Credit, Beatriz Damy/TV Globo
It's the story of someone who leaves their own land in search of a more prosperous place. The costumes and sets are worn, the floor is made of clay and there are cacti everywhere.
This could be the description of the plot of Vidas Secas, a work that Graciliano Ramos published 88 years ago to denounce the ills that plagued the Northeast at the time. But it also applies to Globo's new soap opera, Lá na Minha Terra, which premiered on Monday (9/11) at six o'clock.
The book follows a couple, their two children and a dog on the run through the northeastern backlands to survive drought and hunger. The soap opera stars a goat farmer who lives in the backlands and, after raising five children alone, decides to cross the country in search of her husband, who left for São Paulo years before.
Do the plots seem too similar? For some of the public, yes, as if the serial once again presented the same portrait of the Northeast trapped in poverty, although almost a century separates the two productions.
They see in Lá na Minha Terra the reinforcement of a trend that they attribute to the broadcaster: portraying the Northeast from a hinterland associated with precariousness and crises such as the lack of water — elements that also appeared in the soap operas Mar do Sertão, from 2022, and No Rancho Fundo, from 2024.
The contrast is evident, they say, in the comparison with recent major Brazilian audiovisual productions, such as the film The Secret Agent, which prioritizes showing the large avenues and emblematic buildings of Recife inspired by decorative arts, and the series Cangaço Novo, set in a fictional city in Ceará which, although it is in the backlands, is also modern.
The director of The Secret Agent, Kléber Mendonça Filho, in fact, was one of those who criticized the soap opera.
“Maybe this soap opera really is an expensive and useless rage bait project,” he wrote in X, using the expression in English that characterizes content designed to provoke outrage and generate engagement.
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But one of the videos with the greatest impact in this debate was that of writer Octávio Santiago, author of the book Só Sei Que Foi Assim: A Trama do Preconceito Contra o Povo do Nordeste, the result of his doctorate, whose research focused on stereotypes against Northeasterners.
The original publication on Instagram accumulated 1.6 million views and was shared by influencers who recorded comments on the author's analyses, adding other hits.
In an interview with BBC News Brasil, the researcher explains the criticisms of the soap opera and the practical effects that a stereotypical representation of northeastern people can produce. He also differentiates what he considers a work of denunciation, such as classics such as Vidas Secas, from works that prioritize entertainment.
"By presenting a pulsating Faria Lima and a backward Northeast, what is being said, in practice, is that there is a Brazil that works and a Brazil that doesn't work; that the South and Southeast are the Brazil of the future, and the Northeast is condemned to the past. However poetic and idyllic intentions may exist in relation to this. It is not enough to have good intentions. Good intentions need to appear", he says.
Read the interview below.
Credit, Aline Bezerra/Disclosure
BBC News Brasil — What do you see as problematic in relation to the representation of the Northeast and Northeastern people in the soap opera?
Octávio Santiago — The insistence on trying to validate the discourse that there is a Brazil that works and a Brazil that goes wrong. This soap opera uses the stereotype of a Northeast where women carry goats and drink water from gourds, in a Chapada Diamantina that today emerges as a prosperous farm, with wines, olive oils, coffees and red fruits. As if this myopia weren't enough, we have the repetition of showing this as the absolute portrait of the Northeast.
BBC News Brasil — How does this stereotypical representation occur?
Santiago — If there is a Northeasterner in the plot, either he will be presented in the role of a retreatant — who needs to abandon his land to seek a kind of salvation that only the South and Southeast can give him — or he will be a figure drawn into comedy, almost a court jester — which is a way of representing the Northeasterner as foolish, naive, someone who would be at odds with progress and civility. In the end, it creates a supposed hierarchy among Brazilians.
BBC News Brasil — In addition to the script, which aspects reinforce stereotypes?
Santiago — The false idea that people from the Northeast all speak in a single way, when in fact we have multiple accents. It's as if you blended everything in a blender and made a very exaggerated miscellany to try to create the idea of a standard northeastern. You don't see soap operas about the Southeast that mix elements from Minas, Rio, São Paulo and Espírito Santo. But the opposite, with the Northeast, is done — and everyone is very comfortable.
Furthermore, there are actors from the Northeast included in the cast, but in a minority way and not in protagonist roles. Not surprisingly, several Northeastern actors say they lost roles because they were not considered Northeastern enough. The search is for a caricature.
Credit, Rierson Marcos/Disclosure
BBC News Brasil — There are those who disagree. Actress Dira Paes, protagonist of the soap opera, says that elements such as drought still exist in the Northeast. How do you respond to this?
Santiago — As much as it is said that there is still an incidence of some of these elements, their gathering in the same space and time is a caricatural construction that fulfills the objective only of enforcing a script without respecting the people who are portrayed in these stories.
But you cannot reduce a region with nine states to the incidence of a particularity, especially if it presents itself as negative in a country that is already divided on the false idea that there is a regional hierarchy. When you revisit this photograph, it contributes to validating a discourse that tries to limit the Northeast to a space of subalternity.
