Abstracts
This article shows how O Bem-Amado (1973) and Saramandaia (1976), both of Dias Gomes, enrolled within the aesthetic principles of grotesque realism and carnivalization. From Bakhtin's theory of the novel, the text analyses the scenes in soap operas that such principles are proposed in the fullness of sense. These productions were part of the modernization process that took television in the 1970s. However, unlike the current proposal realistic in that process, such telenovelas appropriated from other genres of literary discourse (the fantastic and the grotesque, mostly). The article concludes that these aesthetic choices allowed new "contact zones" to the Brazilian reality and were not restricted to mimicry of the "naturalistic realism".
Carnivalization; Grotesque realism; Teledramaturgy; Modernization; Dias
Este artigo mostra como O Bem Amado (1973) e Saramandaia (1976), ambas de Dias Gomes, se inscreveram dentro dos princípios estéticos do realismo grotesco e da carnavalização. A partir da teoria do romance bakhtiniana, são analisadas cenas daquelas telenovelas em que tais princípios se encontram na plenitude dos sentidos propostos. Essas produções foram parte do processo de modernização da televisão que se deu nos anos 1970. No entanto, diferentemente da proposta realista vigente naquele processo, tais telenovelas se apropriaram de outros gêneros do discurso literário (o fantástico e o grotesco, principalmente). Concluímos que essas escolhas estéticas permitiram novas "zonas de contato" críticas com a realidade brasileira e não ficaram restritas ao mimetismo do "realismo naturalista" em vigor.
Carnavalização; Realismo grotesco; Teledramaturgia; Modernização; Dias Gomes
En este artículo se muestra cómo O Bem-Amado (1973) y Saramandaia (1976), ambas de Dias Gomes, están dentro de los principios estéticos del realismo grotesco y de la carnavalización. A partir de la teoría de Bakhtin acerca de la novela, se analizan aquellas escenas en las telenovelas en que tales principios se proponen en la plenitud de sentido. Estas producciones fueron parte del proceso de modernización que tuvo la televisión en la década de 1970. Sin embargo, a diferencia de la propuesta realista en vigor en aquella época, las telenovelas de Dias Gomes apropiaron otros géneros del discurso literario (lo fantástico y lo grotesco, sobre todo). El artículo concluye que estas elecciones estéticas permiten nuevas "zonas de contacto" críticas acerca de la realidad brasileña y no se limita a lo mimetismo del "realismo naturalista" presente en aquel momento.
Carnavalización; Realismo grotesco; Teledramaturgia; Modernización; Dias Gomes
ARTIGOS
PARA ALÉM DAS TELAS
The carnivalization in teledramaturgy of Dias Gomes: the presence of the grotesque realism in the modernization of telenovela
Igor Sacramento
Posdoctoral student in the Graduate Program in Communication, Escola de Comunicações da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (ECO-UFRJ) as scholarship project "História da Mídia e Itinerância das Imagens" (PNPD/CAPES). Rio de Janeiro RJ, Brasil. E-mail: igorsacramento@gmail.com
ABSTRACT
This article shows how O Bem-Amado (1973) and Saramandaia (1976), both of Dias Gomes, enrolled within the aesthetic principles of grotesque realism and carnivalization. From Bakhtin's theory of the novel, the text analyses the scenes in soap operas that such principles are proposed in the fullness of sense. These productions were part of the modernization process that took television in the 1970s. However, unlike the current proposal realistic in that process, such telenovelas appropriated from other genres of literary discourse (the fantastic and the grotesque, mostly). The article concludes that these aesthetic choices allowed new "contact zones" to the Brazilian reality and were not restricted to mimicry of the "naturalistic realism".
Keywords: Carnivalization. Grotesque realism. Teledramaturgy. Modernization. Dias Gomes.
Introdution
The scholarship on the modern telenovela agrees that the process of modernization of soap operas promoted the validity of a realistic proposition in the set of productions of the 1970s which was to "portray, discuss and criticize the Brazilian reality" (BORELL; RAMOS, 1989, p.93). In this sense, it has become commonplace in specialized studies, note that telenovelas modern period were "more real", emphasizing that the production of national and new texts marked the discovery of the everyday and the Brazilian reality (BORELLI; RAMOS, 1989, p.95; HAMBURGUER, 2005, p.85; KEHL, 1986, p.289; MATTELART, 1989, p.31). This conception, despite the recognized methodological advances, presents some problems. Apart from incurring a meager theoretical foundation of TV drama realism and an inadequate characterization of products such studies just not considering the variety of aesthetic styles (naturalism, the fantastic, the grotesque and even romanticism) present in the modernization process of soap operas (RIBEIRO; SACRAMENTO, 2010).
