Não foi apenas um beijo: o acontecimento beijo gay na telenovela Amor à Vida e a constituição de públicos

Abstract

The contemporary Brazilian society is experiencing a period of discussion on the achievement and maintenance of the rights of the LGBT community. The mediatic space reflects, in its various formats, this moment. This dialogue between media and society draws our attention to the media's role in the construction of social representations on this theme. And from that interest, we built this research that has the objective of analyzing a specific space where there this interaction experience happened: the gay kiss in the soap opera Amor à Vida. As we categorized the scene as an event, it was possible to understand the relevance of this phenomenon not only in its appearance, but the fact that it happened to someone. And yet the subject arranged by this event were placed in a common, however heterogeneous, area of discussion on the topic. Specifically, we seek to grasp and understand the public constituted by this event and the different ways of allocating them. As a complement, we will discuss also the hermeneutic power of this event, showing what he tells us not only about the soap opera, but about the contemporary Brazilian society. To thisend, our methodology of analysis is grounded in theories that focus on the interpretative process of individuation and significance of phenomena of evental nature. It is composed of two central axis, which are divided into two categories of analysis each:the first axis, we seek to grasp the constitution of the public as well as the symbolic universe that crosses and summons the subject, from the emergence of the event. To this end, we have two categories of analysis: a) Event Description: it includes checking of how this event was named and identified by media outlets (in the articles) and the subject; b) Public Description: it is to identify, through self-nomination or clues left in the texts, the social role (activist, voter, political, religious, spectator etc.) that the subject is playing commenting on the gay kiss scene. The second axis is the apprehension of the hermeneutic power of this event, in which, we look at two dimensions: a) Public: it includes checking of problematic fields in which the subjects inscribe the event. b) Private: which involves the identification as a subject triggers the event to develop the theme of its own life. Our endeavor, then, was to approach the discourse of these subjects presented in debate arenas on the subject. Pragmatically, we arrived to discursive fragments present in the field intended for comments on major portals in Brazil. We found that, as it is a phenomenon inscribed in a public problematic field, subjects re-framed the event constantly, thematizing their lives, the lives of the people indirectly involved indirectly and ultimately society itself. It was possible, also, to identify in a clear manner, that the subject is polarized from a symbolic repertoire subsidized by the triad of institutions, practices and values. And this triad holds the symbolic repertoire of a society to the point that can provide maintenance, stabilization or deconstruction of values of a society. It becomes, thus, central points of the production of (new) narratives of society