XNUMX. These cases contrast with the typical receptions of foreigners to Brazilians, who generally refer to personalities from football, carnival or even bossa nova to refer to Brazil.

[23] PARRA, op. cit.

[24]“After all, works of aesthetic content are not autotelic, that is, they are not supra-historical entities that explain themselves, as Eagleton (1993) points out. They are forged in specific socio-individual practices, and are therefore expressions of subjective internalizations of the objectivity of the world, even if the author is unaware of this (LUKÁCS, 2012; MARX, 2004).” See: MEDINA, Cíntia. The tragic rationality of capital in the cinema of Ken Loach: an irrational offensive against the working class in the 2023st century. (Doctoral Thesis) FFLCH-USP, XNUMX.

[25] MEDINA, 2023, p. 104.

[26] HALL, Stuart. From the diaspora: identities and cultural mediations. 2nd ed. Belo Horizonte: Ed.UFMG, 2013.


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