As telenovelas brasileiras como tecnologias sociais de hipervisibilidade da identidade de gênero e sexualidade

Abstract

Understood as social technologies of hypervisible of gender identity and sexuality, Brazilian telenovelas have promoted, for decades in Brazil, fields of germination of moral issues, mobilized social practices and are responsible for an incalculable production of sex discourses. In this work, we present how this dynamics materialized through letters from readers of Jornal do Brasil (JB), between the years 1978 and 2000, where viewers, moved by the first LGBT representations – issue and/or characters - in telenovelas in the country, led an extensive debate on censorship, new ways of control, freedom of speech and post-military dictatorship democracy. We also demonstrate how this debate sustained and still sustains the arguments for issuing Government Age Rating Ordinances to this day. To track these controversies caused by the telenovelas, we considered the methodological recommendations by Bruno Latour, which proposes to give voice to the actors (groups, spokespersons, anti-groups) of the discussions. That is, try to identify their origin, motivations and controversies. From them, we demonstrate discursivities, statements and gender performatives, according to compressions by Foucault, Butler, Preciado and Eribon. We bring results of analyzes as basis to understand that, as social technologies, as Brazilian telenovelas have in sex one of their main instruments and support.