The telenovela that started the redefinition of the genre in Brazil was Beto Rockfeller, aired by Rede Tupi in 1968 and 1969 (Mattelart & Mattelart,

1 990; Ortiz & Borelli, 1 988; Straubhaar, 1 982). Beto Rockfeller escaped the traditional Latin American artificial dramatic attitudes and speech patterns. It used colloquial dialogue typical of Rio de Janeiro. The dramatic struc ture, narrative strategies, and production values were also modified. Beto Rockfeller was the story of a middle-class young man who worked for a shoe store but, with charm and wit, got himself mixed up with the upper class, passing himself off as a millionaire. The telenovela got very high audience ratings, leading the network to stretch it to almost 1 3 months, much longer than the usual 6 to 8 months (Fernandes, 1987).

TV Globo, which up to that point had followed a traditional style of telenovelas with exotic settings and plots, saw the audience interest in Beto Rockfeller and championed the style. In this process, the genre was resha ped, distancing the Brazilian telenovela from the Latin America model. Intentionally or not, Globo transformed the Brazilian telenovela into a forum for the discussion of Brazilian reality. Globo has brought into the majority of the Brazilian households current issues in the social and political arena. In a historical analysis of the development of telenovelas in Brazil, Hamburger ( 1 999) argued that these texts have created a space to discuss the nation. They have become the way the nation is currently imagined

(Anderson, 1983). Beginning in the late 1980s, as a result of the political abertura (opening) that started with the transition from military to civilian government (Straubhaar,

1 989a), and continuing now, telenovela writers have increased the visibility of their social agendas and included national political debates in their nar ratives (Porto, 2005). The commercial nature of telenovelas also evolved;

156 Chapter 6 these texts were used to sell not only products targeting housewives, but

sports cars, services, and many other products targeted to different audience segments. Although they are still have some room for creativity in plot lines, telenovela writers must now also bow to commercial imperatives and write such product placements into their scripts, in cooperation with network commercial departments. Even the commercial form of the soap opera has been reconfigured to exploit Brazilian culture and rules.

The "melodramatic glue" maintaining these texts' popularity with audiences has modernized. Still, these melodramas have remained loyal to traditional topics such as romantic desire and conflict, social mobility, and the expected happy ending. The genre structure of the telenovela constrains

writers within the commercial and genre conventions, but also gives them resources with which to reach the audience with a message. This is reminis cent of Giddens's ( 1 984) theories of how structure provides both constraints or limits and resources to social actors. One of the more socially minded

telenovela authors, Benedito Rui Barbosa, who wrote 0 Rei do Gado, max imizes that space and resources to discuss land reform. To take this telenovela as a central example, 0 Rei do Gado (The Cattle King) was broadcast from June 1996 to February 1997 in the 8:30 p.m. slot on Globo. The first week of a telenovela is traditionally designed to grab the audience with ravishing visuals and technical care. Toward the end of its run,

0 Rei do Gado was filmed further in advance than the typical few days to

2 weeks, and had higher production values. The first weeks of a telenovela also are used to evaluate it with focus groups and to provide preview screenings for the news media. Some writers dreaded these data from these focus groups and

preferred to ignore them, but others perceived the feedback as a valuable tool (Hamburger, 1999). According to several anecdotes, some writers have had to change the fate of characters based on the evaluation of focus groups. In situ ations where focus group data and low ratings corroborated each other, dra matic measures such as the removal of the main writer might take place, which illustrates the potentially severe commercial restraints placed on the writer.

0 Rei do Gado was a successful program, attracting an audience that hovered around 50% of all sets tuned in every evening. It promoted land reform, political integrity, and environmental issues through social

merchandising. The main objective with this telenovela, however, as with any other Brazilian telenovela, was to create a space to promote commercial goods. Several companies committed to advertise in this telenovela based on the success of the writer, director, and leading actor in their previous col laborations, but also based on Globo's track record of delivering a sizable audience with desirable demographics (La Pastina, 2001 ) .

Barbosa, 0 Rei's author, wove the political narrative within the tradi-

Producing National Television, Glocal and Local 157

His hero, a wealthy cattle farmer, was vulnerable and understanding; the heroine, a landless peasant who inherits a fortune, never abandoned her roots. The landless people remained landless, and the honest politician was killed. Nevertheless, love prevailed. Those who never relinquished their love

were rewarded with happiness after 9 months of tribulation, but the rest of the national problems remained as unsettled at the end as they had been at the beginning. According to the author, his message had come across loud

and clear: Until land reform was taken seriously, the nation would remain under a cloud.

The writer, the news program of the broadcast network (TV Globo), newspapers, and several political figures from different parties all used the program to promote the idea of land reform and their own electoral prospects. The show's writer, by promoting this issue, challenged the inter ests of Brazil's agricultural elite, which in turn challenged somewhat the idea that mass communications are clearly structurally controlled. The interests of the commercial network may have bounded the writer's actions, but that same network also enabled the writer to reach millions of people with a potentially counterhegemonic message. In reaching millions of people, how ever, the author's message was bounded by viewers' ability and desire to engage with that particular socially relevant message. In part, this process may be explained by Giddens's structuration theory, which looks at institu tions as both bounding and enabling the agency of individual actors. (See Chapters 8 and 9 for more on other audience reception issues.)

The telenovela that started the redefinition of the genre in Brazil was Beto Rockfeller, aired by Rede Tupi in 1968 and 1969 (Mattelart & Mattelart,