Content area
Full Text
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
Samantha Nogueira Joyce , Brazilian Telenovelas and the Myth of Racial Democracy (Lanham, MD : Lexington Books , 2012), pp. v + 129, £37.99, hb.
Reviews
Given the paucity of up-to-date academic works that specifically interrogate the subject of ethnic representation within the all-pervasive phenomenon of the telenovela in Brazil, the publication of Samantha Nogueira Joyce's book Brazilian Telenovelas and the Myth of Racial Democracy is to be welcomed. This study sets out to explore a particular example of this television genre, Duas Caras (TV Globo, 2007-8), which openly tackled matters of race and racism in contemporary Brazil in its storyline and dialogue. This was the first prime-time novela in Brazil to have an Afro-Brazilian lead protagonist (Evilásio, played by well-known TV and film actor Lázaro Ramos), and its author, Aguinaldo Silva, wrote a blog during the run of the programme in which he directly engaged with its fans and critics, particularly with regard to the reactions provoked by its treatment of racial questions. Joyce's book sets out to illustrate how race and race relations were negotiated in the novela, and in Brazilian society more broadly, during the programme's typical eight-month duration, via Silva's blog and public engagement with it as well as media criticism and commentary in general. Joyce claims that her study 'tracks the dynamic process through which Duas Caras worked to debunk the ideology of...