Quando a Baixada também é Brasil: um estudo de caso da Baixada imaginada em Senhora do Destino

Abstract

This research is a study about telenovela and Baixada Fluminense that, in a larger scale, also tries to think about Brazil. Under the assumption that a study about telenovela can revel instersections between fiction and reality, the present dissertation tries – from a study of case of Senhora do Destino – to analyse how the presentation of a fluid and flexible Baixada in a prime time novel, that sometimes approaches Baixada to a hegemonic representation of violence, absence and indifference, and sometimes emphasizes Baixada as an ideal territory in terms of election, life and consuption, is associated with a larger sociological context that envolves agents of economic, political and social fields. Therefore, in the light of bibliographical and documentary survey about the theme, and by the analysis of the audiovisual material of the work, we realized that, inserted in a market moviment, where Rede Globo starts to incorporate – from its novels – a process of valuing socially devalued places, the telenovela Senhora do Destino points to an attempt of the TV station to capture and express the socioeconomic modulations experienced in Brazil, much in function of the politics carried out by Lula government. Driven, therefore, by the vigour of lulismo of the 2000 years, the work of Aguinaldo Silva revealed an authorial intencionality and an investiment of midia that, attentive to the ascension of a new social class, opens “space” for that “new class” to see themselve “represented” on television. So, taking a ride in the year of 2004, when Baixada wins the national news from the municipal elections of Nova Iguaçu, Aguinaldo Silva presented us a Baixada that blends legality and ilegality, violence and peace, samba and jogo do bicho; and that – redeemed by the figure of a woman – was, in the end, exalted as a simbol of the national identity.