By the lack of precision of the Brazilian academic studies, the definition of realism that had just been confused with naturalism. In this sense, the "naturalistic realism", implicated in those studies on modern soap operas, ended up being seen as the dominant form in the representation of reality (RODRIGUES, 2009). The term "naturalistic realism" means a combination type that reinforces the naturalistic mimetic dimension. However, we know that realism and naturalism are fundamentally different . The central elements of realistic narration - the action and tradition - not present in the inanimate nature of naturalistic description. Moreover, realism is opposed to romanticism (the excess of subjectivity) and naturalism (the apparent excess of objectivity, the "things" and not people and processes). Realism, as dramatic narrative style, has three basic characteristics: 1) develops a "social aspect" of the drama , when considering common people and work with the "social types" in vogue; 2) reports a series of events in this action is contemporary, and 3) the action is inspired by secular matters. Have a naturalistic narrative privileges action of the characters in relationships with other characters as the narrative engine, displacing the center of the report for the determination of the social environment (the living space) materializes in actions (LONGHURST, 1987).
This article discusses, from O Bem-Amado and Saramandaia two soap operas written by Dias Gomes, the presence of grotesque realism and carnivalization dramatic modernization in the 1970s. Their aesthetic procedures differed from the "naturalistic realism", seen as dominant in the creative works of fiction at the time of issuing procedures. The grotesque realism, as well as already explained in Mikhail Bakhtin (2008), is an aesthetic system of the comic-popular culture, centered on the principles of relegation (the transfer to the plane of the earth and the body all that is high, spiritual, ideal and abstract) and reverse (release, albeit provisional, hierarchies, rules and social taboos established). Why not develop perfect shapes, this aesthetic mode is also characterized by incompleteness, by movement, by becoming, the process is not stopped. It is therefore a distinct manifestation of those who care for the aesthetic rigor based on symmetry, in order to standardize and balance.
I divide this text article into two parts. The first account with a discussion of the reflection of Bakhtin's grotesque realism and carnivalization, taken as the foundation from which will be the Dias Gomes' "grotesque soap opera" upon realistic proposal validity during the process of the Brazilian soap operas modernization. The second part is about O Bem-Amado and the scene analysis of Zelão's flight (Milton Golçalves); in addition, the scene analysis of Dona Redonda's explosion (Wilza Carla), on Saramandaia. These scenes were highlighted in the analysis because we considered emblematic the presence of grotesque realism in the television drama by Dias Gomes in the context of the 1970s.
The carnivalization, the grotesque realism and the analysis of discourse genres
Mikhail Bakhtin's reflections on carnivalization and grotesque realism runs the analysis of the works of Dostoyevsky (Bakhtin, 2005) and Rabelais (Bakhtin, 2008), where this study was thorough and systematic. Without doubt, therefore, one must take into account the specific focus of Bakhtin is carnivalization in the literature, and the novel as most remarkable literary phenomenon. In this sense, although the ideas of Bakhtin should be taken with caution in investigating social carnivals (LACAPRA 2010, p.153), they elude the analysis of cultural products which point out relegation, inversion, incompleteness, ambivalence, parody, the grotesque body and its regeneration as a form of critique of modern society way to criticize the modern society.
Bakhtin's ideas about carnivalization part of their reaction to the hegemonic project of modernity and its initiatives exclusion (of laughter, equality, pleasure, fellowship, sharing, solidarity, and collective utopia joy). For him, there is "almost nothing" and of the ambivalent towards regenerating carnivalization within the signifiers of contemporary languages and evaluative systems. Rather, the mere cynicism and insult are nothing more than "fragments of a foreign language in which you could say something once, but now only expresses needy insults of meaning" (BAKHTIN, 2008, p.25). No wonder, therefore, that he has reassembled the context of Rabelais, the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, to consider carnivalization a greater fullness of meaning in modernity, the "laughing with" was replaced by "laughing of". Moreover, as we know, the emphasis in contemporary productions in pastiche of parody would be a hallmark of the presence of postmodernism in culture. Even though the hallmark of both is the humor, "pastiche is incomplete parody, parody that has lost its sense of humor" (JAMESON, 1985, p.18-19).
