Dancing Days: Nationalism, Soap Operas, and Dreams of Modernization in Authoritarian Brazil. 1970 - 1988"

FAIN: FT-265307-19

Paula Halperin
Purchase College, SUNY (Purchase, NY 10577-1402)

A book-length study about the development of Brazilian national identity and the rise of the television industry during the military dictatorship between 1970 and 1988.

In this project, I analyze the complex relations between the Brazilian military regime (1964 – 1985), the emergence of the television network Rede Globo in 1965, and its growing influence during the 1970s and 1980s. In addition to mapping the political and institutional dimensions of government cultural policies, I closely analyze the emergence of a new kind of aesthetics and teledramaturgy present in popular soap operas that channeled the aspirations and anxieties surrounding the project of conservative modernization promoted by the regime.