Assistencialismo e espetáculo na TV do RN: afetos encenados no discurso de Carlos Alberto de Sousa

Abstract

The research investigates affection as a persuasive strategy by Carlos Alberto de Sousa (politician and businessman, founder of TV Ponta Negra, in Natal/RN), who in the late 1980s and early 1990s commanded an auditorium program at the station. The cutout is a full 5 hour 18 second program aired on December 5, 1987, added to a part of the program of June 17, 1989, of 9 minutes and 15 seconds. Through televisual and discourse analysis, a critical study is sought on some of the codes that connect both sides of the screen in an environment of assistencialism, entertainment and politics, whose hallmark is the spectacle present in Debord's studies (2004). The theoretical framework is based on the Uses and Gratifications hypothesis, referenced in Merton and Lazarsfeld (2000), and on television studies by Sodré (1975, 1977, 2002, 2006), França (2006) and Kneipp (2017). Politics versus mass communication is based on Aldé (2004) and Gomes (2004) and electronic coronelismo in Santos and Caparelli (2005). The concept of mediatization is grounded in Hjarvard (2012, 2014) and of affection in Sodré (2006) and Freire Filho (2017). For televisual analysis, the basis is Jost (2004, 2007). On the discourse, the forgetfulness of Orlandi (1999) and Pêcheux (2014), from the French school of DA, with analysis methodology proposed by Souza (2014). A reading of the only two elections lost by the politician in 1990 and 1998 refers to the institutional perspective of mediatization proposed by Hjarvard (2012, 2014). Only local media owner from the popular classes, Carlos Alberto de Sousa was notably pressured by other social and political actors after obtaining the Ponta Negra TV concession. With regard to his mediatic performance, it is considered that, with rare episodes of spontaneity, the affections are strategically enacted in a narrative of entertainment and assistencialism with political and business purposes, culminating in a capitalist, conservative, sexist and discriminatory discourse, with traces of the grotesque. The charismatic hero's evidence of solidarity pointed out by Weber (2004, to the citizen-victim described by Charaudeau (2010) and the presenter's cultural patronism are part of this mediatic exposure strategy, which includes a pedagogical insertion of political messages embedded in television entertainment broadcasts. This strategy of political capital accumulation through outsourced solidarity, with simulated and short-lived emotional bonds, therefore points to an affective electronic halter, strongly present in the local social environment.