As an aesthetic phenomenon, carnivalization is characterized by its "grand universally popular worldview" that brings the world of man and man's man, a "contact zone" and free family frees the seriousness of moral constraints, nihilism, and the flippancy individualism (BAKHTIN, 2005, p.161). The notion of the contact zone is crafted by Bakhtin, to observe how they establish dialogues between the principal, the representation and recognition in the literary space promoted by the novel, breaking with the distance of the epic genre:
The novel was formed precisely in the process of destruction of epic distance in the comic world and the familiarization process of man, in lowering the object of artistic representation to the level of a current, unfinished and fluid reality. From the beginning the novel was not built in distant image of the absolute past, but in direct contact with this unfinished area current (BAKHTIN, 1998a, p.427).
The public square is the contact zone quintessential carnival. It not only gives cohabitation with the differences, but also an intense reversal of roles and hierarchies that shape the world of officialdom. In carnival worldview, ambivalence reigns, an interaction between the basic opposites in language and in life - the serious and the comic, the official and subversive, old and new, the beginning and the end - which makes opposites combine one the other to release the words "tightening sense of logic, verbal hierarchy" (BAKHTIN, 2008, p.371).
As we see, the theme of the double plays a key role in the processes of carnivalization literature. For Bakhtin (1998b, p.373), there was never a single genre completely transparent, any "direct speech" that had not its parodic twin-transvestizante, its comic counterpart. In this sense, the literature carnivalized produces a kind of inversion that moves the commonplace assumptions for an intense meeting and incompleteness transformations.
The carnivalization is related to the grotesque, in contrast with the classical aesthetic. While this produces geometric, perfect, round, balanced and leveled forms, that emphasizes the holes, lumps and move in motion, incomplete, exaggerated and excessive ways. The grotesque aesthetic, so it's not a closed, complete assembly, it is unfinished, transgresses its own limits - is the "quintessence of incompleteness" (BAKHTIN, 2008, p.23).
In grotesque realism, the degradation of the sublime, classic, high, and possessed a fundamentally topographic body sense (on top, the head and reason; in low, the belly and pleasure). In this sense, downgrade is "closer to the earth, to commune with the earth conceived as a principle of absorption and at the same time, the birth" (BAKHTIN, 2008, p.19). That's why the grotesque aesthetic is absolutely ambivalent, while denial and affirmation. Degradation, for example, is in itself a way of regeneration: the body tomb of "old pregnant" (modeled in terracotta by Kertch) that opens itself like a womb to give birth to a new life.
Parody plays this role to degenerate to regenerate. It is not absolutely negative, but also positive. Parody is one of the obvious ways in seriocomic genres of literature carnivalized. As Bakhtin (2005, p.107-108) noted, these genres have three fundamental and parodic peculiarities. The first is the new treatment they give to reality: the present, day by day, is the object and the starting point for their formalization, interruptions and testimonials. The second peculiarity concerns the fact that these genres are not based on a legend, but in the present experiment (under-ripe) and fancy free. When the legend appears, it is critically and sometimes cynical and unmasked. The third feature is the diversity of styles and variety of voices from different genres of discourse, producing a parodic tone of the narration, the fusion of the sublime to the vulgar, the serious to the comical representation of the represented.
The characteristic of the chronotope carnivalized literature is the public square, precisely because it brings what is marginal , peripheral or border in everyday life to the center of community life. There all opposites meet and mingle. In this festivity and familiarity zone, there is no distinction between spectators and performer. All these functions take turn.
Although in modern times, for Bakhtin (1998a, p.386), Parody have, in the literature, their restricted and secondary functions. Still exist (including media) cultural demonstrations seeking the full meaning of parody (Stam, 1992). That is, the processes have not only carnivalization in the literature. In modernizing the national soap operas, when the realistic proposal became dominant, another realism, grotesque and carnavalizado, also contributed to the aesthetic renewal of television in the 1970s.
O Bem Amado and the Zelão das Asas's flight
Brazilian television programming schedule at 10 pm (considered the most experimental and critical), Dias Gomes introduced the television version of his play Odorico, the Beloved The Mysteries of Love and Death, written in 1962, published by Claudia magazine in 1963, adapted by Benjamin Cattan for TV program TV de Vanguarda of TV Tupi at Sao Paulo in 1964 and staged in theater only in 1969, after years of negotiation with the Federal Censorship and when taken on a more streamlined basis (O Bem-Amado). The telenovela marked a change in the landscape of other productions signed by Dias Gomes. After acclimatizing his stories predominantly urban, in really existing scenarios, he created Sucupira city that would be in Bahia countryside.
