King of the Cattle - |
At different television meetings in recent years, statements like that television will take over the role literature had been playing in the past could often be heard . Or, in order to be a trifle more permissive in the wording and be considerate to those who still continue to read - the future of literature is in television. This forecast – which often embarrasses television people themselves - is no longer a peeping into the distant future, but a very specific piece of current reality. Think only of the Brazilian (or Mexican, Spanish) telenovelas that are daily shown on television, which - as a result of some of their characteristics - provide masses with the intellectual nutrition the acquisition of which had once been the prerogative of the reading public. And not only the masses. The author of this paper, who was often called upon by his work to travel to Portuguese speaking countries, was astonished to find that during the first epoch of Brazilian telenovels the most cultivated social classes followed their daily episodes with the same enthusiasm and perseverance as did the simple people. At the showtime of Gabriela, Carnation and Cinnamon in the 70s, or during the daily screened episodes of Dancin’ days, streets, restaurants, and cafés became empty, and calling someone during that hour was the most ill-mannered thing to do, even if the person called belonged to the intelligentsia of more refined tastes. This paper, that aims at discussing the phenomenon of the telenovel by summarising in the first place the author's experiences and surveys about the Brazilian telenovel, will inevitably have a touch of the empirical, not only because the author has drawn part of his conclusions having seen exactly these works as well as the impact they made on their audiences, listening to their remarks as well, but because the literature available on the genre is somewhat limited and has as yet failed to elaborate this topic with a view to every detail. The Portuguese word telenovela stands for a unique television genre developed primarily by the Globo television company. The genre targeted to entirely engage the attention of the audience by a television series - through relatively short parts that are broadcast at the same time on a daily basis, - for months, and in some cases, even for years. The original objective of the telenovela, in contrast to the soap opera which was supposed to fill in the void between washing-powder commercials, - was to make popular national literature available to the masses in countries where as a result of great distances and the level of illiteracy, books were not for the common man. Under the auspices of this idea, the first successful telenovels, adaptations of e.g. Jorge Amado's Gabriela, Carnation and Cinnamon, or Érico Veríssimo's O Tempo e o Vento (The Time and The Wind) were screened. In them, the literary raw material, the author's actual words, took the upper hand over the more typical elements of film, and the show-time that unwittingly or perhaps consciously took into consideration the conventional daily reading customs of the public (20-25 minute parts in the early evening hours when people taking a rest after their daily work and before dinner - or before bedtime - usually were believed to do a few pages of reading ) was suitable to make these television series a reading substitute. The name telenovela - referring to the literary roots of this television genre - is made up of two parts. In Brazil, the Portuguese word novela is attached to the abbreviation used for television. The word novela has the same roots as the English novel, although novela means a shorter literary work of art, and - in the literary historical sense - it refers to genres that are shorter and less seriously-minded than the heroic poem, which - like the tale of chivalry (novela de cavalaria) or the sentimental novel (novela sentimental) appearing after the Renaissance - spread due to satisfying the entertainment needs of the less cultivated social classes. Although the word telenovela - that makes one think of a "shorter story of entertaining quality" - is perhaps not the most precise definition of the often lengthy novel-like creations that do not refrain from weaving the story along multiple threads or from complicating it with retrospection ((flash-back) as well as forecasts into the future. Yet it is not entirely wrong either, as it refers to a literary genre that - with some boldness - can be considered the model of today's telenovelas. Many consider the soap operas that made their appearance in the 1950s in the United States as the direct predecessors of the telenovela. These soap operas were primarily written for those female audiences who did household work, wherefore its main characters were strong and virtuous women who stood up against their weak and irresponsible husbands, while the peacefulness of family life was continuously threatened by unusual illnesses and crises, in which these women had to stand firmly on the ground. These series became increasingly popular in Latin-American countries, e.g. Mexico, Cuba and Brazil from