Telenovela and the national production paradigm: revisiting the brazilian way of making television La telenovela y el paradigma de la producción nacional: revisitando el modo brasileño de hacer televisión

Abstract

Brazilian telenovelas portray the vicissitudes of the national territory and outline the unique way of producing televised drama in the country. The aim of this paper is to discuss the development of the narrative structure of Brazilian telenovelas over the years, using Globo's television trajectory with the genre as the empirical object. The research examines the practice and conception of Brazilian telenovelas across decades, considering Globo TV as an essential element of the national market and narrative recognition. A descriptive and exploratory bibliographic analysis was used to intertwine the plots of telenovelas with the country’s sociocultural perspectives as reflected in the genre. The theoretical foundation is based on Hamburger (2005), Alencar (2004), Balogh (2002), Lopes (2003; 2014), Mazziotti (2006), and Mittell (2012). In this way, the progression of national productions' narratives can be observed through the characterization of storytelling particularities, which identify the stylistic features of Brazilian telenovelas from the perspective of Brazil's television craftsmanship. This trajectory explains the transformations of the narratives, the potential for ruptures over the decades, the production logics aligned with the developments of serialized fiction, and the cultural proximities between Latin American countries and their respective televisualities. Thus, Brazilian teledramaturgy is in constant evolution, and TV Globo's approach represents the global recognition of Brazilian television drama.