In the adaptation process, there were many changes in the narrative, the staging, the costumes, the inclusion of new characters and the use of resources and elements of television language and particularly the deployment of color. O Bem-Amado was the first Brazilian telenovela in color. Therefore, encountered major technical problems in settings of colors, with striking bright colors of the costumes that the actors wore precisely to affirm the validity of the colorful front of black and white (DIAS, 1991, p.115-164). Certainly, this excess also contributed to the colors that carnivalization telenovela. The excess of realism - the hyper-realism - the design of the scenarios, the costumes, the acting, the technical and visual effects resources was not only used to represent "more accurately" the real, but to exceed the actual. Exaggerate it in colors and tones.
Dias Gomes was not very accustomed to the "naturalistic realism" force in the modernization of national teledramaturgy drama process but believed that production could not appeal for a certain aesthetic radicalism: "While the novel The Beloved began sincerely feared by overly caricatured treatment direction by the three sisters Cajazeiras [before the current naturalistic format] "(Amiga, 12.6.1973, p.41). The excess, not melodramatic, carried out by the humor with which he represented social types: the priest, the colonel, delegated, the political, the spinster, the outlaw. Sucupira was an allegory of Brazil, showing the survival of the tradition of authoritarianism and colonels under a modernizing armor, with promises of progress.
In the process of adaptation, the number nine frames became a telenovela of 175 chapters, based on a thorough reorganization process conducted by the author himself, Dias Gomes. Adding new themes, dialogues and characters (jumping from 15 to 25 in total ) , Days set new creative nexus and critical of the Brazilian reality, within the regime of limits and possibilities of the Globo TV era. For example , neologisms created by Odorico Paraguaçu (Paul Gracindo) were results of the adaptation process, which ended up becoming the most popular, exciting and reprehensible character. This ambivalence (parody colonel and dishonest politician who makes us laugh by how closely follow its trajectory) is itself the process carnivalization, merging the Serious representation (coronelism and its impact on social inequalities and strengthening of holdings) and comical represented. Odorico is a mockery of the coronels.
In general, however, the telenovela kept the plot already mentioned in the piece. This is the story of the mayor Odorico Paraguaçu, whose main campaign platform construction of the first cemetery Sucupira. However, its mandate goes by without at least one dead to be buried. Frustrated and unscrupulous, the mayor makes use several tricks to get a corpse, even promotes the return of an illustrious outlaw and murderer of the city, the dreaded Captain Zeca Diabo (Lima Duarte). However, the fearless bandit redeemed back, wanting only to be worthy of God, the Father Godfather Cicero and make an old dream, to be prosthetic. Faced with this impasse, Odorico urges the captain to kill, taking advantage of intrigue and subterfuge. Anyway, back to killing Zeca Diabo, doing justice to the city, killing Odorico. Thus, ironically, the mayor inaugurates his own work.
The character Zeca Diabo, arising from a homonymous play by Dias Gomes written in 1943, was incorporated into the piece and was also highlighted in the telenovela . However , this was not the only reference the author of his own work . Zelão the Wings ( Milton Gonçalves ) goes back to Joe the Ass The Keeper of Promises (1960). In this piece, Joe the Ass had conducted a promise to be safe and sound your pet donkey , after an accident. The promise held out in a yard with the intention of Santa Barbara. After that, he, carrying a cross, wandered into Salvador city, to Santa Bárbara Church. There, a succession of intolerance by the authorities prevents it fulfills its promise to have it done in a yard of Candomblé, an ass to heal and be likened to Jesus Christ carrying a cross. He had been released from the promise by the priest before the installed confusion, but remained firm in his purpose and his faith. Zelão also had a promise to keep. After escaping the fury of the sea that could cause him to death, Zelão promises to Yemanja (the Catholic equivalent is Santa Barbara) that would make a pair of wings and fly tower of the town church. The fisherman was released by the vicar (Rogério Fróes) the promise , because he was really the intention of an entity of Candomblé. However, Zelão followed obstinate. Had to fulfill the promise he had made to Yemanja to ensure your life. This obstinacy increased when Zelão and other fishermen watched the beautiful daughter of Odorico Paraguaçu, Telma (Sandra Brea), bathing naked in the sea. By far believed that it was Yemanja. Zelão, in turn, believed that the body had been charging you a promise. Thus, an ambivalence arose. While for Telma, that represented the bathroom naked assertion of their freedom, their sexuality and their right over their own bodies, to Zelão, was a collection of the promise and the need to reaffirm their faith. Zelão then went on to fight against the intransigence until the end of the plot to fulfill it.