the 1960s, pushing gradually the previously much liked radio plays into the background, just like these radio-plays in their time also defeated the serialised novels -published by magazines - that were so highly valued by the reading public from the second half of the last century. The story-structure that aimed at engaging its audience's attention from day to day, that promised incessantly new adventures and left the episodes open - thereby keeping interest at a high pitch - appeared in literature much earlier than that. In papers analysing the European novel, it is often mentioned that in the 12th-13th centuries, in order to satisfy the needs of the audiences present in royal and aristocratic courts a new genre, then called roman, appeared. The very name roman refers to the fact that this genre was a translation into the common and vulgar roman language - an offshoot of literary Latin - , and to the fact that these works were not of high literary aspirations but aimed at providing entertainment to the uneducated secular audience. This is the roman that -although originally its name alluded to a translation and an adaptation according to the taste of the masses - later developed into the tale of chivalry, something the majority of contemporary readers felt entirely passionate about. The original tales of chivalry of educating lessons and philosophical content were later displaced by a new form, one that offered an incessant row of adventures, where the always travelling main character, a chivalrous knight continuously meets new difficulties and again and again proves his chivalry and extraordinary capabilities. The general enthusiasm for the genre is amply illustrated by the fact that dozens of versions of the most popular ones have been made, e.g. Palmeirim of England or Amadis de Gaula. And literary history tells us that Cervantes decided to finish the second part of his story with the death of his protagonist in order to hinder his imitators from continuing Don Quijote's adventures. Looking at the structure of a late tale of chivalry it becomes obvious that they are made up of many hundreds of relatively independent sections, (In the White Tirante of the Catalonian Joanot Martorell there are 487 chapters, each of 2-3 pages on the average, while the Portuguese João de Barros' Clarimund is made up of 94 chapters, 10-15 pages each ). The longest chapters recount more or less complete adventures that the protagonist went through and indicate the great likelihood of a next adventure towards the end of the chapter, while the shorter ones - by leaving the individual episodes open - suggest a cyclical quality, providing the reader with the possibility of interrupting the reading at any time so that new listeners may join the audience. The characteristics and reactions of the protagonists are unchanging, their adventures are all modelled on the same pattern and are incessantly repetitive; wanderings, jousts, and the details of a knight's service are constant elements. In view of the structure, the number of chapters and the speediness of reading, reckoning with a daily half an hour to one hour of reading, the reading out of a roman must have taken three to four months, during which time listeners probably developed a sense of feudal belonging to the characters. So much so, that according to contemporary observes, a Spanish nobleman and his entire family went into mourning at Amadis de Gaula's death. The literary quality of the telenovela is emphasised by its clearly identifiable relationship with the medieval tale of chivalry, the serialised novel of the last century as well as by its solutions copying reading habits. In contrast to the movie or the stage performance, the telenovela is not squeezed into relatively tight timing, and does not endeavour to extract immediate emotional reactions, either negative nor positive, or a catarctic and shocking effect. Its lengthy timing, similarly to the way the grand novels of the 18th and 19th centuries were read, presupposes a daily reading rhythm. The 20-25 minute episodes (less often 40-45) are closely intertwined. Most telenovelas start with projecting the last scene of the previous episode, but a retrospection is also common, when before the actual starting of the new episode and the projection of the title, a few scenes of the previous part appear, just as the supposed reader also skips through the previously read pages. The rhythm of story-telling, conforming to habits of television watching and the lowest point of intelligence in the viewership, is slow and repetitive, i.e. if something else accidentally engages the viewer's attention, s/he may join in within a few minutes without a feeling of having missed something. The same is true for new viewers, as these people - assisted by visual or narrative reviving of previous events (actual flash-backs), or references to previous events in the dialogues - will possess virtually sufficient knowledge as to the story after having seen one or two episodes. The structuralism that developed as a result of the activities of Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, Julius