Sex & Violence in Brazilian Television

Just as in any Western country, television plays an essential part in Brazilians’ daily routine, from traditional soap-operas (“novelas”), to children’s programming and sensationalistic TV news-shows. When it comes to TV, sex appeals more often and regularly than violence to the country’s audience. Similar to the “porno-chanchada” movement in the ‘70s and ‘80s, it seems that spectators are attracted to sex as a game, a fun thing to do when they can, and a fun thing to watch all day long. Since violence does not have the same appeal, and perhaps also because of its excess in the streets of Brazil, sex sells better in TV commercials and shows.

Violence, on the other hand, has a different role: Shows such as Alert City or the extinct Here and Now, by SBT (Brazilian System of Television, the second most popular channel in Brazilian open TV) report on violence with as much graphic scenes as possible, shaken camera shots and angles, sometimes employing a helicopter at strategic parts of the city (usually the poorest) in order to catch crimes as they happen and assist the police in capturing the culprits. Gil Gomes, who passed away in June, 2007, was one of the most infamous TV hosts when Here and Now began airing in 1991, with caricatured gestures and a somber tone in his rancid voice, always reporting a crime as if it was a fictitious horror story, shocking viewers and attracting a morbidly-curious audience for several years.

Gil Gomes Pictured Above

After Here and Now, many similar shows came to exist in Brazil’s smaller TV stations (Band, Record and SBT). Alert City, then presented by José Luiz Datena in 1999 through 2002 in TV station Band (former Bandeirantes) had a similar style, perhaps a bit less of a caricature, but still offering viewers the same spiced up stories as Here and Now. The producers provided a “reporting” helicopter following police activities throughout the city, which offered something more to the viewers, an actual interaction as crime stories developed in São Paulo. Strongly opinionated and conservative, former soccer commentator Datena presented the show with frequent vulgar expressions and popular jargons, upholding his reputation as a crime hater, someone who constantly judged criminals as sub-humans, and who gave the suffering citizens of urban violence an aggressive voice to vent out.



Such sensationalistic shows are very common, especially in afternoon and evening programming in Brazilian television. Cristina Valéria Flausino wrote in 2003 that “we can doubt of news written in a newspaper or heard on the radio, but in front of a screen, with the ‘live’ logo displayed on the top corner, with follow-up narration by the anchorperson (who constantly repeats “you are viewing these images live”) there is no contest and everything acquires the appearance of an absolute truth. There is no reality other than the one standing before our eyes.” And her concern is validated by Bourdieu (1997), who said that “an important parcel of our society is given body and soul to television.”


As most of these shows, which in actuality include General Balance (Record), Direct Line (Globo), Brazil Urgent (Band) and the infamous Ratinho Show (SBT) are played in the less popular, less watched and less regarded TV stations (other than Direct Line, which airs on Globo, the monopolistic Brazilian TV station). That means that these shows, as popular and frequent as they are, growing in number tremendously since Here and Now, are regarded as the lowest of low-cultures, and appeal to the poorest and less educated segments of society.




Although the stories are real (ever more real, since most are live, and as Flausino describes, they all provide a constant flow of live audiovisual language), they are overplayed and most of the times come with the constant static of the wild rants by their anchors and reporters. Yet, as she described on her research paper in 2003, the majority of these news-shows are heavily influenced by North-American journalism. Their models are directly taken from American newscasts, and they all claim to follow, as literarily as possible, the social journalism style.


True enough, most of these shows do portray stories that are ignored by the mainstream media (in the case of Brazil, anything that airs on Globo is considered mainstream, but only a few shows from other stations reach the larger public with the same intensity) and are more relevant to local communities and neighborhoods. Luiz Datena, for example, was forced to quit after a long period of uncertainty because of some of his controversial expressions. He never spoke against the people, but against repressive institutions and white-collar as well as petty criminals. He was pressured to leave the show since anonymous parties were unhappy with his indiscriminate criticism of high-level institutions and government.

TV Talk Shows and Soap-Operas

Also regarded as low-culture, soap-operas or “novelas” add to the sexuality and violence portrayed in the media. Talk-shows such as Márcia (Record) and The Ratinho Show (SBT) often include spoofs of news, controversial interviews and guests fighting each other both vulgarly and physically on stage, much like a common Jerry Springer episode (and very much drawn from its model).

Soap-operas, on the other hand, are particularly well viewed by female audiences, and depending on the writer and producer, they do not necessarily expose too much of these themes in their plots and characters' conduct. However, some “novelas” (such as “Kubanacan” Globo, 2004) do insinuate and provoke audiences more by presenting barely naked women and men and portraying most of the challenges and obstacles that the characters face as sexual, or most of the solutions as violent.

As an article from October, 2006, in Sao Paulo Herald described, Band station has created a soap-opera intending to break Globo’s monopoly by appealing to the most basic human instincts of the audience. Forbidden Passions (2006) had scenes of “a slave murdered in one episode … a rape attempt in the next … a few episodes later, a couple has explicit sex on top of a kitchen table …”

In fact, although Forbidden Passions has never erased Globo’s monopoly, it marked a turning-point in Brazilian television, when sex and violence became a must in Brazilian culture. Now, such scenes were not only commercially viable, but became the norm. An increase in sexual and violent content is evident, according to the article, in Brazilian mainstream and open TV stations.
Sex and violence, thus, are well portrayed in the Brazilian media.

Now, we turn to the press and a few NGO’s that have discussed both positively and negatively the power of such themes and their influence on popular behavior.

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