The last scene of The Beloved was not the burial Odorico Paraguaçu, but the Zelão's flight. In a surveillance oversight of the priest and the woman Zelão, Chiquinha Childbirth (Ruth de Souza), who was also against his promise (for fear of her husband's life), Zelão can reach the top of the church tower , and before all onlookers, throws himself into the air and flies Sucupira.
The scene begins with the arrival of Zelão the tower of the church. From the outside, it starts to balance to start your flight. The church is located in the town square. At the site, several townspeople congregate to watch the event. Ahead of the crowd, the priest and Ruth are amazed: he, for failing to stop him, and she, for being about to lose power to your husband. As a last hope, she keeps folded hands, like she was asking God for mercy. At this time, the picture is frozen. The colorful image gives way to black and white. The voiceover, Mario Lago, comments: "Here our story to, for all we know from then on is hearsay. Not that we do not believe, because if you go to Sucupira will see that there no doubt".
The resource status change color, from color to black and white, demarcates the difference between reality and legend, but also between the present and the past. Right now, the first soap opera to have the presence of the narrator, there is a change in the temporal record. Until then, the plot unfolded in the official present time, even in a fictional space. There after, produced a higher spatio-temporal distance (or the narrator or the viewer are Sucupira or last time that the action took place), but also certain cognitive estrangement. Until that event, the story was "true", since that event had been known only by "hearsay". This obviously reinforces the fantastic character, magic, story of Zelão. It can not be explained as the ways to count and verify stories featured in our official world, but only by the unofficial world free of our rules and based on another belief system (for us , fanciful and unrealistic). That is, as we know, carnivalization is a form of a "second life" of the people, based on principles of laughter, liberty and the subversion of officialdom and the standard (BAKHTIN, 2008).
Obstinate in their faith, Zelão is preparing for his flight, making the sign of the cross. He then opens the wings and jumps built. This shows, at that time, the expressions of fear and apprehension of the inhabitants of Sucupira. At that same moment, a song overlaps the sound environment. The music is performed by berimbau, drums, and other african-Brazilian instruments. Zelão, as well as his wife, were black. Both were Catholic, but they were also believers in the rituals of Candomblé and entities. This syncretism was part of the ambivalence that structured those characters, between the official religion and the persecuted; between the acculturation and the reaffirmation of their origins. In this sense, music highlights this ambivalence, placing it in the center of the action. And Zelão flies. His flight is accompanied by his cry. His cry is mixed with the music, as if to commemorate his victory over the intransigence and the realization of their faith.
In this sense, the flight Zelão is a metaphor for freedom. Despite all the obstacles, he held his desire to be free and could fly. This was impossible in the context of military dictatorship. In this sense, the flight Zelão ourselves a "contact zone" directly with the reality of time that production itself. This metaphor worked then at the same time, was a critical to that reality and a belief in the possibility of change. "And Zelão flew. If you doubt, you are a man without faith", concluded the voice-over narrator.
Saramandaia and the Dona Redonda's explosion
Between 3 May and 31 December 1976, was aired Saramandaia in the television programming schedule at 10 pm. The new Dias Gomes' telenovela, directed by Walter Avancini, Roberto Talma and Gonzaga Blota, went in the fictional town of Bole-Bole, located in the sugarcane area of the Bahia countryside. The plot was structured from a controversy: the council should leave the name Bole-Bole and adopt a new, Saramandaia. The "traditionalists", led by coronels Zico Rosado (Castro Gonzaga) and Tenorio (Sebastião Vasconcelos) who wanted to keep the name, based on historic preservation. Have the "mudancistas", which had as leader John Gibão (Juca de Oliveira), believed that it was necessary to change the name because he was referring to an affair of Dom Pedro I in the place. This group proposed the name Saramandaia, the same as a famous rum city, Bole-Bole competitor, produced by the ingenuity of Zico Rosado. For the decision, Mayor Lua Viana (Antônio Fagundes), despite sharing with the opinion of John Gibão, his brother, seeks to maintain the smoothness of the democratic spirit and proposes a referendum, intensifying the competition for popular vote.
