Prime time soap operas break TV’s colour barrier

With their daily dose of melodrama, suspense, romance and tears, Brazil’s wildly popular telenovelas have never shied away from bringing social commentary into viewers’ living rooms.

Over the years, blockbuster soap operas have tackled many contentious issues, from class and sexuality, to dictatorship and deforestation.

But for decades, the issue of racial inequality has been conspicuous by its absence: despite the fact that 56% of Brazil’s population identifies as black or mixed-race, its soaps have displayed a glaring lack of diversity – in some notorious cases, white actors were even hired to play black roles.

Now, for the first time ever, the three prime-time telenovelas on Brazil’s dominant TV network Globo feature prominent black protagonists.

Six days a week, Perfect Love, Never Give Up and Land and Passion serve up the traditional mix of family feuds, romance, betrayal and endurance – but played by a racially diverse cast.

The underrepresentation of black Brazilians in positions of power remains an entrenched problem. As recently as 2018, Globo was publicly chided for airing a telenovela with an almost all-white cast, despite being set in Bahia, the state with the highest percentage of black people in Brazil.

“The big victory right now is that you don’t just have black actors […] you have characters who have a right to their own objectives, characters who aren’t telling their story through the lens of the white gaze or as a consequence of racism,” said Elisio Lopes Jr, a black TV writer who co-authored Perfect Love, a 1940s period drama full of black characters and devoid of racial tensions.

For producers like Globo, addressing concerns with diversity is also a way of recapturing an audience.

“Society wants to see itself better represented on-screen, and this attracts viewers,” said Rosane Svartman, the creator of Never Give Up. Set in contemporary Rio de Janeiro, Never Give Up (Vai Na Fé) tells the story of working mother Sol, a go-getter from the suburbs whose teenage dream of being a dancer hasn’t completely died. The telenovela has been praised for giving a platform to previously ignored issues, such as evangelical faith and Afro-Brazilian syncretism.

“We’re a diverse group of people,” said Raquel Oliveira, 39, a tour guide from Rio. “Within the black community are people who are evangelical, there are conservatives, progressive people, members of the LGBTQ+ community … the telenovela shows that.”

Land and Passion, which premiered last month, features a cast including Indigenous and trans actors, and a child actor with albinism, as well as a black leading lady.

Attention is turning to representation behind the cameras too. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva last month signed off on a 3.8bn reais ($760m) fund for the audio-visual sector, which imposes quotas for black and Indigenous representation on grant applicants’ projects.

“If you don’t build a moving chain within the cultural sector, the [black] protagonism of the stars, the aesthetic, the screen, is ephemeral,” said Samantha Almeida, who leads Globo’s new diversity push.

As a viewer, Oliveira agrees. “This representation is only worthwhile if we also have black people writing scripts, directing, producing.” Observer CONSTANCE MALLERET IS A JOURNALIST BASED IN RIO DE JANEIRO

‘We’re a diverse group of people ... the telenovela shows that’ Raquel Oliveira TV viewer