Vai na Fé: a study on the construction of the increase in interracial relationships in the soap opera of Rede Globo.
black protagonism; racism; production of meaning; soap opera; Vai na Fé.
Brazilian soap operas are one of the most important audiovisual products in Brazil. Through its narratives and plots, national television drama is seen by millions of people. However, it is known that few opportunities were given to the black artistic class for them to obtain prominent positions in these works. The situation becomes even more delicate when asked where these characters' romances are. Do they have a right to love? That said, the objective of this work is to analyze the interracial couples in the soap opera Vai na Fé, a soap opera by Rosane Svarman, shown in 2023 on Rede Globo, at 7pm. The purpose of this research is to highlight the significant number of these romantic couples throughout its exhibition, which was a total of eleven. The popular tone of the plot brought black characters to the center of protagonism who were often marginalized and made invisible in other works. Even so, most of Vai na Fé's black cast belonged to the soap opera's poor core, which reinforces the already widely seen stereotype. The hypothesis raised by this study is that the increase in the construction of interracial relationships in Vai na Fé attempted to break with the invisibility of the black artistic class in Brazilian television drama, even though it reverberated the stereotyping of poor black people. To understand the topic covered in this work, we will use Lopes (2003, 2009, 2019) and Hamburger (2005, 2011) who bring studies about the history of Brazilian soap operas. To understand black people in soap operas, we will approach Araújo (2000, 2006, 2008) and Sodré (1999). To understand invisibilities, representation, intersectionality, the violence experienced by black people and structural racism, we will bring Nascimento (1978), Gonzalez (2020), Almeida (2019), Hall (2016) and Akotirene (2019). We outline as a methodology the critical analysis of Motta’s narrative (2013), in a qualitative-quantitative way.