Greimas and other literary historians and linguists, which started to research epic genres using the thoughts of the Russian formalists (especially Propp's The Morphology of Tale and thoughts of Saussure) highlighted the role played by discourse, i.e. story-telling, and pushed both characters and sites into the background. The new science that thus developed came to be called narratology, and by broadening the scope of its investigation, it included narrative genres as the cartoon, film, newsreels and the telenovela, which latter - as a result of its characteristics - was found to be closely related to the novel. In contrast to the more subjective and shorter literary genres, novels have always been more exposed to the taste of its audience, and an author of novels had to keep an eye on his readers while writing his work of art. The author faces the same problems when writing a telenovela. One of the specialists of the question, S. Y. Campedelli contends: “In television, the process of writing in bits - just like in the case of serialised novels - is at war with the insecure audience. Thus, one may venture to say that the next episode is expected with excitement not only by the audience, but by the author as well. ...” In order to fully grasp the essence of the above statement, one must know the process a telenovela is made. As soon as the first couple of dozens of episodes in a series have been written, screening is launched, followed by extensive opinion polls. By the time the previously completed episodes are running out, the audience's views are known, and any new episodes are written in view of that, while a continuous monitoring is maintained. Although producing a telenovela - as a result of the application of video-technology making immediate control and rapid use possible, and the practice of shooting in closed indoor locations and with a number of cameras - may appear to be a simpler technical matter than producing a feature film or staging a theatre performance, it is a rather trying undertaking. While shooting a telenovela, the entire crew moves into the studio, and the actors and the technical personnel are virtually shut up for 8-10 hours every day for months. As a result, the film's structure of relationships is often mirrored by the private lives of the crew, bringing saturation and exhaustion. But the audience's need prevails even in cases of this kind, influencing film-makers. The story of how a contemporary Brazilian telenovela was made is typical, and is now recounted as an anecdote. After years, the film's makers became rather exhausted with it, and much desired to be rid of it. Thus, all the main characters were collected in a city which an earth-quake totally ruined, causing the death of every one of the characters. The outrage of the audience, however, was of such elemental force, that the television company in question was threatened with boycott. There was no helping it, the film-makers had to give in, and in a next episode one of the main characters was identified under the ruins with hardly any flicker of life in him..... then in a couple of weeks time the remaining main characters were back brought back to life, and the series was back on its feet again. As mentioned before, the first Brazilian telenovelas were built on literary material, and used the narration of the original written novel - by their special forms of expression - almost entirely. Thus, they gave a dramatised and visually reinforced version of the novel. Yet films that adopted the story, the environment and typical situations of the soap-opera into Brazilian surroundings soon made their appearance. The heroes of these films usually represented upper social classes, who were just as frail and in need of the support of the lower classes as was typical of the amorous noblemen in the “capa and espada” mass dramas in the Spanish Golden Age. A special characteristic of the Brazilian telenovela is that it usually features a grown-up or elderly black woman, who stands for the ancient wisdom of the common people. Its explanation is found in Brazilian traditions, as during the age of slaves black nurses reared the children and often introduced young boys into the mysteries of love, which certainly endowed them with a sort of charisma. In addition the specifically Brazilian sites, e.g. the cottages on the Bahian shore, the spacious country homes of the Southern cattle-rearing regions, or the small towns preserving their 18th-19th century atmosphere, these films often use more modern surroundings, where lots of people may meet under natural circumstances, e.g. fashionable discotheques, dress-making saloons, offices of grand entrepreneurs, etc. The adaptations of literary works of art as well as the independent telenovelas are primarily characterised by an attempt at isochrony, i.e. trying to move film-time as close to real time as possible, sometimes even stepping over real time and by building on the characters' dialogues. Telenovela characters mostly meet in closed indoor environments, with limited space for movement, and visual elements serve no more than illustrative purposes and