About his new telenovela, in an interview, Dias Gomes commented:
The attempt is to escape the realism. For exemple, balancing reality and absurdity. Or transmit through the absurd reality which very often it takes, especially in Latin American countries, countries like ours. I sought what was fantastic in northeastern literature because Saramandaia is incorporated into a panel itself and the harsh reality of the Northeast (Jornal do Brasil, 30/04/1976, p.10).
The narrative universe of Saramandia not constituted from social realism that had come to characterize the work of Dias Gomes. This new production is linked to the fantastic realism present in the Latin American literary production of the time and the European absurd theater (Paiva, 2003). However, this does not imply the absence of benchmarks with reality, the association of some fantastic features to certain social types easily identified (singleton and controlled by the parent teacher, coronel, the attractiveness woman, but repressed, eg). In the plot, the teacher and the city tax collector Aristóbulo Camargo (Ary Fontoura ) , who lived for many years without sleep, at dawn Thursday to Friday, turned into a werewolf; Eponina Camargo (Elza Gomes) kept his head husband, left at the door by an outlaw man called Trovoada, for over 35 years and presented with a macabre humor, all visitors to your home , John Gibão, besides having some omens, hid in an apparent hump a pair of wings, sometimes covered by a hood; Colonel Zico Rosado, when crossed, let out ants by the nose; Marcina (Sonia Braga) kept the body on fire with excitement and by repressed desire; Seu Encolheu, the husband of Dona Redonda (Wilza Carla), the man who has not grown, shrunk, and Cazuza (Rafael Carvalho) threatened to spit the heart the mouth every time you thrilled. When spat heart, was presumed dead, but revived, causing terror in the inhabitants of the city. Among the fantastic characters, it is worth highlighting the iconic scene where Dona Redonda explodes from eating. Here is the explicit use of grotesque realism. The explosion is the supremacy of the body but a gargantuan body expands, opens and protrudes out, the margins and limits are subverted by too. It is an example of the purest carnivalized image towards regenerating ambivalence attributed to it in Mikhail Bakhtin (2008). Saramandaia produced an area of absolute carnivalization, in which laughter, delusion and provocation mix (RIBEIRO; SACRAMENTO 2010, p.132).
The presence of the unusual in Saramandaia occurs as a form of mediation with reality. Again, Dias Gomes was comedy with certain moral values. In the morning, in addition to the taxes it charges, Aristóbolo tries to hitch a romance with Risoleta (Dina Sfat), the brothel owner of Bole-Bole, which is even more fascinated when he discovers he is a werewolf. In the night, in their wanderings, he had encounters with historical figures such as Dom Pedro I (Tarcisio Meira) and Tiradentes (Francisco Cuoco). By the day, the teacher Aristóbolo was a learned man, polite and obedient to his mother. He was viewed as eccentric by the inhabitants of the city by the very lofty language with which his discourses uttered in favor of renaming the city. It was applauded, but misunderstood by residents of Bole-Bole, who thought sometimes that he was speaking in another language. In the early morning hours Friday, he turned into a monster, instilling terror to all who cross your path. Thus, the existence of Aristólobo is extremely ambiguous, combining refinement with the monstrosity.
The scene of the explosion of Dona Redonda pointing to other directions. At a rally , the band of "mudancistas" takes over the city. Pregnant, Zelia (Jonah Weiner), the mayor's wife, leaves home after euphoric set, along with Marcina. She invites her husband, but Lua says he cannot go with her because, as mayor, cannot take sides. The outbreak happens, when suddenly, Dona Redonda appears with more advantaged forms, impressing her husband, his shrugged, Maestro Cursino (Brandão Filho) and Maria Aparadeira (Eloisa Mafalda). Encolheu was very worried: "Today I 'm afraid. After the Gibão said one thing, I'm annoyed, anguished. So today, my God". Then, happy, Dona Redonda beckons her husband. Gibão is on the top of the podium urging the cries for change of name "Saramandaia!" , but, when he saw her, he features changes and he realizes that the worst was about to happen. Dona Redonda feels bad. Starts to inflate until it explodes . The force of the explosion was such that it caused several incidents: a huge crater in the center, an earthquake, houses came down and her body spread throughout the city, taking three days to allow the parties were found and collected for a funeral.
