Portuguese Soap Operas: A case study on the emergence of an original production culture

Abstract

In a context of ever greater circulation of televisual content of all genres and formats, this article focuses on the intersections between the global and the local to understand how a specific genre – soap opera – was localised in a specific cultural and geographical setting giving origin to a specific local production model. Our general argument draws on the empirical findings of original research on the moulding of the televisual genre called ‘telenovela’ in Portugal, the specific production mode associated with it, and reflects on its historical emergence and the contingencies of such a process. Our goal is to identify the variables that allowed this genre to gain local dominance and later achieve international circulation. Based on the results of quantitative and qualitative research, we argue that the closed networked structure of the local production and distribution structures and the dominant ideology of the associated production culture promoted the emergence of a resilient local production culture with high levels of bonding social capital that allowed for its sustainability until today.

Mapping the Film and Audiovisual Sectors: a Research Agenda for the Future

“…In this context, Portugal is an interesting case study. Unlike other European countries, the ownership of production companies by international conglomerates in Portugal is not the norm, as our previous research showed (Damásio & Costa, 2020). This does not mean that the global players and flows do not shape national cinema and audiovisual production.…”

“…In dialogue with the field of production studies in film and AV (M. J. Banks et al, 2016;Caldwell, 2008), and based on our previous work on television production (Damásio & Costa, 2020), our proposal includes the analysis of the different individual and collective actors (workers and companies) that mold the structure of the film and AV industry. This dimension enables us to capture how the industry workplace's practices and ideologies, and the working conditions of creative workers affect the film value chain itself.…”

“…In the last few years, Portuguese audiovisual production has gone through significant technological, economic and cultural changes (Damásio & Costa, 2020). In the context of the transformation of distribution platforms, brought about by the digital turn, and despite the decrease in funding on a national level and irregularities in distribution of public funding for the arts in general and the audiovisual context in particular, Portuguese cinema has seen a rise of qualified, semi/professionalised production of audiovisual content by a new generation of production companies, filmmakers and creatives (European Audiovisual Observatory, 2018).…”

“…This, in association with fixed funding schemes, can help the country in overcoming, in the case of cinema, its historical divorce from local audiences and the inability to develop sustainable production modes (Graça, 2021). Furthermore, in the case of audiovisual, its inability to move from a massive low-quality production system, supported solely by local champions, to a high-end one (Damásio & Costa, 2020). Our work addresses the following research question: how to map these sectors in order to identify the factors that increase the value they produce?…”