Race matters

Abstract

This research examines what happens when a telenovela directly addresses matters of race and racism in contemporary Brazil. Duas Caras (‘Two Faces’, which means a person who leads a double life), a TV Globo telenovela (October 1, 2007 to May 31, 2008) was a watershed program for two main reasons: It presented audiences with the first Afro-Brazilian as the main hero, and it openly addressed race matters through plot and dialogue, a practice that had never been done previously, due in part to the widespread belief that Brazil was a “racial democracy.” Additionally, for the first time in the history of Brazilian TV, the author of the telenovela kept a web log or “blog” where he discussed the public’s reactions to the storylines, media discussions pertaining to the characters and plot, and directly engaged with fans and critics of the program. This investigation combines a traditional textual analysis of Duas Caras along with a study of related media – blogs, news pieces, reader’s comments, and so forth – in order to demonstrate how the program introduced novel ideas about race to the audience as well as offered a forum where ingrained as well as alternative views about race, racism, class and racial relations in Brazil were discussed. This is not a reception study in the traditional sense, it is not a story of entertainment-education in the strict sense, and it is not solely a textual analysis. Instead, it is a study of the social milieu that the telenovela (and especially Duas Caras) navigates, one that is a component of a contemporary progressive social movement in Brazil, and one that views the text as being located in social interactions. As such, this study reveals how telenovelas contribute to social change in a way that has not been properly accounted