depict atmospheres and epochs. Movement is of secondary importance, the story moves forward with the help of the dialogue, made up of fashionable expressions and colloquial phrases, thereby meeting the needs of the broadest possible audience. For the viewer with a literary education, watching the telenovela in hopes of seeing a film, these dialogues are often insufferably over-chatted. The characters continue to say complete, redundant sentences even if colloquial language would satisfy itself with omissions and elliptic phrases. The absence of specific film and theatrical methods gave rise to the visual solutions that are quite unique to the telenovela. Close-ups and grand totals play an important part here, projecting the movements from the closest possible points, and the editing is characterised by long takes, portraying the story's different threads in a balanced way. Making use of speech as the primary mode of conveying the story in the telenovela has somewhat deprived music of its customary importance. Music in the telenovela serves not so much the creation of an emotional setting or emotional reinforcement, but the integration of the telenovela into a graspable whole. In similar situations, the accompanying musical tunes are always the same, and the same songs are heard. The reader of this paper might have observed that the author was consequently using the Brazilian name of the genre, i.e. telenovela, although the phenomenon of the television series has an excellent Hungarian name, tévéregény (television novel) . It is surprising that - although the Hungarian audience came in contact with the telenovela almost one and a half decades ago, when Hungarian television showed Isaura the Slave Girl made of the novel written by the Brazilian Bernardo Guimarães, a total adaptation - either theoretically or practically, - has not taken place in Hungary. That a practical adaptation is missing is something the author considers as much to our merit, because the mass hysteria that was created by the humble souls engaged in raising funds for Isaura's liberation, or the passions that were animated at the death of Dallas' Bobby should rather be avoided. Nevertheless, few theoretical works have so far been written on the subject of the television novel in Hungary, and there are hardly any attempts at getting this genre - that under fortunate circumstances can be of a literary inspiration and a literary quality, and which, with the decrease of reading, can play a primary role in the spreading of culture - be rooted in Hungary. It is sarcastic that - as a result of the workings of fate, or of television film-makers - the word "telenovel" has been expropriated for "Neighbours", what is more, its parts have been named episodes, while the telenovelas in the proper sense are broadcast as television series. The logic that exists in this solution - to be honest - is that what is a telenovela in Brazil becomes a series by the time it reaches this part of the ocean, as what we see here are completed as well as edited films, adjusted to European ( or more specifically, Portuguese, French, Italian, etc.) tastes. While Isaura in Hungary was broadcast 13 episodes, it has almost two hundred original parts. Neighbours, however, is made from week to week, subordinated to current events, perhaps in line with the audience's needs. Yet the Hungarian telenovel does not portray reality in an abstracted manner, talking of universal moral values and endeavouring to achieve a certain aesthetic quality - as is usual for every on of the Brazilian telenovelas. The Brazilian telenovela has by now achieved the state of an independent genre among the series and soap-operas produced by the different television companies. This is primarily due to its literary inspirations, its attempt at spreading cultural values, - ambiguous as that may be at times - and the professionalism that Brazilian television channels and television people possess, understanding that television, in this continent-sized and unequally developed country, is an important part of culture. Bibliography: C. Chassay: ”Le mouvement et la production du sens dans le récit audio-visuel” in Recherches Sémiotiques. Semiotic Inquiry, 1984/4. 3/4, pp. 327-337. S. Y. Campedelli: A telenovella. Ed. Ática. São Paulo, 1985.44 J. Cazeneuve: Guia alfabético das comunicaçòes de massas Ed. 7, Lisboa, sine data M. Edmondson, D. Rounds: From Mary Noble to Mary Hartman. The Complete soap opera book. Jove/HBJ, New York, 1977 J. P. Moreira: Telenovelas. A propósito da cultura de massas. in Revista Crítica de Ciências sociais, 4/5 Outubro, 1980, pp. 47-85. T. Lopez-Pumajero: Aproximación a la telenovela Ed. Cátedra, Madrid, 1987. R.. W. Stedman: Te Serials. Suspense and drama by instalment. Univ. of Oklahoma Press, Norman. 1977. M. Stanesco - M. Zink: Az európai regény története a középkorban (Hungarian version in manual form, translated by Gábor Sashegyi, 1997) J. D. Straubhaar: The development of the telenovela as the pre-eminent form of popular culture in Brasil, in Studies in Latin-american Popular Culture, 1982, vol. I. pp. 138-150. |
King of the Cattle - |