But I wouldn't criticize Dira Paes, for whom I have immense respect. She's just a worker. She does not deserve the attack, even if she is chosen to be the shield, because within this industry she is the smallest part. She receives the script ready and has to do her part.
BBC News Brasil — There is a character, played by Camila Morgado, who represents the Brazilians who attack the Northeast. It is presented, in a way, as an example of something bad, which should not be followed. Wouldn't this be a counterpoint to stereotypes?
Santiago — This is what realism did: you create characters that represent the progressive and conservative camps, republican and monarchist ideals. Lima Barreto, Aluísio de Azevedo, Machado de Assis, did this. It's part of it. But, when the rest of the plot doesn't contribute to a respectful vision for the region, you put this character — and especially the actress who plays her — in a very difficult place.
Let's imagine that Europe or the United States constantly made films that portrayed the whole of Brazil as a place condemned to inferiority, to backwardness, something like 100, 150 years ago. How would Brazilians react? There's no point in having a character saying barbaric things about Brazil if the surroundings don't allow for a counterpoint.
BBC News Brasil — Speaking of literature, I see comments comparing Vidas Secas, by Graciliano Ramos, to the soap opera. Why would the book's portrayal of the drought-ridden Northeast be valid, and the novel's, not?
Santiago — First we have to understand that almost 90 years separate the two works. Graciliano published Vidas Secas in 1938. The second point is the intention: Graciliano does not write to entertain.
There is a denunciatory nature, in a Brazil that denied the possibility of the Northeast establishing itself economically. The Northeast was morally destroyed in the 1920s as a terrifying wilderness, like the end of the world, a place that should not be given attention or public resources. Then, in the 1930s, Graciliano writes this book to say "look at the price of this". The denunciatory intention is different from recreation.
But Graciliano himself would have a response to this, which we see when he writes Angústia, a book that did not receive due attention precisely because it is not drought literature, but rather about human subjectivity.
Luís da Silva, who is the main character, says: I wanted so much to tell Moisés [another character] about the wonders of my land, of Alagoas, but he asked me about the drought, he insisted on the scourges. All he cared about was the misfortune from which I came.
Credit, Disclosure
BBC News Brasil — Why would Globo be insisting on this portrait that you consider outdated?
Santiago — It seems to me that for marketing reasons. You have a formula for representing a region that, if it weren't profitable, wouldn't be a repeat offender. Globo has even brought forward the endings of soap operas because the public's reception had fallen short of what was desired. Meanwhile, this aesthetic of the outdated Northeast entered is now repeated every two years. This shows us that it is a profitable product.
I want to know what will be done from now on, because it is already clear that the Northeast no longer accepts this representation. What is the limit of having a population that, instead of seeing itself represented in this product, sees itself violated? Would Globo today insist on making black characters characterized only by subordination? Why did they retreat in relation to this, but insist on the Northeast? Is it because people from the Northeast are just a product?
BBC News Brasil — I return the question to you. Why?
Santiago — The STJ classified the discrimination against people from the Northeast as racism only in 2018. It is too late. Since the creation of the Northeast, we have been considered Brazilians of an inferior race, and only a hundred years later the courts understand that this is racism. It was always racism. And every production that uses this is practicing recreational racism.
We need to remember that all art is political. If you insist on the idea of showing different Brazils, superior and inferior Brazilians, what is the political objective of this?
In the insistence of this outdated representation of the Northeast, perhaps you are recognizing that your interests are market and political, because there is no longer any way to disguise it. There is no denying the existence of information about this.
What will be done from now on will lead this teledramaturgy down two paths: either recognizing that the Northeastern is just a product, which does not deserve respect; or recognize that the objective is political and these plots are in the service of someone's political interest.
BBC News Brasil — From a political perspective, what would be the effect of this representation of northeastern people?
Santiago — The internalization of inferiority. It's telling a population that, yes, you are smaller and you must accept that. For decades, people from the Northeast were driven to the back room, the construction site, something very strong after the country was integrated by road. And if the media only highlights those from the Northeast who are on the margins, and not those who are in the center, in the Northeast itself, it reinforces the idea that there is a hierarchy among Brazilians.
Today, there is a generational change, including a change in social conditions, and people from the Northeast no longer accept the idea that they occupy a smaller place on the social board that is Brazil. Now, for those on the outside, it is a way to validate the distorted view that many already have in relation to the Northeast.
By presenting a vibrant Faria Lima and a backward Northeast, what is being said, in practice, is that there is a Brazil that works and a Brazil that doesn't work; that the South and Southeast is the Brazil of the future, and the Northeast is condemned to the past. As much as there may be poetic and idyllic intentions regarding this. It's not enough to have good intentions. Good intentions need to appear.
What TV needs to understand is that it is dealing with a population that has been diminished and diminished for many years, so to portray this region a lot of respect is needed. And this respect begins by dispelling the idea that we are represented by a single vision of misery.
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