A História na TV: a Guerra do Paraguai na novela Nos Tempos do Imperador (2021)

Abstract

This research intends to analyze the representation of the History of Brazil in the soap opera Nos Tempos do Imperador (2021), specifically with regard to the causes of the Paraguayan War (1864-1870), in order to understand the use that the soap opera makes of History, identify what is represented from the past and how this representation is made. Therefore, we seek to understand how a television production, whose objective is entertainment, represents History, in this case the causes of the Paraguayan War, and how this representation produces and reproduces a version of these causes. Historical representation soap operas, the category in which Nos Tempos do Imperador falls, represents a part of History, portraying, through its own language, a constructed and fictional version of a past - facts or people - that had a concrete existence (Machado, 2013). The methodology of this research is based on the premise that these soap operas are a construction that creates a specific language of interpretation of the past and must be analyzed, therefore, by their textual (script), visual (images) and audio (sound) dimensions, relating them (Napolitano, 2008). Throughout its exhibition, Nos Tempos do Imperador used some well-known facts and events from national history as part of its plot, such as the diplomatic incident between the Brazilian government and the English ambassador, which occurred between 1862 and 1865 and became known as the Christie Question, and the Paraguayan War itself, always told from the perspective of the brazilian imperial family, especially the Emperor Dom Pedro II. In addition, fictional elements and characters are added and relate to these historical characters, taking part in the historical facts. Nos Tempos do Imperador, therefore, organizes the narrative of the facts in its own way, based on its own parameters, mixing real facts and fictional plots, romancing History and using different causal factors in its script to construct the plot of the Paraguayan War, to which it adds a pinch of drama.