The explosion of Dona Redonda is both affirmative and negative. Her body expands beyond its limits. It does not contain in itself. So, it does not repress and not thins. It refuses to regulate. It is excessive, bulky and powerful body: her body expands until it explodes. Moreover, the event confirms the suppression of moralism maximum "eat until I explode", as heard and ignored by Dona Redonda, always with a voracious appetite. The regeneration of Dona Redonda is realized with the arrival of Dona Bitela (Wilza Carla), her sister, who, besides being extremely similar to that exploded, has the same appetite and did not care for happened. When were amazed by the similarity between them and the physical desire to eat, Bitela said: "The difference between my sister and me is that I 'm thinner".
Regarding the scene the Gibão's flight, there is a more intense dialogue with the political context of the 1970s. After a long time hiding their wings, ashamed of his condition, he, perceiving surrounded, ambushed, opens its wings and fly for his life, admiring the entire city with his act. None of the shots hits. He feels free. Here is a resemblance to O Bem-Amado. The first is the use of fireworks flight to represent freedom. However, while in Saramandaia freedom is related to courage in O Bem-Amado, as analyzed, it is related to faith. There is a greater awareness of Gibão its assertion as to be free, without fear. Zelão, in his turn, is taken by his confidence in his religious belief. Another similar point is the use of lofty language and neologisms. The difference is that while Odorico was generally admired for its excesses, Aristóbolo caused more than alluring strangeness.
Between 1960 and 1970, the Brazilian fantastic fiction has already present O ex-mágico da taberna minhoca (1947), a collection of short stories by Murilo Rubião, O coronel e o lobisomem (1964), by José Cândido de Carvalho, and Grande Sertão: veredas (1956), by Guimarães Rosa. These books has had to share characteristics with the Latin American magical realism (DACANAL, 1970). Especially after the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez in 1967, there was an intensification of publication of novels that sought to transcend the limits of naturalistic realism, constituting a thematic complexity (which, otherwise, was realistic) to from the relations of contiguity and distance between the spheres of the real and the unreal (CHIAMPI, 1980, p.61).
As discussed above, the unusual was present in other Dias Gomes' works (in theater, notably in Os Cinco Fugitivos do Juízo Final, O Pagador de Promessas, A Revolução dos Beatos e Odorico, o Bem-Amado; e, na televisão, especialmente em Verão Vermelho, O Bem-Amado and O Espigão). Saramandaia is an intensification of the presence of unusual. After all, although the fantastic and wonderful realism contain the unusual, they are not synonymous. While in fantastic realism occurs between the uncertainty and the inability to be some explanation to the supernatural, knocking the cultural conventions and also diegetic, the wonderful, there is no possibility of estrangement, fear or terror of the unusual event. After all, the extraordinary (in an extra diegetic perspective) is not unknown, mysterious, but part of the narrative reality (CHIAMPI, 1980; GARCIA, 2007; TODOROV, 1975). While the broadcasting of Saramandaia, Dias Gomes was recognized as influenced by Hispanic fantastic realism, bringing the telenovela a set of innovative features (SACRAMENTO, 2012).
Final thoughts
The modernization process of Brazilian soap operas had ownership, among other things, a diverse set of aesthetic and cultural matrices, beyond the melodramatic romanticism (style that characterized the traditional production of telenovelas, mostly) and naturalistic realism itself, hegemonic principle in productions, as well as between fiction producers and specialized critics. Dias Gomes'works, at that time, was not exhausted by the likelihood of realistic representation. Rather, it relies on unusual ways to establish zones of contact with reality.
In this sense, the aesthetic design of Dias Gomes was quite close to a carnivalization of genres of television discourse. The grotesque, fantastic aesthetic as telenovelas O Bem-Amado and Saramandaia constituted representations of supernatural world living with inversions roles, social masks and caricatural forms affected. The relationship with reality, thus it was not much more than the construction of a similarity contiguous, but allegorical structures, such as of Zelão's flight and Dona Redonda's explosion, which, beyond the diegetic dimensions, references have to reality. In the first case, it was the ode to freedom, fully impossible, in a military dictatorship. In the second, the absolute expansion of body fat, socially repressed and controlled, breaking with the expectations and customs.
The modern soap opera, we know, sought mainly on realism and nationalism a form of renewal. Within a realistic proposal, Dias Gomes spoke in their telenovelas with other aesthetic (the fantastic, the grotesque, tragic, melodramatic) with the goal of building a unique language for the telenovela from an intense connection with the Brazilian reality. Although Dias Gomes' discourse that time were part of the modernization process, it established rituals of inversion, bringing the grotesque, the fantastic and the comic popular for the proscenium of the transformations.
