“Uma belíssima história de amor e sangue”: representações sociais do cangaço na minissérie Lampião e Maria Bonita (1982)

Abstract

Lampião e Maria Bonita was a miniseries originally shown in eight chapters by Rede Globo, from April 26 to May 5, 1982. Written by Aguinaldo Silva and Doc Comparato and directed by Paulo Afonso Grisolí and Luiz Antônio Piá, it was the first miniseries on Brazilian television and also the first teledramaturgical work to address the theme of cangaço. The plot of the miniseries is based on the last six months of life of Virgulino Ferreira da Silva, Lampião (Nelson Xavier), the most famous leader and symbol of the Brazilian cangaço between the 1920s and 1930s. Lampião is accompanied in his travels by Maria Bonita (Tânia Alves), with whom he had a daughter named Expedita (Adriana Barbosa) and by his group of cangaceiros. Due to the undeniable importance and social influence of TV, especially in Brazil, it is considered that this means of mass communication can be taken as an object and historical source. In this way, the present master's dissertation intends to investigate, analyze and demonstrate the social representations about cangaço in this television series plot based on three thematic axes: the northeastern hinterland as background and scene, the cangaço violence and the romance between Lampião and Maria Bonita. To this end, some scenes from the miniseries will be analyzed in a theoretical-methodological perspective focused on the possible relationship between History and audiovisual, in particular, between History and Television. It is worth mentioning that, as it is a mediated historical narrative, this television production of the miniseries genre presents convergences and divergences in relation to historiography, precisely because of its fictional character. This will be the starting point that will motivate the analysis of the social representations of the cangaço present in Lampião and Maria Bonita.