A Fabricação do Consumo: Estratégias de Merchandisingna Telenovela “Belíssima”

Resumo (EN)

The theme of this paper is merchandising on TV in the contemporary context (specifically on the Rede Globo soap opera entitled Belíssima). ln it, we discuss the way in which consumption is mixed to that fictional work, for this mixture seems to cause the soap opera viewers to lack public space and face a "reality" forged according to the media dictates. Our objective is to demonstrate how imbricated to "reality" fiction is (in that mediatization process). Four tie-ins in that soap opera are our study object (two of them refer to Valisere, one to Renner and one to Natura).
Through this study, we intended to understand, from the perspective of merchandising producers, one of the social changes (in Brazil) related to soap operas: the adoption (by receivers of merchandising actions) of consuming habits stimulated by fashion trends, which is a perceptible phenomenon, for even the producers of other soap operas have stuck to such strategies. That is a fact that seems to have been scarcely studied by the academy. The studies by Schiavo (1995), Sodré (2006), Baudrillard (2005), Marcondes Filho (1988), Lopes, Borelli e Resende (2002) and Canclini (1999) serve as the theoretical bases to our first chapter, in which we discourse about merchandising and soap operas as new media for the "consuming production". We benefit from the studies by Nascimento (2007) and Balogh (2002) in order to take discursivity and the polyphonic discourse as our targets in the second chapter. Sodré (2006), Braga (2006) and Debord (2004) provide us with theoretical bases to our third chapter, in which we broach the technological advances and the assumption of new values (concerning spectacularization) through the mediatization process. ln the fourth chapter, based on the above-mentioned authors and also on Wajnman (2006) and Rocha (2005), we present our epistemological analysis. We focused on Belíssima and searched for some evidence -in it- of the strategies that were used to induce soap opera viewers to adopt new fashion trends. Our search also included the analysis of women's maganizes, newspapers, websites and talk shows that, during the period in which Belíssima was being aired, dedicated some of their time to paying attention to its characters' clothing. We noticed that, in the media, there was a lot of talking about the subject, including tips to dress like the characters and review of their wardrobe.
The evidence seems to warrant the conclusions that merchandising ends up (1) manipulating its receivers to consume -and consumption, nowadays, is imbricated not only in fiction, but also in entertainment; thus, (2) the mediatization of products and trademarks is done, in a circular way, in several media.