References
- BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Problemas da poética de Dostoiévski Rio de Janeiro: Forense Universitária, 2005.
- _______. A cultura popular na Idade Média e no Renascimento: o contexto de François Rabelais. São Paulo: Hucitec, 2008.
- _______. Epos e romance. In: _______. (Org.) Questões de literatura e estética: a teoria do romance. São Paulo: Hucitec, 1998a. p.397-428.
- _______. Formas de tempo e de cronotopo no romance: ensaios de poética histórica. In: ______(Org.). Questões de literatura e estética: a teoria do romance. São Paulo: Hucitec, 1998b. p.211-362.
- BORELLI, Silvia H. Simões; RAMOS, José M. Ortiz. A telenovela diária. In: ORTIZ, Renato et al.(Org.). Telenovela: história e produção. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1989. p.55-108.
- CHIAMPI, Irlemar. O realismo maravilhoso São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1980.
- DACANAL, José Hildebrando. Realismo mágico. Porto Alegre: Ed. Movimento, 1970.
- DELBAERE-GARANT, Jeanne. Psychic realism, mythic realism, grotesque realism: variations on magic realism in contemporary literature in English. In: ZAMORA, Lois Parkinson and FARIS, Wendy B. (Orgs.). Magical realism: theory, history, community. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995. p.249-266.
- DIAS, José. Evolução cenográfica de O Bem Amado de Dias Gomes (ou confabulâncias sigilosas com todos os acautelatórios das solucionáticas cenográficas de Sucupira e seus habitantes). 1991. 340p. Dissertação (Mestrado em Artes). Escola de Comunicação e Artes da Universidade de São Paulo.
- HAMBURGER, Esther. O Brasil antenado: a sociedade da telenovela. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar Editor, 2005.
- GARCÍA, Flavio. O insólito na narrativa ficcional: a questão e os conceitos na teoria dos gêneros literários. In: _______. (Org.). A banalização do insólito Rio de Janeiro: Dialogarts, 2007. p.11-17.
- JAMESON, Fredric. Pós-modernidade e sociedade de consumo. Novos Estudos Cebrap, n.12. p. 16 26, jun.1985.
- KEHL, Maria Rita. Três ensaios sobre a telenovela. In: COSTA, Alcir Henrique da. et al.(Orgs). Um país no ar São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1986. p.277-323.
- LaCAPRA, Dominick. Bakhtin, o marxismo e o carnavalesco. In: RIBEIRO, Ana Paula G.; SACRAMENTO, Igor (Orgs.). Mikhail Bakhtin: linguagem, cultura e mídia. São Carlos: Pedro & João Editores, 2010. p.149-184.
- LONGHURST, Brian. Realism, naturalism and television soap opera Theory, Culture & Society, v. 4. Londres, p. 633-649, 1987.
- MATTELART, Michèle; MATTELART, Armand. O carnaval das imagens São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1989.
- PAIVA, C. Cardoso. Afinidades estéticas no contexto da latinidade: o realismo mágico de Dias Gomes. In: SOUZA, Lícia Soares et al (Orgs.). América, terra de utopias Salvador: Editora da UNEB, 2003. p.155-170.
- RIBEIRO, Ana P. Goulart ; SACRAMENTO, Igor. A renovação estética da TV. In: RIBEIRO, Ana P. Goulart; SACRAMENTO, Igor; SILVA, Marco A.Roxo da (Orgs.). História da televisão no Brasil. São Paulo: Editora Contexto, 2010. p.109-136.
- RODRIGUES, F. Junqueira. Do figurino cênico ao figurino de moda: a modernização do figurino nas telenovelas brasileiras. 2009. 227p. (Dissertação) Mestrado em Multimeios Instituto de Artes, Universidade Estadual de Campinas.
- SACRAMENTO, Igor. Nos tempos de Dias Gomes: a trajetória de um intelectual comunista nas tramas comunicacionais. 2012. 511p. (Tese ) Doutorado em Comunicação e Cultura - Escola de Comunicação, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro.
- STAM, Robert. Subversive Pleasures: Bakhtin, Cultural Criticism and Film. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
- TODOROV, Tzvetan. Introdução à literatura fantástica São Paulo: Perspectiva, 1975.
Publication Dates
-
Publication in this collection
26 June 2014 -
Date of issue
June 2014
History
-
Received
23 Mar 2013 -
Accepted
15 Nov 2013
