Entre a vitimização e a divinização: a pessoa com deficiência em Viver a vida

Abstract

In 2009, was showed by Rede Globo, the telenovela Viver a vida, which presented a protagonist with physical disability. With this character, the 25 million people with disabilities in the country (IBGE, 2010) were able to recognize their daily lives in the prime time of Brazilian television. This work aims to analyze the representation of the person with disability in the telenovela Viver a vida. The research was built on the Douglas Kellner (2001) model of multiperspectival analysis and the Stuart Hall (1997a) concept of representation. For both, we made, first, a mapping of all the characters with physical disabilities in Brazilian telenovelas, produced by Rede Globo, situating the analysis in a historical perspective of representations of people with disabilities in this television genre. Understanding that the speech of the telenovela is related to the society in which it is inserted, we selected news about the person with physical disability, that were broadcast during the exhibition period of the telenovela (from 09/01/2009 to 06/01/2010), in the magazines Veja and Época, in the newspapers Zero Hora and Folha de São Paulo and in the media focused on the segment of people with disability, the magazine Sentidos and the newspaper Na Luta. In the end, we analyze the representation of the person with a disability in the telenovela Viver a Vida, looking at the socio-historical construction process of what is the disability, treating the disabilities associated with the idea of normality, its historicity and its inclusion in the social environment. With the character Luciana, from Viver a vida, issues such as accessibility, rights of people with disability and social inclusion, were discussed in the telenovela, which, with such visibility, gained space of discussion in society. Although it has, in some moments, a pendular look between the victimization and the divinization, Viver a vida destabilizes the vision that most people have on the person with disability, showing a character who search to have a ordinary life in a society that is not yet ready to live with the disabilities.