Preamble Narratives and Social Memory - Universidade do Minho

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Cabecinhas, R. & Abadia, L. (eds.) (2013)Narratives and social memory: theoretical and methodological approachesBraga: University of MinhoISBN: 978-989-8600-04-2pp. 190 -201The Subject-Matter of Audiovisual HistoricalFiction in Portugal (1909-2010)Eduardo Cintra Torres & Catarina Duff Burnay1, 2Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Portugalect@netcabo.pt; cburnay@fch.lisboa.ucp.ptAbstractEvery era reconstructs social memory, the media becoming one of the main instancesof selection, production and presentation of the past to each new generation. In thisresearch, we intend to compare the production of audiovisual fictional memory inPortugal since 1909, looking for continuities and contrasts in the fictional subjects inthe dominant audiovisual mass media in each period: cinema, in the period 1909-1957,theatre for television in RTP (Rádio e Televisão de Portugal / Radio and Television of Portugal)in the period 1958-1970 and TV drama in national generalist TV channels from 1990 to2010. The survey through synopsis of cinema, TV theatre and TV drama productions (series,miniseries, serials, telenovelas and films for television) will allow for an understandingof what the media elite in each period considered as the past that was worthwhile to(re)create, remember and (re)integrate in the present and the novelists and playwrightsthat were worthy of adaptation to the screen. Based on a diachronic basis, the surveysuggests a combined analysis of the hegemonic proposal of “preferred past” in each periodwith the respective political situation (1909-1931: silent cinema in an underdevelopedcountry, looking for mass success with the new media; 1930-1945: triumphant EstadoNovo dictatorship and integrated cultural policy, through the SNI (Secretariado Nacionalde Informação / National Secretary of Information); 1958-1970: post-War Salazar regimein a slow decadence; 1990-2010: consolidated democratic regime). Besides establishingthe results of the empirical analysis, this research wishes to verify the validity of theapplied methodology, simple and of rapid completion, for the development of the study ofaudiovisual social memory.Keywordshistorical fiction; media memory; television; PortugalIntroductionThe present research is anchored in the project in progress “Memory and Television:Historical Narratives in Portugal and Spain (2000-2012)”, by a joint team of the Centro deEstudos de Comunicação e Cultura, of Faculdade de Ciências Humanas of UniversidadeCatólica Portuguesa, Lisbon, the Universidad Complutense, Madrid, and the UniversidadCarlos III, Madrid. 1 Through the comparison between Portuguese and Spanish television1Centre for the Study of Communication and Culture, School of Human Sciences, Catholic University of Portugal, Lisbon;Complutense University, Madrid; Carlos III University, Madrid.
The Subject-Matter of Audiovisual Historical Fiction in Portugal (1909-2010)Eduardo Cintra Torres & Catarina Duff Burnaycontents with a historical background, this larger research project endeavours to understand,among other issues, how national networks and scripts articulate with each countryhistorical, cultural political and social sensibilities. For the present paper, we decided to lookfor the subject-matter of audiovisual historical fiction in a chronological, diachronic way,in order to establish the continuities and changes in the subject-matter of the dominantaudiovisual mass media in each period. We selected silent and sound cinema, from thefirst Portuguese fictional film in 1909 to 1957, passing to teleplays in the new media from1958 to 1974, and to present-day TV fiction, from 1990 to 2010. We divided cinema in twoperiods, silent and sound cinema, for practical reasons and because the division coincideswith the end of the liberal, parliamentary regime of 1910-1926, and the beginning of theEstado Novo in 1933, after the dictatorship of 1926-33. The Estado Novo, or New State, wasa nationalist regime, inspired by the rightist European regimes, including a cultural policycontrolling the industry and censorship. By 1957, the cultural hegemony of the Estado Novoapparatus was slowly decaying and opposition intellectuals began diversifying the subjectmatterof audiovisual fiction, trying to bypass censorship. For practical reasons, and becauseour main interest is television, we focused on teleplays since the founding of the nationalTV broadcaster RTP, whose regular emissions began in 1957 2 . The choice of teleplays resultsfrom the importance of the genre and because we did not find accessible sources listingtelevision drama in this period. The Coup d’état of 1974 overthrew the dictatorship andbrought profound changes in cultural institutions and personnel. We sense that audiovisualfiction of the revolutionary period was more interested in the present than in the past, butwe left it to a future research, concentrating instead in the television drama fiction of theperiod 1990-2010, after the consolidation of democracy, the entry in European EconomicCommunity in 1986 and the beginning of private television in 1992. Television was then themain mass media in the country, reaching virtually all the population in mainland Portugaland the Islands of Azores and Madeira. Portuguese cinema, by contrast, had abandoned orbeen forced to abandon the possibility to reach the “masses” and its output was residualwhen compared with television production. Thus, television was the only audiovisual mediacapable of presenting fiction history to a large audience.In this paper, we consider audiovisual historical fiction as any feature film, teleplayor TV fictional content whose time setting is in the past in relation to the production andpresentation time, thus experienced as having a past or historical background by the public.We find useful the differentiation between “costume drama” and “historical drama”, the firstignoring the historical discourse and using “the exotic locale of the past as no more than asetting for romance and adventure”, while the second “engages that discourse by posing andattempting to answer the kind of questions that for a long time have surrounded a given topic”(Rosenstone, 2006, p.45). This differentiation will be noted whenever the used sources allow it.2Our main source was the survey Memórias dos Arquivos RTP: 298 Peças de Teatro, a dactyloscopy prepared by the Direcçãode Novos Projectos e Arquivos, RTP, Sacavém, 2002. The list includes the teleplays that exist in video support. It does notinclude teleplays presented live of which no copy exist. In its first years, theatre was a main genre in RTP. The channelpresented a play almost every week. For instance, in 1958, RTP aired 50 plays (Teves, 1998: 97). We consider the list as arepresentative, unique sample of the tele-theatre produced by RTP in the period studied here. This project may include inthe future the exploration of other sources. We wish to thank the support of the Direcção de Aquisições e Controle de Grelhaof RTP in the verification of the subject-matter of several teleplays.Narratives and social memory: theoretical and methodological approaches191
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Cinematic Landscape and Social Memo
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comprises both remembering and forg
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include important questions related
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Part ICognitive and Emotional Proce
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Narratives and Social Memory from t
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The Lay Historian: How Ordinary Peo
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Cabecinhas, R. & Abadia, L. (eds.)
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Emotional Processes in Elaborating
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Transitional Justice Processes, Sha
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The Past and the Present (re)Visite
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Part IIMedia(ted) Narrativesand Pub
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Hard News Cognitive Shift: from Fac
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Narratives of Death: Journalism and
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Researching Identity Narratives in
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Journalistic Narrative: a Story of
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Journalistic Narrative: a Story of
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Memory and the Flows of Identity in
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‘Diaspora Space’ as Heard and O
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Colonial Missions in the North Amer
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Part VSocietal Issues, Collective A
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Collective Mobilization and the Soc
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Narratives as Prison ‘Escapes’:
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Drawings and Narrative: the Inmates
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Comissões Unitárias de Mulheres d
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